Summary
When the Phone Rings coheres a little more in Episode 2, and there’s enough mystery to keep the audience guessing.
Can impersonating a kidnapper save a sham marriage? I guess this is the question being floated by When the Phone Rings Episode 2, which picks up right from where the oddball premiere left off. To recap: Hee-joo and Sa-eon are married, but the whole thing’s a secret and neither of them are particularly into it. Hee-joo was almost kidnapped, and during her escape effort decided to steal the kidnapper’s phone and impersonate him. Why? Well, therein lies the rub.
The premise is still a bit strange, but the story is starting to cohere. There’s clearly a lot still to reveal about the relationship between Hee-joo and Sa-eon and their respective backstories, but it’s all coming along, and the chemistry is definitely there among the cast. Are Netflix on to another K-Drama winner? It’s more likely than not.
Anyway, Episode 2 picks up the same dangling threads of the mystery. As far as anyone is concerned Sa-eon is married to Hee-joo’s sister, In-a, which is a closely guarded secret. Of course, this was brought up on the phone to the “kidnapper”, so Sa-eon is alarmed by the notion that such a personal detail is apparently known to someone outside his inner circle.
Sa-eon remains none the wiser about what Hee-joo has really been up to, so naturally we get some of those classic close-call sequences – like wanting to check out the dashcam footage which will reveal that Hee-joo is lying about her mutism – as he pokes around and gets uncomfortably close to the truth.
Sa-eon’s close surveillance of Hee-joo – for protective reasons, of course – reveals more things to worry about. It isn’t exactly a secret that they don’t want to be with each other, but getting reports from Hee-joo’s bodyguards about how happy she looks with an associate named Sang-woo seems to bring something into stark relief for Sa-eon.
We also start to get a sense here of how her marriage to Sa-eon has monopolized Hee-joo’s life. Sang-woo mentions that she dropped off the face of the earth three years ago, which is when they got married. That’d be sacrifice enough, but it seems like there’s an additional incentive – Hee-joo’s father is in a good nursing home and is being well taken care of, but that will only persist if she keeps trundling along with the sham marriage. Whether she took the real kidnapper’s phone or not, she really is a hostage.
Hee-joo continues to call Sa-eon as the “kidnapper”, which Sa-eon indulges in order to try and track him down. He assumes, understandably, that he’s some kind of pervert, and begins to search on that basis. It feels like a bit of an overcompensation for how sexless their current predicament is, and has always been – Sa-eon isn’t even familiar with his wife’s body and distinguishing features. The next logical assumption is that she’s having an affair.
I suppose it’s funny how all of Sa-eon’s theories and suspicions are really just his anxieties and inadequacies coming to the fore. With the introduction of Sang-woo – who clearly has the hots for Hee-joo – as a potential love rival, it certainly feels like we’re heading towards the idea of Sa-eon unlocking his own latent feelings for Hee-joo in the unlikeliest of circumstances. This is also underscored by a closing reveal in When the Phone Rings Episode 2, but more on that in a minute.
During one of the calls to Sa-eon, a loud blast cuts things short, and Sa-eon becomes suddenly unreachable. He’s missing for a while, and Hee-joo is clearly concerned, especially when she hears news of a fire in the area. When he finally comes home he hikes up her skirt to check for the blemish on her thigh he saw in the photo she sent earlier. He’s still pushing the affair agenda, but it’s not clear what else is going on.
Of note: A flashback reveals that Sa-eon instructed In-a to swap with Hee-joo because he heard her mother was going to force her into a marriage with a despicable heir to a construction empire. So, this loveless marriage was designed to protect Hee-joo? Why? And why would someone with enough affection for someone to do that not be able to show any of it three years down the line, when they’re married?
I’m sure subsequent episodes will let us know, but for now, When the Phone Rings is providing enough mystery and intrigue to be getting on with.
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