Mrs. Cop: Episode 15

by LollyPip

It’s time to focus on our big bad President Kang, and Young-jin and her team are lucky enough to find themselves getting help from an unexpected direction. A new mysterious clue is so devious that it almost goes unnoticed, until a missing piece from a previous case provides the connection that could give Young-jin the information she needs to take President Kang down for good.

EPISODE 15 RECAP

Just as Young-jin tells her team to prepare to go after KL Union leader Kwon Sung-chul, she’s stopped by Lieutenant Seo from Internal Affairs. He has a warrant for her arrest on suspicion for taking bribes, which the entire team argues is a trumped-up accusation.

They insist on taking Young-jin up to Internal Affairs right now, even when she protests that she’s heading out to make an arrest. They have a signed statement from Mabbaki stating that he was arrested without being charged and that he bribed her in order to be set free. Chief Yeom barged in while Young-jin is being questioned and asks if she’s taken money, she says of course not, and he tells her to go back to work.

He yells at Lieutanant Seo for believing gangsters over his own coworker, and orders them not to mess with the Violent Crimes team without his permission. In his office Yeom tells Young-jin that he’ll handle the bribery issue, but he tells her that this is a result of her KL Group investigation.

He warns her to keep her personal feelings out of her investigations, and to leave President Kang alone. Young-jin argues that she’s investigating current events, not her father’s death. She admits having personal issues with President Kang, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal.

Young-jin and her team finally get to go looking for the KL Union leader, who isn’t in the union office. The men there bristle when asked where their leader is, and Do-young takes charge impressively, telling them that she gave their friend Sung-min a beating and offering another to anyone who wants to object.

When the workers get angry and pull their weapons, they find several guns pointed at their faces and Jin-woo sitting on their de facto spokesperson, who finally tells them he doesn’t know where Sung-chul is. Young-jin asks him who would know, then.

President Kang congratulates Chief Yeom on his fake-bribery scheme — this way Young-jin got a scare, but Yeom got to be the hero who rescued her. But he also leaked it to the press, and is counting on public pressure to force Young-jin to quit her job.

Since these are obviously trumped-up charges, Yeom anticipates disciplinary action, and requests compensation to make this worth the ding to his professional record. He asks Kang to leave Young-jin alone once she’s stepped down, but Kang isn’t making any promises.

We do find out though, that their agreement is that if she doesn’t quit her job, President Kang plans to tell her about Yeom’s involvement in covering up for her father’s true killer. Yeom isn’t happy about Kang’s refusal to leave Young-jin alone if she quits, and makes a vague, weak threat of his own.

The KL construction workers stage a protest against the gang members posing as Union leaders, locking themselves into the half-finished building and refusing to leave until they’re paid the wages theyr’e due. Secretary Yoon orders his men to get them down however necessary, so long as whatever they do also serves to make sure that the men can’t rise up in protest again.

As expected, when the news articles come out about Young-jin’s supposed bribe acceptance and that she wasn’t disciplined, the superintendent wants an explanation. Yeom explains that he stopped the investigation, since he knows she never accepted a bribe. Also as expected, Yeom is in big trouble for overstepping his authority.

When they’re alone, Young-jin apologizes for getting Chief Yeom in trouble, asking if he plans to resign. If he does, she couldn’t stand the guilt, and would feel obligated to resign as well. Chief Yeom agrees that someone has to take responsibility and quit, and its silly for both of them to resign — so Young-jin offers to quit, since she would either way.

Young-jin’s team are frustrated on her behalf, but there’s not much they can do about the situation. All they can do is keep working, so they head over to Mabbaki’s club to talk to him again. He’s not there, but they find him later at the driving range. After a minor scuffle, Jin-woo and Do-young check Mabbaki’s phone and find calls to Secretary Yoon, who he initially claims not to know.

Ha-eun and Nam-jin are working on a puzzle when Young-jin gets home that evening. Ha-eun is very upset about the final puzzle piece being missing and refuses to go to bed until it’s found, surprising Young-jin with her obsession. Nam-jin chides Young-jin for not knowing her daughter very well — she’s extremely meticulous about her things, needing her books shelved in the order she read them and her clothes just so or she can’t focus.

Young-jin checks the box the puzzle came in and sees that it was mailed to her, and suddenly the innocent puzzle doesn’t seem so innocent. It’s a picture of a woman and the missing piece is of her mouth, which now looks like an ominous message, though Young-jin doesn’t appear to notice anything strange yet.

Later Nam-jin asks Young-jin if she can go back to working at the sub-station where she worked the last time she quit the Violent Crimes Division. She’s not saying she believes the rumors about her sister, and she knows Young-jin is innocent. Young-jin doesn’t want to quit but she wants even less to ignore a problem just to get along.

Lieutenant Seo of Internal Affairs is upset over Chief Yeom’s interference in his department, and he and Jong-ho go out for drinks. Seo gets thoroughly drunk and complains — why would Yeom tell him to investigate someone, then humiliate him and override him? And then he doesn’t even try to stifle the reporters blabbing the story?

Jong-ho has drunk enough himself that he doesn’t put the clues together, and he’s distracted by a call from Madam Park, the woman who procured the gold bars for President Kang. She’s upset because an artist that was supposed to die pulled through, and now his art isn’t worth as much as she anticipated and she lost a potential buyer.

Jong-ho rolls his eyes that people would be glad someone didn’t die, but he perks up when she mentions that the potential buyer is Mabbaki, and he’s threatening to kill her. He says he can control the guy, but he’ll need something from her in return — information on President Kang.

She tells him that President Kang and Chief Yeom are old friends that go way back, and suddenly Jong-ho’s flirtatious demeanor slips. He says he’s not on good terms with Yeom and tries to recover, but he looks shaken to the core.

Now that he’s sobering up, Lieutenant Seo’s comments about Chief Yeom start to make more sense and Jong-ho realizes something is terribly wrong. He remembers previous comments from Madam Seo about President Kang being friends with Congressman Kim and even Prosecutor Go, and he goes pale.

As a test, he mentions re-opening the gold bar smuggling case and watches Chief Yeom’s reaction closely. Of course Yeom objects, especially now with Young-jin getting ready to quit, but Jong-ho says that he’ll make sure she and Chief Yeom both get to keep their jobs.

He pulls Young-jin into an evidence room and tells her to do as he says from now on. He tells her to stay calm for what he’s going to tell her, and what he shares seems to rock her as badly as it did him. He speaks to the superintendent as well, telling him that there’s a leak in the department and he knows who it is, and that he’s willing to risk his job to expose them.

Jong-ho joins Young-jin’s team (and steals Do-young’s lunch, so Jin-woo slides her his bowl, aww) and tells them to listen closely and keep quiet. He wants them to get all the information on President Kang together, because they’re reopening the investigation. He tells them Young-jin isn’t leaving for now, and reminds them not to tell anyone, even their coworkers, what they’re working on.

The superintendent holds a press conference to apologize publicly for the bribery scandal. He announces that Chief Yeom will take a month’s suspension, and that Young-jin will have to work for three months with no pay.

When Yeom reports this to President Kang, Kang laughs that he wasn’t tough enough with his scheming. Chief Yeom seems dejected and is ready to drop this whole thing, but Kang reminds him of his dream to become superintendent.

Chief Yeom says that he’s tired and no longer has a deisre to climb the ranks, or live a difficult life. Kang points out that his life won’t be difficult if he climbs high enough, promising to ensure Chief Yeom becomes superintendent.

Young-jin is congratulated on getting to keep her job, and she reminds the team to keep quiet about their investigations into President Kang. She assigns Jin-woo to handle the Western District gang, and Jae-duk to locate Kwon Sung-chul as soon as possible.

Preident Kang meets with Congressman Kim to discuss the Mi Rae City plans, which aren’t moving quickly enough for him and risking their profit. Kang wants the business development director replaced, and the congressman says that he’s just meticulous, but at least he doesn’t make mistakes.

Kang offers to let Lawyer Kim explain the situation in detail, privately, which sounds like he’s promising a lot more than just talk based on the way Congressman Kim is leering at her. She certainly doesn’t look happy, even when the congressman offers her a job working with him.

Later she complains that President Kang went too far, but he just says she’s not greedy enough. If she can win over Congressman Kim, she’ll gain a lot from the connection.

Young-jin asks for a report on the Western District gang’s organization structure, but Do-young says that it’s larger than they thought and they’ll need more time. Meanwhile Jae-duk has been monitoring everywhere Kwon Sung-chul might be, but there’s been no sign of him. She figures he’s hiding out, and Do-young offers to go to his hometown and check things out there.

Jin-woo is irritated and gripes at her on the drive down, but there’s no heat in his voice. When they get to the little village and Kwon’s father isn’t home, the first village ajumma they see tells them that he’s out on his boat with his son. They should be back in the morning, so it looks like Do-young and Jin-woo will be spending the night.

They find another ajumma who rents them a room, mistaking them for newlyweds on their honeymoon, and HAHA, Jin-woo totally goes along with it. The room is clean but tiny, and Jin-woo just now seems to realize they’ll be sleeping in pretty close proximity. He offers to sleep in the car, but Do-young points out that that could get them outed as cops.

She asks Jin-woo if she makes him uncomfortable, but he claims it’s just not acceptable to sleep in the same room with a woman, partner or no. She teases that he sounds like he’d jump her, and tells him to stop whining and just sleep here.

It’s Do-young’s turn to get shy when Jin-woo tells her to go wash up — she’s been wearing the same clothes for three days and he can smell her from across the room. HAHAHAew. She stomps out of the room in a snit, and Jin-woo smiles affectionately.

Later Jin-woo asks if Do-young is sleeping and she pretends she is, though he says he knows she isn’t because she’s not snoring. He says he was just wondering if she wasn’t sleeping because he makes her uncomfortable, which is really sweet. She says that’s not the case and points out that he’s not sleeping either, and they both agree that they’re just not sleepy. Riiiight.

Kang is on the phone, ordering the death of… someone, and insisting that it must look like an accident. He makes a second call and tells whoever it is that they’re going to be raiding “the site” tonight, and to tell someone else not to worry.

That night a masked man climbs the wall into the construction site where the protesters are still striking, all asleep at this hour. He takes down the one man left awake to guard the place, and starts to pour (what’s probably) gasoline around the perimiter of the sleeping men, and right near their stash of Malotov cocktails they’ve been using to keep everyone out.

He sets it alight with a stick from their barrel fire, and the flames quickly surround the men and wake them. It rages out of control, and the men are unable to call for help. One of the men who had previously been speaking to Secretary Yoon about the strike sees the flames from below and starts to call the fire department, but Yoon shows up and stops him.

The men still in trapped in the building try their best to put out the fire or escape, but the flames make it to their flammable materials and there’s a large explosion. The news reports the next day reflect four men dead and another fifteen in serious condition. President Kang goes on television to play the remorseful boss, but Young-jin sees the news and knows something is up.

Do-young and Jin-woo are there when Kwon Sung-chul returns to the dock on his father’s boat, and Do-young ignores Jin-woo’s warnings and charges right over to arrest him. He picks up a fishing knife and tries to get away, so Jin-woo takes over. I have to laugh at how Jin-woo calmly tells Do-young to shoot the guy if he stabs him.

He dodges Sung-chul’s knife feints impressively, then sweeps his foot out from under him and kicks the knife out of his hand. He flips the guy and hollers to Do-young, who was so enthralled watching him fight that she hesitated, to cuff him. While she cuffs Sung-chul, Jin-woo fusses at her for showing fear in front of a criminal, but I think he was more scared of her getting hurt than anything else.

At the station Young-jin shows Sung-chul the organizational chart they put together of his gang. She shows him photos of the men who attacked Do-young and tells him that they all named his as ordering the attack, and that he’s being arrested for attempted murder.

She asks why he would want to have her murdered when they’ve never even met. Sung-chul refuses to speak without a lawyer no matter how hard she tries to goad him, but they have enough evidence to arrest him even if he won’t tell them why he did it. Young-jin talks to the team about catching the rest of the gang — they have to catch them all at once or they’ll never get them all.

Nam-jin surprises her sister by showing up at her office, still worried about the strange puzzle that was shipped to them missing a piece. She had contacted the company that shipped it but they can only tell her the name of the person who ordered it sent — Seo Seung-woo. The serial killer.

The entire team takes this very seriously, and confirm with the shipping company that it did in fact come from Seung-woo, and that he did order the one piece removed from the puzzle before shipping. They wonder what message he could be sending to Young-jin with the missing piece, and Young-jin remembers Seung-woo smirking that he’ll see her again before he dies.

She jumps up in horror, suddenly remembering the tablet he’d left counting down the girl’s time in the storage freezer, which had ended with a picture of President Kang with his mouth crossed out. She realizes now that this was the answer to the question of what was on President Kang’s car’s black box.

He must have hit Seung-woo with his car that night, and they must have seen each other’s faces. Seung-woo had been saying, with that picture, that Kang would never tell that he saw him. But how did he know President Kang would never talk? The only way he could have been sure was if he knew something about President Kang in return.

Young-jin goes to see Seung-woo in prison, and he wordlessly slides her the missing puzzle piece. He smiles that he knew he would see her again, but asks why she’s so late. She asks how he knows President Kang, but he says that hers aren’t the eyes of someone who wants to catch Kang… so why does she want to kill him?

He offers to tell her something if she tells him why she wants to kill Kang, and he nods eagerly when she asks if President Kang saw him that night. She asks how he knew Kang wouldn’t talk about it, and Seung-woo just sits back and grins.

COMMENTS

We’re getting back into the meat of the story now, which has always been about Young-jin and President Kang and all the secrets about their shared past. I’m actually appreciating how the information is being doled out to the viewers, now that all the fluff and filler of side cases seems to be over — we’re getting the information just fast enough to keep us on the edge of our seats waiting to hear more, without giving away so much that I feel like there’s nothing more to learn. We still don’t know why Seung-woo was so confident in Kang’s silence despite never actually speaking to him (though I have my suspicions) or how that ties in with the current corrupt system. We also don’t know why President Kang killed Young-jin’s father, or why he held enough power to convince a man to sell him his future and go to prison for him — in other words, how could he promise to keep Boss Park’s daughter alive? And did he have a reason for ignoring that promise and letting her die, or was it just in his nature to let someone die now that he had no more use for them?

I’m back in an upswing with my enjoyment of this show, as I’m finding Young-jin’s plans to take down President Kang much more interesting than watching them investigate car thieves. And I’m impressed how clues are starting to come together, such as the serial killer’s photo of President Kang tying into his current threat towards her. It shows that the writers have had a direction all this time and have been laying the foundation of the final confrontation down all along, even though they took some odd detours along the way. I still think the pacing is good and the characters are wonderful, it makes me wish that the storytelling had been more consistent throughout the run of the show. I’ve definitely had mixed feelings about Mrs. Cop, and I haven’t been stingy about voicing them, but I feel that things are on a quick and interesting track as we head into the final few episodes. Hopefully things will stay this way and end on a high note.

Speaking of great characters, can I just take my own detour to say how much I adore Jin-woo and Do-young together? I love how they have started out as partners and friends, growing in respect for each other’s skills and resilience before they ever noticed their growing attraction for each other. Of course it would take a forced night together in a tiny room to make them realize it, because apparently nobody in Dramaland ever knows they like someone until after it’s glaringly obvious to everyone else in the universe, but still — how cute were they?? I loved how they both were too embarrassed to admit they couldn’t sleep from being so close to each other, and I’m dying to know who will be the first to admit it. My money is on Jin-woo.

I’m a bit disappointed that President Kang is proving to be all bark and no bite when it comes to Young-jin — he vowed a long time ago to get even with Young-jin and her family, back when she put his son Jae-won in jail for killing that young girl. Now he has even more reason since her investigation caused his son’s death, and I was all ready for him to rain fire and brimstone on her. But instead, he just keeps making vague, indirect threats and using patsies to vaguely annoy her. Is that it? He’s so good at seeming scary, and he’s not afraid to order people’s deaths or even kill with his bare hands, when necessary… so why does he always wait for Young-jin to come to him, then respond by just sneering and gloating and then doing nothing (okay, he did send gang members to rough her up, but he didn’t even give them enough information to make sure they followed the right person)? Come on dude, you’re supposed to be a Big Bad Man, is it too much to ask that you actually DO something so that the audience has a reason to be afraid for our protagonist?

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