The Victim Is Revealed
Episode 5 of Penthouse Season 2 begins with Seok-Kyung playing her hand and admitting she knows what happened to Seo-Jin’s Mother. In fact, she even outright admits that she has proof too. As she walks away, Seo-Jin struggles to keep it together. Back at her apartment, Seok-Hoon admits to his sister what he’s seen regarding Dan-Tae and the gold bars. He promises her that Ro-Na’s Mother is not responsible. Predictably, Seok-Kyung doesn’t believe him. Ma-Ri immediately confronts Seo-Jin when she shows up, refusing to forgive the kids over what they’ve done to her daughter. She wants everyone to pay for this, with no exceptions. Ma-Ri warns that she’s seeing red now and demands retribution. This means war. Seok-Kyung swallows her pride and drops to her knees in front of everyone, telling them all that she’s sorry. She even starts crying and blames her woes on her dead Mum. It’s a pretty showy attempt to win people over and most of them are not being fooled. Yoon-Hee however, shows pity and suggests that they give Seo-Kyung a chance. In the main atrium, Yoon-Hee speaks to Dan-Tae about the business and how badly the stocks are plummeting. With the merger off and things looking bleak, Dan-Tae heads in and finds the NDA, using this against Seo-Jin. Using an anonymous report, Ok-Gyo and Seo-Young show up at her office and hand over the documents, admitting that they know what’s happening. In fact Ok-Gyo tells her to stand down as she wants Seo-Young to take over as Director. She even slaps her daughter in the face too. Jut before she leaves, Ok-Gyo tells her to sell off the art centre. With (one of) her secrets out, Seo-Jin believes that this is Yoon-Hee’s doing. Seo-Jin immediately races over and grabs Yoon-He by the throat, confronting her over the incident at home. Meanwhile, Kyu-Jin and his wife find out about Ma-Ri’s secret of working at the bathhouse. They both taunt and humiliate her before admitting that they’ve sent pictures on to Je-Ni as well. As Ma-Ri races off, she manages to intercept the envelope holding her secrets as she sits inside, cradling the photos. Even worse, she receives a call from the prison informing her that her husband has been in a fight – was this Dan-Tae’s doing? That evening, Dan-Tae quizzes Seo-Jin over what’s happening, asking why she’s stepping down as Director. In fact, this is just the play Dan-Tae was banking on, as Seo-Jin asks him to rush the merger between the two companies. At school, things continue to stir up between Ro-Na and Eun-Byeol. Seok-Kyung pulls the strings from the shadows, stirring up rumours that Ro-Na is dating Seok-Hoon. Eun-Byeol immediately confronts the girl though and informs her that she’s the one who’s dating Seok-Hoon. The big performance to win the Arts Trophy is fast approaching and all our children begin practicing. Seo-Jin grills Eun-Byeol hard, forcing her to strengthen her lung capacity. In the midst of all this, the two companies merge together. Dan-Tae is delighted of course, while Seo-Jin begins to exhibit concerns over the Chairman’s true motives. The competition begins and Ro-Na is forced to sing in a different key than what she’s used to. It turns out Yoon-Cheol was the one who sabotaged the piano player, paying them off to try and thwart Ro-Na so Eun-Byeol would win. It’s a bit out of character but we soon see that it was actually Eun-Byeol emotionally blackmailing him to sabotage Ro-Na’s performance. As the judges make their decision, Seok-Kyung shows Eun-Byeol’s phone to Seo-Jin and how she has evidence surrounding Eun-Byeol’s Grandfather being killed. And now we reach the fateful moment surrounding the possible murder. Eun-Byeol and Ro-Na come to blows in the hallway, leading to the former seeing her ghost taunting and mocking her. She grabs the trophy and chases Ro-Na out the building. Eun-Byeol is the one to push Ro-Na down the stairs, with blood stained across her neck. Ro-Na actually won the competition fair and square – which Seo-Jin surprisingly reads out in front of everyone, sabotaging Seok-Kyung’s chances. Unfortunately all of this is about to come undone as we cut to Ro-Na on the ground outside the academy. Is she dead?
The Episode Review
In a week that’s seen the South Korean entertainment world rocked by a series of bullying allegations against top stars, Penthouse returns for a relatively tepid and unfortunately predictable slice of drama. Keen eyes will probably have guessed that it was Ro-Na who fell to her doom early on and 10 points to Gryffindor for everyone who figured this out so early. The only surprise here though is perhaps seeing Seo-Jin actually read out the right name in front of everyone. This episode feels like a turning point of sorts, as Ro-Na meets an untimely demise; another good student lost to the circus of bullying. That’s not a particularly great message to send right now and it’ll be interesting to see what reaction this show receives going forward. The ratings are certainly massive though and this second season has garnered a lot of buzz from fans. Hopefully we’ll see Logan show up in the episodes to come as it’s fair to say he’s doing a super lousy job protecting Ro-Na. The preview for tomorrow’s episode seems to hint that Ro-Na’s dead too, which is a real shame because her character was certainly one of the more likable kids at Cheong-A. And how will Seok-Hoon react to this news? The ending certainly leaves the door wide open though. Roll on tomorrow’s episode!
