Black Out: Episodes 1-2

by mistyisles

After serving ten years in prison for a double murder he doesn’t remember committing, a man returns to his hometown to confront the past. Black Out leans into the heavy emotions of the situation — for our protagonist and everyone around him — and promises plenty of secrets to unravel, even beyond the central question of what happened that fateful night.

 
EPISODES 1-2

Our story begins one terrible night when two high school girls are murdered at a warehouse in a little country town. Their bodies are never recovered, but there’s enough circumstantial evidence for police chief HYUN GU-TAK (Kwon Hae-hyo) to conclude not only that the girls were murdered, but also that the most likely suspect is the girls’ classmate — and his own best friend’s son — GO JUNG-WOO (Byun Yo-han).

Jung-woo is sleeping off a hangover when the police burst into his home and arrest him. What follows is a lengthy and exhausting interrogation process, wherein Jung-woo keeps repeating that he didn’t kill his friends, but all clues point to the contrary. He spent much of the day leading up to the murders planning a party and getting anxious because one of the two girls, PARK DA-EUN (Han So-eun), wasn’t answering her phone. He also argued with the other girl, SHIM BO-YOUNG (Jang Ha-eun), before calling off the party and going home to drink himself silly. Thus, he has no concrete memories of anything that night, and the police hammer him with accusations until he begins to doubt himself.

Still, even after they force a confession out of him and sentence him to ten years in prison, Jung-woo insists he’s innocent. For the next decade, he endures constant violent attacks from his fellow inmates and a slow descent into hopelessness. His own mother refuses to see him; his father passes away a few years in; and only one friend continues to visit. Her birth name is Deok-mi, but as an adult she changes it to CHOI NA-KYEOM (Go Bo-kyul) and launches a successful acting career.

When Jung-woo’s prison term finally ends, Na-kyeom goes out of her way to pick him up, take him to visit the spot where his father’s ashes were spread, and deliver him to the family restaurant his mother, JUNG GEUM-HEE (Kim Mi-kyung), still runs. But Jung-woo isn’t welcome there anymore. Geum-hee will tolerate any amount of abuse from Bo-young’s father, SHIM DONG-MIN (Jo Jae-yun) — who seems to have made harassing Jung-woo’s family his entire personality for the past ten years — but Geum-hee hardly even looks at her son before throwing him out of the restaurant.

Jung-woo’s old friends are far more welcoming, at least outwardly, and so is Chief Hyun. They all assure Jung-woo he can call on them for anything, any time. But considering none of them bothered to visit him even once in ten years, their words ring hollow. Overwhelmed and haunted by memories everywhere he goes, Jung-woo decides his best bet is to leave town and start over in Seoul.

Despite Geum-hee’s outward hostility, her feelings toward her son are much more complex than she lets on. She even goes out and buys him a new shirt, perhaps intending to take him up on his invitation to accompany him to Seoul. But then, disaster strikes again: while out shopping, Geum-hee falls from an overpass, sustaining severe injuries.

The question is: how did she fall? Because of the rain, no one saw it happen, and security cameras didn’t pick it up, either. The police launch an investigation, led by the newly transferred and notoriously hotheaded police officer NOH SANG-CHEOL (Go Joon). As a newcomer, Sang-cheol doesn’t know about Jung-woo’s case. In fact, he’s already met Jung-woo twice, and neither instance made Jung-woo appear to be anything but an upstanding citizen who’s not afraid to call out petty criminals.

Even without knowing why Geum-hee might be targeted, however, Sang-cheol can tell this was no accident. Sure enough, upon combing through CCTV footage, he spots a suspicious individual fleeing the scene. His colleague, Jung-woo’s old friend YANG BYUNG-MU (Lee Tae-gu), attempts to swipe the footage before reluctantly and ashamedly admitting the man is his father, YANG HEUNG-SOO (Cha Soon-bae). Much as Byung-mu tries to argue that his father would never do such a thing, the intensity of his reaction suggests otherwise.

Meanwhile, there’s one more newcomer who’s only just learning what happened here nearly eleven years ago. HA SEOL (Kim Bora) is Geum-hee’s employee and tenant, so she witnesses Jung-woo coming home and being thrown right back out. At first, Seol is morbidly awestruck to have been in the presence of a murderer, but the more she interacts with Jung-woo, the more she starts to sense that something’s not quite right here. She tries to talk about it with her friend HYUN SU-OH (Lee Ga-seob) — Chief Hyun’s autistic son — but Su-oh gets agitated and shuts the conversation down. He also gives Jung-woo a big, welcoming hug and a painting of the warehouse… and we later see that he’s working on a second painting depicting what may well be one of the murders.

Things come to a head when Jung-woo confronts Dong-min at the restaurant, having jumped to the (understandable) conclusion that Dong-min was the one who pushed Geum-hee off the overpass. Just after Dong-min smashes a glass bottle over Jung-woo’s head and leaves, Sang-cheol and Byung-mu arrive to take Heung-soo in for questioning — as a witness, not a suspect, as per Chief Hyun’s orders. To Sang-cheol’s frustration, Heung-soo insists he only saw her fall and that it was an accident, and Chief Hyun accepts it.

Slowly, Sang-cheol pieces the context clues together, from the potential motive (Geum-hee being the mother of a local convicted murderer) to the strange fact that the families of said murderer and his alleged victim still live in close proximity. Further investigation suggests that Heung-soo did not in fact push Geum-hee, but that someone else did — which means just about everyone in this town is a possible suspect.

Whew. That was a lot of ground to cover, but by the end of it I felt like Sang-cheol watching the pieces fall into place about how all these people are connected. He’s certainly got his work cut out for him, because none of these people’s motivations are very clear. Does Chief Hyun mean it when he says he sees Jung-woo as a son? And does he keep warning Sang-cheol not to jump to conclusions because he feels guilty about what they did to Jung-woo, or is he simply turning a blind eye? Is Na-kyeom genuinely and unconditionally in Jung-woo’s corner, or is she hiding something from him?

What struck me the most, though, was how viscerally Black Out showed us Jung-woo’s experience, from being dragged out of bed and accused of horrible crimes he had no memory of committing, to hitting rock bottom in prison and eventually finding the will to fight back, to having everyone — Sang-cheol included — turn their backs on him as soon as they realized what he (allegedly) did. I’m inclined to believe he’s innocent; all he needs is a few more people to both believe and help him prove it.

 
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