Queen of Tears Episode 6 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Kim Soo-hyun as Baek Hyun-woo
Kim Ji-won as Hong Hae-in
Park Sung-hoon as Yoon Eun-sung
Kwak Dong-yeon as Hong Soo-cheol
Lee Joo-bin as Cheon Da-hye
Kim Kap-soo as Hong Man-dae
Lee Mi-sook as Moh Seul-hee
Jung Jin-young as Hong Beom-jun
Kim Jung-nan as Hong Beom-ja
Kim Joo-ryoung as Grace Ko
Yoon Bo-mi as Na Chae-yeon
Jeon Bae-soo as Baek Du-gwan
Hwang Young-hee as Jeon Bong-ae
Jang Yoon-ju as Baek Mi-seon

An empty house and a secret

Late at night in Seoul, the Hong house has its cameras switched off and its housekeepers gone. Someone points out that Hong Hae-in has left the country and Baek Hyun-woo has gone after her. Inside with Yoon Eun-sung is Cheon Da-hye, the wife of Hae-in's younger brother Hong Soo-cheol, and she finally gets the cigarette she can never risk on camera. A voice muses that from the outside the two do not seem to get along, but that they like each other without either of them knowing it, or why else would they keep running back to each other.

Intercut with this is a replay of the last episode's ending. At the park in Germany, as an announcement warns that the gates close at 7:00 pm, Hyun-woo calls out Hae-in's name. She tells him she came looking for a place without sadness and did not find it, and that all she wants is to go home with him.

In between, the Seoul pair poke around a room of the house. One tells the other that Grace Ko has been digging into Hyun-woo for three years without turning up any dirt. The reply is that a man with nothing to hide would not keep what they have just found.

Elsewhere, Hyun-woo's secretary, Kim Min-gyu, calls Hae-in's secretary, Na Chae-yeon, who is on her first week off in years. He knows Hae-in flew to Frankfurt and that his own boss left the night before without saying where. She tells him he is better off not knowing and forbids further calls.

Back at the park, the replay ends and new footage begins. An older man tells the couple that they clearly love each other, but could they do it elsewhere, since his own wife is waiting at home. They apologize and leave. In Seoul, Eun-sung decides it hardly matters what Hyun-woo is hiding. The fact that he has a secret, he says, could ruin a marriage.

Three minutes of last wishes

Hae-in wants cup ramyeon, MSG and all, because she would hate to die without tasting them once. While the noodles steep, she uses the three minutes to list her wishes. No memorial services, since she dislikes the food; instead, wine somewhere with a view and a couple of Hercyna bags on the table. Hyun-woo is to write the eulogy and watch her rivals at the funeral, Kim Ye-na among them. If they say anything odd, he should sue them for defaming the dead. She wants him to cry, ideally in front of cameras, and to stay a little sad for a long time, but not too sad.

Then she raises her will. She wrote it before the wedding because her mother demanded it, and it leaves him nothing. She is rewriting it. Hyun-woo thanks her, then asks her to wait until her cancer is completely gone. For now, he says, they should eat before the noodles go soft.

Eun-sung and Da-hye are still in the house, and a card shows the name of a shop, Juseong Tech 24. Da-hye wonders aloud what life would be like if they had been born into a family like this one. She would at least be smarter than Soo-cheol, she says, the most gullible man she has ever met. A flashback to their first date proves the point. Soo-cheol explains that he cannot stand the word noona because his older sister bullied him, and he claims his body can sense an older woman. Someone wonders how he will react when he learns his wife is five years his senior.

In the kitchen, Hae-in's mother, Kim Seon-hwa, shows off a hundred-year-old wild ginseng nearly a meter and a half long, meant for Soo-cheol's panic attacks and sweating. Hong Beom-ja, Hae-in's aunt, offers double, then triple, to have it for Hae-in, warning that Hae-in could be sick too. Seon-hwa insists her stubborn daughter never even catches colds. When Soo-cheol protests, Beom-ja curses at him to stop hogging it and storms out. Soo-cheol has the root cut up so he can eat it before she comes back.

Beom-ja then visits her oppa, Hong Beom-jun, who is Hae-in's father. He is feeding a snail with a broken shell. Without its shell it will die, he explains, as if it were terminally ill. Beom-ja breaks into sobs over her poor brother. He tells her she is the family's most pitiful member after the snail, and she asks for a drink.

Back at their place in Germany, Hae-in announces she will sleep in the other room and that he can do whatever is comfortable. Hyun-woo asks whether, starting tonight, he could share her bed. She leaves him dangling while she thinks it over, asks whether he means tonight or every night, and finally says sure.

Later, Hae-in tells the story of Ye-na, the CEO of Royal. After a car crash, Ye-na's husband ran to the emergency room with a lawyer to get her signature on a new will, and his shouting woke her up. In their world, Hae-in says, a death always raises the money question first. Her husband is different: when she told him she was sick, he said he loved her, and he fussed over her cough without once asking about her property. Hyun-woo agrees there is no one else like him. When she says she is lucky to have him, what he says, or perhaps only thinks, is that he is the least lucky thing about her.

A deal for Filgrastim

Hyun-woo's lawyer friend Kim Yang-gi phones from a friends' barbecue, demanding to know why Hyun-woo is missing. Hyun-woo says he would only drag the mood down, then admits he is in Germany, eating ham hock with Hae-in. Yang-gi hopes he will not regret it and tells the others that Hyun-woo has changed completely.

The research center writes back, and the show cuts to the meeting behind it. Hyun-woo asks the center's head whether the lab's data can be trusted if it comes from patients picked for good prognoses. The doctor points out that nothing in their agreement forbids that. Hyun-woo does not want the money back. Hae-in gave one million dollars as thanks for her treatment, so refusing even to try counts as deception. As her legal representative, he will sue for fraud in a Korean court, headlines and all.

The center agrees to try. Hae-in explains they will use an injection therapy called Filgrastim to raise her white blood cell count, with no guarantees. Hyun-woo immediately lists the rules: controlled temperature, a protein diet, no raw food because of the risk of sepsis. When she asks how he knows all that, he calls it common sense.

In Seoul, a visitor tells a clerk at Juseong Tech 24 that the clerk could be very helpful. Grace, meanwhile, shows Da-hye a dashcam clip that nearly got her into serious trouble. Da-hye's first complaint is that she looks fat in it. Grace asks where they would be if Mr. Yoon had not found it.

Da-hye asks whether Eun-sung plans to swallow Queens whole and what becomes of the family, and denies any feelings for her idiot husband. Grace grumbles that she learned video editing just to erase footage of Da-hye's nightly smoking. Seon-hwa walks in and asks who was yelling, and both women plead ignorance.

During a massage, Grace confesses a mistake to Seon-hwa. Hyun-woo found out about the wording of Hae-in's will, and Grace explained it. Ever since, she says, he has stalled Soo-cheol's deal with Mr. Yoon by demanding new reviews of the site.

Soo-cheol pleads with his grandfather, Chairman Hong Man-dae, to hurry before Mr. Yoon changes his mind. Man-dae calls business a matter of nerve and tells him to be diligent and meticulous like Hyun-woo, and Soo-cheol admits his brother-in-law is starting to annoy him. A flashback goes to a scholarship ceremony with Chairman Hong. A young Hae-in scolds the child who hit her brother with a ball. Afterwards a child who also lost an older brother proposes to young Soo-cheol.

At dinner, Beom-ja remarks that little Hong Geon-u is handsome and looks nothing like Soo-cheol. Man-dae asks about a paternity test, and someone confirms one was run at birth: 99.99 percent. Soo-cheol shouts that no one insults his wife and child and leaves with Da-hye. Later, after cataloguing Geon-u's resemblance to him, he apologizes to her for being the family runt. The resort deal, he promises, will change that.

Yongdu-ri goes viral

In Yongdu-ri, Hyun-woo's home village, tourists ask Hyun-woo's father, Baek Du-gwan, for directions to a spot they saw on YouTube. A video of Hae-in endorsing Du-gwan has made the village trend, as his son Baek Hyeon-tae reports. Restaurants she ate at are flooded with orders, and the family credits her with reviving the local economy. Then they spot the catch. In one clip she eats an apple, and rival Park Seok-hun is selling Yongdu-ri as apple country.

At her hair salon, Hyun-woo's sister Baek Mi-seon hears the women's association praise Hae-in and plan a flower path named for her, with a plaque of the couple. She is already furious that one of them posted the apple video, now past half a million views. Mi-seon throws them all out.

In Germany, Hae-in teases Hyun-woo about So-yeong, the principal's daughter his sister called his first love. He insists they never even planned to have lunch together. She defines a first love as someone you watch from afar and take the long way to see. She has had one, she says: "The man on the bus." He points out she has never ridden a bus.

At the Hong house, workers arrive to fix the security cameras, which keep shutting off. Someone opens a safe, and inside is a divorce settlement agreement. A voice pities the man who wrote it, who had no other choice and suffered long enough.

An angel for Hae-in

In Germany, the couple search for something they left there three years ago and cannot find it. By a fountain, they buy a four-leaf clover from a hawker for two euros, just for fun. At the hospital she is horrified to have gained three kilograms. If she is not pretty at the end, she explains, that is how he will remember her.

She goes in for her injection and then vanishes from the hospital. Hyun-woo searches for an hour and finds her hungry. She tells him she saw her older brother.

In flashback, a nine-year-old Hae-in survives a boating accident on a summer holiday, and her brother, Hong Su-wan, dies saving her. She says her mother never forgave her, and she feels she is living his life. If the one who loved you most comes to collect you at death, maybe Su-wan came for her. Hyun-woo blames the injections, which can cause delirium, and reminds her she survived. Hae-in decides that many years from now she will be the angel who comes for him, the prettiest one.

The safe is opened

Juseong Tech 24 has shut down, and its phone is off. Eun-sung gives Man-dae a painting, hung on the northwestern wall because that direction brings money, and mentions he is talking to other companies about the resort. Chairman Yeom, a rival, comes up. Then Man-dae learns that a staffer, Mr. Song, embezzled 13 billion won, and Beom-jun warns that prosecutors may call him in too. Man-dae is sure they are after him.

At the house, an electrician finds a voice-activated bug, with its receiver no more than two kilometers away. A recording plays in which Man-dae approves moving 30 billion laundered won. The receiver turns up in Hyun-woo's bedroom, along with a safe. Man-dae orders it opened.

When Seon-hwa calls Hae-in to accuse Hyun-woo, Hae-in counters that anyone could have planted it in their empty rooms and tells her to check the cameras. Seon-hwa says Hae-in has chosen her side. Yang-gi, meanwhile, finds the data shop closed and is sent to pull the dashcam card from Hyun-woo's car. When Seon-hwa calls Hyun-woo, Hae-in tells him not to answer, reminding him that she is not supposed to be stressed. Beom-ja learns that her father's partner, Moh Seul-hee, may really be Oh Sun-yeong, a woman thought to have died 30 years ago, who gave birth to a son in prison. At the house, the safe is opened and Man-dae finds the divorce agreement, with the names Baek Hyun-woo and Hong Hae-in on it.

In Germany, Hae-in joins a kebab line, wanting for once to feel normal, while Hyun-woo runs back to the hawker and buys every clover. In Seoul, the family hears that Yang-gi works for Chairman Yeom's law firm, and someone suggests Hyun-woo tipped off prosecutors. In Germany, Hyun-woo finds the thing they lost and a camera clicks. Hae-in wins the last kebabs by asking a stranger what if her doctor had given her three months. Calls marked Mom and Dad go unanswered, and then Mom sends a message.

Hyun-woo returns, glad that what they were looking for is still there. Hae-in has seen the divorce agreement and begs him to say it is not real. "It's real. I wrote it," he answers, and apologizes for not telling her sooner.

In a closing scene, Hae-in calls him Mr. Baek and starts to object. He tells her not to worry and leaves before she can explain that she has a driver. She asks the driver to slow down, then to follow a bus, even over the bridge.

Thoughts

The ramyeon scene is the heart of the hour. Hae-in plans her funeral like a store launch, down to the cameras for his tears, and then admits she just wants to be missed. Hyun-woo asking her to hold off on the new will until she is cured is the most romantic thing he has done. It also makes the ending hurt more, because the man who would not take her money is the same man who kept that agreement in a safe.

Seoul is crowded with plots, and not all of them earn their time. Grace and Da-hye are fun as bickering co-conspirators, though, and Beom-ja weeping for her brother over a sick snail is one of the best sibling scenes the show has given us. The Oh Sun-yeong file opens a whole new door on Seul-hee, and I want to know who the son born in prison is. I also suspect the bug, the receiver and the safe point at Hyun-woo a little too neatly, which makes me trust the frame even less than the family does.

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