Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 11

by girlfriday

It’s the beginning of the end, and we finally start to get some real answers about the Big Bad. This episode zooms by, mostly because it’s effectively creepy and everything culminates in a big suspenseful buildup of all the clues we’ve gathered thus far.

 
EPISODE 11: “Finale Part I”

A woman covered in blood stumbles through a crowded street, dazed and scared out of her mind. It’s Yoon Ji-hee, the missing Bread Lawyer that Tae-yeon has been searching for. The hooded vamp follows her through the crowd in that creepy slow serial killer way, like he purposely let her go to chase her a little longer.

He finally catches up to her and she screams, as he grabs her by the neck and bares his teeth.

Tae-yeon sits at home and thinks over what Dr. VampBar told him the other night – that he created the Big Bad, by thinking he could save someone’s life with vampire blood. Whoops. Thanks a lot, Dr. Frankenstein.

It turns out the good doc had another connection to the case, with the suspect that Tae-yeon was chasing that fateful night. Flashback shows that the suspect, Park Hoon, is also a vampire. He tells the doc about Tae-yeon, the prosecutor who’s got it out for him, while fiddling with the same lighter that Tae-yeon carries now.

He says that Tae-yeon has a personal stake in the case, as the murder victim was his sister, though not by blood. They grew up in the same orphanage. The doc muses, “There are things in this world thicker than blood.”

Tae-yeon asks what else he knows about Hooded Vamp, and the doc recounts that Park Hoon said he has a pattern: “Bad blood.” What it means, he doesn’t know. They wonder who the hell Park Hoon is, and the doc swears he knows nothing else; just that the lighter Tae-yeon carries was originally his.

A tear falls as Tae-yeon tamps down his fury. He gets up to go, and the doc stops him, trembling as he asks why he doesn’t hate him for what he’s done. Without turning back, Tae-yeon says, “Carry it. The knowledge that because of your selfish choice, countless people lost their lives. Carry that burden with you for the rest of your life.” The guilt has clearly already turned him into a shell of a man.

Back in the present, Soon-bum calls in a panic, saying that they’ve found Bread Lawyer. Tae-yeon rushes to work, where Jung-in is already questioning her. He busts into the room and tells her he’ll take over, and then promptly shuts off all the cameras.

Jung-in wonders what’s going on, but Soon-bum manages to distract her with the ridiculous explanation that Tae-yeon’s hungry so he’s acting weird, and she looks pretty today, so they should go have a drink. Ha.

Tae-yeon tries to question Bread Lawyer, but she’s so badly battered and in shock that she can’t even hear him at first. She finally recognizes him and he asks what happened that night.

She says that she went to call Tae-yeon, and then the hooded vamp appeared and attacked her. When she came to, she was tied up and blindfolded in a car, and then carried inside a warehouse.

She woke up to a room filled with dead bodies – those of her friends from the Murder Bread case, and others. She doesn’t remember anything after that, clearly having been shocked out of her senses.

She suddenly has a nervous breakdown in the interrogation room, and grabs the pen sitting on the table. She points it at her throat in a crazed state, and Tae-yeon has to wrestle the weapon out of her hand to keep her from hurting herself.

She crumples to the ground, wailing that she’s sorry, talking to the Bread Pastor. It seems like letting her survive after that trauma was the crueler thing.

Soon-bum asks if she didn’t imagine it all in her trauma, wondering if they’re supposed to wait until she comes to her senses. Tae-yeon knows they can’t wait for that, and adds that they’ll have to handle this case just the two of them.

But they walk in to find Jung-in and Dong-man getting started on the investigation as usual, so Tae-yeon gruffly orders them to take a week off. Dong-man starts counting the days gleefully, while Jung-in eyes her boss curiously. Dude, you’re just making her want to know your secret even more. Have you just met the girl?

She snaps at Dong-man, asking if getting days off makes him happy, and he stammers that no, working makes him happy, sigh. She suggests they get back to work then, not intending to let Tae-yeon off the hook that easily.

Among Ji-hee’s things, Tae-yeon discovers a keycard with her law firm’s insignia on it, and recognizes it immediately as the same one on his lighter. It’s not Wolfram and Hart, is it?

Jung-in storms into the office, whining that they always leave her out. Hee. Tae-yeon relents and tasks her with taking Bread Lawyer to the hospital and watching guard, and calling him the second she comes to her senses. She flips him off as soon as his back is turned. I love that she’s not so enamored of him that she doesn’t stop doing that.

Tae-yeon goes to Law Firm H, looking for the department listed on the keycard. But he’s turned away at the door, with the security guards insisting that the department he’s looking for was disbanded years ago. Then why is it still on your office directory, dude? Tae-yeon turns back without a fight, for now.

Jung-in fills in Chief Prosecutor Jang on the case, and he asks if all she’s doing is playing nurse, or better yet, watchdog. He purposely goads her, suggesting that he didn’t put two prosecutors on one team for nothing, and that Tae-yeon isn’t always in the right.

But she waits by Bread Lawyer’s bedside anyway, and Ji-hee says in another crazed stupor that there was someone else there, being held captive, and that this person will die if they don’t do something. But when Jung-in tries to find out more, she retreats back into her catatonic state.

Dong-man dozes off at his desk, when suddenly two hands appear and start massaging his shoulders, startling him. What startles him even more is whom those hands belong to, as he turns to find Jung-in smiling at him. He jumps up and crosses his hands over his chest. Ha.

He asks what’s going on, why she’s being so nice to him, deciding that he must be getting fired or something. But no, the out-of-character moment was her hilarious attempt to sweet-talk him into working with her on the case. He sighs in relief. I love how awkward she is at using charm.

She asks what he’s found so far, and he names a rare plant he found on Ji-hee’s clothes that narrows down the province where she was kept. He also found a recording on her cell phone that just seems like random noise, but Jung-in tells him to find out exactly what sounds are recorded, since she must’ve recorded the abduction. Back to her usual self, she threatens him to get it done by morning or he’s dead. So much for sweet-talking.

Tae-yeon waits till nightfall and then sneaks into Law Firm H, using the keycard to get him onto the mysterious seventh floor. The logo for the department is decidedly mystical – “Hell’s Gate,” among other things, are scrawled around a star. Dude, this totally IS Wolfram and Hart! Don’t step into any weird portals.

He digs around in the library, and finds old company photos of the bigwigs of Law Firm H. Among them, year after year, is Park Hoon, vampy suspect and connection to Hooded Vamp.

Meanwhile, Jung-in and Dong-man narrow down the kidnapper’s warehouse to three possible regions, and she vows to find it, because someone else might be held captive there.

Dong-man whines that they should report to Tae-yeon, but Jung-in snipes that Tae-yeon isn’t the only prosecutor around here, and insists they do it alone. Why does that sound like the beginnings of a really bad idea?

Based on the cell phone recording, they figure out the type of car Ji-hee was abducted in, and Jung-in goes for a drive in the regions they’ve isolated, while Dong-man compares her sounds to the ones on the recording, to find a match. They try to replicate the sounds, like a sonar roadmap, which is pretty cool.

Soon-bum tracks down eyewitnesses to the original accident – the one that Hooded Vamp was in, that put him in the hospital in the first place, when he was still human. He finds the guy who caused the accident, and picks him up on a motorcycle, pretending to save him from some cops.

He takes the guy to the river, and hilariously cuffs him to a life preserver. With his helmet still on (because it won’t come off, ha) he roughs up the guy by rolling him down a hill in the life preserver, and then yanking him back up by the string, over and over until he talks.

Motorcycle Guy remembers waking up in the hospital, and seeing the other accident survivor, nearly dead. Then suddenly he got up, miraculously healed somehow. Vamp had approached him and bared his teeth, but then doctors came in the room, and he walked away. Soon-bum asks if he saw his face, and the guy says yes, but he doesn’t remember it. What he does remember is the guy’s license plate, though.

At home, Tae-yeon looks through the file of cases from the super-secret department, and starts to see a pattern. He goes downstairs to his wall of victims, and starts piecing together victim to case file, one after the other, after the other.

He figures out, staring at the wall, what we’ve guessed for some time – that the hooded vamp goes after evildoers who slip through the cracks, the ones that skirt the law. Bad blood – as in evil blood.

Tae-yeon fills Soon-bum in on what he’s put together – that lawyer vamp Park Hoon figured this out about Hooded Vamp, and made a special department in his firm to deal with these types of cases. He then purposely got murderers off scot-free, as BAIT for Hooded Vamp, to see if he’d bite.

Soon-bum goes to see Candy Cop in the hospital (the cop who was stabbed in the mafia war), who’s pretty much paralyzed and can only blink-answer yes or no to Soon-bum’s questions. It turns out he was the officer at the scene of the car accident that Soon-bum is investigating.

Soon-bum asks about the accident, and if Candy Cop was the one to erase all traces of that file in police records, because he can’t find anything about the case now. Candy Cop says no, and Soon-bum asks if someone else was there at the scene of the crime. He tells him to blink in morse code, who he was with that night…

Tae-yeon goes to work to dig through the files that correspond to the cases that Law Firm H handled as defense attorneys…

Jung-in and Dong-man get close, as he guides her all the way to an abandoned building in the middle of the woods, and she stops. And then she heads inside all alone, like the crazy person that she is. No call for backup?

Soon-bum starts decoding Candy Cop’s blinks: “Prosecutor in charge…”

Tae-yeon examines all the records and finds that the same prosecutor was in charge of all the cases where Law Firm H served as the defense…

Inside the warehouse, Jung-in follows the giant streak of blood down the corridor. Please tell me that is not a flare gun in your hand. This is all you’re armed with? Are you freaking kidding me?!

Soon-bum gets to decoding the name… And at the same time, Tae-yeon drops his file in shock. Soon-bum: “Chief Prosecutor… Jang Chul-oh?” Dun dun!

Jung-in gets to the end of the blood trail… and comes upon the room where Ji-hee was being held. She finds it littered with dead bodies, and crumples to the ground in shock.

Tae-yeon goes to see Ji-hee out in front of the hospital, and shows her a photograph of Prosecutor Jang, demanding to know if this is the man who kidnapped her. But before she can answer, Hooded Vamp comes out of nowhere and snaps her guard’s neck.

He throws Tae-yeon back, and then he takes a moment to hold Ji-hee’s face, before snapping her neck too, and driving off. Tae-yeon runs over to check on Ji-hee, and two people see him with his hands on her neck.

Jung-in struggles with her shock and reaches for her phone, but then a figure passes behind her in the corridor. *Chills*

Tae-yeon chases Hooded Vamp down in his car, blue eyes flaring.

Jung-in follows the figure outside. She trips over a dead hand, and keeps running… TOWARD the creepy mystery serial killer? Really? You’re running towards the guy?

Now Tae-yeon and Jung-in are both chasing hooded figures on foot, and if this is occurring simultaneously, then are there two hooded vamps?

Tae-yeon’s foot chase stops at a dead end, where Hooded Vamp traps him and attacks. Tae-yeon puts up a fight, but he’s no match for the bigger, stronger vamp, and he goes down, shattering the wall behind him.

The lighter falls out of his pocket during the fight, and Hooded Vamp picks it up and throws it back at Tae-yeon on the ground, as if laughing at him.

Jung-in loses her guy in the woods. Tae-yeon calls to find out where she is, and she starts to tell him, but then she loses her signal and gets cut off. Ohgodohgodohgod. Don’t diiiiiiiieeeeee! Aaaaargh! Commercial!

Thankfully, her brush with near-death ends there, because after the commercial break, the whole compound is crawling with forensic examiners, as they unearth corpse after corpse, some ditches filled with bodies just piled on top of one another.

The reporters are already calling it a vampire mass-murder, since all the victims have bite marks in their necks. Jung-in reports to Chief Prosecutor Jang, who’s overseeing the case. Oh no. Dong-man comes out to report that they’ve found DNA evidence, most likely pointing to the killer.

But then Tae-yeon and Soon-bum come storming past the police tape, just now arriving on the scene. Tae-yeon doesn’t even break his stride as he knocks Prosecutor Jang to the ground with a punch to the face.

Interrogation room, where Prosecutor Jang breezes that it’s pretty ballsy of Tae-yeon to throw around such accusations without any proof. Tae-yeon says he doesn’t need proof, and loses his cool as he describes that first murder seven years ago – his sister.

He asks if he’s killed so many people that he doesn’t remember them all, and Prosecutor Jang just repeats how ridiculous it all sounds, that he supposedly killed all these people because he’s what – a vampire?

Tae-yeon points out that he’s fully healed. He punched him in the face, made him bleed… so where’s the scar? The bruise? Tae-yeon vows that he will confess before he leaves, and if he doesn’t, well then Tae-yeon will just kill him with his own hands.

Soon-bum interrupts with bad news – there’s been another vampire murder. Tae-yeon stands there frozen. Prosecutor Jang smiles, “So you’ve kept me in here for what, five hours? Looks like you just made me my alibi.” Damnit.

Tae-yeon trembles as he says that something’s not right here. An angry tear rolls down his cheek.

But it’s too late, and before he knows it, Prosecutor Jang has turned the tables on him, and suddenly Tae-yeon is being questioned for Ji-hee’s murder. Now it’s clear that he’s been set up to take the fall from the start.

There are eyewitnesses who saw him with Ji-hee at the time of the murder, and of course a search of his house reveals a wall filled with each of the victims, not unlike a creepy serial killer wall. Oh, this is bad. This is very bad. And it’s heartbreaking to see him get treated like a murderer in the interrogation room, to have the power dynamic flipped on his own turf.

He stays silent for days on end, and then finally, he agrees to a blood test. The lab technician takes out a needle… and then Tae-yeon snatches it out of his hand and holds it up to his jugular.

He orders the prosecutor to uncuff him, and he fights his way out of the room, ditching the cuffs on his way out the front door.

 
COMMENTS

I don’t think it was a huge surprise to anyone that Chief Prosecutor Jang ended up the main suspect, though of course there could still be further twists, since nothing’s been confirmed. It seems based on today’s timeline that Hooded Vamp has at least one accomplice for sure, who we have yet to uncover. The more interesting part for me wasn’t the killer reveal, but the trap set for Tae-yeon, to take the fall. He’s the perfect patsy – almost a carbon copy of Prosecutor Jang on paper. And the fact that he’s a real vampire, who’s been tracking Hooded Vamp’s every move, means that he could potentially take the fall for every single one of his crimes.

I love the setup for the finale – the frame-up, the escape – it’s the perfect way to set Tae-yeon off on a Jack-Bauer-esque mission to clear his name while solving the case on his own, all while running from the law. You could basically have him on the run for an entire new season, if anyone were so inclined. Now THAT would be fun.

Either way, I enjoy that the finale will be about Tae-yeon escaping with his life and clearing his good name, as much as it’ll be about catching the killer. I’m much more invested in Tae-yeon’s survival, and with our hero on the ropes, it keeps tensions high till the very end.

RELATED POSTS

• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 10
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 9
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 8
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 7
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 6
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 5
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 4
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 3
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 2
• Vampire Prosecutor: Episode 1