Mouse: Episode 3

by LollyPip

More victims are discovered and more evidence found as our killer’s murder spree continues. The deaths seem random at first, but a horrific pattern may be emerging. While Mouse seems to be very open about things like its killer’s identity, something tells me we’ve barely scratched the surface of the truth.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

When Jae-hoon’s family (excluding his mother) were murdered, Daniel Lee had gotten a chance to speak to police about the case. Jae-hoon had been considered a suspect but was ruled out because his polygraph test was clean, though Daniel knew that a psychopath can easily beat a polygraph.

The police were confident that an 11-year-old boy wouldn’t murder his whole family, but Daniel hadn’t looked so sure. On his way out of the station, he’d seen Jae-hoon standing in the parking lot, sneering at him.

Back in the present, the body of the latest victim is taken away. Moo-chi looks up at the message left for him by the killer and growls, “Consider yourself on my radar, you psychopathic bastard.”

Daniel visits Ji-eun’s house after all these years, and she warily welcomes him. While they talk, she pets the family dog, which has something wrong with its legs. Seeing a photo of Ji-eun with surgeon Yo-han on the wall, Daniel asks if he’s her son.

She confirms that he is, then says she needs to head to work at her flower shop soon. Daniel asks what happened to the dog, so Ji-eun explains that her son brought the dog home injured and nursed it back to health, because he can’t stand seeing any living being suffer.

As Daniel stands to leave, Ji-eun blurts out that he was wrong (about her son)… but the hand she rests on the dog’s head is shaking.

At the hospital, Ba-reum and Yo-han lock eyes, then Yo-han is paged away. Daniel arrives and is directed to the ER, where he witnesses Yo-han handle an upset mafia member — the thug holds a knife to Yo-han’s side and threatens to kill him if his boss dies, but Yo-han just presses a scalpel to the thug’s throat and invites him to take his chances at blood loss chicken.

Hong-joo enters beside another gurney, and Daniel recognizes her right away. She’s soaking wet, and she’s with the mother of the two murder victims, who appears to have made another suicide attempt.

Staying behind at the murder scene, Moo-chi picks up an instant coffee packet that had been held in the corpse’s hand. Hong-joo calls him to the hospital, where she explains that she went to interview the mother regarding Soo-ho’s murder and found her in a reservoir. Yo-han reports coldly that he saved the woman, but that she’ll probably make another suicide attempt soon.

Hong-joo seems disproportionately upset and refuses to accept Moo-chi’s comfort or his jacket. She thinks of a time when she was a child and witnessed the woman sobbing over the death of her daughter, Soo-jung. Hong-joo had left behind the bag Soo-jung had been carrying that night, a pair of boxing gloves for her brother Soo-ho — ah, so Hong-joo is definitely the little girl who helped the killer on that snowy night.

Ba-reum is making a cage for the injured bird he found when he realizes he doesn’t have enough wire. He goes to buy some and runs into Moo-won, and he apologizes for missing the priest’s last day. Moo-won asks after Chi-kook, who hasn’t improved.

While Ba-reum goes to get a signature from the shop owner regarding strengthening the neighborhood patrol, Moo-chi shows up. He’s furious that Moo-won left food on his porch, and he throws it at Moo-won and yells that he wants nothing to do with him.

Moo-won says their parents would be saddened to see them estranged. Moo-chi snaps that he can never forgive the man who killed their parents and left his brother disabled, so he can’t understand why Moo-won forgives him. “I hate you more than Han Seo-joon,” he snarls. “How will you face Mom and Dad when you die?”

On the news, Ba-reum learns of the watch found on the killer’s most recent victim, leading the police to believe there’s another victim they haven’t found yet. Recognizing Chi-kook’s watch, he runs outside to tell Moo-chi that he knows whose watch it is.

After confirming that it’s Chi-kook’s watch, Moo-chi talks to the inmate who confessed to the attack, supposedly because he disrespected Seo-joon (the Head Hunter). He claims to have burned Chi-kook’s clothes, but he refuses to say where he hid his weapon. Moo-chi says that he doesn’t know where it is because he didn’t do it, using the fact that Chi-kook’s watch was found on a murder victim — outside the prison — as proof.

Moo-chi directs his men to search the prison grounds for Chi-kook’s clothes and the weapon used on him. Ba-reum asks why the clothes are important, so Moo-chi explains that the killer has never stripped a victim before, so logically there must be evidence on the clothing.

Using a teddy bear, Ba-reum explains to Moo-chi the magic trick where Chi-kook was found in the box (it uses mirrors). Moo-chi concludes that Chi-kook must have been in the box before the trick began, which would have made the box heavier than usual.

Ba-reum tells Moo-chi that the only time the box was alone was when he and his team went to lunch. Moo-chi checks the prison’s CCTV footage and sees the performers enter the cafeteria at 1:10 p.m. and leave exactly thirty minutes later. Including the walk time to and from the cafeteria, it leaves someone plenty of time to attack Chi-kook and stuff him in the box.

Meanwhile, Daniel calls Yo-han to ask if they can talk about the recent murders. Yo-han agrees, but when Daniel shows up at an abandoned amusement park to wait in a Ferris wheel car (why??), he turns on the power to the Ferris wheel. Yo-han attacks Daniel and stabs him repeatedly.

Moo-chi and his team are still at the prison looking for Chi-kook’s uniform and the stabbing weapon. Ba-reum brings up the fact that Chi-kook wasn’t posed to point at a cross like the other victims, but neither of them can imagine what makes Chi-kook different.

Teenager Bong-yi spars with a man in a boxing gym, and she’s knocked to the ground. She imagines a man standing over her, grinning and taunting, then a puppy tied to a bridge in the rain. When she snaps out of it, she punches the floor in frustration.

On the drive back to the station, Ba-reum mentions that this is his first time meeting Moo-chi, though he’s heard of him from Moo-won. Moo-chi mentions that they met before, when Ba-reum saved the bird and almost got hit. Excited, Ba-reum says the bird is still recovering at his home. He starts to list all the good things Moo-won says about his brother, but Moo-chi snaps at him not to talk about that jerk.

Undaunted, Ba-reum asks to join the investigation, to learn from Moo-chi and catch whoever hurt his friend. He admits that he’s a rookie, but says he can’t just do nothing. Moo-chi laughs, then says seriously that a psychopath is a monster beyond anything Ba-reum can imagine. Darkly, he adds, “Only guys like me who have nothing to lose, with nothing but evil left within, must deal with them.”

Later, Ba-reum catches Bong-yi coming out of a comic book café when she was supposed to be at the library. He leads her to a restaurant, with her as grumpy and complaining as ever, so he nearly chokes on his food when she asks him to marry her, ha.

She’s completely serious, and he stammers that she’s like a little sister to him. Rejected, Bong-yi leaves and heads to Bukbu Police Station, where Moo-chi works. She hangs outside, looking up a video by Hong-joo titled “Sherlock Hong-joo: The Beginning of a Serial Killing,” that features Moo-chi.

When Hong-joo walks into the station, Moo-chi tears off his jacket, which Hong-joo had previously called stinky (awww, does someone have a lil crush?). She asks about Chi-kook’s attack, then Shin Sang asks if she wants coffee. The mention of coffee sends Moo-chi to his car for the instant coffee packet he found at the murder scene.

Bong-yi hides from Moo-chi, though he senses someone there. He recalls a day years ago when a small girl silently handed him some money, wanting revenge. Moo-chi had pinky-promised to kill someone for her once he was released, and now he checks and finds that the man who traumatized her, KANG DEOK-SOO (cameo by Jung Eun-pyo), is due out of prison in two months.

When Hong-joo leans on him to ask why he’s looking up such trash, Moo-chi has an adorable internal freakout. Yep, he’s in love. But he quickly forgets about that when he realizes that Shin Sang used the coffee packet from the murder scene to make coffee for Hong-joo — oh no, that’s evidence!

In the middle of a lake, a man (Yo-han?) pushes a couple of weighted, bloody bags off a boat and into the water.

While on a morning jog, Bong-yi finds Ba-reum’s now-tame little bird. Ba-reum isn’t far behind, and awww, he’s named the bird “Eo Bong-yi,” his affectionate way of mispronouncing Bong-yi’s name. Annoyed, Bong-yi tries to get the bird to fly away, only for it to land on her head.

Ba-reum says that birds can tell who’s a good person, but Bong-yi grumps sarcastically that he must mean cute, like a cute little sister. HA, she’s so salty about that comment, but she assures Ba-reum that she absolutely does not like him. She gives him his bird back and takes off.

Moo-won is at the station the next day when Moo-chi arrives at work, giving a statement about the show at the prison (it’s set up through his church using member volunteers like Ba-reum). The captain tells Moo-chi not to mention the coffee stick to anyone, doubting Moo-chi’s theory that it’s evidence of another victim and pointing out that he and Shin Sang could get in trouble for mishandling evidence.

Frustrated, Moo-chi shuffles back out to his desk as Moo-won finishes his statement. Moo-chi leaps up reflexively when Moo-won stumbles and needs help steadying himself, but he holds himself back. After Moo-won is gone, Moo-chi yells at Detective Kang for making a disabled person come to the station.

Moo-chi asks Hong-joo not to mention the coffee stick to anyone, worried he could lose his badge. She wants an apology for not recognizing her, and whatever she’s talking about annoys Moo-chi so much that he’s willing to walk out and take his chances, hee.

He heads to the hospital where Ba-reum is watching over Chi-kook, who’s still in a coma. Only one of his severed fingers was able to be reattached, but Moo-chi is more worried about why his attacker would let the watch be found on his victim, knowing it could lead to his getting caught.

Moo-chi visits Soo-ho’s suicidal mother, and at her despondent expression, he says that she needs to stay alive to see her catch her son’s killer. He affectionately threatens to stop looking if she tries to kill herself again, and for the first time, some life shines in her eyes.

At school, Bong-yi is somewhat of an outcast, which obviously frustrates her. At home, bird Eo Bong-yi is in his cage at her house. When Halmoni says Ba-reum brought it for her, Bong-yi quickly assumes her usual grumpy demeanor and complains that she doesn’t like the bird, but she grins at it when nobody is looking.

Bong-yi goes to Ba-reum’s place and exclaims at a picture of him as a baby with his beautiful mother. His home is large for a cop’s salary, and Ba-reum explains that he bought it with his parents’ life insurance money — okay, so his parents are both dead.

To Ba-reum’s relief, Bong-yi says that her proposal was just a joke. She laughingly denies that his reaction hurt her feelings, then flusters him by calling him “Ba-reum-oppa” for the first time. She feeds him some fried chicken she made, then croons that she made it with his bird and asks sharply if he still thinks she’s cute. She goes home to tell Eo Bong-yi about her little trick and admits that Ba-reum is cute when he’s flustered.

Unfortunately, someone leaks the fact that evidence from the murder scene was destroyed/drank, and it ends up on the news. The other cops assume that Hong-joo told someone at her station, but Moo-chi jumps hotly to her defense and says it’s their fault for trying to hide it.

He goes to talk to Hong-joo, and he finds her hugging Yo-han, who looks terrified about something. Moo-chi remembers once when Hong-joo asked him out, right next to a corpse at a murder scene, but he’d lied that she’s not his type. Hurt, Hong-joo had told him that he’d regret it someday, and now seems to be that day.

Yo-han sleeps over at Hong-joo’s place and in the morning, he’s back to his stoic, unemotional self. At his own home later, he stands in front of a wall covered in photos of the recent victims.

For destroying evidence, Shin Sang is transferred to the suburbs, but he manages to land a missing person/murder case as soon as he arrives. Since Moo-chi has been taken off his cases, Shin Sang calls him in for help.

The missing person is Daniel Lee, whose car was found near the amusement park, and enough of his blood is splashed inside the Ferris wheel car for them to assume that he’s dead. The only evidence as to his killer is a zipper found inside the car that doesn’t match the suit Daniel is seen wearing in his hotel’s CCTV footage.

Halmoni is called to Bong-yi’s school — she’s in trouble for hitting another girl. Halmoni begs the girl’s mother to forgive Bong-yi, but Bong-yi yells that the girl spread rumors about her. She storms out, and the student angrily blames her mother for saying nasty things about Bong-yi. Halmoni yanks them both by the hair, HA.

When she rejoins Bong-yi, Bong-yi can see that Halmoni is disheveled and lashes out in frustration. She tearfully blames Halmoni for what happened to her years ago, for asking her to go out for makgeolli and getting her into a situation where she was attacked. Bong-yi runs off, and Halmoni collapses in guilt-weighted tears.

At home, she realizes that Bong-yi’s behavior must be because Kang Duk-soo is getting out of prison soon. She unwraps a knife she keeps in newspaper, saying ominously, “Don’t worry, Halmoni will take care of everything. You won’t get to live even one day as a free man.”

Ba-reum drops by later and Halmoni tells him about going to Bong-yi’s school. He notices a childish ducky pin she’s wearing, and Halmoni says that Bong-yi made it for her as a birthday gift years ago. Ba-reum can’t believe that Bong-yi was ever that sweet, ha.

Bong-yi’s classmate’s mother is demanded a settlement payment, so Halmoni goes out looking for a job. An agent refuses to place her due to her age and her limp, but when she leaves to go to the restroom, Halmoni answers the phone and takes the job offer for herself, hee.

At Halmoni’s request, Ba-reum finds Bong-yi at the boxing gym. He fusses at her to go home and stop worrying her grandmother, but she just invites him into the ring to spar then easily tosses him to the floor. Repeatedly. LOL.

When she’s done kicking his ass, Ba-reum tells Bong-yi that Halmoni was late picking her up on the night of her attack because she fell in the rain and sprained her ankle. He reminds Bong-yi of her grandmother’s age and warns her to be good to her while she’s still here. Shyly, Ba-reum asks Bong-yi if she really wants to marry him. Instead of answering, she just calls him a jerk.

Coincidentally, the job that Halmoni swiped is a temporary housecleaning job at Yo-han’s home. Yo-han tries to get her to leave, but she insists on staying. While she’s there, Yo-han finds the small ducky pin that Halmoni wears on the floor and hands it back to her. He tells her to leave when she finishes and heads out.

Moo-chi gets a call from Shin Sang, who’s learned that Daniel spoke on the phone to Yo-han just before he left his hotel room and disappeared. Moo-chi puts together that it’s the same Sung Yo-han who is Chi-kook’s doctor. He meets with Yo-han at the hospital and asks if he knows Daniel Lee, but Yo-han just says vaguely, “Who doesn’t?”

Moo-chi calls the last number that Daniel called, and Yo-han’s phone rings. Yo-han claims it was a wrong number, but Moo-chi continues, asking where Yo-han was on Monday when he came to the hospital to talk to him about Chi-kook.

Yo-han says he was home sick, and when Moo-chi asks if he has an alibi for the time of Daniel’s suspected murder, he claims to have been with a friend. He writes down that “friend’s” name, Kim Joon-sung. A man at a nearby table gets up, leaving his keys behind, and the sight of the keys seems to upset Yo-han.

Detective Kang calls Ba-reum regarding Chi-kook’s finger that wasn’t able to be reattached — it’s considered evidence, so Ba-reum had asked the hospital to preserve it. Oddly, when he goes to the hospital to retrieve it, he realizes that Chi-kook recently cut that finger, but there’s no wound — it’s not Chi-kook’s finger.

Ba-reum runs into Moo-chi and tells him about the finger, and they realize two things — that Chi-kook’s finger is still out there somewhere, and that there must be another victim they haven’t yet found. Recalling that there’s a chapel at the prison, Moo-chi takes off.

Meanwhile, at Yo-han’s home, Halmoni doesn’t notice the dirty bandage that falls off her ankle. She heads to the basement to clean and finds the door locked but the key still in the lock. Ah, so that’s why those keys freaked out Yo-han… he left Halmoni alone, with this door unsecured.

He races home, but Halmoni is back upstairs. She says she’s finished and leaves, shaking and so terrified that she forgets her payment. Yo-han checks the basement door, which leads to the room that’s wallpapered with photos he’s taken of of his murder victims.

Sure enough, Halmoni stole a picture off his wall, one of the recent victim who was found with evidence from the other murders. She plans to give it to Ba-reum, to help catch the killer, but she’s unaware that the killer is following her home.

Moo-chi and his men search the prison chapel but get kicked out when it’s time for mass. Outside, Ba-reum notices a red liquid dripping from the eaves. Moo-chi climbs up and finds Chi-kook’s missing clothes arranged on the roof, with the bloody knife used to stab him piercing the chest. At the same time, Chi-kook’s finger is found — to the priest’s horror — in the chalice of sacramental wine.

Halmoni gets off the bus at Ba-reum’s building and tries to go inside, but it’s locked. She hides from Yo-han when she finally sees him, but she panics and runs, and he spots her movement. Oh no…

Back at the station, exhausted from finding Chi-kook’s uniform, Ba-reum finally checks his phone and checks a text from Halmoni. It sends him racing home at top speed, where he calls her phone and follows the ringtone to a nearby alley. Ba-reum finds Halmoni’s body lying in the alley, then he sees Yo-han lurking nearby and gives chase.

At the same time, Bong-yi has been thinking of Ba-reum’s admonishment to appreciate her grandmother while she has her. She buys a pretty pin on her way home, but when she gets to that bridge and there’s nobody to walk with her, she’s incapable of crossing it alone.

Ba-reum almost catches Yo-han several times, but Yo-han gets away when Ba-reum is hit by a car while running across the street. Ba-reum lies dazed, but he sees Yo-han’s shoes in the crowd out of the corner of his eye. He can’t quite see Yo-han’s face clearly before the murderer turns and walks away.

 
COMMENTS

Finally, some Lee Seung-gi for me! And I already love his character here — he’s so sweet and innocent, honest and upstanding, and so caring of others. At first I was worried he would be hiding his possible psychopathy behind a façade, but Ba-reum does genuinely seem to be a good guy. Right now my theory is that he’s the son of the pregnant woman Ji-eun met outside Daniel’s office, since it seems pretty clear that Yo-han is the former Jae-hoon, Ji-eun and Seo-joon’s son and the current murderer. And I’ll confess I don’t really understand how the genetic test is supposed to work (if Ba-reum has the gene, as we’re assuming, and he’s not a psychopath, then is he a genius? Because he seems pretty normal). But I love the show so far despite a lot that doesn’t exactly add up, and it’s otherwise so good that I’m wondering if what seem like plot holes are actually clues to some deeper truth of what’s happening.

I find Moo-chi and Moo-won to be very interesting as adults as well… for brothers who were once willing to fight and die for each other, to be so estranged now, is hard to watch. Moo-chi is obviously and understandably carrying around a lot of anger and pain, having witnessed his parents murdered horrifically, his brother permanently injured, and knowing that Seo-joon hasn’t been served his own death as promised. And on top of all that, Moo-won forgives him. It seems clear to me that Moo-chi has a lot of survivor’s guilt, and much of his reckless behavior could be from a desire to be injured or killed himself, just to even out the score. And something about Moo-won himself seems odd to me, plus the church connection and the fact that Moo-won’s hand has a permanently pointing finger both seem too reminiscent of the victims’ poses (pointing to the cross) to be a coincidence.

Another strange thing is Hong-joo’s connection to Seo-joon/the Head Hunter. She’s clearly the child who helped him catch Soo-ho’s sister all those years ago, but how? How did Hong-joo become connected to a murderer to the point that she knowingly aided him in procuring a victim, and has she ever told anyone the truth? I’m guessing it’s a big part of why she so doggedly pursues criminals now, but it’s interesting that she became a reporter and TV personality, and not a detective herself. I’m very curious about Hong-joo and the secrets she’s obviously keeping very close to the vest.

Despite the show seemingly dispensing all kinds of information about the past and present murders, I feel like it’s way too soon to know everything about Yo-han, Ba-reum, and their backgrounds. They both supposedly have the psychopath/genius gene… while Yo-han is Ji-eun’s son, Ba-reum is likely to be the other mother’s son, the one whose husband was a good, kind man. Yo-han apparently takes after his father, Seo-joon, and became a killer, while Ba-reum is a chip off his father’s caring, soft-hearted block. But it just seems too perfect, and as @selena said, we’re only a few hours into a very, very long drama… I’m expecting some major twists.

RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Mouse
• Lee Hee-joon on the hunt with Lee Seung-gi in new teaser for tvN’s Mouse
• tvN’s Mouse releases second teaser featuring Lee Seung-gi, Lee Hee-joon
• Lee Hee-joon, Kyung Su-jin, Park Joo-hyun to join Lee Seung-gi for tvN’s Mouse
• Lee Seung-gi becomes rookie cop for tvN drama Mouse