Player 2 – Master of Swindlers: Episodes 9-10

by mistyisles

The more our team digs into the web of corruption and deceit, the more insidious it gets — and the more dangerous their enemies’ traps become. But before they can face the mastermind behind it all, they’ll have to confront the truth about how their pasts intertwine.

 
EPISODES 9-10

As usual, Prosecutor Kwak rescues Soo-min from Supreme Leader Lim by “arresting” her for a nonexistent crime. And aw, Prosecutor Kwak even returns her smirk as they walk away — looks like someone is starting to enjoy the game! He’s not wrong, though, that this particular game is getting out of hand. Both Soo-min and Mina are unharmed, but the latter is still sleeping off the effects of the drug Supreme Leader Lim gave her (the whole team has to talk Jin-woong down from taking revenge right then and there), and even a few seconds’ delay on any team member’s part could have been disastrous.

But not to worry, because it’s time for the final stage of Ha-ri’s plan. While Supreme Leader Lim gives a sermon that he believes is being livestreamed worldwide, the team hijacks the feed with the video of him attempting to assault Soo-min, wherein he also admits to murder and organ harvesting. When Prosecutor Kwak storms in, Ha-ri helps Supreme Leader Lim escape so he’ll have a reason to bring Ha-ri along to his “Holy Ground” — a secret hideout that doubles as a vault and dungeon.

That’s when things go south. Someone tips Supreme Leader Lim off about Ha-ri’s real name and intentions, and the team loses contact with Ha-ri. Prosecutor Kwak asks the obvious question for us: “This isn’t just another scheme that will only work if I’m kept in the dark, is it?” But no: the tip came from Jeffrey Jung, and this time Ha-ri is in very real danger. After interrogating Ha-ri, Supreme Leader Lim locks Ha-ri in his dungeon and orders his men to burn the whole building — no one gets out alive.

Fortunately, someone already got out: Supreme Leader Lim’s former right-hand-man. He’s the only person besides Supreme Leader Lim who knows where the Holy Ground is, and his secret romance with Mina (sorry, Jin-woong) makes it easy for our team to contact him. (They do have to fake another kidnapping to trick him into revealing the location, but that’s just another Tuesday for this team.)

All that to say, by the time Ha-ri talks his way out of his cell, Jin-woong is there to help him fight off the guards. Prosecutor Kwak finally gets to raid the cult’s headquarters for real, and Byung-min cleans out Supreme Leader Lim’s e-wallet. As promised, Jae-yi delivers Supreme Leader Lim to Jin-woong for punishment. Jin-woong doesn’t kill him, but he does advise Prosecutor Kwak to bring an ambulance when he comes to arrest the badly beaten cult leader.

Ha-ri gets sentimental for once as he thanks the team for saving him. But there are still a few dominoes left to topple following the takedown of Supreme Leader Lim. First, Soo-min discovers a USB in his safe that contains a photo of the current president shaking hands with none other than Jeffrey Jung. And second, Prosecutor Jang calls Ha-ri for an urgent meeting. But Ha-ri arrives just a moment too late to save Prosecutor Jang from being bludgeoned by one of Jeffrey Jung’s henchmen — the same murder method used on Soo-min’s late boyfriend.

Ha-ri rushes Prosecutor Jang to the hospital, but as his life hangs in the balance, we jump back in time for an entire episode to get the backstory on how everyone and everything connects. Before being murdered, Soo-min’s boyfriend, SHIN HYUNG-MIN (Hong Jong-hyun), caught wind of Jeffrey Jung’s dastardly schemes to control the country’s most powerful leaders. This happened to be around the time of Ah-ryung’s death, so now we watch as both sides of the story unfold: Hyung-min prepares to expose Jeffrey Jung to the public while Ha-ri and his surviving teammates deal with their grief and eventually find their way back to each other.

Initially, Ha-ri’s plan had been simple revenge. He obtained a gun, sent his former teammates plane tickets so they couldn’t be implicated, and rigged a trap that gave him a clear shot at Jeffrey Jung’s head. But he never pulled the trigger, because Byung-min intervened. They agreed to find a better way to take Jeffrey Jung down together and — joined by Jae-yi — re-formed into the team we know and love today.

As for Hyung-min, he confided in the current-day president (then Assemblyman Choi Sang-ho), who promised, sincerely, to help fight against Jeffrey Jung. Ever the brilliant puppet master, though, Jeffrey Jung knew exactly how to manipulate Assemblyman Choi. See, no one expected Assemblyman Choi to win the presidential election, himself included. But Jeffrey Jung pulled enough strings to make it possible and then gave Assemblyman Choi a choice: either accept the presidency knowing he was getting it through highly unethical and illegal means, or refuse and let the office go to someone who definitely wouldn’t share his (again, sincere) passion for helping the nation’s people.

Reluctantly, Assemblyman Choi chose the latter. That very night, Jeffrey Jung had Hyung-min murdered and made sure the exposé Hyung-min was writing about him never saw the light of day. Whether President Choi suspected Hyung-min would die or not, he certainly didn’t want it to happen, so he immediately started planning Jeffrey Jung’s downfall. He told Soo-min about Jeffrey Jung — but not about his own entrapment — and told Director Hwang everything. When the time came to choose an agent for the job, Soo-min personally recommended Ha-ri, remembering how Hyung-min admired his methods of exposing corruption.

That (finally!) brings us back to the present day, with our characters poised for confrontation. Jeffrey Jung returns to Korea. Ha-ri storms out of the hospital, determined to find out what Prosecutor Jang wanted to tell him. And Soo-min’s world crumbles around her as she realizes the man she so highly respected made an unthinkable deal with the person who killed the love of her life. Oh, and remember SHIN WOO-YOUNG (Im Seul-ong), the gunman who tried to take revenge on crypto scammer Do-young back in the first episode? Looks like he’s coming back to get in on the action.

On the one hand, I’m glad we got this backstory. So much of it is exactly what I felt was missing from the first week — the team splitting up, wracked with guilt after losing Ah-ryung, secretly watching over Jae-yi (but her catching on and deciding to join them), and Ha-ri wrestling with his desire for revenge and needing the others to pull him out of his own head. But, on the other hand, I’d have liked to see all that sprinkled throughout the show instead of pausing the present-day action for an entire episode. Not only would the pacing have flowed better, but each piece of the backstory could have been used to add emotional impact to the present-day happenings — like when Ha-ri saved Woo-young from killing Do-young just like Byung-min saved him.

I appreciate, though, that President Choi’s situation is a bit more complex than I expected. He’s not innocent by any means, but he’s also not just another evil manipulator laying traps for our team. And, frustrating as it was to not make any forward progress in the main story in Episode 10, it did work in the sense that I’m more eager than ever to see how our team is going to take Jeffrey Jung down once and for all.

 
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