Two Cops: Episodes 27-28

by LollyPip

I’m not sure exactly how many days Su-chang has left to solve the mystery and reclaim his life, but it must be down to a bare handful and I’m getting worried. He and Dong-tak are doing everything they can to catch the Angel and the person that’s been orchestrating everything for sixteen years, but they’re in serious danger of running out of time. They’re going to have to call in every bit of help they can for one final push, before it’s too late.

 
EPISODE 27 RECAP

Dong-tak is attacked by the Angel, and he finds himself fighting to breathe while Su-chang can do nothing but yell ineffectively. The cops show up before Dong-tak loses consciousness, which is lucky for him, but the Angel jumps on his bike and gets away.

Over coffee, Ji-an asks Chief Prosecutor Tak what happened on the day her father died. All she knows is that he was on his way to see her, but he called to say he had to stop and see someone first, and she never saw him alive again. She says that if she knew who he was meeting, she might know what happened to him, and although Chief Prosecutor Tak seems evasive, he agrees to look into it.

Ji-an also asks Chief Prosecutor Tak why he sponsored her for over ten years. A dark expression comes over his face as he says softly, “I owe him. I owe your dad a huge debt.”

After he’s gone, Ji-an tries to call Dong-tak but gets no response. She starts to change his name in her phone from “Two Cops” to “Detective Cha,” then changes her mind, telling herself that it will stay that way until he keeps his promise to get Su-chang’s body back.

She grins when a call comes in from his number, but it’s someone at the hospital where he’s been taken. She rushes over to find him getting ready to leave after having his shoulder bandaged. Ji-an fusses at Dong-tak for getting hurt all the time, and he reminds her that it’s part of his job, but her concern makes him smile.

Someone alerts Jae-hee that Dong-tak is in the hospital and that Ji-an is with him. He tells whoever it is to keep an eye on them.

Leaving the hospital, Ji-an tells Dong-tak that she spoke to Chief Prosecutor Tak, and that he’s her father’s friend and her sponsor, unaware that Dong-tak knows who he is. She assumes that his closed expression means he’s jealous of Jae-hee, and Dong-tak goes with it rather than worry her even more.

He sends her home on her own, and he’s quickly joined by Su-chang, who asks if he’s okay. He’s visibly relieved when Dong-tak says he’s fine, but when Dong-tak teases him for worrying, Su-chang weakly denies it.

They agree that Ji-an doesn’t need to know about their suspicions of Jae-hee yet, and Su-chang sighs that she’ll be shocked when she finds out. They go to the evidence locker, where Dong-tak retrieves Doo-shik’s alibi photo and the lighter found in Hang-joon’s jacket when he died.

Dong-tak remembers that Hang-joon found the lighter at the scene of the taxi driver Kim Jong-doo’s accident. Since Jong-doo was planning to get money from someone that day, Dong-tak guesses that he must have needed the lighter for that. He’s already had Doc analyze it and learned that there’s no blood or any evidence on it, so they wonder why it was important.

Watch the video

He’s MY wife!

 
Su-chang knows someone who might be helpful, someone he was thinking of scouting as his partner in the future. HAHA, it’s Sung-hyuk, and because of his specialty in phone cloning, Dong-tak asks him to give the lighter a thorough once-over. Dong-tak gets jealous and warns Sung-hyuk to stay loyal to him, and Su-chang mockingly calls him “Jealousy Incarnate.”

On their way out, Su-chang notices his hand fading out for a brief moment. Oh no. It doesn’t happen again, so he shrugs it off. Alone in the break room, Dong-tak tells Su-chang that Commissioner Noh named Superintendent Ma as Hang-joon’s killer.

Currently, Superintendent Ma is having tea with Chief Prosecutor Tak at his favorite tea house. Chief Prosecutor Tak seems weighted down by the fact that he’s arranged for a false investigation with false evidence for his own son’s case. He says he’s a weak prosecutor who couldn’t live up to his oath to reveal the corruption in the world.

He tells Superintendent Ma that he’s confiding his secrets because it’s a choice between making him a friend for life, or getting rid of him. He asks if Superintendent Ma wants to hear an even deeper secret, and Superintendent Ma starts to say that he wants to stop.

Chief Prosecutor Tak interrupts to add, in a harder tone of voice, that Dong-tak is close to discovering that Superintendent Ma used Doo-shik to manipulate the case. He warns Superintendent Ma to side with him and not to waver, and not to make his son a weapon again. He adds, “Cha Dong-tak… get rid of him for me.” Superintendent Ma says he’ll do what he can.

Chief Prosecutor Tak holds his empty cup out to his server and says wistfully, “If only this pretty child could hear. No, if only she could speak. Then she could have become the friend I need to comfort me.” He asks for more tea, and she fills his cup obediently.

Dong-tak jumps to attention when he gets a call from Superintendent Ma. Superintendent Ma tells him that he needs to stop, because the person he’s up against is scarier than he thinks, but Dong-tak refuses. He says that there’s another life at stake, someone he promised to help catch the killer, so Superintendent Ma offers to meet in person and tell him everything.

Dong-tak rushes out, telling Su-chang to stay with his body. He stops when Su-chang asks if Commissioner Noh lied (that it was Superintendent Ma who made Doo-shik take the fall), and he says that all he knows is that Superintendent Ma is involved somehow.

Su-chang calls after him that it might be a trap, making Dong-tak turn and ask if he’s worried, but again Su-chang blusters that he’s not. After Dong-tak leaves, Su-chang grumbles, “Of course I’m worried!” Awww.

On the way, Dong-tak gets a text from Superintendent Ma, changing their meeting location from a cafe parking lot to the cafe itself. But Superintendent Ma stays in his car in the parking lot until well past the meeting time, until Dong-tak tries to call him and he finally gets out of his car.

He’s instantly attacked by the Angel, who slams him around before choking him with the metal pipe in his hands. Just as Superintendent Ma loses consciousness, a brick slams into the Angel’s back — it’s Su-chang, who mustered up just enough strength for one blow.

The Angel looks around but sees nobody who could have hit him. Dong-tak exits the cafe and runs to Superintendent Ma, just as Detective Yoo also arrives and urges him to chase the Angel. Dong-tak and Su-chang both follow the Angel, but he slips down a dark alley and gets away.

Superintendent Ma turns himself in, and at the station, Detective Yoo explains to Dong-tak that he and Superintendent Ma planned a two-sided attack. Superintendent Ma makes sure that they read him his rights so that his testimony will be admissable in court, and it looks like the words are actually painful for Dong-tak to say.

After refusing a lawyer, Superintendent Ma confesses that he arranged first for Su-chang to be framed as Hang-joon’s killer, then Doo-shik. Dong-tak asks if Chief Prosecutor Tak is behind everything, but Superintendent Ma says that he did it all on his own. He says that last night was his plan to get out of it.

We see the evening play out in full as Superintendent Ma explains that he wanted to know who really killed Hang-joon, so when Dong-tak wanted to meet, he called Detective Yoo to ask for his help. He’d offered to meet him at the first location he set up with Dong-tak, the cafe parking lot, and confess everything.

When Detective Yoo had arrived, Superintendent Ma sent the message to Dong-tak to tell him to wait inside the cafe. The person who showed up was Jae-hee, who’d overheard Superintendent Ma’s conversation with his father and wanted to know more about what happened sixteen years ago. He’d vowed to stop whoever was threatening his father, and a few minutes after he left, Superintendent Ma was attacked by the Angel.

That just confirms Dong-tak’s suspicions that Jae-hee is the Angel. Superintendent Ma tells him that the forensics team scoured him for DNA, which they should compare to the one they’re all suspicious of. He wraps up by stating that Chief Prosecutor Tak has never given any orders to himself or Commissioner Noh that could leave evidence behind, and warns Dong-tak that Chief Prosecutor Tak is more dangerous than he thinks.

With a heavy sigh, Dong-tak says that he won’t handcuff Superintendent Ma in front of the reporters. But Superintendent Ma says that he should, so that he can set an example, though he apologizes for shifting the responsibility onto his family (the detectives).

 
EPISODE 28 RECAP

When Superintendent Ma is led out of the station, a reporter rips away the towel that’s covering his cuffs to get a picture. Something about Dong-tak’s expression has Ji-an hanging back, and later Dong-tak sees her reprimand the reporter who pulled off the towel.

With Superintendent Ma’s lies finally uncovered, Dong-tak tells the rest of the team that Hang-joon’s death, and everything else, all relate back to the accident from sixteen years ago. Detective Lee fusses at him for not telling them sooner, asking if there’s someone he trusts more than them.

Lounging on the table, Su-chang crows that it’s him, ha. Dong-tak vaguely admits that he’s working with someone, which sets off Sung-hyuk’s jealousy.

Detective Yoo reels them all in and says that they’ll work as a single team from now on, and that their goal is to bring in Chief Prosecutor Tak and Jae-hee. Dong-tak warns that they’ve been distracted by false witnesses before, so this time, they have to prepare their evidence perfectly.

They split up the work, with Detective Lee looking into the orphanage, Sung-hyuk working on the lighter, and Dong-tak looking for the Angel. Detective Yoo volunteers to lean on the forensics team to process the DNA from Superintendent Ma’s attack as quickly as possible.

They need a sample of Jae-hee’s DNA to compare it to, and since he knows all of them, they decide to enlist the Avengers to help. Before they split up, Dong-tak tells them about Ji-an’s father, and that he thinks he was framed the same way Hang-hoon was.

They’re out of people to investigate that, but Detective Lee says that he knows someone who’s pretty bored right about now. Please say it’s Detective Park! Yep, it’s Detective Park, who looks like nine miles of bad road as he answers the phone in his teddy bear pajamas.

Once they’re alone, Su-chang confesses Dong-tak that he went last night to get revenge on Superintendent Ma for Doo-shik’s death. But when he got there, the Angel was attacking, and he wanted the Angel more than he wanted Superintendent Ma. He thinks it’s strange that he couldn’t save Dong-tak when the Angel attacked him, but he was able to pick up a brick to save Superintendent Ma.

The Bakery Boys (I’ve missed them!) tail Jae-hee throughout the day, grabbing discarded water bottles and eating utensils in the hopes that they can get his DNA. They turn everything in to Detective Lee, who gives them a big thumbs-up.

Commissioner Noh tries to whine to Jae-hee about Superintendent Ma, but Jae-hee tells him sharply to worry about himself. Commissioner Noh denies being paid to introduce Detective Park and Min-seok, so Jae-hee so advises Commissioner Noh to take the easy route with all of the charges he’s facing. But Commissioner Noh says that the easy route would be to find out why Dong-tak is so interested in Chief Prosecutor Tak.

He asks if Jae-hee calls Chief Prosecutor Tak “father,” drawing the word out until it sounds frightening. He mocks that he’d be too scared to call him that, and at Jae-hee’s furious expression, he sneers that he’s not going down without a fight.

Su-chang latches onto Jae-hee, following him around and asking if he’s the Angel as if Jae-hee can hear him. He crows that they have Jae-hee’s DNA and that he’ll soon pay for what he did to his father, Hang-joon, and everyone else. He wants to know why Jae-hee tried to kill him, but of course he gets no answer.

With Su-chang listening, Jae-hee gets a call from his assistant. He reports that a thug is watching Su-chang’s hospital room, and that yesterday there was a big ruckus at the hospital right about the time Jae-hee was there.

Dong-tak goes back to the spot where he lost the Angel last night. He retraces their steps but sees no clues, and just as he’s about to give up, Ji-an calls. He teases her for smacking that reporter this morning, and she says that he looked hurt because of his superintendent.

She says that she’s been investigating Doo-shik, whose right-hand man called her today. He’d told her that Doo-shik began visiting a certain club just days before Hang-joon’s murder, and that strange things happened when he went there.

Dong-tak is surprised to hear that it’s the same club they were led to by the matchbox that the Angel dropped in the station back when this all started. He goes there and shows the hostess a photo of Jae-hee, and she starts to recognize him. She stops when the owner, a well-dressed woman in white, walks in.

Having never seen her before, Dong-tak doesn’t recognize her as Chief Prosecutor Tak’s deaf server. He says that he’s looking for a suspect, and when she doesn’t respond, the hostess tells him that she can’t hear or speak. The owner leaves, and the hostess confirms that Jae-hee was at the club just last night. He shows her Doo-shik’s picture, but she doesn’t recognize him.

That’s strange, since Ji-an’s informant said that Doo-shik was here a lot right before Dong-shik arrested him. Dong-shik realizes that if it’s true, then Doo-shik would have known Jae-hee, and he remembers Su-chang telling him that Doo-shik had sided with someone very powerful. He thinks that if he can just figure out how Doo-shik and Jae-hee were connected, it will all make sense.

Detective Lee calls him with the list of the orphanage’s sponsors from sixteen years ago, and Chief Prosecutor Tak is there as expected. Dong-tak realizes that Chief Prosecutor Tak must have visited the orphanage often after the accident, so Jae-hee must have met Doo-shik in that time period.

Sung-hyuk notices that there’s a special sponsorship that can extend past the child’s graduation, and it turns out that Chief Prosecutor Tak sponsored one particular child. They all assume that child was Doo-shik, and that in exchange, he was expected to take the fall for Hang-joon’s murder. Dong-tak is skeptical, since if Doo-shik had been sponsored, Su-chang would know.

Su-chang is still following Jae-hee, growing panicky when Jae-hee goes back to the hospital. He screams that Jae-hee is a murderer, but he goes unheard.

Yong-pal stands sentry at his hospital room door, stopping Bong-sook from going inside. Bong-sook asks if he’s a detective, and he says he’s something like that, but a better fighter. PFFT. She leaves him to watch over Su-chang’s body, since she has to go work at her new part-time job.

Su-chang smirks at Jae-hee, who’s glaring at Yong-pal from down the hall. He turns to find Yong-pal staring directly at him, and he wonders if Yong-pal can see him, but Yong-pal snaps out of his daze and walks right through him. Twice.

Watch the video

Can you see me?

Back in the security office, Mi-nam has fixed the CCTV cameras as promised, and nurse Da-jung demands to see the face of the person who left Su-chang’s room before his seizure. They watch as the person goes down to the parking garage, but they can’t see their face clearly.

They leave the office complaining, which Jae-hee hears as he lurks the hallways. He goes inside and uses his status as a prosecutor to get a look at the footage, and as he watches, his eyes widen.

Chief Prosecutor Tak meets with Ji-an again, and he tells her that he looked into the day her father died, but found nothing. He apologizes, and Ji-an remembers that her father said his detour wouldn’t take long, so she thinks he must have been meeting with someone he knew well.

Chief Prosecutor Tak sighs that there’s not much he can do now, but Ji-an replies that she promised Dong-tak she wouldn’t give up. She says that Dong-tak is working on a case that’s connected to her father’s, and that if he can solve it, they can still find out what happened.

She smiles shyly when Chief Prosecutor Tak asks if she and Dong-tak are close, admitting that they like each other. She asks if he’ll take her to the orphanage that he sponsors, since she received his sponsorship too and wants to pay it forward. He says he’s busy and promises to take her later.

She calls Jae-hee next, but he says he can’t see her now. Ji-an tells him that he’s lucky to have such a great dad, but her words only seem to upset him. He ends the call, gives a hard look to the USB drive he’s carrying, then calls someone to say that he’s sending them two files and wants them to check out the person on the video.

Awww, Bong-sook has a new job working with the Bakery Boys! That’s so awesome. She freezes up when Sung-hyuk brings a tray of pastries to the counter, and he barely even looks at her as she rings him up. He sneaks a longer peek while she’s not looking, but he leaves without saying a word to her.

Later she has trouble taking out the trash, but she doesn’t let herself get discouraged. She acknowledges that working at the bakery makes her feel good and heads back inside with a good attitude. Once she’s gone, Sung-hyuk comes out of hiding, saying to himself that she looks pretty today.

Ha, he was obviously only there to see Bong-sook, since he throws the bread at the first person he sees at the station. He asks his friend about that lighter, and the guy says in confusion that it’s not just a lighter.

Dong-tak is still trying to figure out who Chief Prosecutor Tak offered the special sponsorship if not Doo-shik. He takes a call from Detective Lee as he’s waiting for the DNA results, and then a call from Yong-pal, who’s still at the hospital.

Su-chang finds Yong-pal and listens in, delighted when he realizes that Dong-tak can hear him. They confuse Yong-pal by having a conversation he can only hear half of. Dong-tak asks Su-chang if Doo-shik was ever sponsored after they left the orphanage, and Su-chang says that Doo-shik was too stubborn and prideful to take a handout.

He wonders out loud if the person who keeps coming to see the wings mural will show up again, and decides to go to the orphanage to wait. Dong-tak says he’s going ask Jae-hee something about Doo-shik.

In Jae-hee’s office, Dong-tak reveals that he’s been following Jae-hee because he suspects him of being the Angel. He mentions Doo-shik’s angel wings tattoo, a replica of the tattoo the real angel has on his neck, which is a copy of the mural at the orphanage. He asks if Doo-shik received the special sponsorship from Chief Prosecutor Tak, and if that’s why he went to jail for Hang-joon’s murder instead of Jae-hee.

Su-chang watches the children play outside the orphanage, noticing one little girl who wanders off alone. He sees a boy watching her, and he smiles.

It jogs loose a memory of his own days at the orphanage, where there was another little girl who preferred to play by herself. One boy, young Doo-shik, noticed her leaning against the mural and said in an awed voice, “An angel. She looks like a real angel.”

With dawning horror, Su-chang remembers Doo-shik gasping just before he died, “Find the real angel.” As he’s putting the clues together, the Angel roars up on his motorcycle and parks right in front of the mural.

Jae-hee listens to Dong-tak’s accusations with narrowed eyes, but before he says anything, Detective Lee calls Dong-tak to tell him that the DNA isn’t a match. Jae-hee isn’t the Angel.

Jae-hee gets fax off the machine, the results of the hospital video analysis that he requested. Dong-tak rushes over and yanks down his collar, but there’s no angel wings tattoo on Jae-hee’s neck.

Jae-hee hands Dong-tak the fax of the Angel’s image, which has been digitally sharpened. Dong-tak’s hand shakes as he sees the face of the Angel for the first time — a woman’s face.

At the orphanage, Su-chang watches as the Angel pulls up and all the children excitedly flock to the motorcycle. The Angel pulls off their helmet to reveal Chief Prosecutor Tak’s deaf server. Su-chang growls, “I found you. The real Angel.”

 
COMMENTS

I knew it — I knew that my theory after yesterday’s episode was going to be wrong! This is going to sound lame after the fact, but all throughout this episode, I had this odd feeling that I’d been wrong again and that Chief Prosecutor Tak’s server would turn out to be the Angel. Of course it’s easy to say that now, but for some reason she kept entering my head and making me think twice about what I knew. But the big reveal was still a surprise, because I honestly never considered that the Angel might be a woman until this episode.

First of all, in the beginning scene when the Angel is standing next to Su-chang, the Angel is much shorter than Su-chang, while we saw later that Jae-hee is almost as tall as Su-chang. And something about the Angel’s body language in this episode kept making me think that they might be a woman. And if it’s a woman, then the perfect candidate is Chief Prosecutor Tak’s server, the deaf girl who’s always there during his little meetings. I’d briefly considered the possibility before, and I don’t know why I didn’t give it more serious consideration, since it makes complete sense. Not to mention, it was pretty clever storytelling to have had the Angel sitting right under our noses all this time.

And it makes total sense for her to be the Angel. She’s always there during Chief Prosecutor Tak’s meetings, so she’s in the perfect position to know who needs killing at any given moment. She may not be able to hear or talk, but she can probably read lips, so she knows everything Chief Prosecutor Tak talks about with his minions. If she feels loyal to him, then that would be enough motive for her to want to kill anyone who gets in his way, and it would explain how Chief Prosecutor Tak could be unaware of who’s killing people. Heck, she may even have a personal reason — this is pure conjecture, but we know that two children ended up in that orphanage because of the accident. What if she’s the daughter of the couple who died? She may even have been in the accident herself, and that’s why she can’t hear or speak.

But if that’s the situation, and Chief Prosecutor Tak sponsored her because he felt guilty that his son killed her family, then why didn’t he do the same for Su-chang, especially since he admits that he owes his father? And none of this solves the question of who killed Ji-an’s father, because the deaf woman was just a child when that happened. I like that we still have a lot of unanswered questions going into the final week of the show, and I’m anticipating it being a wild ride to the very end. Despite my complaints about pacing, one thing this show has done very well was to continually keep us guessing about the Angel’s real identity (though as it turns out, Doo-shik’s last words to “find the real Angel” were more clear than we knew). Until now, I’d suspected nearly everyone but Dong-tak and Su-chang of being the Angel, and I still don’t know for sure why she’s killing people.

I really want to know exactly what happened sixteen years ago, and exactly how all these threads tie together. There’s more than one possible answer, which makes it a pretty clever case to center our story around. I still wish the clues had been doled out differently, and many of them much sooner, because this week’s episodes have felt fairly crammed full of clues and twisty turns which I feel could have been spread out a bit better. But I have no complaints about the mystery itself, which has kept my attention just fine throughout the run of the show. I believe that if Two Cops hadn’t forgotten its purpose for a while there in the middle, it wouldn’t have lost a lot of its audience along the way. But it started very strong and looks to have an exciting climax in store for us next week, so all in all I’m satisfied.

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