Trolley episode 5 recap & review: Confrontation

Open Go TV / January 3, 2023 / Reviews

‘Trolley’ episode 5 sees Hye-Joo confronting a face from her terrible past and contending with the distress it brings her.

Recap

Seung-Hee surprises Hye-Joo outside her house just as she’s about to visit her son’s grave with Soo-Bin. Shocked by her sudden appearance, Hye-Joo can’t properly collect herself while a smug Seung-Hee calls her a murderer, gnawing at her with her greetings.

After asking who Soo-Bin is (who Hye-Joo says is just some child she knows, to Seung-Hee’s slight curiosity), she exchanges numbers with Hye-Joo and asks her to come to meet her Youngsan later.

Hye-Joo can barely compose herself to refuse her. So she goes back to her room after telling Soo-Bin she’s not feeling well and that they must go visit Ji-Hoon’s resting place later.

Seung-Hee keeps harassing Hye-Joo via texts and calls after the brief reunion, calling her a murderer. Meanwhile, Joong-Do learns that Seung-Kyu’s mother took a bunch of pills in distress and is hospitalised, recovering.

Later, he learns that another assemblyman from the party is facing a career crisis after his wife ran someone over with her car and drove away.

He later goes to visit Seung-kyu’s mother at the hospital where her husband lashes out at him, throwing hands and kicking him while blaming him for his son’s murderer.

Later, Joong-Do stumbles upon Gwi-Soon cleaning the steps at his office. She does so because she couldn’t think of any other way of repaying the debt and while she thanks him, the assemblyman is a spool of conflicting feelings.

Meanwhile, he also learns that Seung-Kyu had leaked the video which is currently making rounds online, despite the best efforts of Joong-Do’s specialist.

However, to prevent any reports of the video’s distribution from reaching Gwi-Soon, Joong-Do is determined to continue the efforts at curbing the same.

Soo-Bin continues to look for her lip balm, first entering Hye-Joo’s room and picking up her ringing phone, only to be interrupted by Hye-Joo who unleashes her anger on her.

She again lashes out at her for touching her belongings without permission when Soo-Bin reveals she’d broken into her workplace to find the lip balm.

Later on, she is left morose as an orphaned heart aches for warm company when she sees the affection between Hye-Joo and her daughter.

‘Trolley’ episode 5’s ending sees Hye-Joo drives to Youngsan to meet Seung-Hee, a flashback sequence reveals what happened to her and why she’s so traumatised by this place and those who live there.

During her teenage years, Hye-Joo was approached by Seung-Hee’s brother, Seung-Ho. After rejecting his advances, Seung-Ho forced himself on Hye-Joo, sexually assaulting her and leaving her with emotional and physical injuries.

To prevent her from going to the authorities, his mother tries to bribe Hye-Joo, offering her a scholarship for the university, since she has no parents to provide it. Poor Hye-Joo even walks out, seemingly having decided to not take action.

However, when Seung-Ho instantly berates her for taking money and later on sees how his family’s name is plastered all over the school, she goes to the authority. The flashback shortly cuts to Seung-Ho, who commits suicide by hanging himself.

In the present, Hye-Joo meets Seung-Hee, only to be shocked at seeing Joong-Do there, standing with Seung-Hee and her husband, before ‘Trolley’ episode 5 rolls the credits.

Review

‘Trolley’ episode 5 finally delves into Hye-Joo’s past and confirms the theories of her having a traumatic incident preceding a murder that killed Seung-Hee’s brother.
Seung-Hee’s smugness and harassment of Hye-Joo are baffling, raising questions over if she even knows what transpired that led to her brother’s suicide.
Was Hye-Joo’s report ever filed? It does appear so in the flashback sequence but had Seung-Ho’s mother suppressed the legal action, it’d make sense why Seung-Hee constantly calls Hye-Joo, a victim, a murderer.
However, it might be a mistake to so charitably presume Seung-Hee’s lack of knowledge on the matter; she might just be a horrible human being and have a penchant for victim blaming, which is made worse by the fact that she was once her best friend.