You’re All Surrounded: Episode 12

by girlfriday

The fun returns as Dae-gu closes a painful chapter of his life (or so he thinks) and starts to open himself up, just a little, to the people around him. Evil is still afoot in the realm of the rich and powerful, but now that Dae-gu has people on his side to laugh and cry with, the world doesn’t seem so scary. What’s a little life-threatening danger and a walk on the dark side when your team’s got your back?

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Kwon Jin-ah – “그대만 보여요” (I Only See You) for the You’re All Surrounded OST [ Download ]

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EPISODE 12: “The end and the beginning”

Dae-gu crouches under the truck to hide from the killer who’s coming after him with his own gun, when another killer shows up to kill the first killer. Because karma’s a bitch like that.

Combat Boots struggles as he’s being choked to death, and meets eyes with Dae-gu who’s hiding like a scared little boy. Boots reaches out his hand, gasping for air. Gah, does he save the man who killed his mother, or does he let him die?

Dae-gu can’t move at first, but then he grits his teeth and slides out on the other side. He sends the second hitman down with a swift kick, and when the hitman sees that he’s outnumbered, he retreats quickly.

As soon as they’re alone, Combat Boots points the gun at Dae-gu and laughs that he’s a funny kid for saving him when it’s obvious he’s just going to go right back to killing him. He says there was a time he was the same, when he even jumped into the fray to save his friend. But the world rewarded him with nothing but blame, tearing him apart until there was nothing left.

Meanwhile, Soo-sun and Pan-seok arrive at the garage and drive through every floor searching for Dae-gu. Drive faster!

Boots tells Dae-gu to just think of himself as unlucky like him, and says one final, “Go well, Kim Ji-yong,” before tugging on the trigger. Dae-gu lunges at him with a yell…

Pan-seok and Soo-sun make their way through the garage on foot, guns drawn. They finally find Dae-gu, but he’s already lying on the ground. Ack!

They run to him, and phew, he’s alive and just bruised and bloody. And then a few feet away, Boots is lying on the ground too. Pan-seok notices him and makes a move to go after him, but Dae-gu stops him and crawls over there himself.

He kneels down and reaches behind him… to take out his handcuffs. Huzzah! His hands shake as he fastens the cuffs around Boots’ wrists, and then he picks him up by the collar. His voice trembles as he officially arrests Jo Hyung-chul for his mother’s murder, crying and pouring every last ounce of his hate into the reading of his rights.

Pan-seok picks up the gun sitting on the ground, and opens up the chamber. It’s empty. Aw, Dae-gu Dae-gu, you listened!

Dae-gu collapses in tears, and Combat Boots laughs at his nerve, for walking in here with an unloaded gun. Dae-gu: “Because I didn’t know what I might do. But I do know that I don’t want to become a monster like you!”

And with that, he drops Boots and walks away. Pan-seok and Soo-sun watch him with tear-filled eyes, and Pan-seok smiles proudly.

The rest of the team cheers when they finally get the call that Dae-gu’s okay and that he caught Boots and didn’t even kill him. Chief Kang overhears from the hallway and looks pretty freaked out. Things aren’t looking good for the dirty cops.

The team arrives, and as Dae-gu escorts Boots through the precinct in handcuffs, he’s met with a roaring round of applause. Chief Toad makes a proud speech to the press about how the young boy whose mother was murdered in Masan grew up to become a cop in their very own precinct, and came to catch his mother’s killer.

With Dae-gu’s face plastered all over the news stories outing him as Kim Ji-yong, it doesn’t take long for Assemblyman Yoo to find out who he is. He’s beyond shocked, and orders his staff to do an immediate background check on Dae-gu.

I love that Tae-il and Gook are the ones to patch Dae-gu up when he’s back, because that’s just how it is now. Soo-sun tries to convince him to go home early today, but Dae-gu refuses to let anyone question his mother’s killer, and insists on staying.

Pan-seok comes in and they get into the same argument, and Tae-il tries to pull rank as the doctor to get him to rest (and gets a thumbs-up from Gook for it). Finally Pan-seok just orders all four of them to go home, promising that nobody will question the suspect until he comes back tomorrow morning.

Dae-gu agrees to that, and then he’s out like a light as soon as they get into the car to go home. The rest of them all take a moment to be proud of him while he’s sleeping, and they call him “our Dae-gu,” which just gives my warm fuzzies the warm fuzzies. The boys ask Soo-sun what he was like as a kid, and she says he was cute back then too. Gook wonders if they lived in the same neighborhood throughout their childhoods, but she doesn’t answer.

Chief Kang comes to see Combat Boots in his cell, and warns him to keep his mouth shut about everything. She hands him a scapegoat (the company president who threatened Mom about testifying, who’s already dead), and makes it clear that she and Assemblyman Yoo are to be kept out of it at all costs.

He’s not exactly willing to be a good little soldier when he was just attacked today, likely by an assassin that they sent after him. She says she doesn’t know anything about that, and though it’s clear that she’s the one with everything to lose here, she also knows that he has no cards left in play. She tells him that he’s just a tail that can be cut off at any point, so if he wants to live, he’d better find a way to cling to the body. You know she’s a badass when she makes Boots quake in his boots.

Even as she’s giving him evil orders to protect the evil higher-ups, she’s also still explaining everything from the perspective of what’s best for Dae-gu. She says that they have to keep Dae-gu from digging into this case any further, and that means giving him a dead-end and a closed case.

Dae-gu wakes up in bed, and the first thing he does is check his injury, like he’s trying to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. The second he stirs, his bedroom door pops open and three heads peer in, stacked on top of one another.

They’re careful to ask, but as soon as he invites them in, they spill inside armed with beers, like they were just sitting out there waiting the whole time. He’s shocked to find out that he slept the whole day, and Gook says he wants to give him a Good Job stamp on the back of his hand like in grade school. He digs around in his pockets like he’s going to take one out, and then says he’ll give a hug instead. Ha. He tries to hug him and fails. Twice.

They ask how it feels to catch the bad guy, and he says he’s not sure. He tries to express the feeling in words, and then lands on: “The only thing I’m thinking now is… I want ramyun.” Gook does a spit-take, and Soo-sun volunteers to be the chef.

She waits expectantly for a response from Dae-gu after he takes the first bite, and frowns when all he says is that it’s pretty edible. Tae-il has to translate that that means he likes it, because Dae-gu is a picky complainer who won’t eat it if he doesn’t like it. She’s relieved, and once she’s smiling and eating, Dae-gu steals glances at her, trying not to get caught making moony eyes.

Suddenly Gook brings up the fact that Dae-gu is two years younger than Soo-sun, which makes him three years younger than Gook. Yessss, I’ve been waiting SO LONG for this conversation!

Dae-gu shifts uncomfortably in his seat, trying to ignore them at first. But Gook says they have to be proper about this: “Call me hyung!” Then Soo-sun pipes in with, “Then call me noona!” And finally Tae-il turns to him: “Hey, maknae, you’re the youngest one here, so go get the ham in the fridge and bring it here.” Hahahahaha.

He sits there with the grumpiest face full of ramyun, but there’s nothing else he can do—he gets up to go the fridge and fetch the ham. He sets it on the table in silence, and then slams his chopsticks down to argue belatedly that once you lower your speech it’s supposed to stay that way.

It’s a stompy-feet argument, but they have no intention of holding him to it, and bust up laughing. He laughs too, and then they all make a big deal about seeing Dae-gu smile. I luff this scene. Imma watch it again.

In the morning, Dae-gu gets his chance to question to Boots, and Chief Kang joins Pan-seok in the observation room. Dae-gu outlines the events of the night his mother died as he understands them: At least two people came by the house that day. Killer 1 came in, turned the house upside-down looking for something, whacked Mom over the head with a glass vase leaving her almost dead, and dropped the pendant by accident.

Killer 2—Boots—came after Ji-yong arrived home and found Mom. Based on the phone call that Ji-yong overheard, his purpose for coming to the house was to find that pendant, and he can’t be the one who dropped it because he asked someone over the phone what it looked like. He then found Mom still alive and finished the job.

Dae-gu asks who ordered the kill in the first place. When he gets no answer, he asks who Detective Seo is: “Is it Seo Pan-seok?” Everyone’s eyes widen at that, and Boots laughs, realizing how well it fits. But he says no—it isn’t Pan-seok, adding that Pan-seok owes him a greater debt than a favor to be used for something as small as getting a pendant out of evidence.

Dae-gu asks again who Killer 1 and the owner of the pendant is, and Boots takes a long moment before giving the answer he was fed: the company president who threatened Mom. He went to the house to threaten her again about testifying, and when she refused he hit her over the head in anger. When he realized he dropped the pendant, he called Boots in to retrieve it. It’s a lie, but the story fits, so Dae-gu has no reason not to believe it.

He asks what the point is of coming back eleven years later to kill him, and Boots insists that it was to cover up his crime, same as before. He found out after the fact from Detective Seo that Ji-yong was hiding under the bed, and that’s why he came after him at school. Dae-gu asks again who Detective Seo is, but Boots just laughs and says he has to save one for later, just to keep it interesting.

Dae-gu’s blood boils over and Eung-do has to restrain him and drag him out. Boots calls after him that he’s disappointed they’re leaving so soon when it was fun. Curiously, he adds a rather useful warning: “Kid, don’t trust people so easily.” He says that you’ll always be betrayed by the one you trust, and wishes him a future full of blessing.

Pan-seok takes a turn and asks if the job Boots was planning before leaving the country was to kill Kim Ji-yong. He only answers vaguely that it could be. Pan-seok asks a very important question—why now, when the case is nearly dead and isn’t even being investigated actively? Yes, THIS is the question. The smarter thing to do is to wait until the statute of limitations runs out completely.

Pan-seok isn’t convinced that the witness-tampering company president is really the mastermind here, but Boots gives no other information. He asks who Detective Seo is, but Boots just gets nostalgic about how things were good in the old days, and takes out a wrinkled copy of their picture together. He says he keeps it for sentimental reasons, to remind him that he was once a person too. He tells Pan-seok to take it.

Assemblyman Yoo gets the file on Dae-gu including his adoption agency records, and flares up when he sees that Chief Kang has been his benefactor for eleven years. Now he knows that she’s plotting to stab him in the back; the question is how and why, and what it has to do with Dae-gu.

The team reconvenes for their next step, and Pan-seok remembers Soo-sun saying that she gave a police statement about seeing Boots in the school eleven years ago. Dae-gu whips around at that, and says this is the first time he’s hearing about that—it was never in the police report. She swears she gave the statement, and Pan-seok decides they should go to Masan to jog her memory and find the detective she talked to, since maybe he’s their elusive Detective Seo.

Dae-gu insists on going with them, and thus begins the most awkward road trip known to man, kicked off by the world’s most awkward elevator ride. Soo-sun stands between them, initially thinking that silence would be the worst of her troubles. But then Pan-seok gets a phone call, and Dae-gu’s pocket starts buzzing on cue.

Now that he knows that Dae-gu’s been spying on him, he makes a show of answering the phone and waiting for Dae-gu’s clone phone to stop ringing. All of this happens without a word, but he knows he’s been caught red-handed, and tries not to meet Pan-seok’s laser eyes.

When Dae-gu tries to walk away, Pan-seok confronts him about it, and says he’ll be the bigger person and forgive him for the spy camera and the wiretapping as long as he acts appropriately in the future. He can barely eke a curt “Yes” out of Dae-gu, and Pan-seok asks what he’s still so huffy about—do they still have a misunderstanding?

But Dae-gu says this doesn’t change the fact that Mom still died because of Pan-seok’s insistence that she testify. Pan-seok says drily that Dae-gu sure is consistent, and Dae-gu just fires the same word back at him.

Soo-sun braces herself for the trip ahead, and races to the backseat to force Dae-gu into sitting up front next to Pan-seok. She suggests word games, which they both shoot down in unison, heh, and then suggests music, which just starts a fight between the guys over the station.

At the Masan station, Pan-seok greets his old captain warmly, and Soo-sun looks through the old personnel records to find the detective she spoke to. She finds him, but the captain says he quit the force a while back, and is now abroad for business, for at least a few months. Rats.

Assemblyman Yoo comes by to see Chief Kang without warning, and she swears up and down that she didn’t know that Dae-gu was Kim Ji-yong. She calls it a coincidence, and though Assemblyman Yoo knows she’s lying, he lets it look like he’s giving her the opportunity to convince him.

He calls Dae-gu “a child who should not exist in this world,” which almost makes him sound like some botched mutant clone. (I know, it’s far more likely that he’s someone’s illegitimate baby, but that’s just going to anger me, especially if he’s THIS GUY’s bastard child.)

He gives Chief Kang one way to prove her loyalty: she can kill Dae-gu herself. She agrees to it, but asks that she be left to do it in her own time. He says he’ll be the one to determine when it’s time, and she promises that she has Dae-gu eating out of her hand, and it won’t be a problem.

After watching Boots get transferred to prison, Pan-seok goes to visit his son’s grave. It’s a tree planted in his name, and Pan-seok sets his favorite toy robot down with a teary smile.

At the same time, Dae-gu goes to see his mom. He brings her flowers and tells her with a big smile that it’s all over now, and asks brightly, “I did a good job, right?”

Soo-sun runs into Dae-gu outside the precinct on a Sunday and runs up, happy to see him. She offers him the half-eaten ice cream cone in her hand, which he turns down for being licked. It looks like he immediately regrets it though, ha. He tells her that he went to see his mom yesterday, and she says it must’ve been nice.

They’re waiting to cross the street and she absently takes a step into the crosswalk when the light changes, and a scooter comes whizzing by. Dae-gu yanks her back in time, pulling her into a hug. Ah, nothing like a danger hug to get those hearts racing.

They stay frozen in the embrace, and Soo-sun’s ice cream melts in her hand until she finally drops it in shock. Dae-gu takes forever to pull his hand away from her back, and then they separate and sputter awkwardly, him about the scooter and her about the ice cream.

The next day, Pan-seok waits for Sa-kyung to arrive at work, and she congratulates him on closing the case. He apologizes for being so busy lately, and admits that he just realized her birthday passed.

She calls it no big deal, but playfully jabs that she’s used to him forgetting important days by now. She means for it to sting his conscience a little, but says it with a smile, like she’s challenging him to step up and be better.

Pan-seok and Soo-sun run into each other while riding bikes at the river, which she’s been doing lately because he advised her to keep up a workout routine. He asks why she isn’t here with Dae-gu: “Aren’t you two dating?”

She swears they aren’t, and Pan-seok is confused: “You’re not? But if you’re not dating, then how… with the…” He just rubs his lips without saying anything, and trails off wondering how kissyfaces and not dating add up.

She says she has no intention of dating in the workplace, and shares the adage her mom sent her up to Seoul with: “You don’t eat the rabbit that lives in your house.” Pwaha, that’s a terrible adage.

The rookies gather for lunch, or what I like to call PPL Break, and Soo-sun and Dae-gu spend the whole time trying not to look at each other, but constantly looking at each other. Soo-sun gets a call from Mom, who’s suddenly in Seoul for a friend’s daughter’s wedding.

She panics and asks the boys if she can crash the apartment again, and Gook and Tae-il agree readily. She turns to Dae-gu timidly, ready to beg, but then he just says gruffly that she can do whatever. All three of them just gape like he grew a second head.

Mom is busy shopping at the mall, and in her haste to get out of the bathroom, she accidentally grabs the wrong purse on the way out. In her defense, they look identical, but you just know the shouty chaebol madam who owns the other one is going to raise hell over it. It gets worse when someone rolls a stroller over the designer bag that Mom takes, and ruins it. The madam confronts Mom about the bag switch, and she apologizes for the mistake, pleasantly offering to pay for it to be repaired.

She assumes it’s probably pricey, but then the angry madam tells her the bag is 50,000,000 won (THAT IS LUDICROUS). Mom thinks she’s being fleeced at first, because who in their right mind would pay that much for a bag (seriously, does it come with airbags and a powertrain warranty?), but then she sees the receipt and immediately cowers in apology.

Mom asks for some lenience in the matter because she can’t pay it all at once, and the madam says she can come up with something, and smiles devilishly. I have a bad feeling about this…

Gook gets a video sent to him by some buddies, and they say that it’s a scary ajumma beating someone with a bag. What. He plays the video, and it’s definitely Soo-sun’s mom lying on the ground, while the chaebol lady beats her repeatedly with the purse. What a crazy bitch.

Gook runs over to show the guys to make sure that isn’t Soo-sun’s mom in the video, but both Dae-gu and Tae-il tense up immediately—it’s her all right. They jump out of their skins when Soo-sun creeps up behind them, and Dae-gu snaps at her for her silent stealth.

She assumes it’s porn and they almost get away with letting her think that, but then another detective saunters over with his phone and tells them they have to see this crazy video. Argh.

Her face goes white and she stammers, “That… isn’t my mom, is it?” Dae-gu tries to stop her from watching, but she sees the whole thing and then calls Mom in a panic. Mom ignores Soo-sun’s calls, trudging down the street covered in bruises and feeling shamed. She breaks down in tears.

Gook searches online and finds that people have already figured out that the raging bag lady in the video is the wife of Chasung Group’s CEO. Soo-sun hears that and gets ready to charge like a bull, but Dae-gu stops her and says she can’t go in this angry state—she’ll do something rash. He urges her to calm down and focus on finding Mom, and he’ll go confront the nasty chaebol lady. The boys back his plan, and she relents.

Dae-gu rings the doorbell at the gate, but the woman—Chasung Group’s Madam Yoo—arrives a minute later in a car with an older man and a young one (her husband and son?). Dae-gu flashes his badge, and then a second car pulls up. Inside is Assemblyman Yoo, who looks aghast to see Dae-gu there.

 
COMMENTS

Oh, is she Assemblyman Yoo’s wife? That would make sense, given that he’s a raging murderous megalomaniac. It’s a match made in heaven? I really hope we’re not headed down the birth secret road with Dae-gu, even though I know we are. I’m okay with it being a part of the mystery as long as the result isn’t the super obvious one-note version where he’s the son of the murderous bastard who killed his mother. Because that sucks and I don’t want this to be that drama. It might be different if the villain were more interesting, but he’s your standard cookie-cutter power-hungry gangster dressed as a politician, and I don’t know that there’s an interesting there there.

Chief Kang, on the other hand, is fascinating because she’s motivated by something more complex. Yes, she’s clearly out for herself, but she’s also trying to protect Dae-gu at every turn, either because he’s crucial to her plan, or because she cares about his welfare. She’s not absolved of guilt because of it, but it makes her more intriguing than your standard-issue mustache-twirler. I get the misguided-mother vibe from her—the kind who makes evil choices thinking it’s what’s best for her child. I also think she’s the only one smart enough to go up against Assemblyman Yoo, so I am partly rooting for her in that sense, even though it’s frustrating that she’s actively keeping our good guys from the truth.

I’m hoping that Boots was trying to clue them in, with his cryptic warnings about not trusting the people closest to you. Maybe he’ll prove to be useful down the line, once they realize that his actions don’t add up. I’m a little disappointed in Pan-seok for not pressing the issue further. I mean, seriously, what kind of murderer comes back to the country just months before the statute of limitations runs out on his crime? And to commit a second murder, to cover up the first murder, which would’ve stayed buried had you not returned? It almost seems more logical for him to have staged this intending to be caught, so as to point the blame where it belongs—on Assemblyman Yoo. The only problem with that theory is that he’s not actually helping the case. Maybe I’ll just have to chalk it up to crazy killer logic and be done with it.

I know that the case isn’t actually over, since catching Mom’s second murderer is just the beginning, but it was nice to give our characters a beat where they got to feel accomplished in bringing a killer to justice. Pan-seok gets to feel a little bit like the hero that his son saw in him, and Dae-gu gets to go to Mom and be proud that he did the right thing, just like she taught him. It’s gratifying that Dae-gu went into battle with an empty gun, intending from the start to just be the good guy, no matter how hard that might be. It’s stupidly courageous and not at all logical, (who’s to say Boots doesn’t carry a gun?) but it’s important that he isn’t accidentally a good guy—he’s actually good, and he’d never disgrace Mom’s memory by becoming a killer. We see Dae-gu act more and more like a cop in stages, but this is the episode where it feels like he graduates. Even Pan-seok can’t deny that this kid is a cop, down to his bones. Their sameness still amuses me to no end, and I actually enjoy how little they refuse to budge even after clearing up a massive eleven-year misunderstanding. But baby steps are the fun part, both in the romance department, and in the family that’s steadily forming around our bratty maknae.

 
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