Trolley (2022)

3 Comments to “Trolley (2022)”

1. I have so much to say about this one.

   *Spoiler alert*
   I was gonna skip this drama because the synopsis to this didn’t seem very enticing. But having watched the drama anyways, I can tell you that the synopsis doesn’t do it justice. In the first episode everything leads up to Nam Yoon-Seo having run away, and then it is revealed that a dead body has been found but it wasn’t their daughter, it was their son. It was at that very moment I knew that this drama could be a 10/10. It was when I knew that it had the capabilities to trick me and get under my skin: I was at the right place. As I kept watching I started to gather my thoughts for my review and I was going to praise the couple for being the first healthy one I’ve seen. Healthy, respectful of boundaries, controlled temper, communicative, compassionate, forgiving. That only lasted seven episodes. At first, I thought that Kim Hye-Joo’s big secret might have been that she was North Korean, because someone made a comment on her accent in the first episode, but I was wrong. Then, it was revealed that she wasn’t Nam Ji-Hoon’s birth mother, but then I thought to myself, is that really it? Is that the big bad secret? Again, I was wrong. I dont even know where to start with the whole interpretation of this drama. I’ll start with revealing some key secrets in this drama. First off, Kim Hye-Joo’s. The big twist in this story is that 20 years ago (in the drama) she was sexually assaulted by Jin Seung-Hee’s brother, Jin Seung-Ho. That same night he had already confessed to his mother, and so when Kim Hye-Joo went to tell her, she instead tried to bribe her into keeping quiet. That same night he decided to lie to his sister Jin Seung-Hee, telling her that she should believe him because they’re family. After refusing Lee Yoo-Shins’s bribe, she goes to the police but is shut down due to the lack of evidence. Later that night she learns that Jin Seung-Ho has committed suicide. Since that day both Jin Seung-Hee and her mother blame Kim Hye-Joo for his death saying her lies drove him to kill himself. She then changes her name from Kim Jae-Eun to Kim Hye-Joo and skips town to start over. Since then she lived in fear someone would recognize her, which is why she let her husband go into politics on the condition that she doesn’t have to be in the public eye. At first, when Jin Seung-Hee came onto the show I thought that was because she was Nam Ji-Hoon’s birth mother, but as the story progressed it was revealed that the two families were connected over something bigger, somthing worse. She hadn’t told her husband about her past and she was essentially going through Jin Seung-Hee’s emotional blackmail alone. I actually thought we were gonna see the moment she was going to beg for forgiveness for something that wasn’t her fault. It was very difficult to watch and the whole time I wished that her husband would notice how uncomfortable she was around Jin Seung-Hee and I was afraid he wouldn’t push past her defense and find out. It annoyed me how Kim Hye-Joo barely stood up for herself, especially since Jin-Seung-Hee was being so disrespectful. Perhaps the worst thing was that she kept calling her by her old name and there were many many times when I wished I could have reached through my screen and strangled her. Jin Seung-Hee is not a bad person, she is a hurt person and she is projecting all the helplessness and anger she actually feels for her mom onto Kim Hye-Jee. I felt bad for her when her mother kept telling her how she was less than her brother and that she would rather that her brother was still alive instead. Like, who goes and says that to their own child, like it’s no ones fault but Jin Seung-Ho’s that he decided to kill himself. But that’s grief for you. It’s easier to blame someone else for your misfortune than it is to look within yourself and reflect. I wish Jin Seung-Hee had thought to herself that it is by far the fewest people who will openly admit to their wrongdoings, let alone when they’re crimes. Like obviously he won’t just openly admit to raping someone. But Kim Hye-Joo really managed to stand up for herself in episode seven. I think it was so beautifully said that: yes he might have been a model son and a model student but he also did rape someone. All of those things can be true at the same time. I thought that now that the secret was out and that Nam Joong-Do had found out that the rest of the drama would be the two of them against the world trying to keep it a secret, but that is also when their relationship began to crumble. As I said above, I was gonna praise this drama for portraying a healthy relationship but her own husband used her secret against her. It was at this time he had found that the person he was basing Namgoong Sol’s law on was a sex worker, and while that of course shouldn’t make her less of a victim of sexual assault Nam Joong-Do was aware that it would change the public opinion, so he needed someone new he could milk for positive publicity and he chose his wife. I hate this so much because it was HER story to tell or not to tell and he should have respected that instead of emotinally blackmailing her and I felt so sad and angry for her because I knew that once she gave in to what he wanted he was never going to leave it alone, and he didn’t. In fact, he coerced her into telling her story when she didn’t want to, having already made up his mind and then he coerced her into going on tv even though she said from the beginning that she didn’t want to. He even f-ing lied about his son and tarnished his reputation saying he also had sexually assaulted someone just for him to build his own agenda as an honest and sincere politician. He even coerced his own wife into cooperating with the lie. Throughout this whole drama he justied everything by saying it was for the greater good and that all of this would be so that Namgoong Sol’s law would pass. And just to add onto all of this, it was revealed that Nam Joong-Do had raped Hyeon-Yeo-Jin. He admitted that he had dedicated his life to passing Namgoong Sol’s law as a way to atone for raping Hyeon-Yeo-Jin. Even before it was revealed that he had raped Hyeon-Yeo-Jin Kim-Hye-Joo had already decided she was getting a divorce but she also had to choose who to save in the end. Nam Joong-Do begged her to wait to divorce him and tell his secret to the public until after the law had been passed, but that would require Kim Hye-Joo to turn a blind eye to all the betrayal. I thought to myself, why would they even make him a rapist if she was going to keep quiet? I mean, isn’t it already bad enough that he used his wife, purposely sacrificed their marraige and tarnished his dead son’s reputation without the rape? In the end, she held a press conference telling the public that her husband had raped someone and lied about their son having raped someone. After his wife’s press conference he tried to commit suicide expressing that his guilt for what he had done was unbearable to which his wife said that he must live and bear the guilt instead of running away from it. After she successfully saves him from his suicide attempt he is expelled from his political party and is thrown in jail for rape. A few minutes before the end, you hear over the radio that Namgoong Sol’s law, for which he literally sacrificed everything for, is going to get discarded. In the end you also hear Lee Yoo-Shin admitting to the truth, that Jin Seung-Ho had in fact raped Kim Hye-Joo, causing Jin Seung-Hee to finally leave her mother and to apologize to Kim Hye-Joo.

   There was a lot of speculation and confusion in the drama as to how their son had really died. First, it was a simple accident where he drowned. Then, it was thought to be suicide. Then, as more of Nam Joong-Do’s lies got revealed it was thought to be murder but in the end it turns out that he had drugs on him to create trouble for his dad as payback for the affair Nam Ji-Hoon thought he had behind his mother’s back. Jang Woo-Jae was told to keep an eye on Nam Ji-Hoon after he had threatened his father to reveal the affair. That night he had thrown the meth in the river, and then gone back into the water to retrieve it and had accidentally lost his footing and drowned. But the scary part of it was that Jang Woo-Jae was watching. He had bet his entire career on Nam Joong-Do and thought that his son would only be a hindrance alive so he watched him drown.

   Even in the end I kept wondering who was the trolly really meant to hit, and who got hit instead…

   This is indeed a heavy drama with a lot of twists and tons of betrayal.
   It had a bittersweet ending, but justice was served.

   Rating: 10/10.

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2. Unexpected twists and turns. Engaging!

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3. It’s really interesting

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