Catch the Ghost: Episode 10

by lovelee

We’re past the half-way mark but a certain chief inspector still has no clue as to his rookie’s true motivations for joining the subway police. But it turns out that our rookie has been harboring another secret, one that’s haunted her since her sister’s disappearance. Though she’s doing her best to keep her secrets from surfacing, the truth can only be suppressed for so long.

 
EPISODE 10 RECAP

The Subway Ghost strangles Choi Mi-ra, but Yoo Ryung and Ji-seok are on their way to rescue her. They’ve reached the restricted station maintenance room and prepare to confront him.

But when they try to bust open the door, it opens and they’re mystified by what’s on the other side: a lounge for the cleaning staff. A worker informs them that the old maintenance room was moved to the other side of the station, next to the turnstiles. They sprint there, but it’s too late, the Subway Ghost is gone and Mi-ra lies gravely injured.

Ji-seok tends to Mi-ra and calls for backup but Yoo Ryung races out in pursuit of the Subway Ghost. She hears an announcement for the last subway of the day and realizes the only way the Ghost can escape unseen is by getting on the subway. She rushes down to the platform but is just seconds too late. Yoo Ryung heads back and watches in defeat as Ji-seok assists the EMTs carry Choi Mi-ra out while Ma-ri orders her team to preserve the crime scene.

Caregiver Choi is sitting at home looking through a binder filled with newspaper clippings about the Subway Ghost murders. She gets distracted by noise coming from one of the rooms and calls out to someone named Sae-rom, but there’s no response.

Yoo Ryung sits vigil next to Mi-ra’s hospital bed, telling her she needs to pull through. With Mi-ra being the only person to survive an encounter with the Ghost, she needs to recover and tell them what she saw. Ji-seok watches from the doorway and worries that Yoo Ryung throws herself too deeply into her work without taking care of herself.

At Metro, Commissioner Kim is furious about the Subway Ghost’s narrow escape, but Ma-ri assures her they’re closer to identifying him. Officer Jeon adds that reporters are sniffing around so the commissioner orders him to make sure the story doesn’t get out. Commissioner Kim doesn’t let up and lets it be known that if Ma-ri can’t track down a lead, she doesn’t deserve to keep her position.

Ma-ri goes back to her team to get status updates on Choi Mi-ra and lab results from the payphone frequented by the Subway Ghost. They’ve managed to identify four out of five fingerprints on the coins found in the payphone. The one unidentified print is likely the culprit’s, but because it’s a partial, they can’t run it through the database.

At the substation, the team discuss making wanted flyers with photos of the Grasshoppers. Ji-seok notices that Yoo Ryung is unusually quiet, but she assures him she’s fine. A moment later she takes a call from Woo-hyuk, which piques Ji-seok’s interest. He follows her outside and his eyes grow wide when he overhears Yoo Ryung say, “Tonight sounds good.”

In the wee hours of the morning, Yoo Ryung sneaks to meet Woo-hyuk. Unbeknownst to her, Ji-seok is still awake and his mind races at the thought of Yoo Ryung running out to meet a guy late at night. In the tunnels, Yoo Ryung and Woo-hyuk are back at the restricted area, but this time they’re ready with tools to cut the lock off.

On the other side of the door, they find a hidden platform and a cache of stolen wallets. In one of the chests, Woo-hyuk finds Choi Mi-ra’s wallet in addition to the wallets of the five other victims. Yoo Ryung rummages for Yoo Jin’s wallet but it’s not there. Woo-hyuk comforts her saying that it could mean that Yoo Jin is still alive. Meanwhile, the Subway Ghost approaches and sees his hideout’s door is open.

Yoo Ryung speculates that the Subway Ghost hides out in the restricted area until the lights go off, which explains how he avoided the station’s cameras. As the pair take in all of the stolen wallets and cellphones, they realize the Subway Ghost must have been a pickpocket too. The Ghost hides in the shadows and clenches his fists before he leaves.

In another chest, Woo-hyuk finds a pair of red shoes and a pink dress with a piece that’s been cut off. They’re able to match it with the piece that Yoo Ryung found in the tunnels and Woo-hyuk theorizes that the clothes were special to the Subway Ghost. The Ghost may have planted the cloth in the tunnels for Yoo Ryung to find.

With an hour left before the subway opens, they decide to continue searching. Yoo Ryung takes in photos and articles taped to the wall and gasps in horror when she discovers a picture of Yoo Jin. Yoo Ryung can’t get herself to look at the picture again as she reaches for it. She holds it to her chest and breaks down as she kneels on the floor.

At the substation, Ji-seok is still up waiting for Yoo Ryung to return. Frustrated, he turns on the lights and finds her wallet. He finally realizes that she never left the station.

As Yoo Ryung sticks the picture of Yoo Jin back on the wall, Woo-hyuk suggests they call in a forensics team, but Yoo Ryung says they can’t because Ji-seok will get in trouble. She asks Woo-hyuk to lead his unit there and pretend they were the first to discover it.

Ji-seok is on the subway tracks, trying to convince himself it’s all a misunderstanding…but then he comes face to face with Yoo Ryung and Woo-hyuk. Ji-seok brushes off Woo-hyuk’s attempt to explain the situation, and goes straight to Yoo Ryung for answers.

But she stays silent in the face of Ji-seok’s angry pleas. Without a word, Yoo Ryung hands him the “missing” platform door keys before walking away.

Once outside the station, Woo-hyuk tells her to just come clean to Ji-seok, but she says she can’t because there’s something else she’s hiding from everyone.

Woo-hyuk has his own confrontation to deal with back at Metro. Ma-ri knows about his secret outings with Yoo Ryung, and she tells him she’ll let him choose where he wants to be transferred. He apologizes for investigating behind her back and reveals they found the Subway Ghost’s hideout.

Ma-ri has a very subdued reaction to such a huge lead and Woo-hyuk continues that he was planning on putting in an official investigation request from Subway HQ. They can pretend Major Crimes discovered it first and save Ji-seok from getting in trouble all at once.

Focusing on Yoo Ryung, Ma-ri angrily asks what’s so special about her? She’s uncovered more in the last few weeks than Ma-ri managed in the last two years. Outburst finished, Ma-ri tells Woo-hyuk to put in the request today so that she can go in the tunnels herself.

At Subway HQ, the Safety Head reads the investigation request and notices that it’s based on an anonymous tip.

Crime scene investigators are all over the lair, taking pictures and examining everything. Ma-ri finds Yoo Jin’s picture and recalls the day Yoo Ryung came to her begging that they include her sister as a part of the Subway Ghost investigation. A tear rolls down her face but she tamps down any further display of emotion.

On the subway platform, Man-jin and Soo-ho watch the crime scene investigators leave and they shudder at the thought of sleeping in the same station the Subway Ghost hid in. As two detectives walk by, Man-jin and Soo-ho overhear them talk about how there’s a new “first” victim but they haven’t found the body yet.

On their way out, Ma-ri notices an open chest two detectives are carrying and stops them to take a look inside. It’s the chest with the pink dress and red shoes; Ma-ri also speculates that the items were special to the Subway Ghost.

We see a similar pair of red shoes at Caregiver Choi’s home; she tells the mysterious Sae-rom to take care of herself while she’s out. On her way to work, she notices a news story about a murder attempt on a former officer, Choi Mi-ra. She holds back tears and mentally begs her son to stop.

Ma-ri reports to Commissioner Kim on the anonymous tip that led them to the tunnels and adds that there is another victim in the case. They haven’t found a body but there is a good chance she was murdered by the Ghost and reveals the victim was Yoo Ryung’s sister. Commissioner Kim can hardly believe such a bright, hard worker was dealing with the disappearance of her sister, and the compliments seem to pain Ma-ri.

Ma-ri wants to bring Yoo Ryung to her team temporarily but Commissioner Kim scolds her for even considering involving a family member in the case. Ma-ri explains she was only suggesting that Yoo Ryung join in on the investigation because she knows Yoo Ryung is invested in it. Commissioner Kim approves and praises Ma-ri for her efforts and work.

At the substation, Soo-ho wonders why the killer didn’t put the first victim’s body under the subway seats like he did with the other victims. Man-jin thinks it’s probably because it was his first time, but Yoo Ryung suggests it could be because the victim is still alive.

Ma-ri walks in to the substation and calls Yoo Ryung into the meeting room alone. She tells Yoo Ryung to report to Major Crimes starting tomorrow. Ma-ri bitterly says Yoo Ryung must be happy, she got what she wanted–she’ll get a chance to catch the Subway Ghost. Yoo Ryung stands silently, which Ma-ri takes as a sign of fear, but as Ma-ri walks away, Yoo Ryung agrees to the transfer.

Ma-ri leaves and informs Ji-seok that Yoo Ryung will be reporting to her for the near future. At Ji-seok’s confusion, she tells him to ask Yoo Ryung what’s going on before storming out. Yoo Ryung explains that they found the Subway Ghost’s hideout in the tunnels and she wants to help with the case.

Ji-seok tells her that she should have left when he told her to after their first case. He told her to leave over and over, but he thought she stayed because Yoo Ryung really wanted to be his partner. It’s obviously he’s hurting, but Yoo Ryung lies that all she wanted was to go to Major Crimes and apologizes before she leaving.

The next day, Yoo Ryung reports to Metro where Woo-hyuk greets her and introduces her as the newest addition to their team for the Subway Ghost case. The team is impressed that she found the Subway Ghost’s lair and want to know how she did it. She shows them a box containing information that she’s been collecting for the past two years, and the team tells her she should have shared it with them sooner. She adds that she desperately wanted to as she looks at Ma-ri.

That seems to break something inside of Ma-ri and she yells at Woo-hyuk to bring her Yoo Jin’s case file. She orders him to read Yoo Ryung’s witness statement out loud, “While I was on my way home with my sister, I lost her in the crowd.” Ma-ri lingers on the word “lost” then proceeds to show the entire team security footage of Yoo Ryung leaving Yoo Jin behind.

Ma-ri is full of venom as she says she looked into Yoo Jin’s case but when she saw the footage, she stopped taking Yoo Ryung seriously. She places the blame squarely on Yoo Ryung, for Yoo Jin’s exclusion from the Subway Ghost investigation and for Yoo Jin’s death. The rest of the team comment that Yoo Ryung basically left Yoo Jin to die and Woo-hyuk is in utter disbelief. Yoo Ryung admits it’s all true as she holds back her tears. (Wow. What a messed up way to confront Yoo Ryung.)

At the substation Ji-seok tells his team they should start looking for a new recruit because Yoo Ryung isn’t likely to return. He tells Soo-ho to post a notice for a new recruit before leaving to collect the lab results from the Grasshopper’s bag.

Back at Metro, Ma-ri finds a dark figure in the subway footage of the day Choi Mi-ra was attacked and notices the shoulder twitch that Woo-hyuk mentioned. Yoo Ryung takes out her phone and shows them the footage from the day she was followed. Comparing his height to the screen door in the footage, Ma-ri estimates the Subway Ghost’s height to be at least 5 ft 10 in. Yoo Ryung makes the connection to the Grasshoppers who are taller than 5′ 10″–and they know how to access the tunnels. Ma-ri realizes the Grasshoppers were also at the 30th anniversary event and the Grasshopper thefts and Ghost murders started more than two years ago.

Another member of the team enters with results from forensics, DNA from the Ghost’s lair matches DNA from the stolen wallets. That means one of the Grasshoppers is the Subway Ghost. Fortunately, Ji-seok and Yoo Ryung sent in the Grasshopper’s bag they recovered for an analysis. Ma-ri calls Ji-seok but the bag was clean: no DNA.

Woo-hyuk notes that none of the Grasshoppers have a shoulder twitch but Ma-ri suspects the twitch only emerges when he feels the desire to kill. It’s either from the thrill of the kill or because he has dissociative identity disorder. When the other identity takes over, their thoughts and actions change.

At the Grasshoppers’ hideout, Grasshopper Hyung suggests they flee to Vietnam. Tall Grasshopper doesn’t want to go but Grasshopper Hyung tells him they might get lucky, and land on Interpol’s wanted list. (For some reason, that’s a good thing?)

Man-jin and Soo-ho have their wanted flyers ready and hope they get catch the Grasshoppers this time. Ma-ri and Woo-hyuk walk in just then with some news: the Grasshopper case is theirs. The subway team resist until they hear that one of the Grasshoppers is the Subway Ghost case and leaves with the wanted flyers and original files. Shortly after, the Safety Head comes back for the platform door key but he’s still suspicious about where Ji-seok left it. The team stands in a daze as they’re left sans keys and Grasshopper case.

The Safety Head’s next stop is Commissioner Kim’s office. He airs his suspicions that there was an illegal investigation and that he’s certain there was no anonymous tip. She thinks back to her discussions with Ji-seok and Ma-ri before assuring the Safety Head that she’ll look into his concerns herself and make sure the person responsible is punished if his allegations are true.

Commissioner Kim calls Ji-seok and Yoo Ryung to her office and asks them how long they’ve been going into the tunnels. She knows they made up a fake tip to cover it up and Yoo Ryung immediately tries to take responsibility for everything to no avail. As chief inspector, Ji-seok has ultimate responsibility for the keys and his rookie.

The disciplinary committee has already convened and in the interest of keeping the misconduct under wraps, they’ve already reached a verdict. Yoo Ryung’s actions deserve suspension but they took her performance into consideration and settled on cutting her pay for three months. As for Ji-seok, since they were already holding off on taking disciplinary action for another incident, his punishment is harsher: suspension without pay for three months.

Ji-seok goes back to the substation to pack his things and he reassures Man-jin and Soo-ho that he’ll be back. With nowhere to go, Ji-seok ends up in his mom’s hospital room. He sleeps next to her until she wakes up and tries to chase him away, calling him a pervert ajusshi all the while. It’s all too much to bear; he breaks down crying and begs her to remember him.

Yoo Ryung stops by the substation to pick something up but mood is cold and Soo-ho tells her that she might as well pack the rest of her things because they’re hiring a new recruit. Back in front of Metro, Yoo Ryung can hear the voices of the Major Crimes team shaming her for abandoning her sister and she decides not to go in.

There are wanted flyers everywhere for the Grasshoppers, who have now been named as suspects in the Subway Ghost case. Grasshopper Hyung thinks it’s a trick to turn them against each other and Dong-man’s just furious. At their hideout, Grasshopper Hyung asks the Subway Ghost to raise his hand. No one does, because of course, but Hyung is relieved and convinced it’s all a big police scheme. Dong-man punches a mirror and says they should just leave for Vietnam.

Grasshopper Hyung and Tall Grasshopper huddle in fear and tell each other Dong-man’s the killer. When he gets angry, he’s uncontrollable, he even hit Yoo Ryung in the tunnels! Tall Grasshopper tells Grasshopper Hyung they should just leave Dong-man behind and Grasshopper Hyung agrees.

Yoo Ryung fills Nurse Park in on what’s happened. She casually says she hates herself and understands if Ji-seok hates her too. Nurse Park urges Yoo Ryung to tell Ji-seok the truth to clear up things up, but Yoo Ryung thinks to herself that Nurse Park doesn’t know the whole truth. If they knew, they’d think Yoo Ryung was a monster.

Man-jin is looking at both the footage of the dark figure following Yoo Ryung and the footage of the culprit who attacked Choi Mi-ra and realizes they’re the same person. He calls Ji-seok to inform him that the man who followed Yoo Ryung is the Subway Ghost.

At the hospital, Tall Grasshopper takes out his medication again and we see his name, Kim Hyung-soo, written on the bag. Hyung-soo meets his doctor who asks him if his dissociative identity disorder is manifesting again. Hyung-soo looks like he’s struggling but he says he’s fine, he just needs more medication because he’ll be taking a long trip abroad.

Ji-seok looks at the footage Man-jin sent him and notices the shoulder twitch. Meanwhile, Caregiver Choi is on a walk with Ae-shim when she sees Hyung-soo walking out. She runs after him but a concerned Ji-seok stops her and she plays it off. Caregiver Choi tells him she thought she saw someone she knew and excuses herself.

Ji-seok gets another message notification about a voice message and listens to the message Yoo Ryung left. (Finally! But didn’t he say he deleted it?) After he finishes the voice message, Nurse Park appears in front of him to tell him everything herself. True to her work, she really does tell him everything that Yoo Ryung has been through, and as soon as he learns the truth, Ji-seok is off and running.

 
COMMENTS

At long last, we’re getting some details on the Subway Ghost. I’ve been unsure about the identity of the Subway Ghost because there was so many other cases that Yoo Ryung and Ji-seok have tackled and not enough details on the Subway Ghost’s motive or identity.

I think it’s safe to say now that the Subway Ghost is Hyung-soo and that he’s Caregiver Choi’s son. But we’ll have to wait and see as the whole story behind the family and the mysterious Sae-rom. One big question remains, is Yoo Jin really dead? We’ve seen her being transported in a suitcase, but the lack of a body (which has been present in all the other cases) makes me wonder. Could “Sae-rom” really be Yoo Jin in hiding? It’s obvious that Caregiver Choi doesn’t approve of whatever it is her son is doing, so maybe she took Yoo Jin in to cover for him. If Sae-rom is an actual person, I’m guessing she’s the owner of the pink dress and red shoes and something happened to her the day Yoo Jin disappeared.

Choi Mi-ra’s flashback definitely revealed crucial details on what happened to start the Ghost murders. The incident, which seems to have occurred the day Yoo Ryung abandoned Yoo Jin on the subway train, must have started it all and triggered the Subway Ghost to commit murders. Choi Mi-ra needs to wake up and tell us what happened!

I keep thinking about something Man-jin said in Episode 2. He mentioned the reason the tunnels were off limits to the officers was due to an accident that resulted in a death. A detective left the platform doors open after trying to track down a vandal in the tunnels, but who was that vandal? Maybe it’s just a tiny detail added to build on Yoo Ryung’s reckless character, but part of me thinks it’s connected to the case in a bigger way.

Overall, this episode was dark. I felt bad for Ma-ri, she really seems to be struggling with feelings of inadequacy and jealousy at how easily Yoo Ryung seems to capture people’s attention (and track down leads). Yoo Ryung already has the attention and respect of Ji-seok, Woo-hyuk, and even her own mother. I can imagine that trying to live up to her mother is hard enough, but now there’s Yoo Ryung, who’s taken to police work like she’s been doing it all her life. On top of that, it’s obvious to everyone with eyes that Ji-seok has feelings for Yoo Ryung. But, and this is a big but, the vitriol that Ma-ri reserves for Yoo Ryung seems out of balance. It’s just so over the top that it makes it hard to like Ma-ri, which is a shame because she has so much potential to be a great character. More than anything, the thing that really knocked me back was the way Ma-ri revealed Yoo Ryung’s abandonment of Yoo Jin. I get feeling aggrieved by an accusation that she didn’t do her job, but why not just say to Yoo Ryung (alone, at any point in the past two years) that she knew Yoo Ryung left Yoo Jin. She could have easily had a conversation with her to say she thought Yoo Ryung’s judgement was clouded by grief and guilt. Playing the security footage in front of their colleagues and blaming Yoo Ryung for her sister’s death was so, so
incredibly cruel.

It was sad to see Ji-seok break down and to see how alone he feels in the world. After Yoo Ryung’s “betrayal” and his suspension, he turned to his mother–but she can’t even recognize him. I can’t imagine the pain of having your mother speak to you like you’re a stranger. But I’m relieved that he has finally heard the voicemail Yoo Ryung left and that Nurse Park filled him in on what’s been going on (I just wish it had happened a little sooner). I can’t wait for him to reunite with Yoo Ryung! He’s the only person who truly understands her.

Now with all that’s been revealed in this episode, I’m curious about how the story will proceed. I’m expecting a change in the partnership dynamic and I’m excited because honestly, I’m getting tired of the current pattern of Yoo Ryung being reckless and getting Ji-seok in trouble.

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