'When I was the Most Beautiful' Episode 13 Review: Can Ye-ji really cut ties with Jin and Hwan's family now?
Ye-ji meets Carrie Jung after she receives a banquet of flowers from the latter. Ye-ji (Lim Soo-hyang) decides that it is time to face what scared her the most and that is to learn if she really was abandoned. She is confident as she faces Carrie and even puts up a good fight in front of a woman who hid her husband for seven years. She also tells Carrie that she will not be jealous of a woman like Carrie. She explains that she knows the kind of man Seo Jin (Ha Seok-jin) is despite him hiding from her all these years.
She says that he decided to hide from her only because he was in love with her not because he didn't like her. However, the fact that she cannot forgive Jin makes all of Ye-ji's claims pointless. Can she really forgive him and move on to live with him as if nothing had happened? At the same time, Jin's former racing teammates head out to meet Carrie and ask her why she would lie to all of them despite knowing that Jin was alive. It seems there's more to the accident than what the others know about it. Was Jin targetted and did the driver have something to do with all of this?
This is something Jin must look into now that he has heard about what Gi-seok had told the other teammates. There is something fishy and if the truth about Jin's mother joining hands with Carrie were to come out, things will only get more complicated. After dealing with all of this, Ye-ji arrives at her workshop to find her mother waiting outside. She has now learned the truth about her mother committing a crime in self-defense, Ye-ji wonders if the can live with her mother again. Her mother encourages her to divorce if necessary and also tells her that her life will not end at this. However, she believes that she is not someone who Ye-ji can live with because she will always be a murderer. It is a harsh truth that Ye-ji has to understand and realize.
Hwan (Ji Soo), on the other hand, ends up being confronted by Amber about how he has still not given up on Ye-ji. She tries to forcefully get him to prove that he likes her as a woman, however, he is unable to and instead he tells Amber to dump him and leave him behind. He tells her that she is too good to be with him. Their relationship comes to an unfortunate end and Hwan is back to pining after his first love. It is sickening to watch this toxic relationship play out in all its disturbing glory and the more Jin attempts to hold onto his wife, the worse it is for us to watch how unbelievably psychologically abusive this relationship is.
Another disturbing thing about this show is how it doesn't highlight the trauma that Hwan had to live through because of his brother. For now, after breaking up with Amber, Hwan and Ye-ji reconcile with a drink now that both of them understand what it means to break up with someone and lose their friend. This doesn't particularly mean that the two of them can have something romantic. At the same time, Carrie's partnership with Jin's mother plays to her advantage and she tries to use the fact that Ye-ji signed a prenuptial to her advantage. Instead, Ye-ji stands up to Carrie, but in the process, she learns that no one considers her their family.
At this point, she also realizes as she talks to Hwan that she probably just wanted a family more than anything. Even now, when she thinks about divorcing Jin, she realizes that she might lose the only family she has ever had. It is as the two of them have this conversation that we realize that the two of them make great friends. Will this toxic cycle of abuse end with Ye-ji cutting her ties with Jin and his family to regain control over her life? Or will she choose another route altogether?
'When I was Most Beautiful' will air on MBC on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9.30 pm KST. It will be available on Viu outside South Korea.
