Recap
We see the Stalker’s past, him throwing flowers at his wife’s grave, yelling at his daughter to shut up, and curling up in a fetal position. He sees Suzu and Issei dancing together before he starts stalking her.
Present day, his daughter shows him the sign for ‘star’.
At work, the Pink Emperor’s juniors are patrolling the clinic to keep it safe, but only catch the director and Sasaki. Suzu notices Sasaki looks subdued.
Sasaki goes to the house he shared with his wife, which still has baby stuff everywhere, and vacuums.
After their class, Suzu and Chiaki talk about how Sasaki is still buying too much food, hasn’t cleaned out his house with his wife, works late, and goes home to that empty apartment. He looks fine on the outside, but inside he’s suffering.
The Stalker shows up, calling Suzu a two-timing murderer again. Chiaki yells at him to be an adult and move on, that it’s okay to date two people, and pulls Suzu away.
Suzu tells Chiaki she doesn’t think the Stalker wants to hurt or kill her, but he’s fighting something. Chiaki thinks Suzu is strong and glad to hear she had a good cry.
The Stalker is waiting for Sasaki on his steps and goes into his toxic monologue about Suzu and guesses that Sasaki is a cheating husband. Sasaki explains his wife and unborn child died, and he sympathizes with the Stalker. The Stalker is stunned to learn Sasaki became a doctor after their deaths. Sasaki says he became a doctor to get revenge.
Issei feels that the Stalker is going after Suzu because she’s compassionate. Suzu thinks both the Stalker and Sasaki need their hearts quelled. Issei thinks they need hugs, Suzu too. His hug with Suzu turns into laughing sexy times.
Haru finds a ton of money hidden under a tatami mat during their job. During lunch, Issei signs that he thinks it would be best for Suzu and the Stalker to talk, or even go stargazing together. Haru thinks he’s crazy.
Haru and Issei see the Stalker’s daughter wandering on the beach. She says her father abandoned her, but he always picks her up.
Issei gets a call from Sasaki that his grandmother collapsed and runs to the hospital. She’s okay because Sasaki was there when it happened. Suzu comes to the hospital room and Issei hugs her and cries.
Outside, just the two of them, Suzu wants to know if she can do anything for Sasaki and offers to sleep with him, then freaks out. She word-vomits about Charlie’s statistics on nap buddies as therapy.
Sasaki says he sees himself in the Stalker and only maintains his composure because of Suzu. She thinks he should cut loose, cry, scream, get angry.
Haru calls Suzu about the little girl and Suzu and Sasaki go running. They meet the Stalker, who apologizes, bows deeply, and walks off. Suzu is worried and goes after him.
Issei gets a call from Haru updating him on Suzu. He goes running.
Suzu and Sasaki go running after the Stalker, who is heading out towards the water. He throws them off when they try to stop him. He knows he’s been terrible and doesn’t want them to be kind. He wants them to be the bad guys and keeps walking.
He stops when he hears his daughter, arriving with Haru and Issei.
He starts crying. Issei runs over and gives him a hug.
Thoughts
This story is so well done. Haru finding all that money under the tatami is symbolic of the ongoing theme of what goes on with other people under the surface. It ties into Issei’s quest to find important relics from people’s lives while doing his job.
It ties into Sasaki, who is handsome and congenial and hiding deep pain.
It ties into Suzu, who was suffering and is now recovering. She’s healed enough that in this episode she reaches out to Sasaki to help him. Something that Suzu at the beginning of the series wouldn’t have done, all she did then was scold him.
But, I don’t think they pulled off the Stalker subplot, and it comes to a head in this episode.
First, they have Suzu saying things I didn’t see. She says she doesn’t think the Stalker wants to hurt or kill her, yet she looked scared to death when he spoke to her at the clinic. And he has also actually hurt people, including Sasaki twice. She says he seems to be fighting something, but I don’t know when she sees that.
Instead, his actions overwhelm his character arc. He attacks Suzu’s love life, which has nothing to do with his wife’s death and isn’t something I think he’d do with a male doctor. He’s so loud and aggressive and threatening, and neglectful and abusive of his daughter, that I wouldn’t feel surprised to learn he abused his wife.
I don’t think that’s what the writers or director intended, considering how this episode ends.
His actions obscure what I think is the character’s true motivation, to tell everyone the truth about Suzu so that no one else would suffer like him. If he’d been more of a pest and less violent and scary, if he’d interfered with the clinic without knocking people to the ground or throwing bricks through windows, if he’d talked to Suzu only to have her respond coldly and shut down, I might have believed his turn around.
He and Suzu even have a connection, because they were both lied to about his wife’s condition. I wish that had come up in some obvious way.
And I would have liked to see Suzu hug him at the end of this episode. That would be a great close to her arc. That she is healed enough that she can even hug the man who was both someone who’d tried to hurt her and an innocent victim.