The previous episode of “Trolley” ended with Joong-Do condemning his son Ji-Hoon to the gutter and he made him take the fall as Soo-Bin’s sexual assaulter. He manipulates Hye-Joo into agreeing to appear for the press conference as well while he sets up the stage for Seung-Hee’s rebuttal. “Trolley” Episode 12 ended with Hye-Joo realizing the truth through the veil Joong-Do had put over her eyes as she set out to find out about his whereabouts while questioning the people from the places he had visited. Her suspicions had been confirmed, and she had waited for Joong-Do to confront him about them.
Spoilers Ahead
Episode 13: Recap And Ending Explained – Will Joong-Do Get Away With His Manipulation Successfully?
Hye-Joo confronts Joong-Do about her suspicions as she asks him about his meeting with Ji-Hoon before he’d died; instead of confirming her statement, Joong-Do tries to lead her to believe that he might have had an affair. While he refuses to answer her questions because he believes he will be digging his grave one way or the other, Woo-Jae gets informed about the article about Hye-Joo circulating on social media as he immediately calls Joong-Do to inform him about it. Joong-Do, finding out about the news Seung-Hee had deliberately posted on social media about Hye-Joo through Woo-Jae, showed it to her and asked her to appear on television to clear it up. Hye-Joo asks for a timeout as she ponders over her decision to appear on television. She returns home with Joong-Do and tells him that she will be sleeping in Yeo-Jin’s room instead. They part ways as Hye-Joo seeks comfort from Yeo-Jin while she tries to clear her head.
When she wakes up, a hellish experience awaits her as her nightmares from “Trolley” Episode 11 come true. Reporters swarm the front gates of her house and demand an answer from both Joong-Do and Hye-Joo. Hye-Joo quietly slips out under disguise through the side gate to avoid them as she makes her way to her studio. On reaching her, she quickly asks Yoon-Seo, who had gotten her hands on the article, to skip her after classes and meet Hye-Joo before arriving home so as to avoid the media. She also tries to contact Joong-Do, who has switched off his phone due to the incessant barrage of phone calls from the reporters. She then tries to contact Woo-Jae, who immediately informs her that he is sending in help to get rid of the reporters while also poking at her insecurities to get her to make up her mind about the press conference. She then asks Yeo-Jin to come as well so that they can go back together to the house.
Yoon-Seo arrives at the studio, and her accusations push Hye-Joo to make her decision earlier, which she informs Joong-Do of, who had meanwhile switched on his phone again. Hye-Joo agrees to the press conference, while Joong-Do tells Woo-Jae to schedule it for tomorrow when the situation has turned sour enough. He is willing to drag his family through hell just to push for the amendment and his political career. He uses Sueng-Hee’s post as a means to threaten Ki-Young into sending in the evidence, to which Ki-Young informs them that he will have it ready and will hand it over to them by the afternoon of the next day.
Meanwhile, Ki-Young’s situation worsens as he is confronted by his suspicious wife, Seung-Hee, who has found out that he had lied about the CS training as she had picked up the call from their headquarters in his stead. She found out that he had been meeting Hye-Joo and also that Yoo-Shin had confronted him about handing in the evidence from the dashcam in his car. She confronted him about his lies as Ki-Young told her about the lies her mother had inevitably led her to believe throughout the years. He tells her about Seung-Ho lying to her and her entire family, brainwashing Seung-Hee to the point that she believes in them and not her best friend, Hye-Joo. Seung-Hee refuses to believe in Ki-Young, just as she accuses him of liking Hye-Joo. Yoo-Shin also throws a tantrum to lead Seung-Hee to suspect Ki-Young so that Yoo-Shin’s secret is not discovered. Ki-Young, upset and betrayed, receives Joong-Do’s call in his car as he informs him that he will hand in the evidence because he need not be afraid of his family finding out anymore.
Meanwhile, Kang tries to reach out to Seung-Hee in vain about the article and also has lunch with Chairwoman Woo as he offers her a deal where her party would shoot down Joong-Do’s bill in exchange for having 10 of their public welfare bills cleared by the National Party and the People’s Party. Woo holds a meeting where the rest of the leaders decide to side with Kang and ask Joong-Do to get his family’s ordeals in order. Woo had already made her decision, which she, of course, decided to share only in “Trolley” Episode 14.
Hye-Joo, after she had sent Yoon-Seo with Yeo-Jin to Yeo-Jin’s restaurant, had been contacted by her friend Ji-Soo, who informed her that she had recognized Soo-Bin from the picture of Soo-Bin in Hye-Joo’s bag in “Trolley” Episode 12. As Hye-Joo reached her hospital, Ji-Soo informed her about Soo-Bin’s visit, and she also debunked all of the lies about Soo-Bin’s pregnancy. She told Hye-Joo that Soo-Bin had gone through a miscarriage and that Ji-Hoon had not assaulted her because he had been in jail when Soo-Bin had conceived. Therefore Ji-Hoon had not been the father in the first place. Hye-Joo calls Soo-Bin to ask her about it, but after not being able to reach her, she leaves a voicemail instead. She tells Soo-Bin that she should have told Hye-Joo of her miscarriage and she should not have gone through that alone. She should not have bore the pain alone. Hye-Joo later informs Yeo-Jin that Ji-Hoon is innocent after she returns home from the hospital, and that she does not know who to trust except for Yeo-Jin. She returns to her room to confront Joong-Do again, who instead manipulates her with his self-blame over quarreling with Ji-Hoon on the night of his death and thus receives her sympathy instead.
On the other hand, Soo-Bin, while waiting for her friend, gets approached by her acquaintance, who informs her that Ji-Hoon stole the meth that was found on his body from him. He also threatens her with time in jail if she does not listen to him, as he had handled all the dealings via her bank details. Soo-Bin realizes that he was the one who sold the information about her asking about abortion by admitting to being falsely sexually assaulted. Soo-Bin returns to the apartment Joong-Do had provided her with to listen to Hye-Joo’s voicemail. This prompted her to meet with Hye-Joo and also tell her the truth about the entire situation. Hye-Joo had been on her way back from setting the humidifier right in her studio due to rain, which is where Soo-Bin confronted her. She spilled the beans about Joong-Do’s affair and also admitted to lying to her about her pregnancy. She also revealed that she and Ji-Hoon had witnessed the affair, which is why the night before Ji-Hoon died, he had been confronting Joong-Do about it. She could not take Hye-Joo’s pain and also could not stand to see her getting betrayed by the people she called family. Soo-Bin believed in Hye-Joo’s innocence and thus went out of her way to help her, in spite of knowing that this could get her killed as well.
Final Thoughts
That inkling, where you just know that someone might be having an affair with someone close to you, is an inkling, but it’s there. I had that inkling, however, dismissed it, thinking that the way Joong-Do treated Hye-Joo, it could not be possible that he had an affair with Yeo-Jin. Soo-Bin must have known about that, and that is exactly why she confronted Yeo-Jin and was also able to keep her miscarriage a secret from Hye-Joo. Yeo-Jin, on the other hand, was overwhelmed by her guilt—the guilt of betraying her friend, who considered her family. Woo-Jae must have been aware of it too. It all makes sense, though, like the overcompensation through affection and telling Hye-Joo that he would not question her because, in fact, he couldn’t question her at all. He does all that so that Hye-Joo never trusts anybody else when they say that Joong-Do has been cheating on her, which comes as a shock to her when Soo-Bin airs out their dirty laundry to Hye-Joo.
Joong-Do really manipulates Hye-Joo throughout, and the narrative is pushed toward Ji-Hoon getting murdered because he found out the truth and was going to tell Hye-Joo. He must have been acting out as he was shouldering this huge secret that could destroy his family, and it did eventually. Ji-Hoon must have been on his way to tarnish Joong-Do’s reputation to the point where he would never be able to recover from it. But the fact that his wife would turn her back on him pushed him to go to such drastic lengths. The fact that Joong-Do keeps on mentioning that all of this is for the “greater good” really makes his character really quite detestable. This is such a great excuse for people looking for an escape from the crimes that they have clearly committed. Similar to that one headmaster who had sent in a kid to fight a seasoned criminal simply because the criminal had been defeated by the kid who was protected by his dead mother’s spirit. His character was so problematic, but he got away with it because it was all for the “greater good.”
There could be another way to look at it, as Ji-Hoon had stolen the meth, maybe he had planned on committing suicide and dragging Joong-Do’s career with him for all of the grief he had put them through. After confronting Joong-Do about the affair and to condemn him to his personal hell, Ji-Hoon must have swiped the meth from Soo-Bin’s acquaintance and committed suicide after. Ji-Hoon and Soo-Bin had been the only ones to witness the affair and Yoon-Seo and Hye-Joo were kept in the dark before Ji-Hoon had confronted him. Thus, to cover up his ways and also use his son’s death Joong-Do had calculated all of the steps that had led onto Hye-Joo agreeing to appear on television. He had simply miscalculated Soo-Bin’s drive to tell Hye-Joo the truth after she received unconditional care from Hye-Joo, which had led her to feel guilty enough to confess.
See More: ‘Trolley’ Episode 14: Recap And Ending, Explained: Was Ji-Hoon’s Death An Accident Or A Murder?
