So, all the other awesome stuff in ep 12 of My Country
Oh God, I love you, Bang Gan, you unhinged maniac! I love that he looks like it’s Christmas when those guys tell him they are gonna kill him and then literally hops over a body at the end. (And his offhand remark that now they know he came to visit their ailing father. lol forever.) I wonder if Bang Won is going to leave him alive due to the promise, the full blood brother thing, or just because he’s tired of bloodshed by that point, but I am kinda glad he makes it out at the end.
That relationship was deeply unhealthy from beginning to end - Nam Jeon would genuinely look most proud when Seon Ho was most psycho - but I am sorry to see that dynamic end with four eps left to go. I don’t think any antagonist is going to be as viscerally emotionally repellent and with such stakes and ties as Nam Jeon was.
I thought back to this scene where he was all “I am ready to die hooray!” I mean, you promised Hui Jae. (Yes, I know he got caught in the moment.) But I do think, as @kuronekonerochan and I were discussing, that while they both love each other and both are very strong, there is no give in Hui Jae and never was, which is great for a woman trying to survive in awful times but because Hwi himself also has no give or softness now (before, he was the soft, open one), there is nobody to remind them of the softness and sort of - I don't know how to put it - kinder side of existence? Hope and mercy. Yeon brought out the softer side of Seon Ho but there is nobody to do that for Hwi who also needs it.
I get the feeling that Bang Won says this as a direct response to the King’s “hahaha I never gave you any orders explicitly and won’t take any responsibility. Psych!” speech.
This is such a powerful scene because Lee Bang Won is absolutely right and it is the King’s fault (hell, Bang Won literally begged him for an out and the King was all FU) but also he is the one who did the bloodbath and so you see is hand shake on the sword at the King’s words and I am left thinking that the King sure feels sad the crown prince died but was A-OK with Bang Won (and Bang Gan) getting offed. Honestly, the only OK father in this whole drama is Hwi’s and he’s long and gruesomely dead.