To My Beloved Thief: Episodes 2-4
by mistyisles
The plot thickens, and so do our characters’ feelings — for each other, about their circumstances, and regarding the choices they’re pushed to make. Almost everyone is putting on a mask (and only one mask is literal), but sometimes those masks slip and reveal a little of the true emotions and motivations beneath. But only a little! This story is just getting started, after all.
EPISODES 2-4
Both Yeol and Eun-jo are stricken with tangled feelings after she surprises him with a kiss and flees into the night. But Eun-jo has a job to do: as Gil-dong, she does indeed steal from noble houses to provide for people in need, many of whom are her patients by day. The drawings Yeol mistook for boastful calling cards are simply Eun-jo’s way of ensuring the robbed nobles don’t pin the theft on their own servants. As Gil-dong gains a higher profile and a crop of wanted posters, Eun-jo decides to lay low. But when the corrupt and cruel Chief Censor KIM DEOK-HAN (Son Byung-ho) punishes her friend, a young widowed mother, for receiving rice from Gil-dong, Eun-jo can’t just stand by and watch.
Yeol, meanwhile, has also followed Gil-dong’s trail to the young widow, and is moved to hear her speak of the thief with such gratitude. See, his devil-may-care persona is mostly armor to make him appear as little of a political threat as possible. So, when he hears that Gil-dong has been spotted, he orders the police to stand down and takes to the roof to confront the masked thief himself. To Eun-jo’s surprise, he encourages her to continue looking out for her neighbors in her own way — so long as she stays within the reach of his protection. If her thievery pushes the limit (e.g., becomes motivated by politics instead of feeding the hungry), he’ll have to put a stop to it.
They’re interrupted by a few police officers who missed the order to withdraw. In the confusion, Eun-jo slips away to Hyeminseo, the public hospital where she works, and Yeol is grazed by a stray arrow (not one of Eun-jo’s, by the way — she blunts hers with cotton so they won’t harm anyone). As fate would have it, Yeol ends up right at Hyeminseo’s gate, so he ventures inside. He recognizes Eun-jo immediately, but it takes her a moment to realize that the “thief” he’s after right now is her: the woman who saved him from a beating and stole a kiss. While she dresses his arrow-wound, Eun-jo flails for some kind of explanation. She lands on it was a mistake, which isn’t what he wants to hear.
Still, in the days that follow, he finds reasons to drop by Hyeminseo, strike up conversation, and help her out whenever possible. On learning that Hyeminseo is chronically low on herbs, for instance, he makes an anonymous donation. Due to a mix-up, it gets sent under his real title of Grand Prince (Eun-jo currently knows him as a royal inspector working for the police bureau, so it’s still sort of anonymous as far as she’s concerned). Yeol bristles to hear Eun-jo repeat gossip about himself that he actively helps perpetuate. He’s halfway into a defense of “the prince’s” character before he realizes that, for once, he actually cares what someone else thinks of him.
Which brings us back to Chief Censor Kim, a man with crimes so extensive, they fill up a whole book. Lord Im uses this book as blackmail to keep Chief Censor Kim in check. But Lord Im’s manipulation doesn’t stop there: he’s also supplying the king’s concubine with poisoned incense. The king thinks it’s a pain reliever for his skin disease, but actually, it’s slowly eroding his sanity, making him pliant for Lord Im to influence as he will. Lord Im is a fascinating man, but we’ll come back to him in a minute. First, let’s focus on Chief Censor Kim and that book.
When confronted with evidence of his own crimes, the chief censor throws a tantrum and burns the book… or tries to. Eun-jo’s mother (Seo Young-hee) innocently rescues it from the flames and brings it home to use in the outhouse. Being illiterate, she has no idea what it really is, but Eun-jo does. In Gil-dong’s guise, she gives it to Yeol, hoping he can bring Chief Censor Kim to justice at last. At first, Yeol refuses (“Catching one corrupt official won’t change Joseon,” he says scornfully). But he feels so scummy about it that he takes the book to the king and asks him to punish Chief Censor Kim. Since it was the chief censor’s daughter that Yeol was supposed to marry, he argues that these crimes going unpunished is an offense to his pride. The king laughs, but decides pride — Yeol’s, his, theirs — is reason enough. Chief Censor Kim is stripped of his title and condemned to exile.
This turn of events wins Yeol a few extra points in Eun-jo’s eyes. So much so that when he offers his listening ear to share her emotional burdens, she declines, fearing she won’t be able to go through with the wedding if she opens up to him any more than she already has. Yeol presses on, confessing his feelings and his intent to pursue her properly if she’ll have him. Before Eun-jo can think of a sufficient response, they’re interrupted by Jae-yi. Who, you’ll remember, is set to become her step-grandson. Also, he’s horrible. Outwardly, at least. Possibly on the inside too, it’s hard to tell.
Like Yeol, Jae-yi pretends to be less shrewd than he actually is for his own protection. Like Eun-jo, Jae-yi is an illegitimate child — though Lord Im has carefully hidden this fact. As a result, Jae-yi harbors a ton of pent-up anger and shame, and doesn’t seem to know what to do with it other than take it out on people like Eun-jo who don’t have the power to retaliate. Jae-yi is also friends (I use this word VERY loosely) with Eun-jo’s half-brother, HONG DAE-IL (Song Ji-ho). Previously, Dae-il made a bet with Jae-yi about Eun-jo’s impressive archery skills, and Jae-yi insisted she prove it by shooting an apple off Dae-il’s head, just to torture them both. Eun-jo shot a bird out of the air instead, incurring even more of Jae-yi’s wrath.
Now, every time Jae-yi sees her, he finds some way to remind her of her lowly, “subhuman” status. He also tries to convince her to break off the engagement, but tonight, when he catches her with Yeol, he’s more than happy to hold said engagement over her head. Eun-jo figures this is as good a way as any to break things off with Yeol before she catches any more feelings, and lies that Jae-yi is her fiancé whom she totally loves and can’t wait to marry. Yeol doesn’t buy it, but Eun-jo very firmly rejects him once and for all. Yeol spends the rest of the episode nursing a broken heart, while Eun-jo prepares for her wedding.
The day arrives somber and rain-soaked, and multiple obstacles stand in Eun-jo’s way. Her heartbroken brother (who found out the truth about the marriage from Jae-yi), her horrified mother (who found out from Dae-il), a gift of new silk shoes from Yeol (which she tearfully leaves behind in a cabinet), and a very angry Jae-yi (who drags her out into the rain and kicks her palanquin impotently). Eun-jo persists, convinced this is the best and only way to provide for her family. But as she crosses the threshold to her new home, her would-be husband passes away. Eun-jo is a widow before she’s even technically married.
While she adjusts to her lonely new life, distressing news arrives via another servant. The former chief censor has been murdered in his cell, and as he died, he wrote the name “Gil-dong” in his own blood. Eun-jo dons Gil-dong’s attire and goes in search of answers. While evading the police, she slips and falls from a roof. She manages to throw Gil-dong’s mask and arrows into a well, but then something strange happens. Earlier, she and Yeol were each singled out (separately, on different occasions) by a young monk asking for alms, who gave them matching bracelets. Now, as Yeol sits in the palace and Eun-jo crouches by the well, the bracelets start to glow. Both fall unconscious… and wake in each other’s bodies.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this show after the first episode, but now I’m fully hooked. I’ll reserve judgment on whether the body-swap was a necessary addition until we see how it’s handled, but thematically, I think it could work. Most of these characters are already pretending to be someone other than they are, after all. Not least of which is Lord Im, who at times seems to fool even himself. We know that Eun-jo’s father, Lord Hong, was ousted from the court for rebuking the king. The small glimpse we get of that event implies that Lord Im was once on Lord Hong’s side, but threw him under the bus to save his own skin. The two are still friends, and Lord Im expresses remorse for how things went down, but I suspect he only wants to ease his own conscience. Which is why he’s relieved by how easy it is to convince Lord Hong to accept a teaching position far away instead of returning to court like the king wants. Lord Im gets Lord Hong out of the way, but also gets to keep his “friendship.”
In any case, there are a lot of layers to these characters and the conflicts between them. But there’s a lot of warmth between many of them, too: the obvious love between Eun-jo and her family, the sense of community between the townsfolk and Gil-dong, the rapport between the queen and the queen dowager, and Yeol’s strained but clearly affectionate relationship with his mother, to name a few. While I’m still on the fence about a few of them (especially Jae-yi), I’m excited to see where To My Beloved Thief takes them — and us.
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