[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Who Are You - School 2015" Episode 8

In a somewhat surprising twist, it would appear that the main potential victim of Eun-bi being exposed is not Eun-bi herself, but rather I-an. His normally static character arc comes into sharp relief here as I-an deliberately chooses to believe that Eun-bi is Eun-byeon, regardless of how much of his experiences with her post-amnesia simply don't add up. Right when I was wondering if I-an ever had this much fun on dates with the real Eun-byeon, a flashback helpfully pops up to tell us that no, he did not.

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This also takes a much needed edge off of Eun-bi's character. To some extent the way she masquerades as Eun-byeon is cruel- it prevents people from properly grieving Eun-byeon's death. But first with her mother and now with I-an, we see that Eun-bi's decisions are very heavily enabled. Even if Eun-bi wants to come clean, there's just not very much a teenage girl can do when faced with the fact that telling the truth means breaking the hearts of people who have shown tremendous kindness to her.

With So-yeong, of course, there's less of a moral conflict. And I especially like how "Who Are You - School 2015" is genuinely ambiguous on the question of whether or not So-yeong is actually the culprit. While there's no logical motive for her to commit the crime, there's not really any logical reason for anyone else to commit the crime either. All we know for sure is that So-yeong has it in for Eun-bi- a fact further confirmed when bullying behavior exposes a crime we know So-yeong committed and that we also know she can't explain.

The ethical territory is still pretty murky though. Is it really justified to cheer on the bullying of a bully just because she deserves it? The process obviously isn't doing any favors for So-yeong's empathy. It just makes her obsess more regarding possible revenge against Eun-bi even as So-yeong still lacks any particularly useful blackmail material. I do appreciate when an obviously duplicitious character's schemes fail, precisely because the other characters have the sense not to trust them.

The way these two major plotlines intersect by the end of the episode is fairly tough, and provokes a lot of tension. It's another one of the drama's strong points- even in the absence of clear plot progression, or in the case of characters actively trying to prevent plot progression, the performances are strong enough to keep "Who Are You - School 2015" quite engaging. The cliffhanger leaves everyone in a very tough with no especially positive outcome- such is life, for a teenager, and the rest of us.

Review by William Schwartz

"Who Are You - School 2015" is directed by Baek Sang-hoon and Kim Seong-yoon, written by Kim Hyeon-jeong-II and Kim Min-jeong-II, and features Kim So-hyun, Nam Joo-hyuk, Yook Sung-jae, Lee Pil-mo, Lee David, Kim Hee-jung-I and more.

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