Mrs. Cop: Episode 9

by LollyPip

It’s about time we finally got some solid leads up in here, and some more fantastic examples of teamwork as Young-jin and her team become even closer. A bit of light is shone on Boss and President Kang’s relationship, and if we’re still not exactly sure what happened in the past, at least now we know that something did happen and what Boss intends to do about it. Now if only we could figure out what these two situations have to do with each other, we’d have quite the show on our hands.

EPISODE 9 RECAP

Young-jin storms into President Kang’s office, missing the fact that Boss is down in the lobby on his first day working in janitorial services. She offers to let him off the hook if he’ll just hand over his car’s black box USB so she can identify the serial killer, but Kang only laughs at her desperation.

He is willing to negotiate, asking if she’ll let his son out of prison, and she grabs his lapels in frustration. She snarls in his face that if it turns out he withheld evidence, she’ll make him pay. On her way out, Kang promises in turn to make Young-jin pay for her rudeness.

Though Se-young was found in time, she’s still in a coma and it’s uncertain if she’ll recover. Chief Yeom berates Young-jin and Jong-ho for letting the murderer get away and letting their emotions rule their decision-making in the heat of the moment. The worst part is, he’s not wrong, and they can only hang their heads.

The entire crime scene is gone over with a fine-toothed comb, including the spot where Do-young was nearly run over. With pieces from a broken headlight and Do-young and Jin-woo’s memory of the plates, they end up with a list of people who own that car and have the last two license plate numbers of -71.

Seung-woo (whose name I previously got wrong, mea culpa) is injured and has to patch up his arm himself, but he’s already planning this next murder based on the video game sketchbook Jin-woo saw in his office. This picture looks pretty frightening, with a girl trapped in a tree-like cage and a fire-breathing monster threatening her. Seung-woo looks up news about Se-young, and laughs evilly to see that she’s still in a coma and the police have no leads.

The car that nearly hit Do-young is found abandoned, and is registered to a bankrupt corporation so there’s no listed owner. Young-jin orders it taken apart to look for more clues, but it’s been cleaned with a solution that removes things like blood and fingerprints, leaving nothing behind.

Jong-ho complains that the killer is too good — not one scrap of evidence left behind, and his face never showed up on any CCTV cameras. Young-jin is convinced that President Kang knows his face and has it on his car’s black box, but Jong-ho warns that if she makes trouble with Kang, he can’t help her.

President Kang and Secretary Yoon discuss President Kim’s replacement as head of the drug ring, now that Kang’s had him killed, and Yoon asks for a little more time to find someone. Young-jin comes to talk to President Kang again, more contrite this time, to appeal to his emotions as a father.

She practically begs for his help to prevent another person’s child from dying, but Kang says that at this point, if he admitted to having seen the killer, it would make him into a liar since he already said he knows nothing. He prefers that they only think he’s withholding evidence than know it for sure, which is the most circuitous logic ever.

Young-jin tearfully swears to keep whatever secrets he has if he’ll only give them the USB card, and Kang obviously enjoys having her beg. He basically says that she’s playing this all wrong and it’s no fun — because he would see a young girl’s possible death in terms of how much it entertains him. Ugh.

Young-jin gets on her knees and apologizes for being rude before, tears falling freely now, and President Kang actually laughs in her face. He pulls her to her feet and says she’s a good cop, and that he admires her willingness to put aside her own pride for her case. But he says again, he has nothing for her.

Young-jin backs down for now and goes down to the waterfront where the first victim was found drowned. She runs through all three death scenarios in her head — the drowning, the poison gas, and the attempted freezing — hoping to make a connection between the cases.

The team discuss how there seems to be nothing tying the murders together — ordinarily serial killers use the same technique with each victim, but the girls were drowned, suffocated, and (intended to be) frozen to death. Young-jin argues that they are exactly alike in the sense that the killer didn’t directly murder them himself.

Further, each death involved a period of time before the girl died, and Young-jin wonders if he contacted someone before each death as he did with her. They check the two dead victims’ parents’ phone records, and it’s confirmed that they received calls a set time before their daughters died.

It’s Do-young who catches on that the killer isn’t taking responsibility for the deaths — he can justify that he didn’t actually kill them, their parents did. Jae-duk wonders why the police were contacted with the third girl and not her parents, and again Do-young figures out that the first two murders were before the countrywide announcement of a serial killer being on the loose was made.

So now they know it’s a game for the killer, but why? Do-young thinks he has contempt for his victims, but Young-jin thinks it’s the opposite, that he feels an attachment to them. The girls had no other wounds and were killed without violence — it’s his way of taking care of them. It’s a serious moment, but Jae-duk’s muttering that his wife loves him a lot too and now he’s scared, had me busting out laughing, ha.

As a gamer himself, Se-won says that he noticed an inconsistency in the killer’s text to Young-jin. The killer gave her “missions” listing the rules, but the reminder not to call or text him back wasn’t listed as a mission. As a detail-oriented person, that omission can’t be a mistake.

Not only that, but Missions One through Four all had the same number of characters. When lined up and read diagonally, they read You have seen me. He’s telling them that Young-jin knows who he is.

All of a sudden, Jin-woo jumps to his feet — he’s just remembered the game concept sketchbook he saw in Seung-woo’s office. He realizes that the game scenarios in the book match the deaths, and remembers the next photo, which depicts death by fire. Everything clicks into place and they realize — Seo Seung-woo is the killer.

Immediately thinking of Eun-young, who was nearly caught by Seung-woo, Do-young and Jin-woo find her and take her to look at the car. She’s not sure if it’s the same one she sat in with Seung-woo, and she drops her usual smart-ass attitude when they tell her that she was nearly captured by the serial killer. She asks to sit in the car and from that angle, she recognizes a crack in the windshield. It’s definitely the same car.

Young-jin presents her findings to her superiors, including that Seung-woo’s personal cell phone was in the same locations the girls’ parents were called from and at the same times (he didn’t call from his own phone, but his phone being in the same place as the burner phone is no coincidence). Jong-ho wants to have Seung-woo arrested, but Young-jin says that they can’t while there’s still a missing girl.

But they can keep an eye on him while they look for the girl, and the whole department swings into action, making sure there’s never a moment that someone isn’t watching him. They even monitor his grocery purchases, noting that he buys more food than a person living alone normally might.

Young-jin determines that he must be keeping his potential victims at his house, and orders everyone to get ready to go in. But Seung-woo seems to sense he’s being tailed and slips his followers at an intersection, so Young-jin calls Jong-ho to send someone to search his house right away.

Thankfully they find the girl in time, and get her out of there. Seung-woo watches from a CCTV feed to his phone, first looking disappointed, then grinning as if he’s just had another fun “game” idea.

The cops back at headquarters get a good look at Seung-woo’s scooter license plate on CCTV, and sends every available cop car to his location including Young-jin and her team. She directs Se-won and Jae-duk to confront Seung-woo since he hasn’t met them like he has Do-young and Jin-woo. When Se-won brags about what a good runner he is and how he’ll be the one to catch Seung-woo, everyone starts betting on which will win, with Seung-woo the clear favorite. HA.

Jae-duk and Se-won pretty much just walk right up to Seung-woo and challenge him to a race, and he predictably takes off running with Se-won right behind. Seung-woo loses his footing when he sees Do-young and Jin-woo on bikes ahead, and Se-won tackles him. He seems to have hurt his arm again, and Jin-woo quickly has him on the ground.

I love how the team take turns reading him his rights then daring him to use them (“You have the right not to make incriminating statements. If you do, you’re dead.”). When they get him back to the station Young-jin shows him photos of his victims, asking if there are any more they don’t know about.

As predicted, Seung-woo argues sincerely that he didn’t kill anyone at all, so Young-jin rephrases the question — how many girls has he stood by and watched die? Seung-woo says that it’s the exact opposite… the victims fill the streets, and he was only able to save those two.

Young-jin sadly says that they were flowers who died before they could bloom, but in response Seung-woo says that they were trash when he found them. He made them into flowers. When Young-jin yells that all children are flowers, he says proudly, as if he planned it, that he heard that many missing children were found because of him. The world didn’t care about them until he showed up.

That is some frightening logic, because it holds a grain of truth, and Young-jin knows it. Seung-woo argues that once someone is thrown away, their life holds no value. In his mind, he gave those girls’ lives value in death.

Se-young wakes up, and Young-jin goes to see her and tells her to get better and stop worrying her mother. She stops Jae-duk from showing her a picture of Seung-woo, and he just sweetly tells her to get better.

The whole team ends up at Jae-soo’s restaurant, where Young-jin offers everyone as much vacation time as they want. Do-young cheers for three days and gets death glares from everyone, and squeaks out a timid, “… four?” ~Glares~ “A week?” Young-jin agrees to a week.

Boss goes to President Kang’s little meeting-place, which is deserted at the moment. He remembers a time twenty years ago in this very spot, when a younger Kang called him “sunbae-nim,” begging him to… do something. Boss had argued that if “that person” turned out to be a cop, he could go to jail and lose his daughter, but Kang had countered that he needed the money for his daughter’s hospital bills.

Boss had asked Kang to keep his promise (which isn’t clear at this point in time), but Kang said that after everything he’s done to get this far, he won’t throw away his family. In the present, Boss finishes his meal but when he stands to leave, the ajumma refuses his money and tells him kindly not to come back. Interesting.

Surprised that she remembers him, Boss asks the woman if President Kang still comes here. She refuses to answer even when he says with this heartbreaking earnesty that he needs to kill Kang. She does promise not to say that he’s been here, but her words inadvertently confirm that Kang does still come here.

Boss leaves, and just misses President Kang pulling up in his car by about ten feet. Kang sees the man and seems to find him familiar, but can’t see him in the dimly-lit streets well enough to identify him.

Inside, President Kang asks the ajumma about the customer who just left, but as she promised, she says it was just a random guy. Kang is joined by his lawyer and Prosecutor Go, and they discuss the “pests” that are getting in the way of the Mi Rae City project plans. Kang is concerned that the workers are trying to form a union, and he offers Prosecutor Go a suitcase full of money to take care of it.

Young-jin drops Ha-eun off at school in the morning, who’s nervous about her new, more grown-up hairstyle. In a fit of domesticity while on vacation, Young-jin makes lunch and scares the life out of Nam-jin, who’s looking up her government exam results (she’s taken the exam something like seven times now).

Young-jin goes to run an errand and Nam-jin checks her exam results, only to find that she’s failed the test yet again. She tries her best, but eventually gives in to her tears. Young-jin comes home to a messy kitchen and no Nam-jin, and she opens Nam-jin’s computer to find her posted results.

Disappointed on her sister’s behalf, Young-jin has to field a nosy neighbor’s questions, and tries to call Nam-jin. Nam-jin is at the bus station, and ignores the call. She’s on her way to her father’s gravesite, but Boss arives there first with flowers. Nam-jin is surprised to see him there — she doesn’t know who he is, and calls out to him.

The two of them pay their respects together, and Nam-jin says she doesn’t remember her father’s face anymore. She only remembers crying her eyes out so long when her father died, that Young-jin had to hit her to get her to stop.

Nam-jin suddenly looks surprised, and Boss turns to see Young-jin, glaring silently at him for daring to come here.

COMMENTS

While the show as a whole feels a lot more cohesive now, and there’s a definite sense that all these individual stories have a connection between them, it’s still frustrating as we enter the second half of its run, not to have any idea what that connection may be. There’s something about the way the stories are told that make me feel as though that’s not an accident, but it’s just done sloppily — there are cleaner, more engaging ways to keep a secret from your audience without making us feel like we somehow misses a critical scene. It’s not giving me a feeling of anticipation waiting for the big reveal, so much as a feeling that I looked away and missed an important clue.

Also, I feel as though the show is trying to say something, though unsurprisingly I’m unclear what it is, as every case Young-jin and her team have dealt with have had to do with missing and/or runaway youth. President Kang’s son killed a girl who was a runaway, Seung-woo targeted runaways, and then there’s Eun-young’s story woven throughout. It’s just that this show, while giving us endearing characters and interesting min-arcs, still lacks a common thread to pull it all together. It’s not enough to make the show unpleasant or annoying to follow, but it just leaves me with a feeling of What’s the point to all this?

At least we’re finally getting some concrete clues as to Boss’s motivations and why he’s following President Kang around. Evidently they had a past together, and Kang convinced Boss to do something that led to his incarceration. I hesitate to speculate whether it had to do with Young-jin’s father’s death, at least directly, because they made a point to say that nobody would be killed. I’m assuming that whatever Kang talked Boss into, it went pear-shaped and resulted in Young-jin’s father dying, most likely indirectly, and also somehow contributed to Boss’s own daughter’s death. Going by his tombstone listing Young-jin’s father as a police officer, I’m guessing he was there when whatever went down and was killed while trying to stop Boss. It would explain why he’s so apologetic to Young-jin herself. Again, it’s all very unclear, but I’m still along for the ride and assume we’ll get the answers eventually.

And it’s not like there’s not plenty to make Mrs. Cop watchable and enjoyable, despite its weaknesses. I know I keep saying this, but I continue to be super impressed with how the team is coming together, pooling their skills and knowledge to become something greater than the sum of their parts. Watching them brainstorm and figure out the killer’s identity was brilliant. Do-young got to use her deductive skills (I still think she’s going to become the next Young-jin once she learns to open her mind and heart) to figure out the killer’s possible motives and methods. Se-won added his gaming knowledge to decipher the clue and figure out that it was someone they knew. Then Jin-woo’s memory of the sketchbook was the thing that gave all these random ideas a definite structure and tied everything together. Very well done, team (and I’m even enjoying Jae-duk as comic relief, because someone needs to keep things from getting too heavy!).

Then when they took down the killer, their teamwork was topnotch. From their confidence in themselves, to their trust in each other (letting the smallest guy chase the killer down without even asking if he’s sure he can do it, because they already knew he could), to their awesome verbal beatdown while they had the killer facedown in the grass. Now that’s how you do it. I’m perfectly willing to let go of any expectations of an over-arcing plotline if we can just watch this team to exactly what they did there for seven more episodes.

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