Possessed: Episode 14

by LollyPip

This show is cruel. It’s beyond cruel, and I think this is the most that I’ve been tempted to just rage-quit a show. But we’ve come this far, and nobody ever said that a drama about a serial killer would be a walk in the park. I warn you though, this is probably the most difficult drama episode I’ve ever had to watch – it’s not for the faint of heart.

 
EPISODE 14

Do-ryung finds Seo-jung bleeding after slitting her own wrist, and she’s rushed to the hospital. The hospital is low on blood because of all the recent gunshot victims, so the doctor starts a search of the hospital for anyone with the right blood type as Do-ryung tries to call Pil-sung.

Dae-doo lets himself into the basement where he left Seung-hee and Yeon-hee drugged and tied, but he’s baffled to find an empty room. Yeon-hee leaps on him from behind the door and yells for Seung-hee to run, promising that she’ll be right behind her.

Dae-doo hurls Yeon-hee across the room and into the wall. She lies injured, and he yanks her up one-handed. Seung-hee tries to escape but she hears Dae-doo’s voice crooning her name, and he somehow shows up in front of her with his arm around Yeon-hee’s throat. Again Yeon-hee screams at Seung-hee to run, as Dae-doo gives her ten seconds to come back to him or Yeon-hee dies.

Joon-hyung searches the arena for clues, but Chief Yoo calls his name, and he turns to see Chief Yoo aiming his gun at him. They both look terrified, and Chief Yoo says, “I’m sorry. We’re running out of time. I can’t let anything happen to Seung-hee.”

Joon-hyung begs Chief Yoo, saying that he’s like a brother and a father, and reminding him that he even took a bullet for him. “You said you’d be a father to Yeon-hee, too.” Chief Yoo replies, “For you, I could die a thousand times. But my daughter’s life is on the line. He’ll kill my daughter. Joon-hyung-ah, what do I do?”

Chief Yoo’s hands shake wildly as Joon-hyung tells him that they don’t know if Yeon-hee’s baby is a boy or a girl yet, but that he hopes it’s a daughter that looks like Yeon-hee. He cries that another heart is beating inside Yeon-hee, and Chief Yoo says that in Joon-hyung’s next life, he’ll die for him a hundred times, a thousand times.

Chief Yoo says he’s sorry, and Joon-hyung closes his eyes. There’s a flash of Joon-hyung and Yeon-hee, her belly big with their child as Joon-hyung happily caresses it. The sound of a gunshot shatters the peaceful image.

Chief Yoo lowers his gun, staggering in shock as he stares down at Joon-hyung’s lifeless body. He gasps, then screams, “Why… why… WHY?!” He waves his gun around, shooting at everything and nothing as he orders the bastard who did this to show himself.

In the security office, Dae-doo’s lackey Ho-cheol laughs, then calls Dae-doo to tell him that the younger cop died. Dae-doo tells Seung-hee to say goodbye to Yeon-hee, and he nods with sarcastic benevolence when Yeon-hee asks for his promise to let Seung-hee go. Yeon-hee willingly leaves with Dae-doo, and as soon as the door closes behind them, Seung-hee hears a shot.

Dae-doo video calls Chief Yoo and tells him he did well, and shows him that Seung-hee is alive. Chief Yoo tells Seung-hee tearfully that dad is coming soon, but Dae-doo curses, pretending to be pained that the deadline just passed to save both women. Chief Yoo sobs and begs as he watches Dae-doo aim his gun at Seung-hee’s head.

Then he stops, frozen, as a gunshot rings out. Chief Yoo drops his phone in horror, and Dae-doo says sadly that he’ll take good care of their spirits. He tells Chief Yoo to blame Pil-sung for the three deaths that occurred tonight.

Chief Yoo sinks to his knees, remembering Joon-hyung’s happy smile and his daughter’s grumpy acceptance of his boisterous demonstrations of love. Unable to bear the grief, he raises his gun to his own head, screams, and pulls the trigger. Oh my god, this is a nightmare.

Ho-cheol saunters into the arena to kick at Chief Yoo’s body then steal his phone, then does the same to Joon-hyung.

Huddled in his hotel room, Pil-sung suddenly grabs his phone and turns it on. He gets Do-ryung’s message and rushes to the hospital, and he nearly charges into the emergency room before Do-ryung stops him and tells him that Seo-jung was moved to the general ward.

Pil-sung only relaxes a little when he sees that Seo-jung is going to be okay. She’s still sleeping, but Pil-sung tells her that she’s selfish, then starts crying as he gingerly tries to figure out how to hold her hand without hurting her wrist.

Detective Choi is called to the arena, and he begins screaming when he sees Chief Yoo and Joon-hyung’s bodies still lying where they died.

Pil-sung is sitting in the hospital waiting area when he answers a call from Chief Yoo’s phone. But it’s Dae-doo who speaks, asking if he still has no idea what the devil inside of him did.

At that moment, the TV in the waiting area broadcasts the news that the bodies of two detectives were found dead of gunshot wounds early this morning, at the same time as the bodies of the detectives’ daughter and fiancee were found in an abandoned warehouse. Pil-sung struggles to process the information, and in his ear, Dae-doo grumbles that he gave Pil-sung plenty of chances, and that Pil-sung is the one who killed his friends.

He asks who will be next, complaining that he’s tired of killing people because of Pil-sung. He says it’s time to end this, and hangs up.

Pil-sung sits on the floor of the bathroom stall where he and Chief Yoo used to trade secrets. He fights back tears as he reads a text that Chief Yoo sent him after he left town: “Pil-sung-ah, I’m so worried that I’m going crazy. It kills me to think of the agony you must be in. I won’t ask what’s going on, so stay safe and healthy, and just come back to us. You know our secret hideout, right? The restroom stall. You can tell me all about it at our secret hideout, okay?”

He remembers Chief Yoo telling him once that ever since Pil-sung took a knife wound for him ten years ago, he’s considered the rest of his life a bonus round. He’d said that he wasn’t scared of death, and he’d held Pil-sung’s hand tightly as he asked him to take care of Seung-hee if anything happened to him.

The last part of Chief Yoo’s text says: “Pil-sung-ah, I owe you my life. I would do anything for you. If what you’re going through is too hard to bear, call me. Whatever you did, even if you killed someone, I’ll be on your side.”

Pil-sung watches Detective Choi at Chief Yoo and Joon-hyung’s funeral, unable to bring himself to go inside. Instead he sits hunched on the sidewalk, sobbing.

When Seo-jung eventually wakes, she refuses to eat and just says she wants to be alone. Pil-sung complains that if she had the guts to slit her own wrist, then she should have just confronted Dae-doo. He asks how she could do this to him after telling him that the souls of those who commit suicide can’t go to Heaven.

Detective Choi sits alone in a quiet office, all of his teammates gone. He watches the CCTV footage of the night Chief Yoo and Joon-hyung died, and when Ho-cheol steals their phones, Detective Choi thinks that he seems familiar. He checks the CCTV film taken outside So-hee’s store on the evening of her murder and sees Ho-cheol going inside — it’s the same guy.

A fellow detective comes to tell Detective Choi that a call was made from Chief Yoo’s phone five hours after Chief Yoo’s death. It means that someone used his phone after he died, and oddly, they called Pil-sung. Detective Choi recalls Pil-sung’s claim that Hwang Dae-doo’s spirit is possessing someone, and killing the people close to Pil-sung.

He tells Detective Jung to track the location where Pil-sung’s phone was last used, and to keep this between them for now. Detective Jung shows him one more thing, a notebook that was found on Joon-hyung when he died. Detective Choi flips through the notebook, which is full of sketches of his coworkers with little notes about their personalities, and he breaks down in tears.

Do-ryung visits Seo-jung, who stares out the window at the reddening sky. She tells him bleakly that there’s not much time left, and nothing they can do.

Detective Choi finally finds Pil-sung at the hospital, and they take a drive. As soon as they stop, Detective Choi punches Pil-sung and demands the whole truth while he’s still willing to listen. He particularly wants to know who called Pil-sung from Chief Yoo’s phone after the murders, sure that none of this is a coincidence.

Pil-sung says that the call was from Hwang Dae-doo, and Detective Choi hits him again. He wails that Chief Yoo shot Joon-hyung with his own gun just hours after saving his life, then shot himself, all while Yeon-hee and Seung-hee were killed somewhere else. Detective Choi asks how Pil-sung was involved, and they both cry, clinging to each other in their grief.

Seo-jung wakes up that night to see her mother sitting beside her, holding her hand. Her mother asks why she tried to kill herself, and says that she can’t die like this. She says, “You must… “, but a change comes over her, and Dae-doo takes over to finish the sentence, “… die at Kang Pil-sung’s hands. Otherwise you’re breaking the rules of the game.”

Her mother disappears, and it’s Dae-doo sitting next to her. He says that Seo-jung was strong enough to fight back, repeating his infamous line about there being a fine line between pain and pleasure. He tells Seo-jung that she’s standing on that line, and he’s waiting to see which side she falls on.

Seo-jung pleads with him to just kill her, but he says that there’s only one person who can end her life. He says it’s the rule, and the ultimate proof of his victory.

On his way to see Seo-jung, Pil-sung recognizes Chun-seob’s face in the elevator, and he runs to see if Seo-jung is okay. She tells him that it was Dae-doo, and he leaps down the emergency stairs to the parking garage and steps in front of Dae-doo’s car, gun drawn. Dae-doo taunts him to shoot, but instead, Pil-sung tosses his gun aside and tells Dae-doo to get out of the car.

When he does, Pil-sung punches him repeatedly, but Dae-doo just stands there. Pil-sung runs out of steam and collapses, and he admits defeat and says he wants to stop this. He apologizes over and over, and begs Dae-doo to just kill him and leave everyone else alone. He even grabs his gun and offers to do it himself, hoping that becoming a wandering suicide spirit will satisfy Dae-doo.

Dae-doo finally speaks, saying that the harder Pil-sung tries to get out of this, the more pain he’ll be in. He tells Pil-sung to just do what he needs to do — that’s the only way to end this.

Pil-sung slowly goes back to Seo-jung’s hospital room and finds her sitting on the floor, her back to him. He pulls out his gun and aims it at the back of her head, and she tells him softly that he made the right decision. She asks him to hurry up and do it, not for the world, but for her, because she wants to be at peace.

He cocks his gun and tries to grant her request, but he remembers her wish to live in a house near the ocean with the man she loves, and her conviction that she’ll never get her wish. He really tries, but he can’t do it, and instead he pulls her to her feet and leads her from the hospital.

They catch a bus, and Seo-jung falls asleep on Pil-sung’s shoulder. They travel to the ocean, hop a ferry to an island, and Pil-sung rents a house with an ocean view for a month. The house owner figures out that they’re not married, and Pil-sung’s nervous laugh is adorable, but the owner says he doesn’t care so long as they aren’t criminals.

Pil-sung follows the owner down the hill to borrow some clothes and go buy food, and when he returns, Seo-jung is gone. He finds her sitting on the beach and joins her, and she says that it’s so beautiful here that even the energy of Hell feels faint. Pil-sung tells her to stop blaming herself, because even if he killed her and they stopped Dae-doo, they can’t undo what’s already happening in the world.

He says that even if it’s not exactly what she dreamed, he can give her the house overlooking the ocean, and spend the rest of their lives cooking meals together and sleeping together. He says that to him, this island is the only place that exists, and she’s the only person in the world. Gruffly, he tells her, “I love you,” and Seo-jung grumbles that he’s being cheesy and makes him laugh.

Ho-cheol has been keeping an eye on Pil-sung and Seo-jung, and he reports to Dae-doo that they took off together and disappeared.

Do-ryung is also wondering where they went when the world is literally going to Hell. He calls Soon-kyung, and she agrees to meet with him, though the first thing she says is that they’re over. He ignores her and flashes a ring, asking her to marry him. Awww!

They go to get hitched immediately, and wow, they both look amazing. Do-ryung (we learn his real name is Man-soo) nearly stops breathing when he sees Soon-kyung in her wedding dress. They exchange vows, and Do-ryung gets choked up when he promises to protect Soon-kyung even if the world goes to Hell. Do-ryung slips the ring on her finger and leans in to kiss his bride — and they’re interrupted because their time is up. HA.

Detective Choi lets himself into Pil-sung’s apartment and finds his extensive research on Hwang Dae-doo. He even finds the letter that Pil-sung wrote for Detective Kim to read after possessing his body, and he wonders if Pil-sung really has gone insane. He takes a call from Detective Jung, who’s identified the man in the two CCTV videos as gun smuggler Hwang Young-gil.

Dae-doo chastises Ho-cheol for being recognized, but Ho-cheol says that Dae-doo knew he’d get caught. He complains at having to act like Dae-doo’s slave, but Dae-doo promises that he won’t end up in jail. He offers to let Ho-cheol kill Young-gil’s body and move into Chun-seob’s body by getting his wish to make mayhem with a submachine gun.

Soon after, Ho-cheol walks into the police station carrying a duffel bag. He walks right behind Detective Choi, who senses something but continues on his way. Ho-cheol walks into the office and drops the duffel bag, raises his hands, and says he came to turn himself in.

Then with an evil giggle, he grabs the machine gun from the bag and opens fire, shooting every detective in the room. As he’s enjoying the moment, Detective Choi wheels around the corner and shoots him point-blank in the chest, killing him instantly. Detective Choi looks around at his dead friends, but thankfully Detective Jung staggers to his feet, having only been shot in the arm.

Ho-cheol’s spirit rises out of Young-gil’s body and heads towards a nearby rooftop, where Dae-doo is watching the SWAT team arrive at the police station. Ho-cheol’s spirit waits to be allowed into Chun-seob’s body, but Dae-doo sneers that Ho-cheol is completely useless to him. He sends a hello to his friends in Hell, then produces a burst of power that dissipates Ho-cheol’s soul.

Seo-jung is all smiles when Pil-sung brings her a puppy that a neighbor gave him, which they name Teddy Bear. While they’re eating, Seo-jung sees a little girl peeking around the corner at them, and after dinner Pil-sung builds a swing. At sunset, they walk on the beach with Teddy Bear, and that night, they fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Epilogue.

Seo-jung sneaks outside in the middle of the night and looks up at the sky. She thinks again that Hell’s energy feels faint here, and wonders why.

 
COMMENTS

I’m just… I’m utterly heartbroken. I knew with a show like Possessed that people would die, people we cared about. I was not expecting a bloodbath, with the cute self-made family of four-and-a-half all dying within moments of each other. I almost couldn’t watch the first fifteen minutes of the show (which makes it difficult to recap), I kept having to turn it off and walk away. I’m not sure if I’ll be over it any time soon.

I knew that Dae-doo was a monster, but this episode proved that there are no depths he won’t sink to, just to prove his point that killers are made, not born. I predicted Chief Yoo’s death several weeks ago, so I had braced myself for that. But for him to go through the torment of killing the man he thought of as a son, knowing that it would mean the woman he’d taken on as a second daughter and their unborn child would also be murdered, was too much. And on top of that, he was forced to watch the beloved child he committed murder to save be shot right in front of his eyes. Honestly, I would have been more shocked if Chief Yoo hadn’t turned his gun on himself.

What really struck me about this episode is how bone-deep weary Pil-sung and Seo-jung have become. They have lost everything, and they couldn’t even comfort each other without Dae-doo’s edict looming over them. It made me tired watching them in this episode, as they struggle with how not to give in to Dae-doo, but also wanting to give in to make it stop. Seo-jung even asked Pil-sung to kill her and give her some peace, because she’s just completely, spiritually exhausted.

To end on a high note though, how wonderful was it when Pil-sung took Seo-jung to the island and said that she’s the only person in the world for him? He’s so adorably awkward, but he’s always open and honest with his feelings, which makes him wonderful, in my opinion. And I melted when he finally told Seo-jung that he loves her, because it’s not like she didn’t know — heck, the whole universe knows, this guy can’t hide anything he’s feeling — but it was just the sweetest moment for him to actually say the words. The best idea Pil-sung ever had was to take Seo-jung away and give her her dream of having a house overlooking the ocean with the man she loves, even if it’s temporary. I can’t help but wonder if the peaceful aura of the island will be the clue to defeating Dae-doo, if Seo-jung can figure out what causes it in time.

RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Big Issue, Possessed