Summary
When the Phone Rings isn’t content to rest on its laurels in Episode 11, delivering multiple late twists.
When the Phone Rings is clearly the kind of show that delights in keeping its audience guessing (and close to a health event), since even in Episode 11, only one removed from the finale, it can’t help contorting the narrative into ever-more unexpected shapes.
This is good, obviously. Nobody likes perfunctory storytelling, and after some of the revelations in the previous episode, it was clear that there was still more to be revealed, especially in terms of the complicated family dynamics. But that outing also ended with the fairly significant cliffhanger of Hee-joo driving herself and her kidnapper off a cliff and Sa-eon revealing his identity — and who he’s married to — to the world, so it’s not as if there wasn’t enough to be going on with.
Episode 11 of When the Phone Rings begins with a fanciful, speculative scene of Sa-eon imagining how things might have been different if he had just been honest about his feelings from the jump, and this is later called back to in an epilogue that revisits the idea from Hee-joo’s perspective, showing her waiting on a call that she eventually answers with a simple question that contains the dramatic crux of the entire show — “Is that my husband?”
The real search for Hee-joo seems like nothing but dead ends, despite a lot of rallying support from basically everyone, which is nice to see. This is good for the relationship-building even at this late stage, seeing Sa-eon’s earnest despair and even Hee-joo’s mother’s real concern.
But it’s Sa-eon’s “mother” who becomes the primary focus when it occurs to him she has been conspicuously absent for several key events and that her absence speaks to her complicity. When he confronts her, Kyu-Jin explains the endless trauma of uncertainty, of not knowing whether her son was dead or alive. This, she thinks, is the fate Sa-eon deserves, the curse of not having any resolution. She’s trying to create Schrodinger’s female lead.
Ui-Yong’s damage-control press conference is interrupted first by Hyeok-Jin and a recording of Do-Jae that spills the beans about the connection between the real Sa-eon and the missing children from the orphanage, and then by the police, who arrest Kyu-Jin for murder — that of Paik Jang-ho.
As it turns out Grandpa Paik had a camera hidden in his dragon ring that recorded his admission that Sa-eon was his son and also his murder when Kyu-Jin smothered him to death in her anger. She’s arrested but won’t confess to holding Hee-Joo, though Sa-eon knows she is.
We learn that Hee-joo and the real Sa-eon are at the old mansion near the orphanage in separate basement rooms, having been taken there by Mr. Min on Kyu-jin’s instructions. Hee-joo has figured out Kyu-jin’s endgame and, to deny her the satisfaction — and Sa-eon the torment — she is trying to starve herself to death. This is noble enough, but it comes back to bite her somewhat when Mr. Min facilitates her escape and she barely has the energy to flee.
When Ui-Yong arrives with a shotgun all hell breaks loose, giving Hee-joo the break she needs but getting Ui-Yong shot in the process. Hee-joo runs straight into the arms of her Sa-eon, who was racing to the location with the police, following the restored dashcam footage, but you know it isn’t going to be that easy.
In another confrontation between fake and real Sa-eon — the kidnapper is our Sa-eon’s nephew if my calculations are correct — the real version whispers something in fake Sa-eon’s ear that crushes him and causes him to look back at Hee-joo in utter defeat. But we don’t hear it! He pulls a gun and, just as a gunshot is heard, we cut away to Hee-joo’s horrified face. And that’s where When the Phone Rings Episode 11 ends — after the epilogue, anyway — to cause all its loyal viewers the maximum torment possible.
You’ve gotta love a good K-Drama, haven’t you?
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