Summary
When the Phone Rings continues to improve in all areas, with Episode 6 upping the drama, the intrigue, and the romance.
I’ve mentioned before that there’s an old-school quality to When the Phone Rings that it’s difficult to put a finger on. Episode 6 has it perhaps more than any other. I think a part of it is the consistent escalation of every element – the drama, the danger, the romance. Some shows – especially K-Dramas, it must be said – have a tendency to languish in their middle chapters, which is usually where showrunners realize that they don’t have enough story to fill the number of episodes they’ve committed to, but that isn’t the case here.
And thank goodness for that, frankly. It’s always painful when a show with a big, enthusiastic fanbase splurges all that goodwill on middling episodes, but When the Phone Rings not only keeps getting better but keeps filling out. Things are connected, stories are overlapping neatly, and it feels like a drama that’s smartly growing into itself.
I was right, at least, about Sa-eon knowing that Hee-joo is the mystery caller and wanting to use the conversations to learn more about her. But this central romantic thread is far from the only thing going on in Episode 6, which expands the mystery with a more connected backstory.
Much of that backstory is tied to the orphanage Sang-woo is investigating, the one where he mentioned knowing a cat-killing rich kid madman. This person seems the likeliest culprit for the real villain. There were apparently four kids who went missing from that orphanage 20 years prior, and one of them had a twin. Given all the vague comments about knowing Sa-eon better than anyone, and scorned twins resenting their siblings for having a radically different lot in life – being abandoned while the other was taken in by a family, for instance – being classic thriller 101 business, it’s starting to come together.
Alongside all this, When the Phone Rings Episode 6 allows the phone calls between Sa-eon and Hee-joo to evolve given his realization about who he’s talking to. What they’re building towards, in a roundabout way, is having a real marriage instead of a sham one, actually living like husband and wife and being open and truthful with one another instead of standoffish and distant.
Because of where we are this doesn’t just progress on the phone, either, but also in person, particularly at a work retreat where he can’t help but publicly show affection to Hee-joo despite all his peers thinking he’s married to someone else. This stuff is funny but it’s also oddly romantic, and it’s suddenly easier to buy into the idea of two people who have been trapped by their circumstances and never quite realized it before. There are games, there’s gossiping; you can see the outline of a different life in a different show where this wouldn’t all end in something shocking. But this is When the Phone Rings, so it ends with Hee-joo being pushed off a cliff by an unidentified assailant in a black jacket.
Alone and frightened, Hee-joo has to make the giveaway call to Sa-eon, who directs her to a flare she can use to highlight her location so he can find her. The danger brings out the true feelings, the true fear, that the pair are feeling at the prospect of losing one another, which is at least progress. But we mustn’t forget that someone just pushed Hee-joo off a cliff. Even if Hee-joo and Sa-eon begin living as a real couple, which this and the epilogue suggest is the direction we’re heading in, they’re still going to have to deal with someone who very much has it out for the pair of them.
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