Showtime Begins: Episodes 7-8

by mistyisles

As the killer moves ever closer to our leads, the past starts to bleed into the present. But in murder, as in magic, things aren’t always as they seem…

 
EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP

In the wake of their newly established partnership, both Seul-hae and Cha-woong firmly deny they have any romantic feelings for each other. But they deny it a bit too firmly, if you ask me.

Case in point: Cha-woong cancels an advertisement shoot so he can attend a civil police unit activity. Then he agonizes over what to wear, eventually opting for an expensive Italian suit. Not optimal for lugging rice bags up a hill. But Cha-woong does try, even if he’s rather lacking in the brawn category.

Afterwards, they all gather at the shop owned by the civil police unit head, YOON MIN-SOOK (Jung Young-joo), and Cha-woong slowly lets down his inhibitions. It starts with the makgeolli Seul-hae convinces him to try – of which he downs bottle after bottle like it’s the best thing he’s tasted in his life.

That gets him wildly drunk, and he actually has fun entertaining everyone with simple magic tricks, and then shares a heart-to-heart with Seul-hae and Min-sook about their respective family tragedies. Watching him, the ladies agree that while he may be rough around the edges, he’s a good guy at heart.

As Seul-hae walks him home, she realizes this is the first time she’s seen him so smiley. But when she repeats Min-sook’s words about him having difficulty showing love, he denies it, looking into her eyes with supercharged seriousness.

We aren’t told everything that happens between that moment and her carrying him home on her back, but the way she gets flustered the next day when he claims not to remember anything is certainly suspicious.

Meanwhile, the General has figured out who Cha-woong and Seul-hae were in their past lives 2,000 years ago. We get flashes of it throughout this week’s episodes: they were lovers, tragically parted. Cha-woong’s past-self appears to have had supernatural powers, and Seul-hae’s past-self died in front of him – allegedly because of him – though the details are still kept unclear.

The realization changes everything for the General. All this time, he’s believed his task was to pay for his misdeeds by catching evil spirits, but now he realizes he’s supposed to right the wrong that separated Cha-wong and Seul-hae – which he also believes to be his fault.

So the General enlists the ghosts to help him convince Cha-woong to pursue Seul-hae romantically. Their advice on how to do so ranges from getting plastic surgery (so he’ll look pathetically ugly and she’ll feel so sorry for him, she’ll just have to take care of him) to taking her on virtual reality dates.

Cha-woong decides to try the easiest suggestion: taking a page from Hee-soo’s book by repeating the last line of Seul-hae’s sentences to show he’s listening. That’s the theory of it, anyway, but in practice, Cha-woong just comes off sounding annoyed and vaguely threatening.

Amidst all this, we also get a little more insight into the Full Moon Killer. He was once an ordinary human, but was possessed by an evil spirit after mugging someone. And surprise! That evil spirit was also once a human – and another major player in the conflict that got our leads killed 2,000 years ago.

Every so often, the man who became the Full Moon Killer comes back to himself and is horrified by what the spirit has caused him to do. But those moments of clarity never last long, and he continues on a murder spree, literally sucking the life out of people who have the same kind of channel to heaven that Seul-hae does.

And let me just say, Ahn Chang-hwan is doing a phenomenal job of being horrifically creepy, even just through the freakish ways he moves and contorts his body. *shudder*

No pair of Showtime Begins! episodes are complete without a murder case, and this one hits close to home: it’s Min-sook, head of the civil police unit. She also has one of those special channels to heaven, which the Full Moon Killer spots when he ventures into her shop.

Contrary to Cha-woong’s cynical belief that most people are only out to satisfy their own greed, Min-sook is a genuinely awesome lady. She runs an orphanage, and truly loves each child as if they were her own, and she heads up the civil police unit with warmth, authority, and fairness.

She even I want to speak to your managers the grim reaper himself when he comes to collect her soul, not ready to give up her life’s work just yet.

As Cha-woong and Seul-hae hunt for evidence to bring Min-sook’s attacker to justice, they realize that the culprit used the classic magician technique of misdirection to make himself look innocent and put all the focus on someone else…

…And that’s exactly what the show does to us, because the Full Moon Killer didn’t kill her. It was actually her seemingly heart-of-gold husband. Who giggles about it.

Technically, Min-sook isn’t dead yet, just in a coma, but her soul is able to move around outside her body and explain everything to Cha-woong. Her husband schemes to sell off her orphanage land for profit as soon as she draws her last breath, and Seul-hae and Cha-woong will have to move fast to apprehend him before the impatient grim reaper takes her soul away.

With a little help from the General (who was best friends with the reaper when they were both still alive) and the ghosts, they buy enough time to lure Min-sook’s husband and his accomplice into a trap.

Once again, Hee-soo bursts in and interrupts the whole plan, and in the chase that ensues, Min-sook’s husband ends up falling from the roof and plummeting to the street below.

We know what has to come next now that justice has been served, and it’s truly touching to see Min-sook make peace with what she’s accomplished and what she has to leave unfinished.

But there’s one twist left: the name on the reaper’s card is no longer hers, but her husband’s. Her fate has been changed due to countless petitions on her behalf by the people whose lives she’s impacted for the better.

I appreciated this switch-up for several reasons. First, not only did it fit with the theme of misdirection, but it also just felt so satisfying to see a good person get another chance to keep making the world a better place.

It also broke the pattern of each week introducing a beautiful soul, them dying, and them departing in peace once their death has been avenged. Letting Min-sook live creates a turning point (and halfway through the show at that), offering a ray of hope not only to us viewers, but also to our leads – especially Cha-woong.

As a result, he’s starting to see that there really are genuinely good people in the world, and they are worth getting to know – and that putting in effort to help them can actually make a difference.

 
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