Mrs. Cop: Episode 11

by LollyPip

I’d love to say we get some story progression in this episode. We don’t — I’d just love to be able to say it. We do get a teensy bit more information about President Kang and his plans, and Young-jin’s family life. Unfortunately, it’s not much considering the show had an hour to deliver plot and progression and character growth. Honestly, not much happens in this episode, so hopefully they’re saving all the good stuff for the second half of the week?

EPISODE 11 RECAP

President Kang waxes poetic over his gold ingots like an insane person, ordering Secretary Yoon to set the deal in motion. He meets with his Chinese investor who seems even crazier than he is, and promises him “the product” (gold) within a month. The investor expresses concern, and wants to see the gold himself.

Kang takes offense at being checked up on and calls the investor’s bluff, offering to guarantee him his principle back in exchange for forfeiture of any profit, or even to let him out of the deal. Luckily his bluff works, and the two shake hands on the deal. Whatever it is.

Jin-woo notices that Do-young is a lot quieter this time while they stake out a car lot, but she says she’s just bored and tired. This time he wants to ask her questions, and of course his first question is, “You don’t like me much, do you?” He knows Do-young is lying when she says it’s not true, but she says that not liking him doesn’t mean she hates him.

She decides it’s better when she asks the questions, and asks what kinds of girls he likes. Kim Tae-hee, of course — but when asked about style, he still just says he likes pretty girls. Do-young sighs at his lack of ambition or plans, and he reminds her he also has no money, HA.

They follow an SUV all the way to a private hangar and observe as the license plates are switched. They report back to the team that most of the cars are being sold to China, and go over how the process happens. First the cars are stolen, then papers are forged, then a third team exports them. The export company is just a front, with the true person behind it all is a fella called Jangan-pyung Park.

The problem with this Park person is that nobody knows his real name, or seen his face. Young-jin says they have to find him to put a stop to this for good, otherwise they’re just “pruning the branches.” They need to go after the roots.

Next Young-jin asks Jae-duk for any information he found on President Kang who, it turns out, never even finished elementary school. He grew up a gangster and has his finger in a lot of different pies, and is now branching out into moneylending.

Young-jin approaches Chief Yeom to discuss Boss Park’s kidnapping of President Kang, saying there’s something “off” about it. Since he didn’t kill Kang right away, it doesn’t seem to be a simple revenge killing — she thinks Boss Park wanted something from Kang.

She asks about his arrest twenty years ago, and Yeom admits that he actually turned himself in. Since he admitted to the crime and his blood and the weapon were both at the crime scene, it wasn’t investigated too closely.

Young-jin says that Boss Park never has apologized to her, but he did say that someday he would beg forgiveness. Then at her father’s gravesite he said he felt he should visit “one last time.” Then the day of the kidnapping, he texted that the day had come to ask her forgiveness, and before he passed out he said he was sorry to her.

She wonders what he was saying sorry for, and Chief Yeom does agree it all sounds strange. But Boss Park is still alive, so Yeom thinks they should investigate further when he wakes up. After she leaves his office, Chief Yeom makes a call and orders Boss Park’s condition reported to him first if anything changes.

Do-young and Jin-woo spend another night staking out the car lot, and are getting along much better by morning. Well, Do-young is… Jin-woo is still a bit cranky. But they seem to have found a way to bicker and still get along, which is pretty cute.

Jong-ho tells Young-jin about a job opening he knows of and wants her to relay the application to Nam-jin, but Young-jin isn’t happy about it. He swears he didn’t call in a favor or anything, he just thinks Nam-jin would be good at the job. She’s failed the public service exam seven times – it’s time to be realistic.

Young-jin comments on how handsome Jong-ho looks when he’s being like this, and asks why he’s not married yet. Is there something wrong “down there?” HAHA. He offers her the chance to check for herself if she’s that curious.

By nightfall Do-young is going nuts stuck in the car, and Jin-woo is just so done. He finally just walks up to one of the cars in the lot and starts honking the horn, which gets all the thugs running. He identifies himself as a cop, and says this is his girlfriend’s car.

He makes himself comfortable in their little office while they all stand around looking nervous. Their leader makes a call to a one-eyed man who says to pay off the cop, and we see that he’s sitting right next to Secretary Yoon. Why am I not surprised? Yoon refers to him as Park Man-shik, warning him to deliver the cars within the week and threatening him if he talks.

Jin-woo uses the head thug’s phone to call Do-young and tell her to go on without him. It turns out he only called her to capture the thug’s phone number, and they head back to the office. They trace the call history and pinpoint Jangan-pyung Park’s phone number. Then HAHA, Jin-woo gives her the bribe money, since she was so disappointed he didn’t have any.

Jae-duk goes to one of his burner-phone contacts to have him locate the owner of the phone Jangan-pyung Park uses – he and Se-won hilariously camp out in the guy’s office until he complies. They find the phone’s owner homeless and sleeping in a park, clearly having had his identity stolen.

But all they need is the owner’s permission to check the texts, and since he’s the official owner of the phone, they get the permission. Do-young is to watch new texts for any communication about meeting up to transfer the cars.

One car is taken apart to hide President Kang’s gold ingots, which is how they plan to get the gold to the Chinese investor. Secretary Yoon arranges for the exchange to happen the next day.

Chief Yeom is told by Boss Park’s doctor that it’s unlikely he’ll ever wake up. He reports this to President Kang, who seems to expect him to do something about it, and at least Yeom is horrified at the idea. The problem is, Boss Park knows Yeom is in Kang’s pocket, and as soon as he got out of prison he went after Kang. If he wakes up, he could target Yeom as well.

President Kang asks if Choi Young-jin is the daughter of the Officer Choi that he killed back then, and Chief Yeom looks alarmed that he put it together. Kang simply repeats his order to take care of Boss Park: “”Remove his oxygen mask.”.

Jae-soo brings Young-jin a change of clothes and takes the opportunity to fuss at her for not appreciating Nam-jin. Ha-eun has been particularly difficult lately, and Nam-jin has no life of her own because she’s so busy taking care of someone else’s child. Young-jin blows up at being lectured to, but she knows the criticism is on point.

She gets home after Ha-eun is in bed and tucks her in, then climbs inwith her sleeping daughter for a cuddle. She goes to talk to Nam-jin and gives her the job information from Jong-ho. Nam-jin’s pride is hurt, but she shows her sister that she’s already been searching for a job, having given up on ever passing the exam.

But she’s already too old to start a new career with no experience or skills. She feels as though taking the job information from Young-jin would only emphasize that she’s a loser who can’t get a job without her sister’s help.

Secretary Yoon meets with the thugs at the car lot, the same ones that paid off Jin-woo, and warns them about the rumor’s he’s been hearing. Meanwhile Do-young calls Young-jin with the information that the exchange will be happening the following day.

Jong-ho holds a meeting to plan the arrest, warning everyone to wear their bullet-proof vests since the Chinese investor’s men may be carrying guns. The teams move into place, ready to make the arrests as soon as the deal starts to go down.

The money and fake ownership papers for the cars are exchanged, with Do-young right there in the room disguised as a server. The two teams are mobilized — Young-jin’s to arrest the men exchanging the money and papers, and Jong-ho’s to arrest the people delivering the cars.

Young-jin’s team gets their men without much incident, identifying which man is Jangan-pyung Park, and she calls Jong-ho to find out that things are going pretty smoothly on his end as well. One of the men tries to make off with the car that’s hiding all the gold, but Jong-ho sees him in time to stop him.

President Kang is beyond furious to hear that his careful plans were foiled and takes out his anger on Secretary Yoon. He demands Yoon find the car with the gold and bring it to him, no matter what it takes.

The cars are all returned to their owners, and Se-won even gets a promotion. Young-jin and her team get a night out to celebrate — they really look like a real team now.

One man whose car was stolen and returned takes it to Dal-hwan’s garage to be fixed, since the door feel stiff. He’s shocked when he takes the panel off the door and a gold ingot falls out — he finds a lot more where that came from, and he goes for a little drive, singing happily of his newfound fortune.

He stops at the train station to use the restroom, but while he’s in there, Secretary Yoon’s men take the car and all the gold. Dal-hwan freaks out, but when the cops ask him the license plate number of his car, he stammers that it must be his friends playing a joke.

At least he goes to Young-jin to tell her what happened, though they don’t believe him about the gold until he shows them the one ingot that he pocketed. They quickly calculate that there must have been almost thirteen billion won’s worth of gold stashed in that car.

Young-jin puts out a warrant for all the other cars, assuming that the car smuggling was actually a front for gold smuggling. He confronts Jangan-pyung Park about the gold but he knows nothing of it, and she has to admit it doesn’t add up.

Apparently Jong-ho is acquainted with Madam Park, who supplied the gold in the first place, and he meets with her at an art gallery. He asks if she knows anyone who’s been collecting gold, and he can tell she was involved by her reaction.

Do-young finds the car that was smuggling the gold on CCTV leaving the area, and rushes to tell Young-jin.

COMMENTS

Well, I think the show has officially lost me, at least in terms of the villain and his secret plot of whatever-it-is, I have no idea. After eleven episodes, if you’re still talking around the specifics of your big nefarious plot and refusing to tell your audience exactly why we should find this man and his plans frightening — well, it ain’t frightening anymore. I feel like the show wants me to tremble when I see Kang making his little schemes and deals with all these different shady people, but at this point, all I feel when President Kang starts talking about his plans without actually talking about them is, “So what?” So he’s a little creepy and definitely off-balance, but he’s not scary. His secretary is much scarier, because at least we’ve seen him do some pretty awful things.

There’s a very delicate balance to making your villain terrifying while still withholding information about him — done right, it can be horrifying to know just enough, that you don’t want to know any more about this psychopath. But done wrong it just looks like you don’t really have anything scary enough thought up and are counting on “This guy is reeeeally bad, just trust us, look at his scary laugh!” to keep us worried. But that only flies for a couple of episodes at best — you have to give the audience something or it just becomes annoying. And by now, the show has been withholding information too long and the window of opportunity to make him truly evil has closed.

This was definitely my least favorite episode so far, because the one thing the show does have going for it is the wonderful characters that make up Young-jin’s team of detectives. I do enjoy their interactions and their closeness, especially Do-young and Jin-woo. But I find their personal stories much more interesting than watching them solve crimes (though at least interesting murder cases were better than stolen cars) and this episode had none of that. So it was pretty much devoid of everything that makes this a still-watchable show, for those of us still watching.

So I hope things pick up soon, and we get back to people-centric cases and learning about Young-jin and her family and her team. The things that make this show redeemable are dwindling, and I’m hoping that it’s just temporary.

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