“Five Fingers” (다섯손가락)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
June 19, 2018

☆☆☆☆
Yoo Ji-Ho (played by Ju Ji-Hoon)
Yoo In-Ha (played by Ji Chang-Wook)
Hong Da-Mi (played by Jin Se-Yeon)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“Five Fingers” is what I categorize as a “Melrose Place” series, where an evil character treats people like garbage, but viewers are expected to root for them, because they occasionally show signs of humanity.

No. Just no!

To be completely transparent, the only reason I watched “Five Fingers” is because I loved Ji Chang-Wook’s other dramas, “Healer” and “Suspicious Partner.”

And damn, do I ever feel betrayed. To be fair, “Five Fingers” was released years before those other two dramas.

The word that best describes my feeling after watching the 30th (!!) episode/finale is 답답해, which translates into a feeling of intense frustration. In ranks right up (or down) there with “Loving You A Thousand Times” in terms of 답답해ness.

Chae Young-Rang is a devoted wife and daughter in law, but her pride and joy is her son, In-Ha. When Ji-Ho — her husband’s son from a previous relationship — joins the family, she has no choice but to take care of him. But her resentment of her husband’s infidelity manifests in her horrible treatment of the child, who believes that his stepmother truly cherishes him.

After her wealthy husband is killed in a horrific house fire, Young-Rang takes over the family business. The stage is set up for the stepbrothers to compete against each other to become their father’s heir. Young-Rang does everything possible — much of it illegal and immoral — to give her biological son the advantage. Only after Ji-Ho learns how he is being used by his mother and stepbrother — and only after he stops being a doormat — does the momentum of this series pick up.

It doesn’t help that the brothers are both in love with the same young woman, Da-Mi, whose deaf father perished in the same house fire. He had tried to save the family, but ended up being blamed as an arsonist and murderer.

There are so many spoilers that I can’t write about too much without disclosing major plot points. But here are a few observations:

• When people who don’t trust each other live together in one house, they need to lock their bedroom doors, so that it’s not as easy for important documents to be stolen willy nilly.

• Instead of flaunting signed contracts to frenemies, they need to make notarized copies if they want to flash these around. Keep the originals locked away in a safety deposit box at a bank rather, than say, a jewelry box that everyone has access to.

• People shouldn’t have important discussions with the doors open, where someone always seems to be standing in the hallway eavesdropping.

• Everyone has a cell phone these days. Use it to record incriminating evidence, rather than expecting people to take you at your word.

• Just because an evil person ends up having a disability, that doesn’t make all their unforgivable sins OK.

The ending was meant to be sweet and a reconciliation, I guess. But it was so improbable that all I’m left with is feeling an overwhelming sense of 답답해.

Tragedy: Jo Min-Ki — the actor who portrayed the family patriarch, Yoo Man-Se — committed suicide on March 9, 2018. An assistant professor at Cheongju University, he had been accused by students of sexual abuse. Prosecutors were set to question him about the accusations.

Airdates: Thirty hour-long episodes aired on SBS from August 18 to November 25, 2012.

Spoiler Alert: Young-Rang absolutely hates Ji-Ho and does everything possible to make his life miserable. This includes setting him up to be a criminal, taking away his inheritance, disowning him and — most cruelly of all — telling him that she never once loved him.

Color her surprised when it turns out that Ji-Ho is her biological son!

Prior to marrying Man-Se, she had an affair with Kim Jung-Wook, a poor student who wasn’t viewed as a suitable match for her. Without telling him of her pregnancy, she gave birth to Ji-Ho. Worried that an out-of-wedlock baby would be a liability, her stepmother arranges for Ji-Ho to be sent to an orphanage and told Young-Rang that the baby died at birth.

Man-Se, who knew about the affair, has the infant raised by an elderly woman in a remote village. He later brings the child into his family, forcing his wife to care for a child she believes to be his. What a sadist he was, to use an innocent boy this way.

During an argument, Young-Rang pushes her husband and he falls down and hits his head. He’s not dead yet, but she senses a way to get out of her unhappy marriage. Around the same time, one of their maids accidentally sets the house on fire. Young-Rang locks her husband in his study and saves In-Ha.

But. (There’s always a but, right?) It turns out that Ji-Ho was wearing In-Ha’s pajamas. She saved the child she hated, while her son was protected from death by Da-Mi’s father (who had come to the rescue at the bequest of Young-Rang’s mother in law). Da-Mi’s father was hit by a chandelier and died.

Only after learning that Ji-Ho shares her bloodline does she show signs of love and affection for him. And he falls for it.

I hated that.

Her being his biological mother doesn’t erase the fact that she is a cold-hearted sociopath. Same with In-Ha.

She ends up going blind, after using her body to shield Ji-Ho during a kidnapping. She insists on living in the remote island where Ji-Ho grew up. She dies in the finale. After Ji-Ho returns from Germany (where he went to study for three years), In-Ha tells him that they need to have a long talk. Apparently Ji-Ho doesn’t know his mother died yet.

How is that even probable that he didn’t know this? She was a well-known person in Korea and her death would’ve been all over the news and on social media.

© 2018 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved