Black Out: Episodes 5-6

by mistyisles

New details about the murders come to light, with startling implications — and yet, most people in this town seem determined to sweep it all back under the rug. But the tide turns when a familiar face shows up, ready to drag long-buried secrets back into the light.

 
EPISODES 5-6

When Jae-hee says she and Chief Hyun killed Bo-young, she means it in the sense that they were two of the last people to see her alive. They had been having an affair, and Bo-young had walked in on them that fateful day, only to run away in angry tears once she realized what was going on. (Which also explains her crying in Jung-woo’s car not long after.) Now, Jae-hee threatens to reveal the affair to the whole town unless Chief Hyun releases Dong-min from custody and drops the charges against him for pushing Geum-hee off the overpass. Chief Hyun stalls for a bit, but ultimately complies.

Meanwhile, Sang-cheol and Jung-woo (separately, of course) reinvestigate the timeline of events from the night of the murders and arrive at the same crucial conclusion. Based on the times of Bo-young and Da-eun’s deaths and the distance from the warehouse to the school where Bo-young’s remains were found, Jung-woo theoretically could have killed one of the girls — but not both.

Jung-woo latches onto the fact that this disproves at least some of his (coerced) confession, while Sang-cheol doubles down on the possibility that Jung-woo could still have been an accomplice. In fact, Sang-cheol doubles down so hard that he dismisses 1) Jung-woo’s realization that whoever disposed of Bo-young’s body knew they had just enough fuel to get to the school and back and 2) Seol’s realization that Su-oh witnessed the murder. While condescendingly brushing off the latter, Sang-cheol also makes sure to toss in some casual insults about Su-oh’s intelligence, because he’s prejudiced like that.

Still, Jung-woo keeps trying to convince Sang-cheol to reopen the case, even as Sang-cheol keeps telling him to get lost. On one occasion, Jung-woo helps Sang-cheol fight off a group of thugs looking for a fight to pick, but Sang-cheol just yells at him for interfering.

That happens to be the night Dong-min gets released. To no one’s surprise, Dong-min immediately procures a gun and tells Jung-woo to come home and face him. Sang-cheol follows Jung-woo and arrives just in time to hear the gunshots. Fortunately, Dong-min fired most of his bullets into the wall instead of Jung-woo, so the worst of the damage is a surface wound on Jung-woo’s forehead.

For once, Sang-cheol acknowledges that Jung-woo wasn’t the aggressor here. He even bandages Jung-woo’s head and stays the night in case Dong-min comes back. Then, after finding himself on the receiving end of jeers from a couple of highschoolers who mistake him for Jung-woo, Sang-cheol actually listens to some of what Jung-woo has to say. Sang-cheol still isn’t keen to work with Jung-woo, but he does continue investigating and putting pressure on Chief Hyun to reopen the case.

Through Jung-woo’s attempts to explain himself and Seol’s fruitless attempts to visit Su-oh at the hospital, we finally learn a bit more about Da-eun. It’s been hinted that she and Jung-woo were dating and that she was rumored to be cheating on him (that’s what Jung-woo and Bo-young fought about in his car), but now we learn that Da-eun had some kind of relationship with Hyung-shik. It’s possible she was simply his patient, but the way she kept count of their meetings suggests otherwise. As do the present-day anonymous text messages accusing him of murder.

In the midst of all this, a new character (re-)enters the narrative and shakes everything up with his presence alone. He’s Su-oh’s identical twin brother, GEON-OH, and a bunch of people are absolutely terrified of him. But it’s not the same contemptuous fear that they have for Jung-woo. Instead, they greet Geon-oh with over-the-top enthusiasm and nervous laughter, like he might explode in their faces at any moment.

On the surface, Geon-oh seems every bit the loose cannon. He’s perpetually drinking and/or drunk; he’s on the no-fly list for illicit drug use (interesting, considering he just flew back from the U.S.); and he radiates Dangerous Energy. Upon learning that Geon-oh has returned, Chief Hyun immediately tries to ship him back overseas without anyone else knowing he was here.

But Geon-oh has his reasons for being here, and the more we see of him, the more it seems he’s only a danger to those who know what happened eleven years ago. He calls Byung-mu and Min-soo shameless for becoming a police officer and nurse, respectively, and they in turn scramble to get him away from Bo-young’s parents before he can explain why he’s back in town. What’s more, he greets Jung-woo with a gigantic hug, just like Su-oh did, and an apology for coming so late. And then he delivers something that has been buried in Su-oh’s greenhouse for years: Bo-young’s backpack.

So, to summarize what we know so far: Bo-young and Da-eun were killed in the warehouse on the same night, but (probably) by different people. Right now, Hyung-shik is the most likely suspect for Da-eun’s murder. His wife, Assemblywoman Ye, knows about the accusatory text messages, but is more concerned about eliminating potential threats to her upcoming election than anything else. And since Seol now lives in the apartment Da-eun used to rent and won’t stop asking to visit Su-oh, Hyung-shik suspects she may be sending those texts. If he is a murderer, Seol may be his next target.

On the other hand, all the “evidence” linking Jung-woo to Bo-young’s murder involve his belongings, but not him directly — e.g., her blood in his car, said car being spotted leaving town right after her time of death, and a mixture of blood and mud on his shoes (which he swears he never wore because they were too small). Byung-mu and Min-soo both act incredibly shifty whenever the details of that night are mentioned, and their fathers definitely know something. Na-kyeom promises to help Jung-woo uncover the truth, but really, all she wants is for him to leave the past buried. And finally, Chief Hyun has kept both Su-oh and Geon-oh conveniently out of the way for the past eleven years — and the second Jung-woo asks where those two were the night of the murders, Chief Hyun angrily shuts down the entire conversation.

I can’t help thinking that if Sang-cheol would just stop being so belligerent, he and Jung-woo, with some help from Seol, could put most of these clues together pretty easily. Which is frustrating, because it feels like he’s written that way solely to keep him from getting to the answer too quickly.

Frustrations aside, though, I’m excited about what Geon-oh’s return brings to the story, especially how he’s completely shattering the status quo in a single day. Regardless of whether he was complicit in the murder(s), he’s lighting a fire under all the right people to get the ball rolling again on exposing this town’s darkest secrets. Plus, his initial reunion with Jung-woo felt way more genuinely affectionate than most of Jung-woo’s other reunions have been, and Jung-woo definitely needs all the genuine hugs he can get.

 
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