Player: Episode 9

by Regals

The race is on to finally bring Lawyer Jin to justice. But the powerful and corrupt have no intention of giving up without a fight. Everyone is pulling out all the stops as they attempt to outmaneuver each other and end the investigation once and for all.

 
EPISODE 9: “This is just the beginning, dad”

Inside the warehouse, Ha-ri confidently taunts the thugs into attacking him, and he is able to fend them off with relative ease. As the fight rages inside, Chief Maeng arrives with a large team of prosecutors and searches the lot for Ha-ri.

When Chief Maeng finally finds the right building, all the thugs are already incapacitated, and Ha-ri runs off to catch the broker, intent on swiping the ledger from him to use as evidence of Lawyer Jin’s crimes. Meanwhile Chief Maeng cleans up the mess left behind.

Back at the school, the rest of Ha-ri’s team search for Lawyer Jin’s money, but come up empty. Ah-ryung notices the lockers outside the room seem to be out of place, and realizes the money is probably inside them.

At the warehouse, Ha-ri loses track of the broker, and when the broker thinks the coast is clear, he climbs out of his hiding spot. Unfortunately for him, Ha-ri is waiting right next to the hiding spot, wise to the broker’s plan, and finally captures the man.

Ah-ryung picks the locks on the lockers at school, and finds all of Lawyer Jin’s money hidden inside. As she and Jin-woong unload all the boxes of cash, the Mustache Thug shows up with a party of gangsters to take the money themselves.

When Chief Maeng finally finishes rounding up the thugs at the warehouse, he finds the bloodied broker restrained in the prosecutor’s van. The ledger is no longer with the broker however, as Ha-ri’s taken it for himself and is nowhere to be seen.

Elsewhere, Lawyer Jin politics with some power players in an attempt to get them to sweep his crimes under the rug. As he does so, Ha-ri calls from the broker’s phone and blackmails Lawyer Jin with the ledger, asking for all of the money he earned from his illegal cases.

Ha-ri’s taunting enrages Lawyer Jin, but he insists on meeting with Ha-ri. Chief Maeng finally tracks down Ha-ri as he wraps up the call. Ha-ri flees and just barely avoids capture.

In the interrogation room, Prosecutor Jang warns Candidate Kim’s wife that, due to the nature of her crimes, she’ll need to remain in prison until they wrap up the investigation. She looks absolutely furious at the thought of being locked up with commoners.

Back in his office, the rest of Prosecutor Jang’s team field a ton of calls pressuring them to end their investigation, but Prosecutor Jang remains resolute.

Ha-ri, elsewhere, gets word from Doctor Jo that everything is fine on her end of things. At the same time, Prosecutor Jang calls to cuss Ha-ri out for taking the ledger.

But Ha-ri protests that the ledger is safest in his hands, since they know there’s a mole in Prosecutor Jang’s team. Besides, he argues, things are already hectic enough for the prosecutors.

At the school, Byung-min, who was off on his own prior to the thugs showing up, stumbles back on the fight in progress and intervenes by spraying a fire extinguisher in the thugs’ faces.

Using the distraction, Ah-ryung grabs the money and she and Byung-min flee while Jin-woong stays behind to fight Mustache Thug one-on-one, which Jin-woong wins with ease.

Ah-ryung and Byung-min manage to escape, and on their way out they rendezvous with Jin-woong and they all flee successfully.

Lawyer Jin finds out that all of his money is now gone and throws a huge tantrum, running out to find Ha-ri as soon as possible.

As Ah-ryung drives the boys away from the school, Ha-ri calls and informs them about a new plan, though we don’t get any details.

Meanwhile, Ha-ri arrives near Lawyer Jin’s place, but Lawyer Jin is staked out in a car nearby and tries to run Ha-ri over in the street, barely missing when Ha-ri dodges at the last second.

Lawyer Jin continues to chase him down while Ha-ri tries to run. As Lawyer Jin pursues Ha-ri around a corner, another car hits Ha-ri, who sprawls into the middle of the street unconscious.

The driver of the other car quickly collects Ha-ri off the street and transport him to hospital, leaving a large pool of blood in his wake.

In the hospital, the doctor informs the team that Ha-ri suffered significant injuries, and that they’ll need to monitor his condition to make sure he’s okay. The team all leave to think about what to do next, but right after they do, Lawyer Jin sneaks into the room. He stands there alone with the unconscious Ha-ri.

At the prosecutor’s office, the chief prosecutor orders the deputy chief to release Candidate Kim’s wife and seize all of Prosecutor Jang’s findings.

Ha-ri wakes up in the hospital to see Lawyer Jin watching over him. Lawyer Jin takes back the ledger and successfully finds the bug Ha-ri planted in the room, disabling it so their conversation won’t be recorded.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team exit the hospital, only to run straight into Mustache Thug and his men outside. Their only option is to turn and run the other way as the thugs give chase through the hospital.

Upstairs, Lawyer Jin taunts an incapacitated Ha-ri, claiming that even if the crimes were exposed, all of the people who were involved are powerful judges and political figures, so they’ll cover everything up. Lawyer Jin decides his best course is to silence Ha-ri for good, and starts to strangle him.

Downstairs, the rest of the team are finally cornered in a hallway by a locked door, and the thugs close in behind them. But the doors behind them suddenly open, and Mustache Thug can only stare in shock at what he sees.

Back upstairs, Lawyer Jin seems to successfully take out Ha-ri, but suddenly Ha-ri stops feigning weakness, and pushes Lawyer Jin off of him.

In the hallway, the doors behind the team swing open to reveal Chief Maeng and the prosecutors waiting, guns drawn, to capture the thugs. The team all return to Ha-ri’s room with cameras trained on Lawyer Jin.

Flashback to Ha-ri’s car accident earlier, where it was actually Ah-ryung who ran over Ha-ri. As part of their plan, she and Byung-min planted fake blood to make the scene look more serious and convince Lawyer Jin it was real.

Chief Maeng arrives to take Lawyer Jin into custody, and Ha-ri reveals that the television was recording Lawyer Jin’s confession and attempted murder of Ha-ri.

Lawyer Jin tries to make a run for it, but he runs straight into Prosecutor Jang outside, who trips him up and finally takes him into custody.

Upstairs, the team commend the doctor for helping them out, and Ha-ri agrees, cryptically telling them that they all fell for the doctor’s acting too, and Ah-ryung realizes that Ha-ri planned this all out from the start. It turns out that the doctor agreed to help Ha-ri at Doctor Jo’s request.

Elsewhere, Prosecutor Jang arrests Candidate Kim’s wife, using Lawyer Jin’s ledger as the key evidence against her. When she protests, Prosecutor Jang reveals that there’s even better evidence, and pulls out his phone to show her.

Doctor Jo, at her hospital, directs the team to one of the rooms, and when they go inside, everyone looks incredibly relieved by what they see.

Candidate Kim’s wife sees exactly why, from Prosecutor Jang, as the aide who was presumed dead from falling off the building is actually alive. She’d been hidden by Doctor Jo all along.

We flashback again to the phone call Ha-ri made at the hospital the night the aide fell. Doctor Jo was reluctant to help, but when Ha-ri revealed that the woman was just an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire, Doctor Jo agreed to help.

Doctor Jo, thinking back to that conversation, realizes that Ha-ri isn’t a bad person after all, and when she sees the team razzing Ha-ri on the way out, she quips that it can’t be helped that he’s still a bit of a weirdo.

The next morning, as the news breaks of the arrests made the night before, Prosecutor Jang bursts into the chief prosecutor’s office and arrests both the chief prosecutor and his deputy chief for their involvement in Lawyer Jin’s crimes.

The chief prosecutor warns that someone else will fill the vacancy to stop Prosecutor Jang. But Prosecutor Jang is fearless; he just bites back that there’s a vacancy in jail that’s about to be filled.

Lawyer Jin tries to get the shadowy broker to help him out of the predicament, but the broker declines and hangs up, as Lawyer Jin realizes he is screwed.

The broker prepares to dispose of his phone now that Lawyer Jin is compromised, but just then he gets a call from Lawyer Jin’s phone. It’s Ha-ri, who’d confiscated the phone earlier, and he warns the broker that he’s the next person they’re after. Finished with the phone, Ha-ri ditches it in Lawyer Jin’s mailbox.

Prosecutor Jang leaves the office early for the day, telling his team that there’s someone he wants to see. They assume he means a lady friend, but Prosecutor Jang denies it.

Meanwhile, Ha-ri visits his father’s grave and place a large bouquet at the base to honor him. Not long after, Prosecutor Jang arrives at the same memorial, but all he sees are the flowers Ha-ri left, as Ha-ri hides just out of sight nearby.

Later, Ha-ri treats the team to a fancy dinner for their successful operation. When Ha-ri goes to the restroom, another man is washing his hands inside.

The man leaves just before Ha-ri finishes washing up, and when Ha-ri goes to dry his hands, he notices that the man left something completely shocking behind: Lawyer Jin’s phone.

Ha-ri calls the dinner off early to get Byung-min to search for the man, but there are no CCTV recordings in that area during that time.

Meanwhile, in a darkened room, several politicians debate what to do about Candidate Kim’s falling ratings. Another man enters and, with authority, declares that Candidate Kim will remain as their representative. It’s the same man from the washroom.

At home, Ha-ri tries to recall the face of the man from earlier, but can’t quite put a face on him. One thing is clear to him though: that man is the person at the center of the conspiracy.

 
COMMENTS

As we suspected last week, Doctor Jo was the person who Ha-ri called from the hospital. It’s kind of a bummer, in a way, that this twist was so predictable, since heist-style dramas are built around sharp twists that keeping you guessing about what’s really going on until it all gets revealed. Being predictable is maybe the worst condemnation of a drama like this, so I’m not thrilled that I could see that one coming pretty much as soon as they started to develop it.

It’s a shame because most of the writing is actually pretty solid. The interplay of the team is great, the still-to-come connection between Ha-ri and Prosecutor Jang over Ha-ri’s father is neat, and most of the villains are so downright contemptible that you can’t help but want all kinds of horrible things to happen to them. But nailing the twisty nature of heist shows requires the right amount of finesse to get right, and so far, it’s been a little too heavy-handed for my tastes.

Now that the shadowy broker has a face we can match to his dealings, I must admit I’m a bit underwhelmed with his role in the story thus far. He feels almost too detached from everything that’s going on, and as a result, it feels like he doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the team. I guess that’s by his design, since he just sits back in the shadows and gets others to do his dirty work. The only thing, really, that we can attribute directly to him is killing Ha-ri’s dad 15 years ago. The rest you could reasonably attribute to the lesser members of the conspiracy acting on their own.

So when I compare him to some of the truly detestable villains the team dealt with previously, he seems way less terrible, and thus, I feel there’s less urgency to deal with him. Sure, he’s the head of the snake and needs to be dealt with, but he comes across as just a guy with a lot of power and not a horrible monster like everyone else. There’s still time to develop the character a bit more, so here’s hoping there’s a bit more to latch onto in the near future, but as of now, count me unimpressed.

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