Player 2 – Master of Swindlers: Episodes 5-6

by mistyisles

As we approach the halfway point, the connections between our team, their tentative allies, and everyone’s enemies emerge one by one. But the closer our master swindlers get to the truth, the deeper into danger they venture. Will they come out on top once again, or are they about to get in way over their heads?

 
EPISODES 5-6

As we’ve been led to suspect, all of the cases our team has tackled thus far link back to one man: JEFFREY JUNG (Kim Kyung-nam), a.k.a. Ah-ryung’s killer. And, it would seem, he’s also the reason the president wants Ha-ri’s assistance. See, they have a common enemy (that would be Jeffrey, and I suppose powerful evildoers in general) who is/are too powerful to be taken down through legal means, so the president’s hands are tied — unless someone else does the less-than-legal work for him. All he asks in return (for now, at least) is assurance that Ha-ri will see the job through to the bitter end, no matter what.

But there’s another interesting angle at work here, because the president is an old family friend and surrogate father figure to Soo-min. As such, she trusts him explicitly. But there’s something ominous about the way he surveils Ha-ri, and something even more ominous about the potential link between his election and the murder of Soo-min’s reporter boyfriend.

Further speculation will have to wait, though, because it’s time to tackle Director Baek and her art gallery. For this scheme, Ha-ri poses as an up-and-coming artist, and the team establishes his credibility via influencer marketing and driving up auction bids for a cheap vase he pretends to have sculpted. Then, once he’s piqued Director Baek’s interest, he gets her to accept a literal trojan horse into her secret storage room. And I do mean literal — it’s a horse statue commissioned from a local artist, and Jae-yi hides inside so she can swipe the other paintings from the storage room after Director Baek has left.

Much like our team’s previous cons, the plot involves having someone “betray” their plans to Director Baek so she’ll think she’s won right before the tables turn against her. Ha-ri didn’t count on her vacuum-sealing the storage room, though, and nearly has to call the whole thing off as Jae-yi starts losing air. But Byung-min gets the vacuum reversed just in time, and the rest of the operation proceeds smoothly.

Director Baek calls Prosecutor Kwak to arrest the “fraudulent sculptor,” only to realize her valuable paintings have been replaced with evidence of her bribery, which he’s all too happy to collect. And no, none of her sweet talking will sway this prosecutor from the straight and narrow. It’s time for Director Baek — and the chaebols she helped — to face some actual consequences.

That all wraps up in Episode 5, and then Episode 6 opens with an alarming flash-forward wherein Ha-ri, bloodied and held at gunpoint by a dozen or so masked assailants, grimly announces to a camera that if a steep ransom isn’t paid, “we will all die.” How did he get into this predicament? It all started when the team took on their next case…

The name of this particular game is real estate fraud, and it has resulted in a growing number of suicides. Only by careful investigation does our team discover that each victim is tied to a mysterious MR. MYUNG (well hello Lee Soo-hyuk!). Our team doesn’t know it yet, but Mr. Myung doesn’t just drive his victims to suicide — he has them murdered and only makes it look like suicide. (He also carries out one murder personally, just to see what it feels like.)

Prosecutor Kwak also cottons onto the Mr. Myung connection, and almost before he realizes what’s happening, he gets roped into Ha-ri’s big scheme to flush Mr. Myung out of hiding. As usual, Ha-ri introduces himself to one of Mr. Myung’s agents as a fellow fraudster and stages an elaborate fake con to prove himself, only to get “sold out” and “arrested” by Prosecutor Kwak (for further credibility as a scammer).

Of course, Prosecutor Kwak isn’t very keen to release the team once he’s got them in handcuffs, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to charge them with anything — and besides, Ha-ri is very persuasive, and Prosecutor Kwak does so want to put Mr. Myung behind bars. But does he want it enough to “break out of the mold,” as Ha-ri puts it? Only time will tell.

Mr. Myung isn’t so easily fooled, however. He sees right through the scheme from his vantage point in the shadows, and decides Ha-ri is the worthy opponent he’s been waiting for. So he arranges another meeting between his agent and Ha-ri. Even with their limited perspective of the situation, everyone can sense that danger is afoot, to the point Prosecutor Kwak tries to have them abort the mission. But Byung-min nervously assures Prosecutor Kwak that Ha-ri has it handled as always (I suspect he’s trying to assure himself, too), and the meeting proceeds.

It does have all the hallmarks of their usual tactics — Jae-yi stands by on her motorcycle, Jin-woong fights off the minions who were about to descend on Ha-ri from behind, and Soo-min surprises Mr. Myung by showing up at the office no one is supposed to know is his. But between the general anxious atmosphere and that flash-forward at the beginning of the episode, I’m inclined to think Ha-ri may be the one walking into a trap this time.

Of course, knowing Ha-ri, the ransom video could well be the trap, and he could be in complete control even with all those guns trained at his head. But I almost hope it isn’t. Not because I want him to get hurt (I think I’ve made it fairly clear by now how much I adore the guy!), but because the pattern of “Oh no, the team has been outsmarted for once… just kidding, this was all part of the plan!” is starting to feel just a tad repetitive at this point.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still having an absolute blast, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fall for several of the fakeouts — most of them, even. But I also think it’s about time to break that pattern and give our swindlers a challenge that won’t be quite so easy for them to wiggle out of. That way it’ll be even more satisfying when they do wiggle free — and it might even serve as a nice bonding experience now that Prosecutor Kwak has sort-of unofficially joined the team.

 
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