Mad Dog: Episode 6

by Regals

The mystery deepens this hour as Min-joon and the Mad Dog team race each other to find Go Jin-chul first, even after a near-death experience. While they squabble over catching the killer, the bigger question is: Can they manage to avoid the machinations of those pulling the strings behind him?

 
EPISODE 6: “Pull Up”

Kang-woo races after Go Jin-chul’s getaway vehicle, but stops when he spots another car on fire nearby. Inside, he finds Min-joon and Ms. Lee unconscious, and he desperately tries to rescue them.

Kang-woo grabs a nearby rock and smashes out the window to pull Min-joon out to safety. Just as they reach a safe distance, the car explodes behind them, with Ms. Lee still trapped inside. Soon-jung and Ha-ri arrive seconds later, but it’s too late to save Ms. Lee.

The next morning, detectives are on scene to investigate, and Kang-woo asks to inspect Ms. Lee’s body himself… only to be rebuffed by Detective Jo. The detective questions whether Min-joon could be responsible for the fire, perhaps as revenge for Ms. Lee giving his brother the insurance policy that ultimately led to his suicide.

When Kang-woo looks unconvinced, however, Detective Jo wonders if Kang-woo trusts Min-joon’s innocence, and Kang-woo answers, “I have no idea what I should trust.”

In an ambulance, Ha-ri watches over the still unconscious Min-joon, and the paramedic assures her that “her boyfriend” will be okay, though she hastily denies this relation. Still, she tends to him with care and concern as they drive to the hospital.

Kang-woo and Detective Jo rush back to Go Jin-chul’s temporary apartment, but Soon-jung informs them that not only is all of the surveillance equipment gone, all traces of fingerprints in the place were wiped clean.

They head to Gohang Farm as well, and it’s also cleared out as though Ms. Lee and her son were never even there. As they leave the farm, Noo-ri informs Kang-woo that there is a new voicemail on Kang Eun-joo’s phone, and plays it for Kang-woo.

The message is from Ms. Lee’s son, who heartbreakingly called Kang Eun-joo to pick him up when he realized his mom was gone and not coming back.

Kang-woo goes to Kang Eun-joo’s hospital room and finds the boy there with her. Kang-woo pulls her aside to inform her that Ms. Lee is dead, and asks if Eun-joo knows Go Jin-chul.

She recognizes him as the man who found the corpse Ms. Lee used to fake her suicide. Kang-woo inquires as to why Ms. Lee faked her suicide in the first place, and all Kang Eun-joo knows is that Ms. Lee was afraid that someone wanted to kill her.

Kang Eun-joo corroborated Ms. Lee’s story, because the two of them were like family after growing up in the orphanage together, and they promised not to let Ms. Lee’s son grow up the same way they did. Kang-woo comforts her by noting that Ms. Lee’s son won’t be alone since he has Eun-joo to take care of him.

Elsewhere, Min-joon remains unconscious in his hospital room, but the doctors are unsure if he suffered any lasting damage from the encounter with Go Jin-chul, so Ha-ri continues to worry about him.

Meanwhile, inside his head, Min-joon recalls a trip to a German bar where he drinks alone. Min-joon’s brother approaches from behind and introduces himself to his long-lost brother. Beom-joon tearfully tells Min-joon he became a pilot so he could fly to Germany and look for his brother.

Min-joon dismisses him coldly, unwilling to reconcile with the brother who abandoned him. The memory switches to the last moments of consciousness during the car fire, where Min-joon imagined that his brother was the one calling for him before Kang-woo pulled him out of the vehicle.

Min-joon wakes back up soon after and tells Ha-ri not to call the doctor, since he plans to leave right away. Ha-ri argues that he should at least have some tests done, but he refuses and teases Ha-ri for worrying about him.

On their way out, Min-joon spots Ha-ri’s jacket covered in his blood and questions how that happened, but she refuses to tell him and forcefully drags him out of the hospital.

She brings Min-joon to Mad Dog headquarters, where Kang-woo interrogates Min-joon about Go Jin-chul, but Min-joon doesn’t know the name.

Min-joon does, however, recognize Go Jin-chul’s face as that of the man who attacked him at Gohang Farm, and Kang-woo explains that Go Jin-chul followed Min-joon to Ms. Lee.

Min-joon wants to know where Go Jin-chul is now, but the Mad Dog team lost him when they chose to save Min-joon instead. Min-joon, though, is nonplussed as he tells Kang-woo that he should have kept chasing the killer.

But Kang-woo disagrees: “What if I did? Do you think we can verify that Beom-joon’s crash wasn’t suicidal? Is that what you want?”

Kang-woo argues that all the evidence points to the crash being suicide, but Min-joon rebuts that Ms. Lee being alive invalidates such evidence, and he stretches to call her reappearance proof that Beom-joon didn’t crash the plane.

Kang-woo doesn’t bite though, noting that even though Ms. Lee was alive, she never said anything to confirm Min-joon’s theory.

However, Min-joon recalls that Go Jin-chul said he was offered a million dollars for Ms. Lee’s life and openly questions who could afford such a price, naming both Taeyang and Juhan Airlines as the potential backers.

Min-joon taunts Kang-woo for being too trusting, but Kang-woo barks back that Min-joon is the exact opposite, unwilling to trust anyone. Kang-woo hypothesizes that Min-joon doesn’t even want to clear his brother’s name and is only digging into the crash for himself.

Min-joon retreats to his apartment to work alone, but Ha-ri soon knocks on his door to deliver the files on the crash investigation, urging him to watch the interviews and see if he still can’t understand why the Mad Dog team believes it was suicide.

The videos show the testimony of several people all pointing the finger at Kim Beom-joon for the crash, including the pilot, who asserts that Beom-joon knocked him out so he could steer the plane into the ground. Min-joon reels from the preponderance of evidence.

In the Mad Dog office, Kang-woo watches the same interview and ponders Min-joon’s claim about Ms. Lee’s life being worth a million dollars, wondering who could be behind it.

Sometime later, Kang-woo meets with Professor Byeon to go over the results of Ms. Lee’s autopsy. Professor Byeon notes that they found unidentified DNA on her teeth, and it turns out that she bit Go Jin-chul during his attack. Kang-woo urges the Professor to hand the DNA sample over to him.

Min-joon studies his hidden event timeline, and we flash back to the night of the car fire, where with her last gasps, Ms. Lee had cryptically muttered, “Taeyang Insurance. Find it.”

Later, Min-joon leaves his apartment, but a robotic rat blocks the door from closing on his way out, and Min-joon leaves without noticing. Ha-ri reports his departure, and Soon-jung sneaks into the apartment to steal Min-joon’s clothes from the night of the fire.

Back in the Mad Dog lair, the team spreads Go Jin-chul’s DNA onto the clothes they stole from Min-joon, preparing their bait for the killer. Later, Kang-woo gives the clothes to Detective Jo and tells him to compare the DNA with Jin-chul’s family.

Kang-woo starts to tell Detective Jo something, but the detective cuts him off. He knows that Kang-woo doesn’t plan to use the law to punish Go Jin-chul, and the detective earnestly promises to catch the killer before Kang-woo can so that Kang-woo won’t become a murderer for revenge.

At Taeyang, Kang-woo arrives to find Manager Park combing through paperwork. Manager Park bristles at Kang-woo’s presence and demands to know why he is there, and his face darkens when Kang-woo mentions Min-joon’s name.

Kang-woo explains that Min-joon believes that his brother is not responsible for the plane crash. Not only that, he adds, but Go Jin-chul tried to kill Min-joon, and he has the DNA evidence to prove it.

Manager Park straightens up even further at this, but tells Kang-woo to stay out of it. Manager Park also remembers what happened to their rookie at Go Jin-chul’s hands two years ago and vows to catch the killer himself, legally.

However, Kang-woo says that he can’t trust Manager Park’s words and plans to do his part to catch Go Jin-chul, leaving an annoyed Manager Park to stew at his provocation.

In his office garden, Chairman Cha receives word that Go Jin-chul’s DNA was found at the scene and that Kang-woo knows about it. Chairman Cha calls Hyun-gi and orders him to take care of Jin-chul, since it was Hyun-gi who chose Jin-chul for this task.

Chairman Cha berates Go Jin-chul for not only failing to do the job, but for leaving a trace that could ultimately lead back to the chairman and Hyun-gi. Hyun-gi disdainfully holds the phone away from his face as Chairman Cha yells through it, but promises to send Jin-chul out of the country in a few hours.

Hyun-gi, however, calls Go Jin-chul to tell him to finish the job instead before leaving. Hyun-gi won’t pay Jin-chul unless he does the job right this time… by ending Min-joon’s life.

Kang-woo, meanwhile, heads up to Chairman Cha’s office and tells him about the case Mad Dog is working on. When Kang-woo doesn’t deny that Taeyang may be involved in the case, Chairman Cha offers to give Kang-woo any help he may need.

Afterward, Kang-woo joins Ha-ri in the parking lot as they stake out Min-joon’s arrival at Taeyang. Min-joon ends up running directly into the mirror of Hong-joo’s car, forcing her to get out to survey the damages.

Hong-joo accuses Min-joon of running into the car on purpose and hands over her business card, introducing herself as the executive director of Taeyang.

But Min-joon takes it all in stride, smoothly handing over his watch (which was broken long before he hit the mirror) as he tells Hong-joo to take care of it via her company before casually strolling off, leaving Hong-joo completely flustered.

Back inside the Taeyang office, Hong-joo meets an important client in her father’s office, and Hong-joo finds out that she is being put in charge of all of this client’s cases.

After the client leaves, Chairman Cha instructs Hong-joo to give the client a large sum of money when they ask for it, adding that she shouldn’t ask any questions.

Hong-joo looks miffed, so Chairman Cha adds, “Did you think you can only do clean things? You’ll have to jump into filthy water and jump into a pond of mud too.” Hong-joo relents and agrees to follow her father’s wishes.

As she leaves the office, Min-joon texts Hong-joo with his information, but Hong-joo ignores him and sends his case to the claims department to handle.

Later, Min-joon arrives back at Taeyang, this time with Ha-ri hot on his tail. But as she follows him in, Go Jin-chul arrives as well, ready to finish his assigned task of killing Min-joon.

Min-joon heads straight to Hong-joo’s office, and she hands back his watch, which the claims department found to be genuine. Min-joon takes this opportunity to claim that he wouldn’t lie, but she bites back that someone who fakes a collision shouldn’t say that.

At this, Min-joon challenges her to prove that he walked into the car on purpose. Min-joon adds, “An executive director of a huge company like Taeyang Insurance shouldn’t frame an innocent man.”

Hong-joo asks what Min-joon is really after, and he quickly answers that he wants the original documents for Kim Beom-joon’s insurance policies. We flashback to the car fire again, and this time, we see Ms. Lee explicitly telling Min-joon to find the originals before she passes out from the smoke.

Hong-joo tries to protest that Min-joon is not entitled to view the original documents, but he uses the earlier car accident as leverage, and Hong-joo eventually caves and tells her secretary to call the department in charge of the files.

Ha-ri chats with Hong-joo’s secretary as this happens, but she can’t figure out why Min-joon would need something from that department. Meanwhile, Manager Park gets word that Min-joon is asking for the original files, and he rushes off to Hong-joo’s office to see what’s going on.

Ha-ri observes Manager Park’s arrival, and when he mentions that he was the person originally in charge of the case Min-joon is asking about, Kang-woo, who’s watching from the Mad Dog base, realizes that Min-joon is after the plane crash files.

With the originals now laid out in front of Min-joon, Hong-joo asks why Min-joon wanted to see the files so badly. Min-joon confesses that he’s here for more money and tips his hand when he asks, “What if it was an accident, not suicide?”

Min-joon reveals that in case of accident, he would be entitled to even more money than if Beom-joon’s death was a suicide. He asks for copies of the original files, and Hong-joo agrees to allow it in spite of Manager Park’s protests.

Back at Mad Dog, the team looks through those same files, which Ha-ri obtained by simply asking the secretary to make extra copies for her.

As they’re considering why Min-joon was after the originals, Noo-ri interrupts to reveal that he found Go Jin-chul. He shows the rest of the team the footage of Jin-chul following Min-joon earlier in the day.

Min-joon, meanwhile, gets a text from Manager Park asking him to meet up in a remote location to discuss the insurance policies. (That sounds sketchy.) Min-joon heads out to meet Manager Park, and Go Jin-chul follows closely behind him.

Min-joon arrives at an abandoned building, and a figure emerges from the shadows inside. It’s Go Jin-chul, and he raises a pipe to strike the defenseless Min-joon.

Just then, several lights flash in Go Jin-chul’s face, and the entire Mad Dog team pops out from hiding as Kang-woo greets Jin-chul for the first time in years.

Kang-woo explains that when he realized that Go Jin-chul was still following Min-joon, Mad Dog set up Min-joon as bait by sending the text to Min-joon (pretending that it was from Manager Park).

Go Jin-chul finally recognizes Kang-woo from two years ago and taunts him over the rookie’s death. But Kang-woo is here for more important matters—namely, to find out who offered a million dollars to kill Ms. Lee.

Go Jin-chul denies his involvement, but Kang-woo reveals that he knows Jin-chul’s DNA was found on Ms. Lee’s teeth, and Kang-woo spread that information around so that Jin-chul wouldn’t try to flee to another country.

Kang-woo explains that Go Jin-chul now has two choices: die by Kang-woo’s hand, or give up his backer and go to prison alive. Jin-chul, though, offers a third option, and he takes out his own phone and calls the police himself to tell them that he killed someone.

Kang-woo grows angry and moves toward Go Jin-chul to attack him, but Min-joon steps in to stop him, saying that Jin-chul is of no use to them dead.

In his office, Hyun-gi receives a call from his lawyer and cheerily answers by ordering that his father’s obituary be released as soon as Taeyang pays the insurance out. His smile drops at what he hears in response, however, as he receives a recording of his earlier order for Go Jin-chul to kill Min-joon.

The lawyer, now counseling Go Jin-chul in police custody, tells Jin-chul to claim that the recording was a false confession and just admit to assaulting Min-joon. Jin-chul’s DNA problem will be taken care of by the lawyers, and Jin-chul agrees to follow the lawyer’s plan.

As the lawyer leaves the interrogation room, a detective hands him Go Jin-chul’s bagged phone, which the lawyer confiscates.

Meanwhile, the detective leads Go Jin-chul to the bathroom, and not long after, the lawyer follows them inside. The detective leaves Jin-chul alone with the lawyer, who quietly sneaks up behind Jin-chul with a cloth in his hands, ready to strangle him.

The security cameras within the facility all stop recording as the lawyer exits the premises, then turn back on again as soon as he is out of sight.

In the station, an officer questions the Mad Dog crew about the incident with Go Jin-chul, but in the middle of questioning, another officer reveals that Go Jin-chul hanged himself in the bathroom to the shock of everyone in the room.

Sure enough, the body is found in the bathroom stall, hanged by a makeshift toilet paper noose. Kang-woo finds the paramedics escorting the corpse out of the building and tears back the sheet to confirm that Go Jin-chul is indeed the victim, and another round of disbelief courses through the Mad Dog team.

Back in the Mad Dog office, the team stews over what to do now that Go Jin-chul is dead, and Noo-ri and Soon-jung debate whether they should really be digging into this case when everyone involved keeps dying.

Min-joon stews in his own apartment before getting a text message with a photo from a hospital where the pilot from Flight 801 is apparently a patient. Kang-woo gets the same message simultaneously, and the two of them sprint off to find the pilot. The rest of the Mad Dog team tracks Kang-woo via GPS after he leaves.

At the hospital, Kang-woo barges in to the pilot’s room, and he finds Manager Park standing over the pilot’s bed. Turns out that it was Manager Park who sent the text message, and Kang-woo wants to know what Manager Park is up to.

Manager Park also wonders what exactly he has done before revealing that the pilot was an alcoholic for at least a year prior to the crash. Min-joon arrives just in time to hear this, and he realizes that this means that the pilot’s testimony about Beom-joon intentionally crashing the plane is not reliable.

Manager Park can only offer a solemn stare in response, so Kang-woo tries to wake the catatonic pilot from his stupor. Min-joon, meanwhile, studies the several scattered drawings the pilot has strewn across the room and realizes that they are in the shape of the flight controls in an airplane.

The pilot notices Min-joon standing there and mistakes him for Beom-joon. This seems to knock him out of the stupor, and when he notices Manager Park also in the room, he recalls the interview Manager Park conducted two years ago about the crash.

The pilot remembers Manager Park asking about Beom-joon crashing the plane, but this time, the pilot insists that Beom-joon pulled the wheel up, not down. The pilot lied back then, he says, and claims now that Beom-joon was trying to fly the plane back up.

Both Kang-woo and Min-joon now realize that Beom-joon wasn’t at fault, and they both hold back tears.

Back at the Mad Dog office, the SIM card they recovered after Min-joon threw away his phone is finally unlocked, and they see a history of text messages from Beom-joon to his younger brother.

The texts show Beom-joon happily trying to regain his brother’s affection as he tried to convince Min-joon to move back to Korea. The final message from the day of the crash strikes a particular chord: “The sky looks so nice today. Shall we go on a trip together after my flight duty this time? Min-joon, I love you very much, brother.”

In the hospital room, Min-joon finally breaks down, overcome with emotion.

 
COMMENTS

Interesting. I went back and rewatched the original crash scene to see if Beom-joon was actually pulling up the plane the whole time and we just interpreted it incorrectly, but no, we definitely saw Beom-joon steering the plane downward then. So it looks like they were just intentionally misleading us by showing an inaccurate depiction of the events so that they could then reveal the true account later. For some shows (Forest of Secrets being the prime example), this can be a neat trick that enhances the overall storytelling, but here, I think, it feels cheap.

Mad Dog hasn’t really established that we shouldn’t necessarily trust what they’re presenting as absolute truth. So I was ready to consider that the crash might not be entirely motivated by Beom-joon wanting to kill himself, and that it was maybe instead part of a larger conspiracy. I wasn’t ready, though, to completely absolve him and treat him as the apparent hero that he was by steering a malfunctioning plane into a landing which didn’t catastrophically kill everyone on board as it probably should have. He essentially saved dozens of lives.

I’m intrigued by Manager Park’s role in this apparent conspiracy. He is openly antagonistic to the Mad Dog team at almost all times, so it was somewhat of a shock that he suddenly decided to reveal the pilot’s location to Kang-woo and Min-joon. Perhaps he simply took it upon himself to reinvestigate when Min-joon brought up the possibility that the crash was an accident, and the sudden re-emergence and untimely death of Go Jin-chul pushed him to question the conclusions of his original investigation.

He certainly seemed shocked when the pilot changed his testimony to reveal that Beom-joon was actually trying to stop the plane’s descent, so I wonder if that revelation will stir Manager Park to dig even deeper, and maybe even consider helping the Mad Dog team from the inside. But maybe I’m just being too trusting, since I want to believe so desperately that Manager Park is one of the good guys.

Meanwhile, Chairman Cha is now openly discussing some probably illegal financial dealings with Hong-joo, who seems destined at this point to be dragged down into whatever horrible evil he is plotting. While we got confirmation that both Chairman Cha and Hyun-gi were complicit in Go Jin-chul’s crimes, I wonder how involved they both are in the plane crash itself.

Normally, it would be reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was actually just an accident and that they decided to use Beom-joon as a scapegoat instead of making the airline take responsibility themselves. That would certainly fit Hyun-gi’s flippant persona, but there seems to be more to it than just a simple accident, and I wonder what kind of scheme they could even be pulling here. What could they gain from intentionally forcing a plane crash? Money? Something more politically motivated? Their motive is a bit of a mystery to me.

That said, we’re effectively set up for Mad Dog to start investigating both Taeyang and Juhan Airlines more thoroughly, and it’s about time for Min-joon to stop lone-wolfing his way through life and realize that Mad Dog shares a common goal with him: to get to the bottom of the Flight 801 crash by any means necessary. Were it not for Mad Dog’s intervention, Go Jin-chul would almost certainly succeed in killing Min-joon. Well, okay, maybe Min-joon wouldn’t be in that position in the first place if not for Mad Dog, but Go Jin-chul was going to find Min-joon eventually regardless.

The point remains that Mad Dog offers Min-joon some extra security, because if there’s one thing Min-joon is bad at, it’s spotting someone blatantly tailing him. At least with Mad Dog, he could stop getting himself caught in so many traps. Min-joon’s past experience makes him loath to trust anyone, but he’s going to need to start somewhere if he wants to remain alive long enough to find out what really happened.

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