Bad and Crazy: Episode 8

by solstices

A tragic case steers our hero towards the demons of the past that he’s been trying to keep at bay. Faced with circumstances that are unsettlingly familiar, he’s forced to grapple with his turbulent emotions that threaten to spill over.

 
EPISODE 8 RECAP

In the hallway of his memories, Soo-yeol curls in on himself, tormented by flashes of the past. K approaches, eyebrows furrowed in what seems like sympathy, and holds out a hand for Soo-yeol to take.

Soo-yeol does, and then he jerks awake in Geun-tak’s chair. Geun-tak chastises him for running amok in his hypnotized state, warning him that triggering his trauma could be dangerous. Still disoriented, Soo-yeol asks blearily why K appeared in his subconscious, and Geun-tak theorizes that K could be linked to Soo-yeol’s childhood memories.

On the drive home, K shows up in Soo-yeol’s car, reassuring him that things can’t go that badly. Attempting to find out more about the gap in his memories, Soo-yeol asks K whether he recalls anything from before or after his father’s death, but K draws a blank — all he can think of now is Hee-gyeom, ha. That makes Soo-yeol remember the passionate kiss he shared with Hee-gyeom, causing his cheeks to redden.

A girl in a yellow raincoat trudges down a dirt road, eventually approaching the police station. When we see her face, it’s bruised and blood-spattered, and she says in a small voice, “My father is dead. Did I kill him?”

With that, she collapses to the floor in a faint, and the police officers rush to check on her. Next to her prone body lies a bloodstained packet of the drug Pupil.

Now that the narcotics team is in shambles after Gye-shik and Chan-ki’s arrest, Bong-pil orders Soo-yeol to investigate Pupil and arrest Andrei with the help of Hee-gyeom. She’s been temporarily assigned to the anti-corruption team as backup, to Soo-yeol’s dismay.

Hee-gyeom and Soo-yeol’s car ride is an awkward one, with K eyeing them suspiciously in the backseat as they skirt around the events of that night. Once they get out of the car and Soo-yeol has a moment alone, K grabs the back of his collar and warns that heroes go all out in justice and love, HAHA.

At the former cop Baek Jung-hak’s house, Soo-yeol’s stunned to realize that the murder victim was the same cop that he and Jae-sun had arrested in the past. Hee-gyeom notices something odd about the house — there’s no trace of the daughter Young-joo’s items, only the victim’s.

Returning to the station, Hee-gyeom interrogates Young-joo, but she can’t remember anything about her father’s death or how the drugs came to be in her possession. In the observation room, Kyung-tae comments that the daughter’s homeroom teacher once filed a report of possible domestic abuse, wondering if that could form a possible motive.

In a flashback, Young-joo passes a ledger over to Soo-yeol. She tells him that her father had instructed her to hide it in her school locker, then asks if her father can be arrested with this so that he won’t return home anymore.

Back in the present, Kyung-tae wonders why Young-joo didn’t run away from home, and Soo-yeol replies quite tellingly that she must have tried multiple times — only to return upon realizing that she had nowhere to go.

Soo-yeol visits Attorney Nam’s office with a gift plant in hand, in exchange for him taking up Young-joo’s case. Just then, Hee-gyeom enters the office, also with a plant of her own.

The pair end up leaving together, and Hee-gyeom explains that she felt sympathy for Young-joo and wanted her to at least have a fair trial. Tentatively, Hee-gyeom says that she heard about Soo-yeol’s history with Young-joo. She hopes he isn’t blaming himself for Young-joo’s abuse at the hands of her father.

With a tired sigh, Soo-yeol tells her that he regrets closing the case after Jung-hak was fired. Young-joo had requested them to lock her father away, but Soo-yeol had simply sent him home. If only he’d been more attentive, then perhaps he might have realized why she’d reported her own father to the police.

The next day, Kyung-tae and Jae-sun are at the supermarket that Young-joo bought her yellow raincoat from. It’s a 40-minute drive away from her house, making Kyung-tae wonder why she went all the way there just to buy it.

At the detention center, Attorney Nam is outlining the points of the case that lie in Young-joo’s favor, but her gaze is blank and she doesn’t seem to be registering his words. When he tries to get her attention, she asks haltingly what today’s date is.

Soo-yeol rushes into the station, where the rest of the team is huddled around a desktop screen. They play a video from Jung-hak’s that’s captured his murder, and we see Young-joo advance on him and stab him unflinchingly multiple times. Then, she walks over to the laptop that’s recording the scene. As if addressing someone through the screen, she says that the job’s done, then smiles in relief as she says that she feels like she’s finally opening her eyes.

Jae-sun informs Soo-yeol that the file was found on Young-joo’s laptop. Hee-gyeom speculates that Young-joo recorded it to send to someone, possibly an accomplice. Building upon that, Kyung-tae asks if Young-joo could have gotten Pupil through that accomplice.

Just then, a call comes in, and Kyung-tae reacts in shock to the news on the other end of the line. It turns out that after staying silent for days, Young-joo met with Attorney Nam and even held a conversation with the nurses today, but subsequently broke a window and slit her wrist.

Soo-yeol heads to Geun-tak’s office to get him to watch Young-joo’s video, in an attempt to understand her thought process. Out of options, Soo-yeol suddenly turns to K and frantically urges him to put “that” down, exclaiming that Geun-tak could die if he hits him with it. Hilariously, K isn’t holding anything, and he stares at Soo-yeol dumbfoundedly.

That’s enough to scare Geun-tak into complying, and after watching the video, he tells Soo-yeol that it could be gaslighting. He explains that people with extremely low self-esteem, stemming from abuse or a lack of affection in childhood, are easy targets. These victims often lose their judgment and grasp on reality, leading them to believe that their gaslighter’s desires are their own.

Soo-yeol’s stunned that someone could manipulate another person to commit murder, and Geun-tak advises him to find the person that Young-joo relies on the most.

At Young-joo’s school, a teacher tells Soo-yeol that Young-joo didn’t really have friends. Soo-yeol asks if there was a teacher that Young-joo admired or was close to, but the teacher deflects by asking if Young-joo named her. She says that Young-joo once ran away from home together with a school bully named Ga-young.

As they walk down the hallway, K wonders if the gaslighter made Young-joo wear the yellow raincoat. Just then, a man stumbles out of an apartment, clearly drunk. The apartment door opens to reveal a group of friends, all similarly drunk, and when one of them tries to get aggressive with Soo-yeol, K decides to take over.

At the station, Kyung-tae gives a briefing on Young-joo’s movements on the day of the incident. He’s realized that she took more time than was necessary to return to the bus stop after buying the raincoat, making it likely that she went all the way there to meet someone.

Back at the apartment, the friends are all kneeling docilely in front of a smug K. Amongst them is Ga-young, who protests that she’s not friends with Young-joo. K intimidates them all over again, getting them to describe Young-joo in turn until Ga-young blurts out, “Mental hospital!”

Soo-yeol asks her what she means, and Ga-young explains that their homeroom teacher once dragged Young-joo to a mental hospital. Soo-yeol calls the teacher, who explains that she’d brought Young-joo to a therapist at a youth shelter, not a mental hospital. The therapist was Shin Joo-hyuk — the very same one that Soo-yeol is currently seeing.

She tells Soo-yeol that Young-joo looked up to Joo-hyuk a lot, and even began going to the shelter on her own to see him. Soo-yeol receives phone calls from Hee-gyeom and Jae-sun, who tell him that Young-joo received a visit from Joo-hyuk prior to her attempted suicide, and that the person Young-joo met before buying the yellow raincoat was also Joo-hyuk.

Incensed, Soo-yeol confronts Joo-hyuk in his office that very night, pointedly describing the case in veiled accusations. Perplexed, Joo-hyuk asks if he’s talking about Young-joo, and Soo-yeol demands to know why Joo-hyuk met Young-joo the day of the murder as well as her suicide attempt.

That’s news to Joo-hyuk, who didn’t know Young-joo had tried to kill herself. Soo-yeol scoffs, furious that Joo-hyuk took advantage of Young-joo’s trust in him. Joo-hyuk’s genuinely clueless, though, and he plays a video of one of Young-joo’s sessions for Soo-yeol to watch.

In it, Young-joo is reticent and refuses to tell Joo-hyuk anything. She says that she knows he’ll eventually abandon her and send her back home anyway. Dropping the honorifics, she tells him to keep his mouth shut and mind his own business, then leaves without looking back.

Turning to Soo-yeol, Joo-hyuk asks why the accomplice made Young-joo record the video, and why they intentionally exposed it. If Young-joo had truly been gaslighted, then it would’ve been easy to make her destroy the video.

Soo-yeol doesn’t have an answer to that, and Joo-hyuk slowly realizes something. He asks if Soo-yeol might have experienced something similar to Young-joo, and if that might be the reason why he avoided talking about his childhood. Growing defensive, Soo-yeol asks why Joo-hyuk’s shifting the topic to him, and Joo-hyuk says that Soo-yeol’s getting too worked up. Soo-yeol counters that he’s still suspicious of Joo-hyuk, since his explanation is too logical and airtight.

Soo-yeol visits Young-joo in the hospital. He asks if she knows what she did, and she ekes out that she killed her father. Next, he asks who gave her the drug Pupil, and she responds that “that person” helped her open her eyes. Now, everything will be fine.

She falls into a daze after that, though, and doesn’t respond to Soo-yeol’s questions about the person’s identity. Worked up, Soo-yeol urges her to tell him so they can help her. She turns to face him, then asks what the date is, to his exasperation.

Back at home, Soo-yeol’s troubled by Joo-hyuk’s words. Hesitantly, he asks his mother what he was like when they first found him, abandoned in an alleyway. Dong-yeol recalls that Soo-yeol’s real name was Jae-hee, then says that he was bruised and bloody, causing Soo-yeol’s expression to turn troubled.

The next day, Soo-yeol drives out to his old house. Inside, he’s hit with a flashback of a beating he suffered at the hands of his father. He turns around, coming face-to-face with his younger self, who takes off running.

Soo-yeol gives chase, but he’s suddenly hit with a migraine, and then he’s transported back into the hallway of his subconscious. At the end of it is a door, but just as he’s about to open it, K grabs his hand to stop him.

Telling him not to open the door, K starts to pull Soo-yeol away, but Soo-yeol shakes his arm free. Asking if K knows something he doesn’t, Soo-yeol attempts to open the door again, but K blocks the door. Shoving him out of the way, Soo-yeol flings the door open, and he suddenly finds himself back in reality and all alone.

Elsewhere, Dong-yeol pulls his mother out of a card game with her friends, chastising her for gambling money away. In response, she tells him that she has Alzheimer’s, and that she was playing cards because she heard it helps. She instructs him not to tell Soo-yeol because he already has enough on his plate.

Young-joo escapes from the hospital, sending our team into a frenzy. Just then, Joo-hyuk calls Soo-yeol to tell him something he’s realized. Perhaps it could be like a game — the person who’s controlling Young-joo could be trying to convey some sort of message through the video they made Young-joo record.

Just then, Young-joo steps into Joo-hyuk’s office. All Soo-yeol can hear is Joo-hyuk’s pleas to Young-joo to “put that down”, but it’s to no avail when she stabs him. By the time Soo-yeol rushes to the scene, Young-joo is long gone, but there’s a location marker left on Joo-hyuk’s computer.

Heading over to the location, Soo-yeol finds Young-joo sitting in the shadows. She asks him if he’s ever experienced feeling disgusted at the sight of something, like maggots in the summer. She’s always felt that way about herself, she says, contemplating the knife in her hand.

Soo-yeol asks why she stabbed Joo-hyuk, to which she responds that he keeps looking in the wrong places and at the wrong people, so “that person” is angry. Coaxing her to put the knife down, Soo-yeol promises that he’ll catch the person who manipulated her. Yet again, she dazedly asks what the date is today, and he replies that it’s the 2nd of October.

With a small, relieved smile, she murmurs that it’s time, then stabs herself in the neck. Soo-yeol rushes to her, but she’s already dying in his arms.

The next day, Soo-yeol meets Joo-hyuk as he’s discharged from the hospital. He tells him that neither the murder of Jung-hak nor Young-joo’s suicide were the end goal. Rather, he thinks someone is toying with him. The place he found Young-joo at before she killed herself was the house he used to live in as a kid. Soo-yeol doesn’t know who the gaslighter could be or why they’re doing this, so Joo-hyuk offers to help Soo-yeol, for Young-joo’s sake. He tells Soo-yeol that he’s stronger than he thinks he is, urging him to believe in himself.

At the station, Kyung-tae hands Soo-yeol the ID and password to Young-joo’s dark web account. Upon logging in, a chat window opens, and a user named X tells him that it’s been a long time and that they’ll meet soon. Soo-yeol asks who X is, and in response X tells him, “Look forward to it, Jae-hee.”

Stunned that X knows his real name, Soo-yeol reels in shock.

COMMENTS

Gosh, my heart hurts for Young-joo. It’s such a tragic tale of a young, tormented soul who was ultimately failed by the adults around her. My heart breaks to think that it was an entirely avoidable tragedy, if only someone had noticed the signs sooner. It’s awful that she was essentially turned into a pawn in someone’s game, and so chilling to realize from her repeated questions about the date that her suicide had been premeditated from the very beginning.

It was clear that Soo-yeol saw his past self in Young-joo, and it’s likely that his desperation stemmed from an unconscious desire to give her the help that he never had the chance to receive. He’s so firmly in denial about his past that he refuses to show even the slightest hint of vulnerability around others, so I’m glad that his teammates are beginning to catch on and show concern towards him. Once the tightly-woven knot of his repressed memories begins to unfurl, it’s going to shake the tenuous foundation that he’s built his new life upon, and I really hope that his friends will be there to catch him when he falls.

One interesting detail to note is that the room number on the door at the end of Soo-yeol’s mind hallway was 1002, which could signify October 2, the same day that Young-joo committed suicide. I suspect that the gaslighter made her kill herself at the same place and on the same day that Soo-yeol’s father (or someone else dear to Soo-yeol) died, which means the gaslighter knows way more about Soo-yeol than he’d expect. That’s a terrifying notion, which makes it feel all the more like Soo-yeol is a marionette on a puppeteer’s strings.

Given that Young-joo was under the influence of Pupil, which originates from Boss Yong’s drug ring, I wonder if there’s some past connection between Boss Yong and Soo-yeol. I’m normally not a fan of such convenient coincidences, but if this gives us more of Boss Yong’s backstory, I’m all for it. She’s so blasé and ruthless, yet she still seems so human under her dispassionate exterior. I’m so curious as to what her true motivations are, since she doesn’t seem like someone who would be doing all this purely for money or power. This also sets her apart from the previous villains of the drama, which should make for a layered and gripping confrontation once she and Soo-yeol finally meet.

The sudden introduction of Joo-hyuk, though, does give me pause. Adding a character this late in the game only serves to cast even more suspicion on him, especially with all the connections he seems to have to Soo-yeol’s past. It’s already been hinted that Soo-yeol has a past connection to the youth shelter, which means that Joo-hyuk could presumably have access to Soo-yeol’s history. If he’s truly the mastermind, then he’d likely also be smart enough to manipulate Young-joo into stabbing him so as to appear like a victim and remove himself from the suspect list. I really do hope that he’s as innocent as he’s making himself out to be, though, because I’m tired of lackluster and predictable villains. Give the spotlight to Boss Yong, stat!

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