Class of Lies: Episodes 9-10 Open Thread

by Saya

Boooyyyy does the plot thicken in the School of Sinners. SO MUCH went down this week, did everyone survive the tension? Big happenings push up the stakes and everyone’s got an agenda that they’ll do whatever it takes to protect. Our team fight to uncover how far exactly the villains are willing to go, and the Class of Liars sure is full of villains⁠—scheming, delightfully bad villains! The only question is, who’s the worst?

 
EPISODES 9-10 WEECAP

Our first hour focus is on the adults, and Moo-hyuk is still working closely with Prosecutor Cha. He gets deep into fieldwork for his original investigation: Who killed Soo-ah, and who was using her for sexual favors? He discovers a hidden shortcut that would’ve allowed someone to enter or leave her house undetected. Together with loyal hacker friend WON-SEOK (Lee Soon-won), they scour hours and hours of CCTV footage which finally gives them one tiny clue: Beom-jin getting into a taxi a bare minute’s jog away from that spot, a week before Soo-ah was killed. Why was he there?

We left off last week with Moo-hyuk about to be caught by Beom-jin while hacking his phone. He manages to evade being caught outright, but Beom-jin’s pretty much onto him. More interestingly, hacker Won-seok discovers a surveillance app Beom-jin has hidden on his phone, with which he’s spying on an unknown person. Beom-jin has an agency photo-spread of Soo-ah on his phone that’s been mined from the one he’s spying on. They guess that whoever he’s spying on has got to be “Speed Dial 0”.

Meanwhile, So-hyun’s been chasing up shuttle Byung-ho to find out what he said to Han-soo that made him try to kill himself. She takes him to visit his friend in hospital, where he’s still in a coma, and Byung-ho breaks down sobbing. She learns how Lee Tae-seok groomed the vulnerable boy, but the message isn’t openly incriminating like they hoped.

I dunno, seems clear enough to me as Byung-ho finally realizes that his message about The Little Mermaid was an ultimatum to Han-soo, to choose his life or Soo-ah’s. Of course, we know what he chose. At that critical moment, though, Beom-jin appears and tells him he doesn’t need to tell anyone anything.

It’s really hard to tell exactly what Beom-jin’s game is with Byung-ho. He’s also been pulling bully Joon-jae’s strings, saving him and his mom from loan sharks, and I can’t see yet what the reason for that is. He clearly has some kind of long game, but what? At least by this point, everyone can see through his carefully curated image. I mean, if innocent, pure-hearted So-hyun thinks you’re up to something, you are definitely bad.

Moo-hyuk knows the information they need about “0” is in Lee Tae-seok’s safe at school, and he and Won-seok go to raid it that night. To their shock (and mine!!!), they stumble onto the man strung from the ceiling in what they quickly realize is a murder staged as suicide. Moreover, the notebook with the damning information is gone.

The police shut the case with alarming alacrity and Prosecutor Cha can’t do a thing about it because some much bigger fish have called the shots on this one. With Lee’s death, the stakes have suddenly shot wayyy up for everyone, but it’s become easier to rule out the lower-hanging fruit like Lee Do-jin (Ki-hoon’s dad).

Speaking of Ki-hoon, there’s a character who really has me torn. He’s the only one I really believe right now. He wants just two things: to know who killed Soo-ah, and for that person to be punished. He was probably the last person to see Lee Tae-seok alive, after he went to confront him with a baseball bat, and if we didn’t have any other evidence, just the way Lee beat the crap out of him and threw him out would tell us that that was not a suicidal man, but a man who believed he was about to get everything he ever wanted.

But more significant than that is the way Ki-hoon confronts and stands up to his dad, in a way that is either terribly brave, or terribly foolish (or both). But just as I’m beginning to warm to him, we get the full flashback of his sexual assault on Soo-ah where he is just utter scum-of-the-earth.

Maybe that’s what makes his character arc so compelling, because you can see him reassessing himself and finding himself lacking. But he is also still himself: short of fuse and prone to violent outbursts. That makes watching his internal moral conflict play out in such a transparent way equal parts painful and exciting.

I’m not sure if it’s an anti-climax to finally show the hidden face of Congressman YOO YANG-GI (Kim Min-sang), aka Beom-jin’s powerful dad, as “0”: the person in secret cahoots with Lee Tae-seok, the person buying Soo-ah’s services, the person in possession of the missing notebook, and, we can only assume, Lee’s killer, or at least the person who ordered the hit.

As for why Beom-jin is surveilling his dad, what’s everyone else’s guesses? This case has several threads: Let’s say Congressman Yoo is “0”—he’s definitely not the one who murdered Soo-ah. The strongest suspect for now is only Beom-jin. We also know he disappeared from his date with Tae-ra the night Soo-ah was killed, and came back smelling of smoke, and he lied about being with her the whole time. That’s shady.

Moo-hyuk’s cover is totally blown with the quartet, though, as Byung-ho reveals his true identity to Beom-jin. Beom-jin warns the quartet them to stay away from Moo-hyuk, and not to rock the damn boat if they want to keep a clean record.

But the kids are increasingly at odds with each other as their individual suspicions and secrets make them act out according to their own interests—which of course are against everyone else’s. Ye-ri is particularly furious about Moo-hyuk’s identity and nearly reveals all to a reporter until Beom-jin intercepts her. His hold on the group has become a palpable force, which is a fascinating change, because he’s always maintained control with an almost invisible touch.

The fact that his control is showing says to me that it’s also fraying. I feel like he’s become a dangerously predictable wildcard, which is a far cry from his buttoned-up beginning. There’s just so much about Beom-jin we don’t know, though the horrible cliffhanger ending seems to have revealed his hand with Joon-jae. I am downright scared of this diabolical trap Moo-hyuk just walked into, as the girl he saved from Joon-jae rips off her shirt and starts screaming. I just KNEW that was coming, but I didn’t think cynical, mistrustful Moo-hyuk who never underestimates the kids would so naively walk into it. Come on Moo-hyuk, run away! Save yourself!

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