The third episode of Snowdrop revolved around Soo-hoo’s (Jung Hae-in) escape from the dorm of the Hosu Women’s University with Yeong Ro (Jisoo) and her friends’ help. After a narrow escape from the Dean, the former decides it is not safe for him to take shelter in the university anymore, while the latter is reluctant to let him go. The episode also reveals some secrets about the students of the university.
Spoilers Ahead.
The third episode begins with madam Pi (Yoon Se-ah) searching the empty cabin on the roof where Soo-hoo is hiding. After a narrow escape, Soo-hoo realises that he might leave soon.
On the other hand, the women are busy preparing for the Open Day, when outsiders, including men, are allowed in the Women’s University. Still unaware of his true identity, Yeong-ro decides that the event would be the perfect day for Soo-hoo to escape.
Parallelly, Eun Chang-Su and Nam Tae-il wait for the North Korean delegates to negotiate with them for their benefit in the upcoming presidential elections, and Soo-hoo’s disappearance causes a major problem for them.
Back at the University, Yeong-Ro’s roommates accuse Bun-ok of stealing their expensive stuff. When madam Pi calls her to her room, the conversation that follows hints that the two might be related to each other. Nothing more is revealed on that front in the episode.
It is also revealed that Yeong-Ro is the daughter of Eun Chang-su, the director of ANSP, and his wife Hong Ae-ra is her step-mother. The brief interaction between them further reveals that she shares a strained relationship with her father and her step-mom and is probably carrying the guilt of her birth mother’s death.
The rest of it focuses on the Open Day celebration and how Soo-hoo finally manages to escape.
Jung Hae-in steals every scene he is in despite having few to no dialogues. Beneath his calm and composed outer front, lies a deeply troubled mind of a Korean spy and we can catch glimpses of his worries in his dreamy eyes.
Although he knows he doesn’t belong where he is currently, he starts noticing Yeong-ro and by the time the third episode ends, the viewers might feel that he, too, is growing fond of her.
Jisoo, on the other hand, limits her expressions to either smiling, getting shocked or sad and doesn’t do a good job of conveying her emotions to us. Even in the scene where she is confronting her stepmother with whom she has a strained relationship, she lacks the maturity to portray her character’s inner turmoil. A slap from her step-mom doesn’t help either.
Till now, the series doesn’t clearly show what happened during the democracy movement in Korea and the students’ protest, so if you are watching it to expand your history knowledge, you might as well google the events. Jung Hae-in and Jisoo’s chemistry, too, has been a hit and miss. The sparks of the first two episodes died down a bit in the third episode, despite the writers trying to show that Hae-in is being considerate towards Jisoo.
Even in the third episode, the series fails to pick up the pace and some of the scenes are painfully dragged. However, the extravaganza of the Open House event was fun to watch. There were several scopes in the episodes where the lead characters could have established their power, for instance, the confrontation scene between the stepmother and the daughter or the scene where Yeong-Ro imagines dancing with Soo-Hoo.
However, the scenes, despite having the potential, could not hold one’s interest.
Meanwhile, the politics of the show, which caused a major uproar in South Korea during the time of its release, continues to receive mixed reactions. For instance, the ANSP agents, whose real-life counterparts were accused of several problematic things, try to invoke viewers’ sympathies. The act of whitewashing their crime put the series on the receiving end of a lot of criticism.
With too many things going on at a slow pace, the following episodes of the series have a lot to deliver.
Snowdrop is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, where one new episode is dropped every Wednesday.
