Stealer: The Treasure Keeper: Episodes 5-6

by mistyisles

As the treasure hunt begins, our heroes join forces to get a leg up against their greed-driven nemesis. It’s going to take teamwork, courage, stamina, charisma, and a whole bunch of hi-tech gear, but fortunately they’ve got all those things (and then some!) in spades.

 
EPISODES 5-6

So. Remember Chairman Kim from last week? A.K.A. the Evil Personified collector who makes even the most fearsome assassin tremble in abject terror? He gets worse. All those scars on his body are from organ transplants to prolong his life, and he gets those organs by visiting a nearby orphanage and picking “donors” (read: victims) out of a catalogue.

Growing up during the Japanese occupation, he spent his childhood eating popsicles while watching his family torture freedom fighters. As an adult, he used his position as Minister of Construction to get first pickings of the treasure from newly discovered tombs. Now, he’s gathering the seven Joseon coins because it’s believed that the treasure they point to includes a Stone of Eternal Life. (At least if he gets it, he might stop stealing kids’ organs?)

The good news is that our heroes know he’s up to no good. Tae-in makes a personal visit just to press as many annoying buttons as possible: calling attention to the guards’ bruises (from their fight with Skunk), accusing Chairman Kim of hiding contraband, jabbing at his deeply buried trauma from when Korea gained independence and his family were booted from their positions of power, and the like. The point is to provoke Chairman Kim to act so they can react, and it works a little too well — but more on that later.

When the team meets up with Skunk late at night, Dae-myung takes his time pretending to think their offer over before agreeing to team up — on the condition that they go after his personal target, Mugunghwa Foundation, after they finish recovering the artifacts on their list. According to Tae-in, this foundation is linked to Chairman Kim’s old grave-robbing racket, and I’m willing to bet it’s also related to the stormy night Dae-myung came home to find his parents gruesomely murdered.

The team’s first task is to locate slippery artifact thief Dr. Go and convince him to hand over the coin he took from those two orphan kids. Tae-in tracks down two of Dr. Go’s former lackeys just after they scam an elderly couple out of their home… only to realize the couple was Dr. Go himself and his ex, Vivian, scamming the scammers right back.

Thanks to some background work and empathy on Min-woo’s part, Vivian then double-crosses Dr. Go, delivering him right into Min-woo’s hands. He doesn’t try to fight his way out, being too impressed at having finally been caught (and taking a very odd but noticeable interest in Min-woo).

Dae-myung happens to be along for the ride, having dropped by the station to deliver specially engineered phones from Choon-ja to the new team. These phones are equipped with tracking devices, of course, which becomes immediately useful when Min-woo is stalked and kidnapped by Chairman Kim’s men.

Min-woo does an excellent job of breaking out of her bonds and beating up her own kidnappers, but she’s no match for Hwin-dal. After coldly and swiftly killing all the other thugs (since they knew too much), he tosses his pen aside and fights Min-woo bare-handed, all too easily flinging her around like a rag doll.

Dae-myung (finally!) arrives just as Hwin-dal moves in for the kill. Since Hwin-dal’s pen can’t stab through Dae-myung’s Skunk suit, this fight is a lot more evenly matched. It only ends when Hwin-dal manages to knock Dae-myung out, Min-woo pushes Hwin-dal off a ledge, and police sirens outside (from Choon-ja’s drone) convince Hwin-dal to leave. Min-woo allllmost removes Dae-myung’s mask, intending to perform CPR, but he wakes up in time to stop her.

Back at their dilapidated school hideout, Min-woo’s teammates interrogate Dr. Go, completely unaware that Min-woo is literally fighting for her life. Dr. Go refuses to cooperate until they uncuff him, but in the end he hands over the coin and decides to do more than just answer their questions — he wants to join the team. His contribution? The location of the final coin.

Our respective teams take some time to regroup. Min-woo’s teammates kick themselves over almost losing her, and Choon-ja scolds Dae-myung for acting like a “Super Action Hero” instead of a simple thief (Dae-myung: “I am a Super Action Hero!”). Then they move their headquarters to Choon-ja’s luxurious, hi-tech home, because the creaky, rotting school was totally killing Skunk’s vibes.

The final coin belongs to Chinese black market boss JANG CHUN-FUNG (Song Jae-hee), who stores it in a super-secret safe in his Jeju hotel. That means it’s time for a group heist! The first step is to get Min-woo invited to Boss Jang’s VIP room, so she and Tae-in get glammed up and waltz arm-in-arm into the hotel’s casino. While the original plan is to lose spectacularly while retaining enough money to stoke Boss Jang’s greed, Min-woo uses the special X-Ray contacts Choon-ja gave her to win spectacularly instead.

The real bait for Boss Jang is Min-woo herself, though, and with a little luck and flirting, Boss Jang practically begs her to join him in the VIP room. Once they’re safely in his room, Min-woo drops the seduction act and forces a truth-telling drug down his throat so he’ll tell her the password to his safe (somehow, her repeatedly screaming “password!” is enough to get the exact, correct password out of him, but hey — whatever works).

Chang-hoon dresses as a decoy Skunk to distract the security guards, making it easy for the real Skunk to get inside and open the safe. Where he’s confronted with the consequences of only extracting one secret password: the entire inside of the safe is crisscrossed with deadly laser beams. That are invisible. And also moving.

Choon-ja deems it impossible, even with her tech illuminating the lasers via Dae-myung’s goggles, but Dae-myung hasn’t come this far to quit. As one does when confronted with crisscrossed laser beams, he performs intricate acrobatics that carry him back and forth across the seemingly empty space to the coin.

I’m not sure he’s thought about getting back across all that space again once he has the coin, but it doesn’t really matter — as soon as he lifts the coin from its display, a siren blares. And Hwin-dal is already on his way, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake.

I love all the team building we’ve got going on, what with the established teams (the police unit, Dae-myung, and Choon-ja) melding together into one. Choon-ja, absolute delight that she is, makes for excellent glue uniting them. Because while it’s pretty clear the show wants us to see Min-woo as the common factor connecting everyone — including Dr. Go, given how much he stares at her — it’s Choon-ja who makes them smile (literally), keeps them on task, and gets them the information and tools they need.

I’m curious how long it’ll take for the others to learn Skunk’s identity so they can fully appreciate Dae-myung’s contributions, too. But for now I’ll just enjoy his pouty face every time he gets unfavorably compared to… himself.

 
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