Buried Hearts: Episodes 15-16 (Final) » Dramabeans

Buried Hearts: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by mistyisles

Remember the adage about being careful what you wish for? Buried Hearts wraps up with a gloomy reminder that getting everything you want isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. As our hero prepares for a final showdown with his nemesis, he’ll have to confront whether revenge is worth losing his principles — and whether a family this cutthroat can be saved from self-destruction.

 
EPISODES 15-16

Despite Jang-sun’s confession being plastered all over the internet, he’s far from finished. As he explains to the Elder, there’s no concrete evidence against him, so it’ll be simple to claim the video was fabricated. He also promises the Elder something far better than the 2 trillion won Dong-joo stole: Daesan Group, and with it, enough political influence to sway national and local elections however he pleases.

Thus the final battle lines are drawn between Dong-joo and Jang-sun with their respective supporters. In Jang-sun’s corner, Guk-hee publicly blames the slush fund on Dong-joo while Sun-woo’s mother verbally and physically fights Deok-hee — inadvertently giving her the nudge she needs to (reluctantly) back Dong-joo for Tae-yoon’s sake. Chairman Cha, meanwhile, finds himself torn between Sun-woo’s mother and Dong-joo, both of whom claim to want what’s best for Sun-woo. Dong-joo gets a slight edge by promising that if Chairman Cha will give him enough company power to beat Jang-sun, he’ll step down and let Sun-woo take the reins.

At this point, Jang-sun and Dong-joo are playing three-dimensional chess, each trying to preempt the other’s public announcements. Now it’s Jang-sun’s turn to get a leg up: with help from Sun-woo’s mother, he reveals Chairman Cha’s dementia diagnosis and accuses Dong-joo of taking advantage of the chairman’s condition. Chairman Cha collapses on seeing the news (don’t worry, he’ll be okay). Daesan stocks plummet, until Chairman Cha gets desperate enough to let Dong-joo handle securing investors to stop Jang-sun from buying up all the shares. Luckily, Dong-joo has wealthy friends who are happy to lend their wallets.

Chairman Cha’s memory continues to decline. So before he loses it completely, he decides to turn himself in for ordering Il-do’s murder, thereby implicating Jang-sun as well. Jang-sun is arrested, but the Elder pulls a few strings to get him placed on house arrest instead of kept in police custody. But somewhere between the police station and his house that night, Jang-sun disappears. A month goes by with no sign of him, and the investigation is suspended until further notice.

We know what no one else does: Dong-joo hijacked the car that night and stuck a needle in Jang-sun’s neck before driving off into the fog. But even we don’t know the answer to the question everyone thinks but only a few are brave enough to ask: Did Dong-joo kill Jang-sun? We’re left to wonder as Dong-joo sets about saving Daesan and helping put everyone’s lives back together. After securing himself Il-do’s former position, Dong-joo announces a merger of two subsidiaries, which he plans to use to grow the company. Lo and behold, it works, and even Guk-hee is happy with the result (being named CEO of one of those subsidiaries under Dong-joo’s governance certainly helps).

Despite his new responsibilities, Dong-joo doesn’t forget to help his friends, either. He accompanies Won-bae to meet a lawyer who has agreed to help sue the hospital that framed him for malpractice. To everyone’s surprise, that lawyer is Hee-chul. Though he makes Dong-joo leave before he’ll talk to Won-bae about the case, he also chases Dong-joo out into the hallway for a quick conversation. They don’t part as friends, per se, but their bickering is much friendlier than it used to be.

Dong-joo’s relationship with Eun-nam also returns to something sweet and amicable, as he fills her in on some of his insider Daesan knowledge and gets her promoted within the company. When she asks about Jang-sun, he still doesn’t give a straight answer. But she assures him that if he did kill Jang-sun, it was the right thing to do.

A full year passes before we learn Jang-sun’s fate. He’s alive… and chained in the very back of Chairman Cha’s secret vault — the one only Dong-joo can open. Aside from a bed, bathroom facilities, and Dong-joo’s daily hamburger delivery, all Jang-sun has in his makeshift cell is cold, hard cash. But beyond using gold bars as mirrors and folding paper bills to pass the time, all that money he so desperately wanted to get his hands on is completely useless to him.

So what does Dong-joo want with him? Well, he wants Jang-sun to beg for mercy, for one thing. And for another, he wants Jang-sun to sign over his entire fortune. In the end, Jang-sun does both, and Dong-joo lets him walk free. To Jang-sun’s utter shock, however, his wife has recently moved and converted their home into a kindergarten. Meaning he has no home to return to. The last we see of him, he’s serving a (legal) prison term at last.

Dong-joo has won, but happy he is not. He sees Il-do in his dreams, telling him it’s time to let go of both his grief and the gun he keeps beside his pillow. And the conversation with Jang-sun’s wife that prompted Dong-joo to let Jang-sun go forces him to confront the fact that, somewhere along the way, he’s lost all sense of right and wrong. So, now that Daesan is back on its feet and everyone finally appears to be getting along, he takes another leave of absence.

Eun-nam drives him to the shore, and they share what they both know is a goodbye kiss. Then Dong-joo takes a boat out and scatters Il-do’s ashes in the sea. But while he reminisces on everything that led him to this point and seems to make peace with it, everything back home falls apart.

Thus far, the only blatant sign that all is not well has been Tae-yoon’s growing unhappiness. He doesn’t want to keep playing the power struggle game, but Deok-hee won’t let him walk away from it. That, coupled with earlier hints of him almost-but-not-really getting pushed off the roof, made me think he would end up jumping to his death. But no — Sun-woo pretends to make friends with him and then pushes him off! (Yes, it was technically foreshadowed. Yes, I’m still mad about it.)

In the epilogue, Chairman Cha, his wife, and Sun-woo pose for a family photo, the latter two wearing twisted smiles, while Deok-hee and Guk-hee look absolutely miserable. We end with Eun-nam, wearing the ring Dong-joo bought her, painting herself into the picture of him on the yacht and wishing he would come back at least for a visit.

I genuinely don’t know how I feel about this ending. On the one hand, I get what the writer was going for, and I don’t hate where each character ended up (except poor Tae-yoon…). On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve properly conveyed above just how simultaneously drawn-out and abrupt this all felt. I had to double- and triple-check that this really was the finale, and that the epilogue wasn’t a teaser for next week.

What I am sure about, though, is that for all its (many) flaws, Buried Hearts was a fun ride with a cast that committed to what they were given and that stirred my emotions even when I struggled to care about most of the characters as people. That scene where Dong-joo let Jang-sun go and then just sat in his CEO chair and slowly dissolved into tears will probably stick with me for a long time. So, despite being stitched together in a way that didn’t quite gel for me, I’d still say this finale conveyed its message loud and clear: that in games of revenge and greed, even if you win, you lose.

 
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