Connection: Episodes 1-2

by solstices

When a narcotics investigator finds himself addicted to drugs against his will, he must fight tooth and nail to maintain his grip on sanity and uncover the truth behind a dubious death. An intimately familiar code draws him back to the bygone days of his youth, hinting at a connection that runs deeper than he could have ever imagined.

 
EPISODES 1-2

Set in the strictly drug-averse city of Anhyun, our story wastes no time introducing us to its morally ambiguous protagonist JUNG JAE-KYUNG (Ji Sung). As part of the city’s narcotics unit, he’s leading a crackdown on a notorious drug cartel, and he’s apprehended them all save for the gang leader JANG CHUL-GU (Choi Young-woo).

After a moment of distraction on Jae-kyung’s part, the pursuit of Chul-gu culminates in a rooftop scuffle where Jae-kyung easily gains the upper hand — then shoots the defenseless Chul-gu in the Achilles tendon. It’s stone-cold revenge for Chul-gu slashing Jae-kyung’s junior detective AHN MYUNG-HO (Bae Jae-young) in the exact same spot a month ago, and Jae-kyung doesn’t look the least bit conflicted about his bloody vengeance.

Composed and remorseless, Jae-kyung lies smoothly that he’d merely been following protocol in self defense, and his successful arrest nets him a special promotion. Later that night, his old friend PARK JOON-SEO (Yoon Na-moo) pays him a visit to offer both a congratulations and an apology — but Jae-kyung asserts the latter comes 20 years too late.

There’s high school history between Jae-kyung and Joon-seo, former best buddies who found a kindred spirit in each other after Jae-kyung attempted to expose the bribery in their school’s administration and class president Joon-seo got suspended as a warning. They even shared a special distress signal between them, which Joon-seo playfully pranks Jae-kyung with; one text with the code “1882” and Jae-kyung immediately comes sprinting over to Joon-seo, aww.

Despite their opposite dispositions and shared attraction to a transfer student, the pair forged a close bond. We’re only privy to the beginning of their falling out — Joon-seo lied about not witnessing something despite Jae-kyung urging him to testify — but it was enough to irrevocably fracture their friendship.

As for our heroine, she’s both the aforementioned transfer student and brief distraction. Reporter OH YOON-JIN (Jeon Mi-do) is all too willing to trade her scruples for money; Jae-kyung had witnessed her attempting (and failing) to leverage connections and angle for bribes. Yoon-jin’s materialistic avarice comes from a well-intentioned place, though. As a divorced mom, she’s trying to supplement her meager salary in order to provide for her young daughter through child support to the deadbeat dad overseas.

Still, Yoon-jin is deeply passionate about her job, relentlessly pursuing leads for better or for worse. When she coincidentally witnesses a woman gulping down pills, panicking at the sight of her young daughter, then running away into the path of a truck, she immediately latches onto the potential scoop. The yellow pills seem to be a new narcotic drug, and Yoon-jin realizes — while giving her witness statement, no less — that the police don’t know much about it yet.

Later that night, Joon-seo enters a deserted construction site. Elsewhere, Jae-kyung enjoys a celebratory team dinner, after which he gets a text from an unknown number. Identifying themselves as “Doctor,” the sender points Jae-kyung towards a specific location, then ends the message with the code “1882.” Oh no. Fearing the worst when Joon-seo doesn’t answer his calls, Jae-kyung heads straight to the location — only to get accosted by a plastic bag over his head and a needle up his veins.

Fast forward three psychedelic-tinged days later, and a dazed Jae-kyung finds himself being shaken awake by fellow officer KIM CHANG-SOO (Jung Jae-kwang) in a subway station. Supposedly, Jae-kyung had sent Chang-soo a similar meetup text as well — complete with “From Doctor” and “1882” — despite having no recollection of it. The text points to their current location, where they witness a drug handoff and promptly pursue the criminal.

The plot starts to go a little off the rails here; first, Jae-kyung gets his gun stolen by the drug dealer while in his weakened state. Then, when he faints and gets taken to the hospital, he breaks into the nurse’s room and drinks the test tubes of his blood in order to avoid a blood test. Sheesh.

There’s somewhat of a method to Jae-kyung’s madness — he can’t afford to get suspended for drug use, intentional or not, when he’s just found out his best friend is dead. Needless to say, he can’t quite think straight with the withdrawal symptoms incapacitating his system. Worse yet, Jae-kyung receives a text from the Doctor, advising him to take his “medicine,” alongside a video of a drug-addled Jae-kyung. The single yellow pill he finds in his pocket taunts him, and Jae-kyung resolutely crushes it beneath his shoe.

Jae-kyung manages to pull himself together by the time Chang-soo arrives to investigate the situation, brushing it off as an overreaction to the hospital taking his blood without his consent, but it isn’t quite convincing. Especially not when Chang-soo witnesses Jae-kyung violently threatening Chul-gu for information with a scalpel he’d swiped.

The outburst does net Jae-kyung a name, though. Chul-gu pinpoints BOSS YOON (Baek Ji-won) as the online distributor of the yellow pills, and it turns out she’s in cahoots with the gun thief GONG JIN-WOOK (Yoo Hee-je), who’s the intermediary between her and the Doctor. Jin-wook might not last long, though, because in exchange for removing the middleman, the Doctor had instructed Boss Yoon to abduct and drug Jae-kyung. Our cop catches on to the discord between the drug dealers, figuring out that his abductors dropped him off at the handoff location in hopes he’d arrest the guy.

Back at the precinct, Jae-kyung learns even more suspicious details about Joon-seo’s death that don’t quite add up. Not only had a post-mortem been done on Joon-seo unusually swiftly, but it’d also been signed off on by the deputy chief prosecutor. And who else would that be but PARK TAE-JIN (Kwon Yul), who also hails from the same high school. The official story is that Joon-seo likely ended his life in grief after his daughter succumbed to her illness, but Jae-kyung isn’t buying it.

At the funeral hall, Jae-kyung tries asking Joon-seo’s bereaved widow to permit a full autopsy, but he’s interrupted by the arrival of Tae-jin, WON JONG-SOO (Kim Kyung-nam), and OH CHI-HYUN (Cha Yub) — the last three people Joon-seo had spoken to on the phone before his supposed suicide. It’s obvious that they’re obfuscating the events of that night, but it’s neither the right time nor place for Jae-kyung to pursue his suspicions.

Then, as this week’s episodes draw to a close, our hero is thrown a curveball. Two weeks before his death, Joon-seo had approached fellow classmate HEO JOO-SONG (Jung Soon-won) to sign up for three life insurance policies with the beneficiary listed as his company “Audio File.” None of them can be claimed since Joon-seo’s death has been ruled a suicide, but Tae-jin receives Joon-seo’s will, which he reads out to the funeral attendees — Jae-kyung and Yoon-jin are listed as equal beneficiaries to both the policies and his company’s shares.

Phew, that was one wild ride with a lot of information crammed in; the plot is moving at a breakneck pace, with new developments at every turn. It does require the suspension of disbelief, especially given the extreme actions Jae-kyung is prone to taking, but it’s almost like watching a train careening down a hill in an incandescent blaze — there are signs of it ending up as a wreck, but there’s an intriguing sort of adrenaline to it that’s keeping me hooked so far. Or perhaps it’s just the stellar cast that has me holding on to blind faith?

Either way, there’s so much secrecy surrounding Joon-seo that it has me curious — what exactly was the incident that split him and Jae-kyung apart? Why did Joon-seo voluntarily go to the construction site, and why did he approach Yoon-jin a day before his death? If Tae-jin had a hand in the policies, why did he list Jae-kyung and Yoon-jin as beneficiaries — and if he hadn’t, why did he openly read out the will when he had the chance to doctor it beforehand? So many questions, and I’m hoping the answers are satisfyingly compelling.

 
RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Connection
• Ji Sung becomes mired in a broken friendship Connection
• News bites: April 27, 2024
• News bites: April 22, 2024
• Ji Sung and Jeon Mi-do team up to uncover the Connection
• News bites: April 17, 2024
• News bites: April 8, 2024
• Ji Sung hunts for the conspiracy Connection in first teaser
• News bites: December 12, 2023
• News bites: September 12, 2023