A tale of two writers consumed by obsession and revenge, Notes from the Last Row shows the power and danger that emerges when we learn how to tell our own stories.
Netflix’s latest limited series, Notes from the Last Row, follows writer and professor Heo Mun-oh (Choi Minsik). Stuck in a years-long writing slump, he finds his spark reignited when he reads the work of Lee Kang (Choi Hyunwook), a student who sits in the last row of his classroom.
Kang writes about his involvement–and near obsession–with his classmate’s seemingly perfect family. At first, Mun-oh believes he has found his prodigy, but soon, Kang’s stories uncover the family’s dark secrets, leaving him unsure of who to trust.
Disclaimer: Major spoilers ahead. Read with discretion.
Notes from the Last Row Recap: First assignment
Heo Mun-oh is known throughout Yeonseo University as a strict professor who has been unable to write a new novel in years. He also carries a deep resentment for another writer, Kim Suhun, who once cruelly criticized his manuscript.
Lee Kang first catches Mun-oh’s attention when he writes about how he befriended his classmate Kim Seyun. Kang writes with an outsider’s fascination at Seyun’s picture perfect life and deeply desires to be part of it. Mun-oh is so riveted by this that he asks Kang if he would like to have private lessons. Though Kang refuses at first, he later agrees to cancel one of his part time jobs to attend lessons.
Small transgressions
Once Kang is at Mun-oh’s house for lessons, he tells him about how he can’t write about Seyun’s family anymore as Seyun’s mom caught Kang snooping in her closet. Kang also overheard Seyun’s parents talking about how suspicious they think he is. However, they’ll let their son hang out with him, because they think Kang might help Seyun win the programming competition.
Kang asks Mun-oh to steal the programming competition problems for him so Seyun’s parents approve of him and he can continue writing about them. Mun-oh initially refuses, but later fantasizes about being Kang’s mentor and guiding him to literary success, thereby one-upping Suhun and his literary prodigy of a daughter.
Mun-oh steals the programming problems. Seyun and Kang become runner-ups in the contest.
Sympathy
Mun-oh has been showing Kang’s stories to his wife, Hyeonsuk, who is a therapist. Though she disapproves of the theft, she notices how Kang seems to inspire Mun-oh, who admits that stealing the programming problems made him feel alive. Mun-oh and Hyeonsuk haven’t slept in the same room for over a decade, ever since they decided to stop trying for a child. They finally sleep in the same bed again, though Mun-oh is aloof to Hyeonsuk the next day.
Kang tells the story of his family to gain the trust of Seyun’s parents, and shares this in his next assignment. According to him, his mom left when he was young, and his dad is in a nursing home suffering from alcohol-induced dementia. His ploy to gain the family’s pity works, and Seyun’s dad invites him to move in with them.
Though Seyun’s family welcomes Kang, his arrival is soured by the housekeeper, Minhui. Minhui is a young single mom who regards Kang as another person she has to clean up after.
One woman
While at his house for lessons, Kang brings up Mun-oh’s novel, Twelve Women. Mun-oh doesn’t want to discuss it, but he says that all twelve women are actually referring to just one. At dinner, Kang asks if Hyeonsuk is the one woman in Mun-oh’s novel. Hearing about this “one woman” for the first time and knowing that it isn’t her, Hyeonsuk gets upset at Mun-oh.
Kang’s next assignment narrates how he put Seyun’s mom’s scarf in Minhui’s bag to get her off his back. Seyun’s mom accuses Minhui of stealing, and Minhui ends up quitting. Kang sees Seyun’s dad chasing Minhui and grabbing her. They end up in his car, where Kang sees movement and assumes that Seyun’s dad is having an affair with Minhui. Mun-oh tells Kang off for his voyeurism and speculation.
That night, Mun-oh is woken by a call from Kang, who says he’s caught in an emergency. Mun-oh rushes to Kang’s location, only to find himself at a hotel where Kang claims that Minhui and Seyun’s dad are continuing their affair. Annoyed by Kang’s actions, Mun-oh declares their lessons to be over.
However, just as he says this, a car runs over a woman in front of the hotel. Kang says this woman is Minhui. He also spots Seyun’s dad in the crowd of onlookers, pointing to the writer Kim Suhun.
Change in perspective
With this revelation, Mun-oh’s mental image of Seyun’s family changes. If Suhun is Seyun’s dad, then his mother must be Ahn Eunjoo, Mun-oh’s first love.
Now more invested in Kang’s stories than ever. Mun-oh presses him for more details of the alleged affair. He reinstates his lessons with Kang, who writes about the morning the family received the call about Minhui’s death. He reports that the whole family appears shocked, including Suhun.
Mun-oh tries to make amends with Hyeonsuk and asks her out on a movie date. Afterwards, Mun-oh and Hyeonsuk are having dinner with another couple when Kang texts Mun-oh about his latest assignment. Mun-oh excuses himself from the table to read it, leaving Hyeonsuk to claim that he treats her well despite his actions.
Crime scene
Kang writes that he went back to the hotel to investigate and found an old work sunbae, Jaesik, working there. Jaesik says Suhun is a regular at the hotel and that he uses their suite to sleep with different women. On the night of the accident, Jaesik overheard Suhun and a woman threatening each other in the suite. He also says that a young man around Kang’s age has been around the hotel, asking about the incident and bringing up the possibility of murder.
When Mun-oh emerges from the bathroom, he finds that Suhun himself has joined them at dinner. Suhun tells everyone that he, Mun-oh, and Eunjoo went to the same university, which is something that Hyeonsuk didn’t know. When Mun-oh tries to probe Suhun, Hyeonsuk says Mun-oh is just curious about Suhun’s writing process since he’s been in a bad slump. This embarrasses Mun-oh, and the two of them get into another argument when they get home.
Seyun and Jeonghu
Kang shares his suspicions that the young guy who asked about the incident is Seyun. He says that Seyun has been acting strange and sullen. Jeonghu, Seyun’s older sister, comes home for Suhun’s birthday, but Suhun is out taking care of Minhui’s funeral.
Once their mother is away, Kang overhears Seyun and Jeonghu talking about how they knew their father had been cheating this whole time. The siblings debate telling their mother about it. Seyun tells his sister that he tailed Suhun and Minhui to the hospital and he’s convinced their father killed Minhui. Jeonghu is an up and coming writer herself. She fears for their father and her reputation, and tells Seyun to keep his mouth shut.
Notes from the Last Row Recap: Confrontation
Hyeonsuk apologizes to Mun-oh over what she said at the dinner with Suhun, but he leaves her at the table again when he gets a text from Kang. The text is a picture of a shredded note that Kang pieced together.
The note is addressed to Suhun from an anonymous sender. It states that they have the hospital CCTV footage and instructs him to meet them at a certain place and time.
Kang and Mun-oh assume it’s from Seyun, who wants to confront his father with evidence. Thoroughly upset by Mun-oh’s secrecy and neglect for her, Hyeonsuk drinks and yells at Mun-oh. Later that night, Kang shows up at Mun-oh’s house and tells him that the person who was going to meet up with Suhun was not Seyun but Eunjoo.
Eunjoo’s story
Before Kang gets the chance to tell Mun-oh the whole story, he gets an urgent call and has to leave. The next day, he’s not in class nor is he answering phone calls, leaving Mun-oh on edge. When he finally calls Mun-oh back, he says his dad went missing, got hurt, and is now in the hospital.
Mun-oh tries to sympathize but is mostly interested in the continuation of Kang’s story, which Kang promises to send within the week.
In the next assignment in Notes from the Last Row, Eunjoo says she has known about her husband’s cheating for a long time but has just been letting it slide. However, she couldn’t let go of his affair with Minhui since it was happening inside her own home.
Eunjoo actually found a pregnancy test inside Minhui’s bag the day she fired her. She confronts Minhui about the pregnancy test, but Minhui says that it has nothing to do with Suhun.
Minhui’s story in Notes from the Last Row
Minhui reveals that she had an older sister who dreamed of being a writer but died of cancer. She finds her sister’s manuscript after her death and gives it to Suhun in the hopes that he could help it get published. Suhun says he doesn’t have time to read it and Minhui thinks that’s the end of it.
However, when Suhun’s book gets published, Minhui realizes that he plagiarized her sister’s manuscript. Minhui blackmails Suhun, as she has the original file. All the moments between them that Eunjoo thought were intimate were Minhui threatening him.
Complications
Eunjoo pays Minhui to give her the original file to save her husband’s reputation, but then Minhui dies from the accident. Eunjoo goes to the orphanage where Minhui’s daughter is staying. She takes the USB drive from the child and burns it.
Eunjoo thinks it’s all safe, until Seyun tells his mom that he saw his father kill Minhui. He says Minhui was still conscious after the car hit her, but when he came upon her at the hospital, she had already died. Presumably, Suhun killed her to get the USB.
Eunjoo plots with Seyun to find out the truth from Suhun themselves. She sends him to recover the hospital CCTV footage, while she sends Suhun the note and goes to confront him at the park. Then, as Suhun is walking to their meeting place, he gets a call from Jeonghu saying that Sehun knows everything. Suhun decides to meet Jeonghu instead and Eunjoo is unable to confront him. Apparently, the CCTV footage is useless as well, because it faced a blind spot and didn’t capture what happened.
Fictions
Eunjoo is devastated to be trapped in a marriage with a murderer. After reading this story, Mun-oh is desperate to save Eunjoo. He calls Kang and tells him to tell authorities that he witnessed Suhun kill Minhui. As this would be fabricating evidence, Kang refuses to do it. Mun-oh decides to take matters into his own hands and writes a novel exposing Suhun for being a monster. This becomes Mun-oh’s precious second novel.
In the morning, Mun-oh gets a frantic call from Kang. According to him, Seyun called Kang in the night because his father was going to kill his entire family and burn down their house. Mun-oh races to the family’s home, calling emergency services and attracting the attention of the cops along the way. Everyone becomes a witness to Mun-oh’s distress, including Seyun, Suhun, and Eunjoo who are perfectly safe and have no idea what’s happening.
Falling apart
Elsewhere in Notes from the Last Row, Mun-oh sees Kang leaving his apartment building. He tries to run after the younger man to no avail, and instead goes up to find Hyeonsuk packing her things. There’s wine and cheese on the table and Hyeonsuk’s bed is unmade. Mun-oh accuses Hyeonsuk of sleeping with Kang. She neither confirms nor denies this, but reveals that she and Kang have been secretly meeting for a while. She also declares that she’s leaving him.
Soon, Mun-oh’s colleague calls to say that an anonymous post was uploaded to the school message board. It details how Heo Mun-oh asked a student to fabricate defamatory information about the writer Kim Suhun. He allegedly bribed them with programming competition problems to write a novel depicting Suhun as a despicable human being, and later claimed that the student’s work was his own.
Mun-oh frantically searches his study for the novel he wrote and realizes that it’s missing.
Kang’s story in Notes from the Last Row
After facing the disdain of his students and the disciplinary committee at his university, Mun-oh sits in his empty apartment and reads Kang’s last assignment. Kang talks about a day twelve years in the past, when Mun-oh and Hyeonsuk came to an orphanage in the province. Hyeonsuk will provide counseling to a group of children as part of her practicum. She brought Mun-oh along for a change of scenery.
In the class, a student in the last row refuses to do the activity and walks out of the classroom. Mun-oh goes to talk to him, teaching him about the power of stories and helping the kid open up about his parents. Later, the kid asks Hyeonsuk for Mun-oh’s address as he wants to write to him to tell him more stories.
When Mun-oh hears about this, he waves it off as sentimental fluff and says the kid was just sharing a regular old sob story with nothing special.
The boy, a young Lee Kang, is heartbroken, as Mun-oh essentially did to Kang what Suhun did to him. Since then, Kang was determined to show Mun-oh a special story. He reveals that the woman who got hit by the car was an unplanned coincidence. She was from Suhun’s publishing house, which explains his presence at the scene. The rest was all a product of make-believe and Mun-oh’s obsessive imagination.
The last scene of Notes from the Last Row shows Mun-oh writing a new novel as he works at the university bookshop. Kang finds him there and tells him he wants to resume lessons, as he finally has a story he really wants to write. Mun-oh considers this for a long time, but he can’t help himself and eventually asks Kang, “What story?”
Source: Netflix KR
