Oasis 2023 Recap Episode 9-10

No surprises this week as our happy couple gets torn apart, but just because I saw it coming doesn’t mean it’s any easier to take. We begin with an omen of sorts, as Jung-shin tells Doo-hak that life is happier when it’s not like a movie. She doesn’t want any Hollywood drama; she just wants for them to live peacefully together. This is fair warning to the audience that things are about to get very dramatic.

To start, Doo-hak has big plans for his new construction business. As a long-term financial strategy, he decides to buy up all the land surrounding Choong-sung’s redevelopment sites. It’s not worth much now, but will rise in value as the nearby development happens. To get the funds for this endeavor, Doo-hak organizes all the country’s gangs into a kind of “crime council” to funnel money toward the land purchases.

The problem with this strategy is that even though Doo-hak is technically not involved in any crimes that the gangs are committing, the land was bought with dirty money, and — more importantly — Doo-hak is the mastermind behind this massive organization of criminal enterprises.

On the prosecution side, some of Cheol-woong’s colleagues are happy that this alliance has stopped all inter-gang violence, and they’re ready to look the other way. But for Cheol-woong, it’s an opportunity to make it look like Doo-hak is behind a large-scale criminal conspiracy. He gathers the evidence he needs against Doo-hak and then hands over the file to another prosecutor, so he can wiggle out of his involvement in the case.

Cheol-woong then informs Jung-shin — as a matter of “protecting” her, of course — that Doo-hak isn’t really on the straight and narrow after all. When he’s delivered his news, he tells her not to marry Doo-hak, but she just wants Cheol-woong to leave them alone.

Doo-hak knows that word is spreading about the crime council, but doesn’t understand the severity of Cheol-woong’s intentions. Blissfully ignorant, he tells his parents that he’ll be marrying Jung-shin soon, and that he’s quit his life of crime and entered the construction industry. He even hands his mom the deed to an apartment in her name. His parents are both driven to tears with happiness, but the long-standing conflict between Doo-hak and his father means that Doo-hak remains cold and Joong-ho ends up leaving their meeting.

 

Neither Doo-hak nor Joong-ho know it’s the last time they’ll see each other, but dear-old Dad is permanently silenced this week after he threatens Yeo-jin. It happens when Joong-ho learns that Yeo-jin is claiming Choong-sung is Cheol-woong’s father. This pierces Joong-ho to the core because he forced his wife to give up their baby to the Choi family as part of his debt to them. He’s never tried to call Cheol-woong his own, but to say Cheol-woong is not a Choi is too much for Joong-ho.

He calls Yeo-jin and threatens that if she doesn’t stop what she’s doing, he’ll tell Cheol-woong the truth and claim back his son. Yeo-jin is shocked he found out what she’s up to, but then tells him it’s none of his business what she does with her son. She then goes crying to Choong-sung and feeds him a lie, knowing it’s going to get Joong-ho killed. She says Joong-ho has been blackmailing her for years because his son, Doo-hak, went to prison for a murder that Cheol-woong committed. If she doesn’t pay him, he’ll tell everyone Cheol-woong is a murderer.

In the interim, Yeo-jin tells Cheol-woong that Choong-sung is his real father. She’s quite the strategist, this one, because that single lie has already helped Cheol-woong get the career he wanted and now it’s about to allow her the marriage she wants as well. After the reveal, Cheol-woong is not as stunned as one would imagine and goes to visit his “biological father” to tell him to cut ties with Doo-hak before Doo-hak is arrested. In an intersplicing scene, Cheol-woong’s real father, Joong-ho, is being killed by Man-ok.

Following Joong-ho’s death (by a “hit-and-run”), Doo-hak is overcome by guilt, thinking of all the negativity he showed his father. (Although, as a viewer, I can’t forgive anything his father did.) Before Doo-hak gets to mourn for long, he’s arrested — and wrongly assumes that Choong-sung (as his employer) will get him out of trouble. Unbeknownst to Doo-hak, Choong-sung has decided to be on Cheol-woong’s side no matter what, and plans to make Doo-hak’s crimes look worse than they are.

Thanks to Cheol-woong, Doo-hak’s investigation is suspended so that Doo-hak can attend his father’s funeral. There, after Yeo-jin makes a big, fake, sobbing scene, Doo-hak’s mom, JEOM AM-DAEK (So Hee-jung), asks Cheol-woong to pay respects together with Doo-hak and his sister. Am-daek watches as all three of her children bow to their father — and Yeo-jin gets more nervous that Am-daek will reveal the secret.

 

After Doo-hak is arrested, Jung-shin is her ride-or-die self, pleading with Cheol-woong to stop what’s happening. She accuses him of planning the whole thing, but rather than answer her, he asks if she really sees him as that low. She’s too smart to fall for his manipulation but she changes gears and uses the only leverage she has: herself.

She tells him she wants to send Doo-hak abroad and Cheol-woong responds, “What about me? Why should I put my life on the line to do this?” Jung-shin says, “I’ll also save you once, with my life on the line” — and it looks like she’s just made a deal with the devil to save Doo-hak.

Jung-shin develops a plan to smuggle Doo-hak out of the country that starts as he’s scattering his father’s ashes over a lake. Doo-hak is handcuffed and under police supervision, but Cheol-woong places the keys to the cuffs in his palm and whispers that there will be a commotion and then he should run toward the mountains.

All goes as planned and Doo-hak narrowly escapes with the help of his friends from the gang. However, when they arrive to the docks to put him on a boat to Japan, he doesn’t want to go. He feels like he’s losing either way and decides he’d rather risk death than leave — annoying everyone that’s just risked their own lives for him. As he talks to his friends about his arrest, he learns that Yeo-jin is marrying Choong-sung — making him realize the connection between Choong-sung and Cheol-woong.

Doo-hak calls Man-ok to threaten him, but this allows Man-ok to track his location. Before Man-ok can get to him, though, Doo-hak sends for Jung-shin through a friend. On their way to the docks, the friend says, “It’s so romantic. Isn’t it like a movie?” — our cue that things are about to get even worse.

Doo-hak tells Jung-shin he won’t leave and wants to go forward with their wedding. And instead of talking some sense into him, she agrees. (Huh? Why don’t they both go abroad? Wouldn’t that solve all the problems?) As they’re standing there, chatting about unrealistic options, the cops come from all directions to arrest Doo-hak. Cheol-woong and Man-ok are there too — and someone has given Cheol-woong a gun. Doo-hak grabs a cop as a hostage and starts to back away, yelling that he knows Cheol-woong is behind everything.

Cheol-woong fires into the air and Doo-hak lets go of the cop and runs toward the water. Man-ok takes aim to shoot him — and everybody knows that dude won’t miss — so, Cheol-woong runs over and pushes his arm as he fires. We won’t know until next week, but it looks like he may have hit Doo-hak as he went over the edge and into the water.

 

The evil just get more evil in this show but the disappointing part is that the smart don’t get smarter. Both Doo-hak and Jung-shin acted a little out of character this week for being the smarty pants that we’ve come to know. Doo-hak refusing favors that Man-ok asked of him — and then assuming that Choong-sung would get him out of trouble — seemed too naïve for Doo-hak. He promised to die for Choong-sung, and now he’s being asked to lay down and die. He had to see this coming.

And Jung-shin, for all her heroics, should have orchestrated a plan that included meeting Doo-hak abroad later. That way, he gets out of his trouble and she gets out of hers by not owing Cheol-woong anything. I know, we’ve got six episode to fill — but that’s exactly why I’m complaining: I want to see more of the best qualities of our leads, not have them surrender to the story.

On the thematic level, various things are happening that I really like, though. For one, the drama is painting an interesting dynamic of nature versus nurture. Doo-hak’s parents have two kids that turned out to be hard-working, fight-for-your-rights citizens and a third — raised by well-off parents — that turned out to be a horrible human being. Is it in Cheol-woong’s nature to be the way he is? The drama seems to be moving toward the idea that not only was it his environment that made him this way, but loss of his privileged status might be his total undoing.

A few weeks ago, I was questioning why Doo-hak and Cheol-woong needed to be brothers for the story to work. At the time, I had a different idea of where the story was going — thinking that Cheol-woong’s growth could come from having his enemy (Choong-sung) as his father. But now that we’ve seen Cheol-woong’s political interests were superficial, his character has to develop in another way. With his confidence and identity tied to his family status, what will he have left when he learns he’s the son of servants?

And I have to hand it to Choo Young-woo for embodying such a spineless twit here. His face goes from indignant to guilty in a flash, showing his character’s shaky confidence. Although, I hate that he’s playing such an ugly character so well, because I can’t think about how cute he actually is for even a second. I’m going to have to rewatch Once Upon a Small Town after this to get my fluffy fix.