Song Man San (Liu Kai-chi) is shaken by the video clip of his wife. He tells his assistant to check every inch of his office and home for hidden cameras. Later, Song meets Yip Ching (Angelica Lee) in a remote area. He asks her to hand over the video since he had already cancelled the deal with Ho Chun Pak, but she says she will keep a copy in case he pulls any more dirty tricks. Privately though, she makes Cheung Kwai Lung (Gregory Wong) delete the video, which had been sent to them by the same anonymous person.
Protesters demonstrate outside of Yip Ching's campaign office, demanding that she step down because of the hostage incident. Meanwhile, Sum Suet Lai (Violet Li) ramps up her effort to slander Yip Ching via HKMG's various channels. She orders extra coverage linking Yip Ching to the death of the elderly hostage. In addition, she makes up fake poll numbers, citing that an "independent source" has found that Yip Ching's approval ratings have dropped to 9.88%.
Yip Ching arrives at a high school to give a speech and is met with protesters outside. Inside, she walks into a largely empty auditorium as the parents' and teachers' associations have boycotted the event. She delivers her speech to an audience of 13.
On the other hand, Song prepares for a speech at a gala in front of many prominent business people. During his speech, he is interrupted by a man. The man spews off a bunch of environmental facts, then presents a gift to Song. Later on, Song opens the gift in his office and is stunned to see a broken finger.
At night, Cheung waits for Gei Man Wai (Isabel Chan) outside her home. He wants to see the clip of the environmentalist at the gala, which has been kept out of the news by the DNRA-friendly media. In exchange, he promises to give her exclusive news and first interview if Yip Ching decides to withdraw from the election.
After watching the clip, Cheung recognizes the man as Lin Chi-Yun (Simon Lo), a former professor that used to help the government with their environmental assessments, but had mysteriously disappeared eight years ago. Cheung finds it odd that Song would act as if he didn't know the professor even though they had worked together before.
Facing rapidly declining support, Yip Ching decides that they must do something bold. She will host another event at the high school. If the number of attendees plus online supporters reaches 300,000 people (10% of eligible voters), then she will continue with her campaign. Otherwise, she will announce her withdrawal from the election. Although it is a risky plan, Cheung supports it. He says the quickest way to get the word out is to go through HKMG.
They set up a live interview with Gei on the pretense that Yip Ching will announce her withdrawal from the election. However, Yip Ching uses the on-air opportunity to announce the event at the high school. When Sum realizes what is happening, she orders the live broadcast to be cut immediately.
Song calls his team into his room and tells them that he has reached a deal with Ho to join the DNRA along with 120 other party members. He wants to hold a press conference at the same time as Yip Ching's event to devalue her public support.
That night, Song's assistant Kong Yat Dong (Samson Yeung) sneaks into Song's office and attempts to steal the file with Ho's statement. He is shocked to find that the file contains only blank paper. He quickly leaves the office, but Song is already waiting outside. Song says that the purported deal with Ho was just a trick to find the mole in the team. He is enraged that his loyal assistant would betray him, but Kong insists that he is only helping. He explains that he ruined the deal with Ho because Mr. Wong would not be happy to see a collaboration between Song and Ho. Song asks about Kong's relationship with Mr. Wong, but Kong says that the only important thing is for Song to win the election.
Kwan Suk Mei (Candy Chu) announces that she will file a lawsuit against Yip Ching for causing the death of her father. During the press conference, Poon Tsz Wan (Eunice Ho) puts Cheung on the speaker phone to share Lee King Shun's thoughts about the incident. Lee spent a long time thinking about why Yip Ching would enter the building. If it was only to play hero and win votes, it was not worth the risk since the extra votes would be meaningless if she had be killed. He concludes that the only explanation is because she truly wanted to save the hostages. He asks citizens to ignore the media reports and use their own minds to analyze the facts. In the end, this speech clears yet another hurdle for Yip Ching...
Election countdown: 33 days
Hi miriamfanz! First off, thanks again for the well-written recaps! I’ve actually been reading every single recap, even though I’ve already watched that particular episode – it’s a good reminder for me of what happened in those episodes and in some cases the recaps help clarify a part that I might not have understood or might have glossed over somehow.
ReplyDeleteAnyway…so it turns out I guessed correctly on the “mole” who was giving information to Yip Ching’s camp about Song Man San’s dealings with Ho Chun Pak (I had suspected Yat Dong all along)…with that said though, I actually guessed the motive wrong (never thought that Yat Dong actually worked for Mr. Wong and supports Song Man San, just doesn’t like Ho Chun Pak). It’s actually quite interesting how the scriptwriters wrote that piece (again, kudos to the scriptwriters for the good script).
I was going to save this next comment for the episode 12 recap, but I’m afraid I might forget: the piece that I still can’t figure out is how Yip Ching managed to get the 300,000 attendance count she needed at that event, especially since her approval ratings had not been high after that hostage incident. They never really explain it, even in episode 12 (they only put that blurb at the end of episode 12 saying that Yip Ching got the attendance count she needed) – I kept thing that maybe Cheung Kwai Lung was able to rally up some type of support, since he always seems to have a solution up his sleeve (plus he sounded so confident that she would meet the number in both episodes 11 and 12), but it doesn’t look like he did anything out of the ordinary. So did everyone just ‘show up’ miraculously, despite all the negative press / media reports? Or did something actually happen and I missed it somehow?
Nice that you guessed Kong Yat Dong correctly! I actually didn't think of him so it was a great surprise. I was guessing Sum Suet Lai since she might want to hedge her bet on who wins the election. The fact that Kong is related to Mr. Wong also shows how the Chinese government is secretly wanting to intervene in HK politics.
DeleteYou didn't miss anything in ep. 12. The scriptwriters magically created a miracle for Yip Ching via the captions. In my opinion, they could have done it better just by switching a few scenes. They had that radical politician gather tons of supporters to rally for Yip Ching. If that scene had happened before the event, it could have help explained how she got so many attendees suddenly (all the radical supporters). This is one part where the script failed. It is not the first time the writers got a little lazy either. They kind of did the same thing when Yip Ching won the internal election where she "magically" beat Ho Chun Pak without much reason.
Hmmm....actually Sum Suet Lai was a good guess too, especially since at certain points it was kind of hard to tell whose side she was on (though of course it become more and more obvious as the series went on). The initial guess that Yip Ching and Cheung Kwai Lung threw out about the "mole" possibly being Mary (Fong Kai Chiu's 'ex'-wife) was kind of ridiculous if you ask me -- too obvious that it definitely wouldn't have been her given how ticked off she was at Fong Kai Chiu (plus I saw no reason why she would want to betray Ho Chun Pak)....
ReplyDeleteAh, good point about the internal election thing -- almost forgot about that! Yup, I was kind of disappointed with that part too because the whole segment became anti-climactic given everything that had happened up to that point (with that assistant who committed suicide and all). With that said though, I feel that part wasn't as "glaring" as the episode 12 "miracle" with the 300,000 attendees -- I actually thought it was an editing issue or something because the episode ends with Yip Ching and Cheung Kwai Lung sitting on stage waiting and talking nervously, then it cuts to the ending captions...I thought we wouldn't find out until episode 13. Good thing us viewers paid attention to the captions otherwise we would have been totally lost going into episode 13!