Start Date: January 5 and will air until February 23rd for eight episodes on NHK-BS
Main Cast:
Yuki Uchida as Suzune Makabe
Chizuru Ikewaki as Mizue Furusawa
Toshinori Omi as Mamoru Yanai
Nobuaki Kaneko as Takashi Nada
Yuki Tezuka as Kota Furusawa
Miwako Ichikawa as Mihoko Yonezawa
Yoshinori Okada as Tadashi Umemori
Not going to talk too much about the previous episodes so if you haven't read these recaps then suggest you click on the tab for the show at the bottom to read the other posts which should catch you up on what happened prior to these shows. Three more of them to go and it'll probably be a frantic ending as even more subplots have come up in the story, so many questions need to be answered and resolved in the final 84 minutes.
At the conclusion of the third episode Suzune had found some prescription sleeping pills in Mizue's bag, has she been secretly giving them to Suzune? She thinks so as she's been so rundown lately and has been sleeping more than ever too, one time so long she missed a deadline for a script. Didn't happen right away but it did come up in a conservation between the pair, Mizue denied giving her any pills as said they were for her as the stress in her life was making it so hard to sleep. Seems Suzune has bought the excuse as this matter wasn't brought up again but wouldn't doubt if the real truth does eventually come out.
Suzune is the only writer for a very popular drama but she's been in a serious slump, so bad that the producer who she also dates on occasion is bringing in a second writer to help her out. Suzune is furious at this but seeing as how her writing doesn't improve at all in these two episodes the producer had no choice but to bring in the second writer. This writer is actually quite good and is assigned to write a few episodes solo which eventually leads to a tragic incident later on in this recap.
Meanwhile Mizue and her son Kota seem to have become permanent residents in Suzune's apartment, one night turned into two more. Then Kota got sick and they had to stay over even longer. Once he recovered Mizue made Suzune feel so guilty about her leaving without a job or a place to live the subject of her staying isn't brought up as often. Doesn't look like Mizue will ever get a job, first her son gets sick then she seems to always fail her interviews, kind of wonder if she ever ends up going to them or whether she's just lying to Suzune.
For the most part that brings up to the end of the fourth episode, have to figure at 28 minutes a show these recaps are naturally going to only be a bit shorter than regular length series. That's why I thought combining two episodes for a recap would work out better and think it has, may do more of these for future dramas.
One character we haven't talked about too much is Nada, mainly because he hasn't appeared too much in the series. However he's making a big presence now in the show as it looks like besides Yanai Suzune may also have a new flame in Nada. He owns a used book store which has some very rare books, him and Suzune have many similar fave writers and she frequents his store.
Nada is a bit of a shy guy but eventually asks Suzune out to a book event, she agrees but had to cancel as Mizue had asked her to stay home to watch Kota as she was going on another one of those .job interviews'. Mizue felt a bit guilty about that so she secretly asked Nada to have dinner with her and Suzune, she did that without telling Suzune about it. No words were spoken about it but Suzune was a bit furious for Mizue inviting him to dinner but one good thing did come out of it as Nada asked Suzune out again and she readily agreed to the date.
Two more main incidents should wrap this up, the first is a continuation of Suzune's slump as a drama writer. Everyone around her says the problem is Mizue and her son living with her, at first Suzune believed them but after a while has kind of shrugged their opinions off. But towards the end of the fifth episode Suzune has dropped a huge bombshell, she tells Mizue that she's quit being a writer of her successful drama. Suzune kind of realized she just couldn't write any more and didn't want to go through the agony of trying to write so she just gave it up. Think Suzune still has a job as a writer at the TV station but for now is on break.
Besides being a bit shy Nada also seems to be a really nice guy, wonder if he may be too nice for his own good. Mizue has been hounded by a loan shark as she owes a total of 300,000 yen and has no way to even start paying it back. At first she was going to try to steal some of Suzune's money and credit cards but they had been hidden away. The loan shark finally catches up with Mizue and starts beating on her a bit when Nada appears to break the pair up. He then bring the shark back to his bookstore and repays the entire loan.
Mizue may have the wrong idea as it appears that she thinks Nada really likes her which is why he paid off the loan. He does like her but not in the same way, he has his heart set on Suzune and lets Mizue know that the pair are going out on a date the next day. In the final scene which is the next day the pair do go off on their date at an old bookstore, they really hit it off.
While on the date Suzune's producer Yanai pays a visit to Mizue and offers her a sum of money to leave Suzune's apartment. Until she leaves he tells her Suzune will never be a good writer again but we don't know what her answer will be yet. We don't know that because as Mizue was being offered the money to leave they notice Suzune and Nada coming through a park and observe them. And what they observed was a brief moment of lust as the pair embraced and had a short kiss, they didn't know they were being watched.
Have no clue what's going to happen next which is a good thing, a solid drama is rarely predictable and so far this show hasn't been at all. The last three episodes should be an interesting view as there are too many things to list which need to be answered or worked out, the main one for me being what exactly is Mizue doing back in Suzune's life?
Will be back in two weeks with the recaps for the next two episodes then will devote one post to the drama's finale as it's just an eight episode series. As is par for my recaps have a second post chock full of more screenshots.
