[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Pinocchio" Episode 9

Jae-myeong is a hero. But you may note that almost none of the characters we see celebrating in the early portions of the episode are happy because a young boy was saved. No, they're happy because this is a huge news story, and the entire incident was caught on camera. Even in positive moments like this "Pinocchio" revels in showing off the darker parts of news journalism. It seems to force people into thinking selfishly, even if normally they're perfectly ethical individuals.

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Creepily enough, this applies to Jae-myeong as well. Once all the dust has settled and he's regained enough of his senses to realize what's happened, Jae-myeong comes up with a plan for revenge. It's a good one too, although we don't see it come to fruition right away. That's part of the point. Jae-myeong intends to play up the story just enough so that eventually someone will make the shocking revelation of his true identity- and only then will matters really get difficult for Cha-ok.

Cha-ok too is in a bit of an odd spot. The drama seems to be trying to make her come off as sympathetic, and it does work somewhat. This episode she becomes privy to a troublesome part of In-ha's past, and the discovery clearly affects the woman. While we don't know the exact details of the divorce, it seems that Cha-ok agreed to not having any future contact with her daughter. Apparently it did not occur to the woman that In-ha would make an effort to contact her.

But for all this context, we get just as much detailing exactly what Cha-ok did to destroy Jae-myeong's family. Her actions were mean and spiteful- yet all the same, mostly kept within the very loosely defined bounds of journalism ethics that we've seen most of the characters adhere to so far. It's rather telling here that one character realizes what Jae-myeong's revenge plan is, and hesitates about warning Cha-ok about it mostly because he's not sure whether or not she deserves any forewarning.

This is a pretty good episode for the secondary characters all around, even if the cliffhanger pushes everything on to an important development in the relationship between Dal-po and In-ha. Even Beom-jo gets a couple of really nice moments to shine here. Not Yoo-rae, though. I'm still waiting for her to obviously be relevant somehow. Lee Yu-bi is doing a perfectly servicable job here as secondary lead. But so far she's in the story mostly just to give Dal-po a peer of equal standing to talk to every once in awhile.

Review by William Schwartz

"Pinocchio" is directed by Jo Soo-won and Sin Seung-woo, written by Park Hye-ryeon and features Lee Jong-suk, Park Shin-hye, Kim Young-kwang, Lee Yu-bi, Lee Pil-mo, Kang Shin-il and many more.