The First Responders: Episodes 2-3

by quirkycase

Our joint response team starts learning how to work together and manage their differences. There’s no shortage of emergencies for them to handle, keeping them busy and exhausted. But not every situation gets a happy ending, and our team members have to live with the sometimes dire consequences of their decisions.

 
EPISODES 2-3 WEECAP

Some of the ice starts to thaw between Ho-gae and his new coworkers Seol and Do-jin, although they still butt heads over their competing priorities. Do-jin and Seol are all about the victims and patients. Ho-gae, on the other hand, prioritizes solving the crime and gets frustrated when Seol and Do-jin trample all over his crime scene in their rush to treat victims.

Despite Ho-gae’s callous demeanor, he’s not immune to victims’ pain. It seems more like he’s laser-focused on solving the crime because it’s the only way he knows how to help. Seol, in particular, looks like she’s warming to him a bit after watching him work; at the very least, she finds him equal parts annoying and amusing.

Ho-gae and Seol get the chance to work more closely together on the first case of the week. The team is called in when a mother can’t reach her young teenage daughter Hyun-seo who locked her out of their home. Our trio breaks in and rushes to get the girl to the hospital after realizing she drank poison.

The mom is rather blasé about it since Hyun-seo seems okay after vomiting, and it’s not the first time she’s done something like this. But this time is different. Oxygen causes the specific poison Hyun-seo took to speed up organ failure, leaving Seol devastated since she put the girl on oxygen in the ambulance. There’s nothing they can do, and a terrified Hyun-seo dies in the hospital minutes later.

It’s awful and heartbreaking for everyone involved, but Seol takes it particularly hard due to guilt. There’s no way she could’ve known giving the girl oxygen would be detrimental, but it must feel awful. When you have to make snap decisions based off your best guess in a crisis, there are bound to be wrong calls, despite your best efforts.

When Ho-gae decides there’s something amiss, Seol jumps in to help him solve the case. He finds threatening texts on the girl’s phone and suspects a sex-related crime and subsequent blackmail. Ho-gae asks to test Hyun-seo’s body before cremation, which earns him a slap from her mother. He’s shocked and impressed when empathetic Do-jin gets permission after one heartfelt conversation with the mother.

Ho-gae’s hunch was half right. After some sleuthing, they figure out that the culprit is an incredibly unnerving fellow classmate of Hyun-seo’s. He tricked Hyun-seo into debt, getting her hooked on a gambling app and then loaning her cash with exorbitant interest. Then, he blackmailed her into silence and coerced her into taking risqué photos as further blackmail.

When Hyun-seo refused to give him her mom’s bank account info, he goaded her to commit suicide. Then, when she actually drank the poison, he ran off, leaving her alone to die. Jesus. And this kid is in middle school! They can’t charge him with anything since he’s only 13, but Ho-gae makes sure to put the fear of God into him.

Hyun-seo’s tragedy makes Ho-gae think of another teen with the same name who also died. We don’t get the full story yet, but it’s obviously hero backstory trauma that will come into play later. Because although this is sort of an ensemble drama, it’s clear that Ho-gae is our central character.

His shady father CHIEF PROSECUTOR JIN (Jo Seung-yeon) looms in the background, unhappy that his son became an incoercible cop rather than a lawyer. He’s got ties to the powerful, rich criminal MA TAE-HWA (Lee Do-yub) who warns Chief Prosecutor Jin to keep his unwieldy son in line – he’s out on bail after Ho-gae arrested him, and Tae-hwa is not a happy camper.

Meanwhile, after a hectic start to his new role, Ho-gae finally gets to go home and get acquainted with his supposedly haunted apartment. I love seeing the tough Ho-gae freak out over the idea of a ghost. He’s so disturbed that he decides to solve the case of the previous resident’s disappearance following an apartment fire.

And thus begins our next case. Ho-gae ropes Do-jin into helping when he discovers blood under the floorboards that suggests murder. Do-jin previously ruled the fire an accident, but now it’s looking like arson. To his credit, Do-jin quickly admits his mistake and reinvestigates.

Because they’re both a bit petty, Ho-gae and Do-jin treat solving their respective crimes as a competition. As you’d expect, their styles are vastly different. Ho-gae follows his hunches in a throw-things-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks way, whereas Do-jin methodically tests predictions. Ho-gae has his faithful office lackey GONGMYUNG PIL (Kang Ki-doong) sift through sewage to find body parts flushed down the toilet, while Do-jin blows up different concentrations of hand sanitizer and successfully finds the accelerant, which looks way more fun.

Ho-gae gets his own win, though, when he notices something is odd about the bathtub molding in Do-jin’s. They pry it away and find bags of bones hidden beneath (eww). Sure enough, the DNA matches the man who disappeared. Now there’s proof of murder.

Teamwork on the fire and crime front leads Ho-gae to find the perpetrator: the man’s ex-girlfriend. Haunting hallucinations of her ex lead her to almost set a police officer (and herself) on fire. Do-jin and Ho-gae show up just in time to save the day, and then Ho-gae gets the full story from the woman.

Coming in at second place for Most Horrible Male of the Week, the woman’s ex blackmailed her into staying with him. After coercing her to get an illegal abortion, he threatened to turn her in for it if she left him. While everyone feels sympathy for her, she did kind of go overboard with the murder, dismemberment, and arson, so no one comes out of this smelling like roses.

Ho-gae really can’t get any rest. After wrapping up the case, Tae-hwa shows up at his door. Ho-gae introduces him to Seol and Do-jin as an unrepentant murderer. (It seems that maybe Ho-gae’s father helped cover it up with a drug charge.) Tae-hwa, in turn, accuses Ho-gae of murder with the implication it’s related to the teenage girl from Ho-gae’s past.

We end on the start of our next case later that night. The team arrives on the scene of a hit and run, but it’s not that simple. In an odd twist, the body is lying on the roof of a bus stop.

Well, there’s certainly a range of cases in this drama. This week’s weren’t as intense as the opening case, but it might feel a bit overdone if every case were that dramatic. I’m glad we got to see Do-jin more this week. I like his and Ho-gae’s bickering almost-camaraderie and begrudging respect.

However, there seems to be some tension brewing over Seol. Do-jin was a little too sensitive to seeing Seol treat a wound on Ho-gae’s hand (not like it’s her job or anything…). There have been a few signs Do-jin likes her, although it doesn’t appear to be reciprocated for now. I’m sensing more chemistry between her and Ho-gae, so for better or worse, I wouldn’t be surprised if a love triangle is in their future.

I’m not yet sure what to think about the side plot with Ho-gae’s father and his shady dealings with criminals. I hope it doesn’t get too heavy into corruption politics and the like since I’d rather just focus on the team’s work. But with the way Tae-hwa is gunning for Ho-gae, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of him.

 
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