LUCA episode 10: Each unhappy family is certainly unhappy is in its own way, but even Tolstoy couldn’t have seen THIS coming. When Jin Kyung announces that she and Dr Ryu are Zi-oh’s parents, the look on Kim Rae-won’s face is pure gold.

The next generation isn’t doing much better. Baby zaps Gu-reum! GR drops Baby! Baby levitates in a ball of electricity! Knewbie almost drops a cup of tea! I completely disagree with viewers who say GR is a vacillating, gullible bitch who is abandoning ZO for no good reason. On top of what she has experienced herself, the details of the wrecked car containing her parents’ remains are pretty damning, and ZO’s current denials contradict his earlier claim that he really doesn’t know whether he killed them. And I think she would still have tried to work things out with ZO if Jin Kyung and Dr Ryu hadn’t taken her to the lab and given her a massive dose of body horror, David Cronenberg style. I doubt any new mother, let alone one who has recently had her baby prised from her arms, could have accepted all that gross gene editing stuff with equanimity.

I also think GR is so horrified now precisely because she truly did accept ZO as a human being earlier. ZO had followed Dr Ryu’s advice, grabbed happiness with both hands and become more human than he’d ever been. Without the interference of both well- and ill-intentioned outsiders, his powers were just something the couple took in their stride, like pets that can be trained to adapt to Baby. The same would have applied to Baby’s powers. Too bad the world refuses to leave them alone. Thus begins ZO’s backsliding into his less than human state. But what a magnificent backsliding it is! Even the far from impressionable Jin Kyung is so impressed that she takes a knee in her white trouser suit. At the same time, GR busts out of her cell with Baby strapped to her back and a stake fashioned from a wooden spoon. Woohoo!

Enough about our inter-species couple. It’s the baddies who interest me more, and they get so many good lines in this episode. Jung Eun-chae is deadlier than anyone else, having mastered all Deputy Kim’s old tricks and with lots of new ones up her immaculately tailored sleeve. Jin Kyung shows ZO that cliches have no place in the modern world (“I said I was your mum, not that I gave birth to you”). Dr Ryu continues to be a disturbing combination of compassion and megalomania (“I created ZO. I am already a deity.”). Deputy Kim knows exactly how many times lunkhead Lee Son punched him. Most amazingly, Team Leader Choi really does redeem himself! When he and ZO revive the sensible but trusting ahjusshi cop, I wanted to kiss them all.

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