Inspector Koo: Episode 2

by DaebakGrits

Our intrepid investigator struggles to convince those around her that the deaths she has encountered are no mere accidents. Though it will be difficult to prove the deaths are all connected, a mysterious benefactor may prove to be just the ally she needs right now.

 
EPISODE 2 RECAP

Kyung observes a stage production of Hansel and Gretel from the audience, but as the child actors deliver their lines, the scene switches to the night Kyung-yi tracked down Kim Min-gyu. Kyung is in the woods with a pair of binoculars, observing Min-gyu’s progress as he follows the markers through the woods.

Kyung ominously quotes lines from the children’s play as Min-gyu scurries through the door leading down into the sewer system, and she gleefully pushes a boulder down the hill, triggering a small rock slide that traps him inside.

While Kyung-yi tries to dig Min-gyu out, Kyung visits Min-gyu’s former hiding place and retrieves the items tying her to the murder. She releases the valve on a propane tank, and opens the spout of a water jug so it will trickle down onto a surge protector. As she leaves, she flips the breaker and ignites a spark that blows the building up. She drives back to the city with the top down on her convertible, visibly enjoying the cool night air and her successful kill.

The next day, Kyung-yi and Santa watch the police investigate the site of the explosion. Kyung-yi calls Je-hee and tells her to come down and assist with the case. The situation is bigger than she’d originally thought.

At a remote restaurant in the woods, YONG SOOK (Kim Hae-sook) is so engrossed in a news report about Min-gyu’s death, which has been ruled an accident, that she’s spooked when her right-hand man MR. KIM (Jung Suk-yong) arrives and reaches for her water bottle. She scolds him for startling her, but she softens when realizes he’s miserably sweaty. They discuss the circumstances of Min-gyu’s death, and Sook asks about Kyung-yi. Mr. Kim reports that she is a former police officer who occasionally works as an investigator for NT Life Insurance, and when he tells her Kyung-yi’s time of birth, Sook decides that they will get along well with each other. Mr. Kim says that they should be cautious, but something about Min-gyu’s death has made Sook so terrified she’s unable to sleep at night.

A commercial for Pureun Children’s Foundation follows the news report, and Sook halts the conversation to watch as she appears on the screen next to an attractive young man who identifies himself as HEO HYUN-TAE (Park Ji-bin), the honorary ambassador for the charity. Sook and the restaurant proprietor both fawn over Hyun-tae’s adorableness.

Kyung arrives home and notices an extra pair of heels by the front door. Her aunt, Jung-yeon (Bae Hae-sun), is sleeping on the sofa. When she wakes up, Jung-yeon worries that Kyung had a nightmare, but Kyung lies that she went out drinking with her colleagues and stopped at a nearby cafe to sober up before coming home. Jung-yeon sniffs Kyung, and decides her musty smell matches her alibi, but after shooing her niece towards the bathroom, she notices the mud on Kyung’ boots.

Kyung soaks in a bubble bath and loudly hums along with “Ode to Joy,” which triggers an epiphany. She prematurely ends her bath to retrieve a box under her bed filled with mementos from high school. She powers on an old cell phone and searches through the photographs until she finds a photo taken on Shadow Day, the day Kyung-yi visited Kyung’s school. She recognizes Kyung-yi from the night before.

Alone in a police interrogation room, Kyung-yi talks herself through the details of the case. Despite the police’s ruling, she knows Min-gyu’s death was not an accident because the killer took the time to blow up Min-gyu’s hiding spot and destroy evidence. Perhaps the killer did it to protect Jae-young, Min-gyu’s wife, but that doesn’t explain the other recent deaths in town.

Finally acknowledging the police officer who’d entered the room, she asks about the connection between the other deaths. The officer insists that they are all coincidences, but when she probes about Lee Joon-hyun, the boy who’d died on the boat during the yacht party (which was a company dinner), the police officer is silent as he recalls his initial suspicions about the conveniently broken security camera and lack of witnesses. In the present, though, he calls the boy a troublemaker and declares Joon-hyun’s death an unrelated drunken accident.

Unable to make a breakthrough on the case, Kyung-yi tries to drink her way to enlightenment. She dips a tea bag into her cup, explaining to Santa that it makes the liquor taste like whiskey. She waves the concoction under his nose, but he’s such a light-weight that one whiff makes him pass out at the table. She pours another glass and presents it to the empty seat across from her, asking the late Joon-hyun to tell her who murdered him.

At the columbarium housing Joon-hyun’s remains, Kyung-soo hands Je-hee the belongings he retrieved from Joon-hyun’s landlord. She goes through Joon-hyun’s cell phone and deduces he was a loner with a lot of debt, but Kyung-soo notices that someone lit a candle at the columbarium for him. After searching through the guestbook, they discover that the person was Jae-young.

Kyung-yi blackmails Jae-young into talking to her, threatening to tell the police she was her husband’s accomplice and prevent her from receiving an insurance payout. Reluctantly, Jae-young reveals that she was initially against her husband’s idea to fake his death, but he promised that they would run off together with the insurance money and lead a happier life with their daughter. But then he gave into his sexual desires and almost ruined everything. Kyung-yi knows Jae-young isn’t meticulous enough to have blown up the hideout and cover up her involvement, so she wants to know the identity of her accomplice.

In the past, the night the police called Jae-young to tell her that her husband’s phone had been turned on, an anonymous number had sent Jae-young a video of her husband getting frisky with the hooker. She confronts Min-gyu and smashes his phone so he can’t use it again. He angrily shoves her to the ground. After her confrontation with Min-gyu, Jae-young receives a call from a restricted number. The caller asks if she knows what happened at her husband’s company dinner party and tells her to not feel guilty if he dies. The caller later instructs Jae-young to tell Min-gyu to follow the marks in the woods if he is ever close to being caught.

Back in the present, Jae-young claims she didn’t want her husband to die, but Kyung-yi doesn’t believe her. Jae-young slaps Kyung-yi and accuses her of not understanding how she feels, but a short flashback shows Kyung-yi seated across from her husband, telling him that she doesn’t know who he is anymore.

As Santa drives Kyung-yi back to the city, she imagines being on the boat the night of the company party, observing as Min-gyu and his coworkers stand around and fail to rescue the drowning Joon-hyun. Then she imagines walking through a series of theater sets, and each of the murders plays out like a stage performance with Kyung-yi starring as the mysterious killer tying them all together.

Who could have done it?

In front of an audience of elementary school kids, Kyung plays the role of a tree that warns Hansel and Gretel to not go into the witch’s house. Her poor performance causes the children to cry, and at lunch she’s ostracized by her fellow cast members who tell her she will be in charge of lighting for their next production. She’s overly excited to have a role — any role — with the theater troupe and offers to pay for everyone’s meal.

Kyung and GEON-WOOK (Lee Hong-nae) arrive separately at their hideout by the river. She calls him a thief and a stranger when she sees him holding a wine bottle, but he denies that he’s drinking again. She asks if the news has reported on Min-gyu’s death, and Geon-wook confirms that it has been ruled an accident.

While Geon-wook wipes the fingerprints off the items Kyung removed from Min-gyu’s hideout, she compliments herself on her successful kill. Geon-wook asks if she encountered any complications, and she brings up JANG SUNG-WOO (Choi Young-joon), her old high school drama teacher. Geon-wook remembers him, adding that he’d heard a rumor that the teacher had killed himself. Kyung wasn’t aware that he’d committed suicide, but she reveals that his wife is now an insurance investigator and a witness to Min-gyu’s murder.

Geon-wook is uneasy that a former cop is snooping around Min-gyu’s murder, so he tells Kyung to kill her if she digs too deep. Although Kyung claims she’s not interested in killing Kyung-yi, she’s also disappointed that there is no one left to kill. While Kyung is distracted by her thoughts of murder, Geon-wook discretely goes through his text messages and stops at a text from Joon-hyun that reads “I miss you.” He deletes the contact from his phone.

At dusk, Geon-wook paddles out to the middle of the river and dumps the duffle bag of items related to Min-gyu’s murder into the water. Meanwhile, Kyung returns her copy of Hansel and Gretel to her bookshelf.

Kyung-yi’s legs are asleep from playing video games too long, so she collapses to the floor when she tries to retrieve a beer from the refrigerator. Je-hee let’s herself inside the apartment and helps herself to a beer, ignoring Kyung-yi’s outstretched hand and pleas for alcohol. Je-hee suspects she’s going to be fired because of a poor performance evaluation since they couldn’t rule Min-gyu’s death a suicide and had to pay his widow.

Je-hee hands Kyung-yi her beer, and once Kyung-yi has refueled, she reveals that Min-gyu’s death was a homicide. Je-hee points out all the reasons it’s unlikely to be a murder, but Kyung-yi argues that’s why the situation is especially scary: the killer was successful at making it look like an accident.

Je-hee reminds Kyung-yi that she asked Je-hee to stop her if she ever spiraled out of control and started suspecting groundless things. Kyung-yi sobers as her mind flashes to her husband’s funeral, and she retreats back into her video games.

In the past, Sung-woo stops teenage Kyung as she’s leaving school and asks if she said goodbye to her friends. Kyung admits she skipped the tearful farewells because it was too much of a hassle, especially since she never planned on seeing them again. He advises her to not try so hard at her next school. He could tell that she was pretending to be someone she’s not when she was with her friends, so it’s better for her to be herself and make at least one true friend she’s comfortable around.

Kyung comments that Sung-woo’s wife doesn’t appear to be that person for him, and he compliments her keen eye, admitting that he and Kyung-yi are complete opposites. Kyung pauses when she hears his wife’s name, and Sung-woo laughs that their names are the same but backwards (Kyung’s full name being Yi-kyung).

In the present, Kyung meets up with her old classmate Young-ju, who is visibly uncomfortable and in a hurry to leave. She rushes to explain the circumstances surrounding Sung-woo’s suicide. It all began when their classmate Han-gyeol drowned in the reservoir.

Her death was ruled an accident, but no one believed it because someone saw Sung-woo with Han-gyeol the day she died. Rumors spread that the two of them were secretly dating, and everyone suspected that his wife, a police officer, helped cover up any evidence of murder. Completely humiliated by the rumors, Sung-woo killed himself.

Kyung asks if he left a suicide note, but Young-ju claims there wasn’t one, adding that Kyung-yi tried desperately to prove her husband’s innocence before she quit being a police officer. Maybe, Kyung speculates with an exaggerated shiver, she was trying to find evidence that he was actually guilty, and if that’s the case, someone should have killed him before he committed suicide.

“Why should he be alive when Han-gyeol’s dead?” she asks, stabbing her steak with a knife and frightening Young-ju, who remembers saying something similar to Kyung about the janitor who killed the kittens. Young-ju tries to leave, but her hesitation to exchange phone numbers prompts Kyung to ask Young-ju if she still thinks Kyung was the one who put the mice in her backpack during high school. Young-ju drops to her knees in the middle of the restaurant and begs Kyung to leave her alone.

Kyung-yi is about to call it a night when her gaming friend MelonMusk expresses suicidal thoughts, revealing she’s deep in debt and her family is ashamed of her. Kyung-yi and Santa scour the internet for information, and when they find a home address, Santa keeps MelonMusk talking while Kyung-yi runs to the gamer’s rooftop apartment. Kyung-yi lies that she’s a delivery person and forces her way inside when MelonMusk opens the door. They fight over the poisoned drink, and MelonMusk asks Kyung-yi to give her one reason to live.

Beyond being good at video games, Kyung-yi can’t think of a reason, so MelonMusk snatches back the poison. Kyung-yi kicks it out of MelonMusk’s hand, so MelonMusk runs outside to the edge of the roof and threatens to jump instead. Having injured her back and lost the energy to fight, Kyung-yi sits on the edge of the roof and forlornly agrees that they don’t have a reason to live.

MelonMusk listens in confusion as Kyung-yi reveals that she’s a former police officer whose suspicion of her husband led to his death. Even now she’s curious if he was the real culprit and wishes that he told her the truth before he died. MelonMusk awkwardly agrees that Kyung-yi is an awful person, and Kyung-yi agrees she should die. Kyung-yi leans back and falls off the edge of the building… and lands safely in the back of a dump truck.

While Kyung-yi is being whisked off to a landfill, Kyung dances at a nightclub. Everyone is giving her a wide berth as she dances wildly by herself, the beat of the music punctuated by intermittent flashbacks of Young-ju rubbing her hands together as she begs Kyung to leave her alone.

Kyung-yi pops up from a mound of trash like a gopher, startling the landfill worker. She flags down a taxi, but as a sketchy looking van pulls up behind them in traffic, Kyung-yi realizes she never told the driver her destination. The driver, who’s actually Mr. Kim, hits the brakes, and the black van drops off two men, who shove their way into the backseat and join Kyung-yi for the rest of the ride.

The taxi drops her off in front of a public sauna, but not because she smells like a landfill. Sook is waiting for her inside, and as she emerges from a bath and towels off, Sook probes Kyung-yi about her investigation into Min-gyu’s death, suspecting Kyung-yi knows it wasn’t an accidental death. Kyung-yi confirms she finds the circumstances surrounding all the deaths suspicious, but she’s unwilling to reveal more of her thoughts without Sook explaining why she kidnapped her.

Sook wants to team up with Kyung-yi to catch the murderer. She doesn’t trust the police since they’re the ones who covered up the cases to look like accidents, and she suspects Kyung-yi will do a better job. Sook offers to provide resources and information to aid in her investigation, but Kyung-yi declines Sook’s offer to put together a team for her, preferring to work with her friends at NT Life Inspection instead. Their jobs at the insurance company will provide an excellent cover for their investigation.

As they shake hands to seal the deal, Sook warns that if word gets out Kyung-yi is investigating, “K” — Sook’s codename for the murderer — might kill her, too. Kyung-yi asks about Sook’s identity, and she responds that she’s the Pureun Children’s Foundation.

Kyung-yi arrives home, looking so rough that she scares a school teacher into hurrying her students onto a bus. The security guard at her building fails to recognize her at first, but when he does, he directs her to an equally nasty looking Santa who had spent the night looking for her dead body at the landfill.

After Santa takes a shower at her place, she uses him as a sounding board while she talks herself into accepting Sook’s offer. She decides to play a round of video games to unwind, but Santa stops her and shoves her into the bathroom. While she showers, he cleans the floor, muttering, “Just as I expected.” (So he can talk!) Kyung- yi pokes her head out of the bathroom, and he looks panicked that she overheard him speak, but instead she’s unable to remember if she’s supposed to use shampoo or conditioner first.

At NT Life Insurance, everyone blatantly gawks in the hallway as Team B packs up their office. Kyung-yi and Santa shove their way through the crowd, and Je-hee explains that their team is being disbanded due to their low performance scores. Kyung-yi can’t let that happen, so she asks Kyung-soo to bring her all of their ongoing cases.

One by one they go through the documents, and Kyung-yi helps them expose the fraudulent claims. The man swearing he injured his back after falling down some stairs is caught red-handed bending over to pick up some money Kyung-soo “accidentally” dropped, and the woman who supposedly lost her hearing is tricked into revealing she overheard Kyung-yi’s phone conversation, which led the woman to believe her son was involved in an car accident. Their final case involves a man who claimed to have never had cancer on his insurance policy, but his doctors report seeing scarring from previous surgeries.

Kyung is laying on the dock with her head dangling over the edge when Jung-yeon calls to remind her that she has a session with her counselor. At the session, Kyung reports that she hasn’t had any nightmares lately, but she complains that her aunt coddles her too much. Jung-yeon, who is sitting in on the session with her, denies it, and Kyung exchanges a playful smile with her counselor.

Jung-yeon steps away to take a call from work, but the conversation is loud enough that Kyung overhears her aunt agreeing to meet with Kyung-yi. Kyung offers to drive Jung-yeon to her appointment so that they can still go shopping together afterwards, and the counselor ends the session with the news that Kyung’s progress is good enough that she only needs counseling once every six months. After they leave, the counselor opens Kyung’s file and stares at Kyung’s photograph on a missing child poster.

Jung-yeon arrives at the hospital and asks if the patient was at the hospital because he injured himself, but he claims he’s not feeling unwell. Kyung-yi, who was secretly laying in the bed next to the patient’s, dramatically opens the curtain and asks Jung-yeon if she was aware that the patient had already had thyroid cancer when she opened the insurance policy on him. The patient claims Jung-yeon told him to not check off the box indicating he’d previously had cancer because the insurance company couldn’t check his foreign medical records.

Kyung-yi slowly elevates her hospital bed and pointedly reminds Jung-yeon that if the patient is telling the truth, then she committed insurance fraud. Kyung, who had been eavesdropping outside, enters to defend her aunt. After confirming with Kyung-yi that the evidence in the case rests solely on Jung-yeon’s statement, Kyung gives her aunt a pointed look, and Jung-yeon denies ever knowing the patient’s medical history. After hearing Jung-yeon’s statement, Kyung-soo reveals he was hiding behind another curtain and informs the patient that the insurance company will be terminating his policy.

As they walk towards the elevators, Jung-yeon worries that she will be fired. Kyung-yi assures her that the insurance company will probably be pleased that they were able to make money from the patient’s premium payments and then have a valid reason to terminate the contract before having to pay his hospital bills.

Kyung-yi pushes the button to summon an elevator and is startled when Kyung touches her hair. Kyung explains she was extracting a piece of raw meat — a parting gift from the angry not-deaf woman — and turns to leave when her aunt calls for her.

But Kyung-yi stops her with a question: Why are you pretending not to know me?

 
COMMENTS

This episode started off with a bang — literally — and I’m pretty invested in seeing how this particular cat and mouse game will play out now that we know more about our protagonist and antagonist.

On the surface, Kyung-yi appears to be an eccentric inspector with a poor work ethic and a love for video games. We’re supposed to laugh at all her exaggerated and seemingly amusing behavior… right up until we realize she’s still grappling with the grief and guilt associated with her husband’s suicide. Suddenly her poor hygiene, reclusiveness, and reliance on alcohol to function and work through complex problem solving are all the obvious symptoms of her depression and alcoholism. She’s a woman barely holding herself together, and we see just how close to the edge she is when she literally performs a backwards dive off a building in order to discourage someone else from committing suicide.

On the other side of the coin is Kyung, our killer who seemingly has it all: good looks, a swanky apartment, a sporty little convertible, and a loving aunt. And yet, she’s depicted as being someone who is alone even in a crowd. But how much of her isolation is intentional? She’s spent her whole life pretending to be “normal.” While some people aren’t fooled and can see when she isn’t being genuine, we know she’s at least talented enough to be a tree in a children’s play, which means she carefully crafted the persona of a floundering actress who’s woefully ignorant that her coworkers don’t want her around. It’s a game for her to see how much she can annoy them before they crack and stop being “nice” to her.

The use of stage productions in this episode was not only some of the best visual story-telling I’ve seen in a drama, but it mirrored Kyung’s killing style. She enjoys the thrill of manipulating people and getting them to perform in predictable ways. It’s like she’s written a script, and her victims are obligated to follow her stage directions to their deaths. She also seemingly has a code of ethics, killing only those who “deserve” to die, and if she was kidnapped during her time as a missing child, it likely explains her need to avenge the victims of other crimes.

This episode also introduced a few interesting secondary characters, among them the mysterious Sook. Given that she’s aware of Kyung/K’s existence and is afraid of her, I suspect she may have had something to do with Lee Joon-hyun’s death and wants to identify K before she realizes Sook was involved and adds her name to the list of retribution killings. As a huge fan of actress Kim Hae-sook, I’m enjoying this low-key gangster vibe she has going on, and part of me hopes the character has an evil streak just so I can see Kim Hae-sook deviate from her usual wholesome grandma image.

I find Geon-wook to be a bit of an anomaly, though. Given the complexity of her murders, it’s understandable that Kyung might need an accomplice, but it doesn’t jive with her voluntarily solo lifestyle, in my opinion. Perhaps we’re supposed to believe she has found the one who truly understands her, but I don’t think that’s the case. Geon-wook doesn’t respond well to Kyung’s brand of humor, and he’s a bit too cavalier with his suggestion that Kyung should kill Kyung-yi, indicating he doesn’t fully understand Kyung’s personal ethics. So is he a long-term sidekick, as hinted by his knowledge of Kyung’s high school teacher, or is his involvement with Kyung unique to this particular case due to his hinted history with Lee Joon-hyun?

The end of this episode sets us up to believe Kyung-yi remembers Kyung from the janitor’s attempted murder. I’m hoping we will see more flashbacks to Kyung-yi’s investigation of that case next week. In order to understand and appreciate Kyung-yi’s personal struggle following her husband’s suicide, I want to see more of the woman she was before his death.

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