Black Out: Episodes 7-8

by mistyisles

Things take an (even more) grim turn this week as long-buried evidence surfaces, causing certain people’s masks to slip and revealing just how horrible they’ve been all along. Our protagonist is slowly gaining allies, but the people who ruined his life haven’t come this far just to let him expose their atrocities without a fight.

 
EPISODES 7-8

According to Jung-woo’s old teacher, he and his friends were inseparable in high school. But they all split up just before his trial: Geon-oh to study abroad and Byung-mu and Min-soo to military service. Now that Geon-oh has returned, the reasons for that all-too-conveniently timed separation finally come to light.

It starts with him giving Jung-woo Bo-young’s backpack. They’re interrupted by Byung-mu and Min-soo’s fathers — sent by Chief Hyun to collect Geon-oh — but Jung-woo and Geon-oh manage to hide 1) Bo-young’s cell phone and 2) one of her old textbooks before being attacked. And I do mean attacked — in the end, both Jung-woo and Geon-oh are knocked unconscious, and the older men carry Geon-oh and the backpack away.

Fortunately, Sang-cheol happens to call Jung-woo not long after, and gets him taken to the hospital. Curiosity piqued, Sang-cheol spends all night searching the premises, where he discovers Bo-young’s cell phone. But don’t worry — this doesn’t lead straight into yet another cycle of him putting all the blame on Jung-woo, because the last video Bo-young took on that phone happened shortly before her death, and Jung-woo’s not in it. Bo-young, Byung-mu, Min-soo, and Geon-oh were all drinking at the warehouse that night, and when they ran out of alcohol, Geon-oh left to grab more.

The video alone doesn’t reveal what happened next. But remember that textbook Geon-oh frantically hid at Jung-woo’s house? Tucked inside is the only article of clothing missing from Bo-young’s skeletal remains — her underwear (yes, unfortunately this means exactly what it sounds like). Sang-cheol and Jung-woo work together to get DNA samples from each of the so-called “friends” for testing. Byung-mu is the hardest of the bunch to sneak a sample from (he didn’t become a cop for nothing), and when Sang-cheol picks up the results from the lab, Byung-mu follows and T-bones his car in an (ultimately futile) attempt to keep him from telling anyone. Why? Because both Byung-mu and Min-soo’s DNA match the DNA found on the underwear.

Elsewhere, Min-soo confesses (under threat of having his face smashed in by Jung-woo’s hammer) that a petty argument with Bo-young that night bruised Byung-mu’s fragile ego and the two took turns sexually assaulting her as revenge. Thanks to Sang-cheol’s quick thinking, Min-soo and Byung-mu are both swiftly arrested.

Byung-mu in particular is finally showing his true despicable colors. When Sang-cheol interrogates him, all he does is whine about how hard he worked to become a police officer. To Jung-woo’s face, Byung-mu admits scornfully that he always resented Jung-woo’s popularity and privilege, adding that Bo-young deserved what happened because she defended Jung-woo instead of him (hence the bruised ego).

But Min-soo maintains that they didn’t kill Bo-young, and that brings us back to Geon-oh. Geon-oh is too distraught to coherently explain everything that happened, but he does state, repeatedly, that Jung-woo went to prison in his place, that “it” (whatever it was) was a mistake, and that he wants to turn himself in. But Chief Hyun isn’t about to let that happen. He padlocks Geon-oh in his bedroom, and not for the first time, either (looks like Bo-young wasn’t the only one who grew up with an abusive father). After Jung-woo breaks him out and leaves him in Seol’s care, Geon-oh takes off on Seol’s scooter in search of more alcohol to numb his guilt. Jung-woo only finds him again because Geon-oh mistakes a random highschooler for Bo-young and falls at her feet sobbing and begging for forgiveness.

Chief Hyun, thinking his son is safely imprisoned contained at home, examines the evidence. To his relief (and mine, honestly), none of it points to Geon-oh — quite the contrary, in fact. So Chief Hyun gives Sang-cheol full rein to investigate and charge Byung-mu and Min-soo for their crimes. After their fathers grovel and pledge unconditional obedience, however, Chief Hyun and his lackey manage to spin the narrative into a neat little closed case that still names Jung-woo as the murderer.

Enter Geon-oh, who with Jung-woo’s help has finally worked up the courage to come clean. But before Sang-cheol can question him, Byung-mu and Min-soo’s fathers cause a scene, buying time for Chief Hyun to pull Geon-oh aside and threaten him into silence. He does it by appealing to Geon-oh’s sense of responsibility and guilt (Who’ll take care of Su-oh if you turn yourself in? Are you really going to let your family suffer just so you can feel better about yourself?), and it works like a charm. Geon-oh wrestles with his tormented conscience, but in the end he tells Sang-cheol that everyone was gone by the time he returned to the warehouse on the night of the murders.

When Jung-woo gets hit by a car while trying to chase Geon-oh down for answers, it’s the final nail in the coffin. Geon-oh hangs himself in the warehouse, and Chief Hyun arrives too late to save him. I have no sympathy left for Chief Hyun, but his scream of anguish rips my heart out all the same, if only because Geon-oh didn’t deserve this. Chief Hyun’s corruption has destroyed yet another young life, but this time it was the very life he was trying to save.

Aside from the specifics of how Bo-young died and how complicit Geon-oh was or wasn’t, that’s one murder almost solved. So what about the other? Well, Hyung-shik is acting as sketchy as ever, and has gotten no closer to figuring out who’s sending him the accusatory text messages. He does, however, receive a visit from someone unexpected: Na-kyeom. She claims she’s only here to ask about moving Jung-woo’s comatose mother to Seoul, but the fact she used to volunteer here with Jung-woo’s entire friend group seems too convenient a connection to ignore.

But that’s the thing about Na-kyeom — she’s very hard to read. Did she turn to Byung-mu and Min-soo in innocence when she asked them to help convince Jung-woo to move away and never look back, or did she do it knowing full well what they were capable of? And what’s her motivation for bringing the news about Byung-mu and Min-soo to Bo-young’s parents?

Regardless, it’s clear that the worst people in this town are very good at hiding their true natures and turning vulnerable people around them into scapegoats. I’m glad that Sang-cheol is finally learning to see through it, and that we actually got to see him and Jung-woo working as a team. Sang-cheol and Jung-woo staging a fight so Jung-woo would get locked in Byung-mu’s cell for a couple of hours was exactly the sort of thing I’ve wanted to see from them all along, so here’s hoping we get more of that dynamic in the second half of the show.

 
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