Flex x Cop: Episodes 9-10

by DaebakGrits

Our chaebol has regained his memories, and all he wants to do is disappear and lick his wounds. Murderers are going to keep on killing, though, and when his friend becomes the prime suspect in our detectives’ latest case, our chaebol comes out of hiding to do what he does best: charm people with his smile and money.

 
EPISODES 9-10

Now that Yi-soo correctly remembers the night his mother died — courtesy of the vindictive doctor skilled in hypnotism — he wastes no time confronting his father, who doesn’t even bother playing dumb. Yes, he had the doctor alter Yi-soo’s traumatic memories so that he could recover from his aphasia and have a normal childhood (false Truck of Doom memories notwithstanding).

Although Chairman Jin claims he loved Yi-soo’s mother — and flashbacks seem to concur that his affection was genuine — Yi-soo calls bullshit. Kicking a pregnant woman to the curb is definitely not one of the five love languages, and Yi-soo blames his mother’s suicide on Chairman Jin’s unwillingness to set aside his ambitions to be with Yi-soo’s mother. The neglect must have lead to her depression and suicide.

After saying his peace, Yi-soo storms out of the room. Seung-joo is waiting. Too emotional to accept his brother’s offered consolation, Yi-soo makes a polite escape so he can marinate in his feels for a little bit. His drive home is full of angst and artistic bokeh to really emphasize that he’s in a dark place. (Sidenote: Moody solo drives are infinitely more relatable as a means of isolated brooding than the dramatic pool scenes from See You in My 19th Life.)

At home, Yi-soo can’t bring himself to go inside, so he sits on his stoop, looking like a dejected puppy as he silently cries outside his childhood home. When Kang-hyun discovers him, she immediately knows something is wrong and takes him to her special place where she goes to think when she has a lot on her mind. Together, they gaze out over the night cityscape. Yi-soo’s on the verge of telling her what he’s learned about his mother’s death when Kang-hyun admits she already looked into it and knows the truth. His mother suffered from depression and died from a sleeping pill overdose.

Poor Yi-soo. Despite his earlier confrontation with his father, he wonders if her death was because of him. After all, it must have been hard for her to raise Yi-soo on her own, but Kang-hyun tells him to not think like that. The people who are left behind always seek answers, but the reality is that there are none. It’s in the past, and nothing can change what happened.

Kang-hyun leaves Yi-soo to his thoughts so she can meet up with Ki-suk, who is still itching to write an article about Yi-soo’s mother. Kang-hyun, never one for small talk or making nice with scum, gets right to the point. She tells him to drop the bone he has against Yi-soo, and if he plays nice, she will give him the scoop on Team One’s next case.

It’s as though the universe heard Kang-hyun make a deal with Ki-suk, because Team One is assigned the juicy, high profile murder of a leading actress. In yet another instance of it’s-a-small-dramaland-after-all, the victim is the same actress that Yi-soo briefly met (a few episodes ago) before ditching her — and his dumb druggie friend — to have dinner with Team One. And guess who’s the prime suspect? That’s right, Dumb Druggie, who was found covered in blood at the murder scene.

Initially, Yi-soo was going to sit this case out in order to take some “personal time,” as Kang-hyun explained to Jun-young (who was totally missing his favorite annoying chaebol). He’s overwhelmed by memories and misplaced guilt, and not even Jung-hoon’s assurances that Yi-soo was very much loved and wanted by his mother can rouse Yi-soo’s desire to resume detective work.

But, predictably, Yi-soo is pulled into the case after Dumb Druggie is hauled into the police station and calls Yi-soo, fully expecting his chaebol-turned-cop buddy to bail him out. Or, at the very least, point the investigation to other suspects. He didn’t kill her, Dumb Druggie swears! He just did some drugs and passed out so hard he didn’t hear a woman being murdered.

After hearing Dumb Druggie’s alibi — if you can call it that — Yi-soo’s displeasure and disappointment are palpable. Even so, he tells Kang-hyun that he thinks Dumb Druggie is innocent. Are you saying that because he’s your friend, or do you feel that way as a detective? she asks. But either way she’s inclined to agree. As far as she can tell, Dumb Druggie had no motive to kill Leading Actress, and that bugs her.

The problem, though, is that the film cast and crew aren’t willing to tell tales about what goes on behind the camera. Spreading gossip is a major no-no in their line of work that could get them fired, and they’re all staying quiet out of self-preservation. All it would take to loosen their lips, Yi-soo explains, is to have their boss consent for them to speak with the detectives. And wouldn’t you know it? Yi-soo is the bankroller and co-CEO of Dumb Druggie’s production company.

With Yi-soo’s permission — and the promise of a hefty bonus for anyone who comes forward with information that leads to a break in the case — the crew opens up about what they’ve seen and heard around the set. Soon, Yi-soo and Kang-hyun have two new suspects: the film’s leading actor (cameo by Choi Tae-joon), who was rumored to have had a hostile breakup with Leading Actress, and the Supporting Actress, who was caught slapping Leading Actress.

Leading Actor is narcissistic and absolutely insufferable, so it’s hard to believe him when he downplays his relationship with Leading Actress and denies murdering her. But he has a solid alibi. The night Leading Actress was murdered, he was hooking up with another woman, and she has time stamped photos to prove they were together.

Supporting Actress doesn’t appear to be the murderer either. Yes, she slapped Leading Actress, but they were rehearsing for a future scene together. And the fact that her DNA was found under Leading Actress’s fingernail is because Leading Actress applied some ointment to the rash on Supporting Actress’s back, which is later confirmed by forensics. All is not lost, though, because Supporting Actress points Kang-hyun and Yi-soo in another direction. Apparently, Leading Actress had a stalker who had been sneaking into her apartment.

According to Leading Actress’s manager, her stalker was none other than Leading Actor, and he has the text records to prove Leading Actor was obsessed with her. But Leading Actor has an airtight alibi, remember? Just as Team One begins to ponder the possibility that Leading Actor hired someone to kill Leading Actress, they obtain the file names for the (now deleted) videos Leading Actress downloaded from the cloud and watched before her death. Yi-soo realizes that the file names are the timestamps for when the videos were recorded by her hidden camera. She was trying to catch her stalker in the act.

Team One cross-references the timestamps with the CCTV footage outside Leading Actress’s apartment, and it’s — surprise! — her manager (known henceforth as Creepy Manager) that they see entering her home. Unfortunately, the CCTV footage is not enough to prove Creepy Manager is her stalker or her murderer because, as her manager, he can justify needing to enter her apartment. However, the fact that he’s seen entering Leading Actress’s apartment after killing her suggests he was there to find and eliminate the hidden camera’s SD card. With any luck, maybe Team One can find the SD card in his possession and prove he had a motive to kill Leading Actress.

While Creepy Manager visits a shaman to find out the current going rate for an after-death wedding ceremony, Yi-soo and Kang-hyun check out his apartment. They can’t force their way inside, so it’s up to Yi-soo to find some ethically gray way to gain access without a warrant. As luck would have it, the whole building is for sale, and Yi-soo has a wallet deep enough to convince the realtor he should use his master key to let Yi-soo, a potential buyer, into the apartment.

Once they’re inside, it’s ick city. To say Creepy Manager is obsessed would be a massive understatement. Posters and cardboard cutouts adorn every wall, and he’s so delusional that he displays a fake marriage certificate and a photoshopped wedding photo above his bed. Even worse, in the bed is an armless mannequin with a printed image of Leading Actress’s face covering the head. *shudders*

Thankfully, Yi-soo and Kang-hyun’s trip into Creepville is successful. They find the hard drive containing Leading Actress’s hidden camera footage of Creepy Manger rifling through her undergarments and (*gags*) sniffing them. The only problem is that they can’t convict Creepy Manager on motive alone. They need a confession, which means it’s Yi-soo’s time to shine with another one of his elaborate plans.

The full cast and crew — including Creepy Manager — gather on set for a ceremony in Leading Actress’s honor. Ki-suk, who’s about to get his exclusive, is also present, along with a shaman who will perform a ritual that will coax Leading Actress’s lingering soul into the afterlife. In reality, it’s all a Hamlet-esque play-within-a-play designed to make a guilty Creepy Manager confess his crimes. It works — because of course it does — and Creepy Manager admits he killed Leading Actress after she popped the delusional little bubble he’d been living in. After his crime of passion, he pinned the murder on Dumb Druggie, who was conveniently passed out on set, and he changed Leading Actress’s clothes after killing her so she would have a pretty final outfit.

The case is closed, but there’s still the matter of Dumb Druggie. He may not be a killer, but Yi-soo can’t in good conscience let Dumb Druggie’s addiction and illegal drug use slide. He escorts Dumb Druggie — who has inexplicably wearing the same blood-stained clothes for days — straight from his jail cell to narcotics. Yi-soo tells him to undergo a proper investigation and get help for his addiction. In response, Dumb Druggie reveals that he never truly saw Yi-soo as a friend and that he only hung out with him to reap the benefits of being a part of his inner circle.

Yi-soo, however, is not surprised by Dumb Druggie’s confession. He knew he was being used, but he allowed it because he was lonely — but not anymore. Yi-soo has realized that there are people who will stay by his side for no ulterior reasons, and he no longer needs to cling to shallow and draining relationships. It’s really a sign of how far Yi-soo has matured over the course of this story, and I loved the complex emotions conveyed through this scene. Yi-soo may be ready to end his toxic friendship with Dumb Druggie, but that doesn’t make the moment any less painful for him.

As Yi-soo dejectedly walks home, Kang-hyun stops and offers him a lift. He accepts, and as they drive home, Kang-hyun decides to be nosy — something she’s made a conscious effort to avoid doing over the years because she grew up with a mother who is constantly up in everyone’s business. She reminds him of when he first moved to the neighborhood, when he explained that he moved into his old house because he had a lot of happy memories of living there with his mother.

If he continues to avoid the house, it will be harder for him to put himself back together. In response, he asks her to drive him home — not to the hotel where he’s been temporarily staying. He’s chosen to take Kang-hyun’s advice and remember his mother as she lived — not as she died. (Cue: a series of sweet memories of a young Yi-soo with his mother.) And with that, it feels like the story arc of Yi-soo’s mother’s death has neared its end.

Now that Yi-soo has presumably found his closure, it appears our story is pivoting to focus on Kang-hyun and her desire to restore her father’s reputation. She receives a phone call in the middle of the night from the manager of Oryun Community. He says he will reveal everything about… something (to be determined). Kang-hyun is instantly awake and rushes to meet him, and while she waits for him at the rendezvous point, we flash back to another cryptic conversation between them, which ends with her giving Oryun Manager her business card and instructions to contact her if he ever changes his mind and wanted to talk.

Well, he’s changed his mind, but there’s a group of men after him. And given that Kang-hyun waits long enough for him to see the sun rise, methinks this man is no longer alive. Oh wait — yup, he’s dead. He only lived long enough to become Team One’s next case, and a bonus clip at the end of Episode 10 confirms that our latest dead man is connected to Hyung-joon’s last case — the one that got him framed for accepting bribes and fired from the police.

Color me surprised because I definitely thought Yi-soo’s mom was murdered, but after this week’s episodes, I don’t think Team One will be handling a cold case involving Yi-soo’s mom later in the story. The shaman’s mysteriously insightful knowledge of Yi-soo’s mom suggests she killed herself because peace eluded her when she was alive. And tonally, Yi-soo’s return to his childhood home adds to the impression that the door has been closed on that chapter of Yi-soo’s backstory. I guess K-dramas have conditioned me to believe that the mothers of chaebols die in one of two ways (murder or Truck of Doom — and often both at the same time), because there’s still a part of me waiting for the trope to drop — not that I want it to.

Now that my expectations have been shattered, I’d prefer that they stayed broken because having her death become a murder would detract from all the wonderfully delicious character development that occurred this week. Kang-hyun stepped out of her comfort zone to help Yi-soo navigate his survivor’s guilt, and even though Yi-soo is trying to place blame on others because he can’t accept that his seemingly happy mother hid her depression from him, he’s having conversations with his surviving family members — namely his father — that might ultimately bring them closer.

This drama continues to surprise me with how well it balances the comedic and police procedural elements with the insightful character development. Each week, as Yi-soo evolves, the tone of the drama seems to grow with him. The charm and humor are still there, but between Yi-soo’s biting one-liners and over-the-top plans to catch the bad guys, there’s an increased seriousness that reflects Yi-soo’s personal growth as he makes friends and realizes that being a detective is his true calling. The more he’s accepted by those around him, the less inclined he — and the drama — is his to keep up the pretense of being flashy and shallow.

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