Summary
When the Phone Rings nicely picks up the pace and tension in Episode 3, adding more character depth and intrigue to the plot.
If you were to look back, I reckon Episode 3 is the point at which When the Phone Rings really starts coming together. The same core dynamic is intact – a loveless couple realizing that they’ve perhaps underestimated their connection – as the oddball kidnapping premise begins to give way to a slightly wider scheme with better tension and higher stakes.
This episode introduces new turns and dynamics and begins fleshing out the bones of the core characters. The whole point of this show out of the gate was that basically nothing we were seeing was really as it seemed, so starting to get to the meat of the issue nice and early is fine in my book.
Things pick up fairly neatly from the previous episode. We see a little flashback of Sa-eon cutting off the call from Hee-joo, who he believes to be her kidnapper, and then almost getting killed by a bomb that someone left at the office. CCTV footage reveals it was disguised as a pizza.
We got a hint of this previously and saw Sa-eon return home after in a bit of a state, highly suspicious of Hee-joo. With this additional context we can see his point of view. The interesting aspect is to what extent his suspicion ends and his concern for her safety begins. With no leads to go on regarding the kidnapper or bomber, he has no idea that his wife is the one who has been calling him.
Given all this, Hee-joo does resolve to end the ploy, confused herself about how her relatively innocuous prank calls are connected to an explosion (luckily there were no serious injuries.) But Sa-eon’s still rightly suspicious, especially of his wife and Sang-woo, which is a dynamic that was also introduced in the first two episodes. Hee-joo’s fuming about the implication of wrongdoing, at least with Sang-woo, which is a bit rich when you think about it.
Then again it’s easy to see where Hee-joo’s coming from to a certain extent too, since as far as she’s concerned, Sa-eon wants her dead. This is obviously based on what he told the kidnapper about not bothering to call back until he had a corpse to show him, but she has no idea that he only said that because he was misled about her whereabouts. He believed she was safe.
When the Phone Rings Episode 3 undermines this assumption by wringing more affection out of Sa-eon. Hee-joo’s surprised to find him asking her to sleep beside him so he can provide her some comfort, and you can tell he means it because he still has a good look at her after she has fallen asleep. While she sleeps, she dreams of her childhood with her mother forcing her to fake her mutism – a habit which has obviously endured – to finesse the chairman into financial support.
In the midst of all this it’s easy to forget that before Hee-joo began impersonating the kidnapper, there was a real one at work. And this guy returns to the fore here when he uses Hee-joo’s father’s phone to call and threaten her into continuing to intimidate her husband. Some teeth – worryingly not inside someone’s mouth – make the point clear, and when Hee-joo rushes to the hospital, the police inform her that several gnashers were clasped in her father’s hand. The point is pretty clear.
And it all gets too much – the stress of this, combined with the mistaken belief that her husband wants her dead and a lifetime of manipulation from the woman who is supposed to love her the most, make Hee-joo physically sick while the police escort her home. But it is, weirdly, Sa-eon to the rescue, who pulls up out of nowhere and addresses his wife as his wife, publicly, for the first time. It’d be a nice moment, but it’s tempered by the fact that Sa-eon’s sudden protective instinct has begun to manifest just as Hee-joo is being strongarmed into extorting him.
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