[Drama 2013] Thorn Flower / Spine Flower 가시꽃

[baduy]

Episode 59 text preview:

Hyeok Min announces to his family that he has transferred ownership of the house to Jennifer and is going to give her a shareholding in the company. This distresses Ji Min and his mother.

President Kang urges Je Joon to resist giving up Ji Min to Seo Won, saying that thanks to his ties with with Seo Won's father, there won't be any serious difficulties, and he asks him not to doubt or blame Ji Min.

Newspapers from 8 years earlier, reporting the case of Se Mi, are delivered to the President's house, to Seo Won and to Hyeok Min himself. Hyeok and Seo Won try to find out who has waited until now to send these newspapers.

Not in the text preview, but in the video teaser, Nam Joon tells Jennifer she's looking really weary and reminds her she can "lean on him" any time she likes. [i used to wonder why Kdrama women were so universally keen to "lean on" men, until I realized it must be the effect of constantly wearing those cripplingly high heels, which seriously weaken their ankles and strain their calf muscles, so they are literally incapable of standing on their own two feet]  And we see Seong Mi overhearing the truth about the identity of his mother, followed by a violent confrontation between Hyeok Min and Yang Hee, witnessed by the now enlightened and enraged Seong Mi, after Jennifer has apparently brought his real mother yet again to the house.

[Auntie Mame]

Regarding those crippling stilettos, I've marveled at how they could run in them.  It's truly physics-defying, as well as death-defying.

"Lean On Me"

Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you won't let show

You just call on me brother, when you need a hand (Chorus)
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'd understand
We all need somebody to lean on

If there is a load you have to bear
That you can't carry
I'm right up the road
I'll share your load
If you just call me
(Chorus)
Call me (if you need a friend)
Call me (call me)
Call me (if you need a friend)
Call me (if you ever need a friend)
Call me (call me)
Call me
Call me (if you need A friend)
~ The great Bill Withers  (Ah, it brings back memories)

Okay, back to the story.  I can accept that anything is possible, given enough money.  So, how is Jennifer funding all of her revenge activities.  It certainly can't be cheap to create such a huge CV, with supporting documentation attached.  :-?

[baduy]

Auntie Mame said:
It is interesting that, 7 yrs ago, Ji Min won't give the time of day to Seo Won.  But, 7 yrs later, she has an affair with him; risking a scandal to her career and family.  Of course, even the affair is totally self-centered.  She had the affair because of her frustration with her loveless marriage, which was of her own making.

[Auntie Mame]

Ohhhh!  Without subs, I never knew one of their tie-ins was getting rid of all of Ji Min's rivals.  Well, Seo Won is still delusional if he thinks that Ji Min is ever going to love him.  She loves herself above all else, which means everything and everybody related to her must be perfect.

And, not in a million years would Seo Won qualify as perfect in the 'looks' category. 

Thanks, Baduy!

[Triton823]

Seo Won looks like a creepy perv....just saying.

Ok...my question which will be answered in due time over the course of the next 50 plus episodes...does Hyeok Min really love Jennifer...in most kdrama like this once he finds out who Jennifer really is and the truth about what his dad did...he is going to turn good or be a dooch like he was in the past...these are just questions that had popped into my head about his character.

Also, if that be the case...I pray to God that he don't pull a Ha Joon from glass mask and say, "YK is dead, but I love the person she has become"...if that happens I'll drop this show like a rock on water. His character totally went off the deep end which is another reason to avoid glass mask.

[baduy]

Auntie Mame said: So, how is Jennifer funding all of her revenge activities.  It certainly can't be cheap to create such a huge CV, with supporting documentation attached.  

[gene71632]

From what I understand from the earlier episodes (ep.20 where Jennifer explained to Nam Joon and his aunt at the bar), she got a job in a hospital in New York working as a nursing aid. There was a humorous grandfather who is dying of cancer. She was like a granddaughter to him. It is only after he died that she knows he is wealthy. He left a large portion of his estate to her. He told his son, James to adoptJennifer and left Jennifer the hotel chain as well as the shopping malls. And the story goes.

[Guest yukiyoshinori]

baduy said: [i used to wonder why Kdrama women were so universally keen to "lean on" men, until I realized it must be the effect of constantly wearing those cripplingly high heels, which seriously weaken their ankles and strain their calf muscles, so they are literally incapable of standing on their own two feet]

[Guest atomickitty]

Triton823 said:Also, if that be the case...I pray to God that he don't pull a Ha Joon from glass mask and say, "YK is dead, but I love the person she has become"...if that happens I'll drop this show like a rock on water. His character totally went off the deep end which is another reason to avoid glass mask.

[Triton823]

Rofl....it can't be helped it was all good until they started to smoke some bad stuff then it went all twilght zone for me.

[baduy]

Looks like the mvibo subbing tortoise has been suspended for nibbling performance-enhancing lettuce leaves, but his place has been taken by a subbing snail who has now crawled as far as episode 19.

[elegance1]

I don't think Seo Won is creepy looking, he's freaking handsome .. he looks passionate.  I kinda feel bad for him, I mean when he was younger when the almost-rape happened. I can only blame his father. Villains are really the best in my opinion. Hyeok Min is still the best looking guy with his masculine/craycray-look, but Seo Won is very attractive too. 

[Auntie Mame]

Actually, I think casting did an amazing job with the Seung Min character.  The actor playing Seung Min really looks enough like Hyeok Min for them to be brothers.

Based on ep 59, I guess we have to amend 'Evil-mother' to 'truly loving Evil-mother'.  Her scene with Seung Min was great.  She really does love him, as if he was her own child.  And, it does seem like she didn't keep in mind that he was not her flesh and blood, as she was raising him and treated him less than her own flesh and blood.

Kudos to any woman who can raise a child fathered by her husband and another woman; especially a carnivorous tigress like her.  /:)

[Triton823]

Auntie Mame said: Actually, I think casting did an amazing job with the Seung Min character.  The actor playing Seung Min really looks enough like Hyeok Min for them to be brothers.

Based on ep 59, I guess we have to amend 'Evil-mother' to 'truly loving Evil-mother'.  Her scene with Seung Min was great.  She really does love him, as if he was her own child.  And, it does seem like she didn't keep in mind that he was not her flesh and blood, as she was raising him and treated him less than her own flesh and blood.

Kudos to any woman who can raise a child fathered by her husband and another woman; especially a carnivorous tigress like her.  /:)

[Auntie Mame]

Triton823 said: Auntie Mame said: Actually, I think casting did an amazing job with the Seung Min character.  The actor playing Seung Min really looks enough like Hyeok Min for them to be brothers.

Based on ep 59, I guess we have to amend 'Evil-mother' to 'truly loving Evil-mother'.  Her scene with Seung Min was great.  She really does love him, as if he was her own child.  And, it does seem like she didn't keep in mind that he was not her flesh and blood, as she was raising him and treated him less than her own flesh and blood.

Kudos to any woman who can raise a child fathered by her husband and another woman; especially a carnivorous tigress like her.  /:)

[Triton823]

@Auntie Mame as always excellent point. I guess I didn't pay close attention to what you had posted. Yes it would be difficult to do, but still a child can't help who or what happened at the time of his conception.

I do agree kudos to a person who can do that and not kill the spouse! LOL

[baduy]

Unfortunately, I didn't get to view ep 59 properly yet. We have kitchen fitters working in the house, right underneath my study room, and though I asked them not to mess with the power lines during the time TF was airing, they decided instead to start making holes in the wall with percussion drills, so although I did  manage to see the live stream, I didn't get to hear a lot of it properly.  I'll try to watch later and report back on any stuff I think non-Korean speakers may need a bit of help with.

Meanwhile, here's the text preview for episode 60

Learning that his real mother is Jin Yang Hee, Seong Mi finds himself entangled in confused emotions between between Yang Hee and the mother who raised him. (The video teaser has him telling his birth mother firmly, but not unkindly, that he needs time to sort himself out and asking her to go away for now, which she dejectedly does)

Jennifer phones Seo Won and plays back a recording of a conversation between President Kang and Kim Baek Choon ( = the creepy chauffeur, presumed dead, -- unless, that is, the call that Evil Mom thought she had from  him several episodes ago now wasn't a nightmare, as she tried to convince herself it was. Could it be that this recording Jennifer has is a recent one, proving the guy isn't dead?? Maybe we'll find that out tomorrow. EDIT We did. and it wasn't. There were two recordings, the second one played to the President, and they were both of conversations we already witnessed when KBCh was alive). Seo Won is alarmed to suddenly hear Kim Baek Choon's voice. [Presumably, the scene in the video teaser where she's in a public payphone is of her making this call while concealing her identity. But it would appear that although she went out to the payphone wearing the trusty Kdrama Magic Incognito Baseball Cap, she rather unwisely gave herself away at the other bodily extremity by wearing High Recognizability Factor Slippers on this mission. Her punishment for breaking the High Heels Outdoors At All Times rule, maybe. We see Hyeok Min recognizing Jennifer's slippers as the ones worn by the Baseball Capped Magically Incognito figure he  saw behaving suspiciously in a payphone booth near the house, whereupon he looks  about as thoughtful as someone with excessive testosterone and inadequate gray matter can manage to be. EDIT Actually, that was  just me watching on a low resolution stream. In the actual episode it's clear what actually happened. The slippers were irrelevant: they just happened to be so prominent because the camera was showing what her feet were up to.  What happened after Jennifer got back home, having dumped her disguise in some haste, was that she accidentally dropped the recording device and hastily kicked it under a piece of furniture in a desperate attempt to conceal it].

Jennifer goes to the ?? [the word used, 천창 is one I've only encountered in the meaning "skylight" = 天窓 but it looks from the teaser clip more like she's reaching under a large chest of drawers. EDIT And in the actual epside the item of furniture concerned is indeed called a 서랍 which is the usual word for a drawer, or set of drawers. Maybe the preview writer goofed here] when she thinks no one is around, to retrieve a recording device she planted there, but she encounters President Kang and misses her opportunity. (In the video clip she tells him in unconvincing tones she was looking for a ring she'd dropped)

The housekeeper finds the recording device, and when she shows it to President Kang, {EDIT after seeing the actual episode, I see I should have translated that as "when President Kang sees this" because what happens is that he spots the housekeeper first of all retrieving the device and then later  handing it to Jennifer]  he begins to feel suspicious. (At the very end of the teaser, we hear a voice ?the housekeeper's? sounding very upset and saying "She's Se Mi!")

[baduy]

Auntie Mame said: My point isn't so much about a kid born out of wedlock, but of a woman asked to raise the child conceived from an adulterous affair between the husband and another woman.  Put yourself in the shoes of the mother, who is also a woman and a human being with her own feelings.

It's shocking enough to find out about the cheating.  Then, to be asked to raise the child produced from the cheating?  Isn't that adding insult to injury?  /:)

[baduy]

Here's my filler-in on ep 59 for people who can't follow all the Korean

First off (though it actually comes in the middle of the episode) an incident that wasn't mentioned in the preview but which is ominous. Nam Hee (who yet again shows she is a better detective than any of the professionals in Kdrama land) figures out that Eun Seok isn't her Auntie's child at all.

Her mother has taken Eun Seok for a medical checkup and comes back with the report. Nam Hee notices that his blood group is incompatible with him being his supposed mother's child. Granny isn't too fazed by this (Nam Hee is, after all, a girl, so how can she understand things like blood group inheritance, that's men's stuff) but once Granny is out of earshot, Nam Hee makes plain to her mother that there are only three posibilities. 1) the hospital got Eun Seok's blood group wrong -- very unlikely since he underwent major trauma surgery there  2) Seon Yeong is mistaken about her own blood group -- equally unlikely since all Koreans take an intense interest in their own and their associates' blood groups: after their exact age (and maybe also their profession and therefore income level) it's the next thing Koreans always want to know about people. 3) Eun Seok isn't really Auntie's... At which point her mother puts her hand over her mouth to stop her finishing her sentence, because that's too disturbing a prospect to even think about. Jin Suk hasn't been told the truth  about the child: that's known only to her son and sister-in-law. But now her daughter has winkled it out, she's unlikely to let the matter rest.

In the opening sequence, Jennifer notices to her satisfaction that her plan is working, and that the envelope has been opened and the contents transmitted to Hyeok Min, supposedly without her knowing. When Hyeok Min asks her what the documents were, she just casually says it's some stuff about her father's financial affairs, nothing major, she'll tell him about it later. In his ongoing burst of generosity (fired of course by his supposedly secret knowledge of his new wife's unexepected personal wealth, which makes her more of a business asset than even her former position as a Director of the now-defunct Mason Group) Hyeok Min adds that in addition to making her co-owner of the house, he's also going to arrange for her to get a 5% stockholding in Taekang.

That gives her the opening to say that she feels she wants to repay his generosity in kind and demonstrate her commitment to her new family and its business interests, and so she's proposing to inject major funding into Taekang from her own resources. There's a company that owns a brand in the US conveniently called TK and she's proposing to fund a takeover of that company and use it as a vehicle to get Taekang into the US market in a big way. [Kdrama writers and audiences have some wacky notions about how overseas stockmarkets in general and mergers and acquisitions in particular work, and how Western economies as a whole function, which bear scant resemblance to truth but make for quite good drama plots: see Midas...] She adds, almost as an aside, that she'll have access to the necessary cash from the start of July. This drama, like most other Kdramas if we discount the obligatory opening "7, 10, 15 years ago" phase and the equally obligatory "1,3.5,. years later and new hairstyles all round" bit in the final episode, runs in "real time". So it's now the beginning of May in the drama too. So we can have some inking of what Jennifer is up to here (though we still have to relay on some guesswork, since she's only just begun this particular part of her scheme). My guess is that before very long she'll claim that they need to make an immediate move to snatch up the TK brand, and can't wait till her funds are liquid. So she'll get Taekang to advance the requisite 150 million dollars, with a promise to pay them back in July. Thinking they have rock-solid proof that Jennifer is indeed good for 150 million, Haek Min and his father will agree, whereupon their cash will disappear beyond recall into a phantom company... It looks though from the next episode as though Jennifer's cover is going to be blown before this can go into effect.


The scenes with Je Joon, first with his father-in-law, then with his wife, are slightly different from what the preview led us to expect. The President is clearly worried about Seo Won' threats and he wants to find out where his son-in-law stands and how far he can be relied on to stand by his wife and fight of a scandal that would damage the company image. Of course, he doesn't reveal to Je Joon what his true anxieties are concerning Seo Won and the dirt he has on him, but he does warn Je Joon that Seo Won seems intent on forcing himself into Je Joon's place and that he's a man determined -- and accustomed --  to get what he wants. Je Joon reassures him, at least as far as his own attitudes in the matter are concerned. Seo Won's obsession with Ji Min isn't new to him. he explains. He's been after her since their school days, but Je Joon doesn't regard him as a serious rival and he won't let him destroy his marriage.  Ji Min is anxious to know what her father had to say, but Je Joon reassures her as well. He will stick with Ji Min and his family (he means Ye Ji come what may, so Ji Min needn't worry about Seo Won's harrassment of her affecting his loyalty.

Then the old newspapers start to be delivered. While they are having their impact, Jennifer is cheerfully handing over her company responsibilities to Soo Ji and offering an amicable handshake, but Soo Ji coldy says she has no intention of shaking hands with her. Jennifer's upbeat manner disappears as soon as she is out of the building, where she is joined by Nam Joon, who commiserates with her and reminds her that if it all gets too much for her she can always run away from it and turn to him. But although she admits she's finding life as Hyeok Min's wife almost unbearable, she says she's in no mood to hear the kind of things she knows Nam Joon would want to say to her about backing off from her vengeance campaign, and she takes her leave of him. But Soo Ji has been observing their meeting and is obviously suspicious about the very different atmosphere between Nam Joon and Jennifer when they think no-one else is around.

Seong Min overhears an argument which reveals the truth about his mother, and he goes to Hyeok Min's office (where another copy of the old newspaper has just arrived) and demands a straight answer to a straight question: do they have different mothers? Hyeok Min blusters that that's a nonsensical question, but in effect he answers it by asking Seong Min whether it really matters whether the woman who brought them both up was the real mother of either or both of them: does that make her less of a mother to either of them? And should Seong Min make her sad by speaking of this matter, even if what he's heard is true? Seong Min takes his point and makes his way dejectedly home, while Hyeok Min phones his mother in alarm at tells her Seong Min knows the truth.

Seong Min is attempting to follow Hyeok Min's advice and not mention anything to his mother, but she insists on calling him over to come sit with her, because she has something important to say. But that important thing turns out to be a suggestion that he should go live abroad. "You mean, you'd prefer it if I wasn't here?" he asks and while she's still flustered by that question, he follows through by asking is that also why he was sent off to school in the States at the age of ten,  because she couldn't bear to have him around? She protests that that isn't true, and we know that in one sense it wasn't. He was sent off to live in the States as part of the deal the President made with his mother, by which she agreed to complete separation from her son, who was not to know of her existence until he reached the age of 18. It was the way the President and his wife went back on that deal and refused to let Yang Hee make herself known to and meet her son even after he turned 18 that led Yang Hee to join the vengeance team.

Jennifer announces that Yang Hee has arrived outside the house (no doubt summoned by Jennifer to bring this crisis to a head) and is refusing to leave until she's allowed to meet her son. To Jennifer's suprise (and Ji Min's astonished indignation)  Evil Mom agrees to this request, explaining to Ji Min that Seong Min knows everything and that the best thing to do by way of damage limitation is to let his mother have her way, in the hope this will disarm her threat to go public with the family's dark secret, which she'd so far held back from doing so as not to hurt her son.

Jennifer tells Seong Min that his mother is downstairs, waiting to meet him, but he replies that as far as he's concerned he has only one mother, the one who raised him, and he's not interested in meeting or knowing the real mother who abandoned him. Jennifer conveys the first part (only) of this message to Yang Hee, who takes it on the chin and prepares to leave the house and return some other time when her son has had time to reconsider. But then Hyoek Min comes home and furiously flings Yang Hee to the ground, causing her son to emerge and intervene to defend her.

[chasen8888]

Hello there,
Special request.  I have yet to see this show, from your comments its good, plans are to watch later.  However, I'm unable to download it from episode 20 and up.  Checked d-addicts, some are there but most do not download.  Is there a site that I can download the rest of the episodes from.  This would help a lot.  Thanks for your help.