Cheese in the Trap Ep 15 Review (and Jung’s dad is a piece of work)

I am watching Cheese in the Trap right? Not a reverse gender version of Oh My Venus or the gazillion dramas that’ve gone before it, using the same damn plotlines over and over. The latter half of today’s episode was so formulaic I could scream at the injustice of it all, given how brilliantly Cheese started. And unfortunately, tomorrow’s episode promises to be more of the ‘same old’. Seol fighting for her life, chaebol parent disapproves of commoner daughter, Seol’s parents will blame Jung, Jung breaks up with Seol ‘for her own good’. And worse, tvN’s promised us a lovely timeskip for the ending. I can’t even. But let’s focus on the good? Because there were some redeeming parts of today’s episode. Inho is thankfully relegated back to his actual role as a supporting character!!
YAY!

But we still get a shot of him with his BFF piano
Boo.

And even worse, his hand needs surgery. How on earth is he supposed to participate in the piano competition let alone cough up the ten grand he owes now.

And he has his seriously mental sister to deal with too.

Poor puppy, don’t worry. Tomorrow’s the last episode, so I’m certain you’ll have a hasty rushed ending while Cheese’s producers try to ram in all the Jung-Seol scenes they should have used instead of you with your piano. Seriously though, the Show could have dealt with his arc so much better. Such a waste of a good and well-acted character. But back onto the good points. The acting! Jung and Seol are giddy and so believably in love and I love it. Too bad we’re getting random angst in the final episode. I seriously need to focus on the good points. Like these Jung-Seol moments.

Lee Sungkyung’s acting was pretty brilliant this episode. She showed an emotional range she’d kept hidden the entire series. From coy, to furious, to conniving, to desperate, to severely mentally broken, part of what kep tbe glued to my seat despite knowing how it was going to play out was the sheer manic energy she brought to Inha’s character. And it wasn’t just all crazy, you could see her vulnerability, the shock she felt at the one constant person in her life casting her away.

I seriously got goosebumps watching her at this point. Utterly brilliantly wrathful. In addition, we finally got more background on Yoo Jung and his relationship with his father. It comes very late, but explains so much. I’d always assumed that Jung’s father groomed him in such a manner given that he was Taerang’s future heir, and while that is part of it, the larger part of the reason has to do with his own insecurities. It came as quite a surprise to hear that Jung’s father had the same issues with anger and revenge that Jung did, but everything clicked into place right after that. His manipulation of the Baek siblings, him tolerating Inha because of how useful she was to him in delivering news of Jung, the way he suppresses and suffocates Jung.

I’m not sure what form of sociopathy or psychopathy it is that wires their minds, but clearly it manifested itself in physical displays of anger with Jung’s dad and Doctor Baek managed to help him deal with it. However, Jung showed a more internal passive-agressive way of dealing with his anger since he was a child (I get that there are people who will be freaked out by the fact that he gave that drink to that girl knowing it was drugged, but frankly I’m more freaked out that the other boy drugged it. At least the girl was safe with Yoo Jung, who only wanted to her to destroy her own bear. Heaven knows what that other boy wanted to do with her). What boggles my mind is that Jung’s father thought that the same method that worked with him would work with Jung. While it may have helped him with controlling his anger and showing not outward signs of it, in Jung’s case, it drove an introverted child further into himself.

Even worse is how high-handed the fellow is. Doctor Baek may have advised him to bring Jung siblings but her sure as hell didn’t mean for Jung’s father to use them as spies. The conversation yoo Jung over heard between Doctor Baek and his father makes sense now, and only goes to show how appallingly arrogant his father is, seeing how he kept defending his actions as being for his son’s sake. He’s the real psycho here. And he have the nerve to get upset upon hearing Inha call Jung strange. You’ve been saying to the boy’s face and behind his back and you’re pissed that she said it herself? Not that Inha’s any better. Talk about entitled.

You get join the rest of the world (and your poor brother) in the rat race of jobs, that’s what.
I nearly forgot to comment on Sangchul..who is an unmitigated asshole. The funny thing is I would have agreed with what he said about Yoo Jung but it just fell flat now. It would have been satisfying if he’d said it back during ep 6, or 7, because both of them were highly problematic. But Jung’s changed so much over the course of six months (I seriously couldn’t believe it when Seol said it’d been six months) that it just doesn’t ring right anymore and just makes Sangchul look worse than he already does.
Final good thing about today’s episode: Seol. I love the way she admitted to having guessed what Yoo Jung was up to, but let it happen anyway. And I love how she asked him to try to stop. It wasn’t patronizing; it wasn’t even an order. But Yoo Jung dashed off to fix things right away. It’s all Jung-Seol really. That’s what gave this drama life to begin with, took away its life when we began the Inho-piano-Seol loveline, and what keeps us watching even now that the plot’s a mess. Long live Jung-Seol. Here’s to a satisfying conclusion tomorrow?