Seoul Busters: Episodes 7-8

by lovepark

This week is all about the dad of the group and how he ended up with four daughters. It’s a miraculous tale about beating the odds, and while it may inspire others to strive for their dreams, to the actual protagonists, it’s an unexpected twist and burden. Alas, our detective will need to deal with his baggage quickly since the latest kidnapping case requires him to finally address the mental block that’s been dragging him down.

 
EPISODES 7-8

The spotlight turns to our resident father of four this week, a retired professional sharpshooter with a penchant for procreation. After a successful chase across rooftops — mostly completed by Min-seo since the others jump backwards from the ledge — everyone is invited to Jung-hwan’s housewarming party. (Except the criminal, of course. He has to go to jail.)

With four young girls in the house, the party is loud, and the violent crimes team only adds to the chaos with their characteristic boisterousness and lack of social awareness. It’s no wonder Jung-hwan’s wife, Young-eun, looks stressed and finally blows a fuse when things get too unruly.

Once the party ends, Joong-ryuk ropes in Tan-shik for seconds, and the latter sips on a liter of soda while listening to Joong-ryuk’s story time. The tale is about Jung-hwan, and starts over a decade ago at the national team training facility. It’s where Jung-hwan met his wife, and it was love at first sight ball to the face.

Though Young-eun failed to make the national team for table tennis, Jung-hwan was able to join for shooting, and he asked her to marry him after he won an Olympic gold. Before he started training, though, he convinced Young-eun to spend the night with him, and thus, their first daughter was born. The pressure of fatherhood caused Jung-hwan to waffle during the selection match, and failing to make it to the Olympics, he changed course to become a cop.

Child #2 was a honeymoon baby, and after that, Jung-hwan got a vasectomy from a doctor with a Korean name equivalent to “Dick Johnson.” Unfortunately, Jung-hwan beat the 0.3% odds, and daughter #3 came to be. With three little mouths to feed, Jung-hwan became unstoppable at work and easily took down a room of thugs by himself. However, in his rush to get back home, he jumped out a window while chasing a culprit and landed on his nether regions.

Thanks to his sacrifice, Jung-hwan received a special promotion — as well as all his superior’s sympathy — but for this father, a broken penis was actually good news. Declared infertile, Jung-hwan cried tears of joy, but soon, those tears turned to despair when their doctor congratulated them on baby #4. It’s declared a miracle, and everyone at the restaurant listening to the story feels invigorated to keep trying.

The major case this week is the kidnapping of a little girl, and from the lack of CCTV footage of the incident, Yoo-bin believes it was targeted. This means the kidnapper had ill-intentions towards the parents, and the father confesses that he has made a lot of enemies through his YouTube channel. Apparently, he went undercover to expose lying used car salespeople, and out of those scammers, one particular ex-con has no alibi.

Joong-ryuk is convinced the ex-con is the culprit because of his “hunch” (which is usually wrong), but Yoo-bin rules him out after realizing that the man is colorblind. The kidnapper’s ransom note used a red-green clipping, meaning that the ex-con is unlikely to have made it. With only a caricature sketch of the kidnapper at their disposal — thanks to a friendly native white woman who delivered the ransom note for the culprit — our team returns to the drawing board.

Given the sensitive nature of the case, Yoo-bin instructed everyone to keep quiet about the details, but his warning didn’t extend to the ex-con who blabs about the kidnapping to a nosy reporter. As news of the missing girl gains national attention, a special investigation team is assigned to the case and essentially sidelines our heroes. Yoo-bin, though, doesn’t pay them much heed and assures his team to continue investigating since he will take full responsibility for any fallout.

Finding something odd in the father’s school records, Yoo-bin invites Min-seo to a hotel, but then fails to provide any useful details causing her to misunderstand his rather salacious words. After she punches him in the stomach for suggesting they “do it,” Yoo-bin apologizes for not explaining properly and brings her to the father’s high school reunion where he hopes to gather more intel.

Thanks to Min-seo’s surprising pick-pocketing abilities, she procures them tickets to get inside, but their cover is nearly blown when a classmate asks who they are. As the two of them stumble over their story, another classmate mistakes Min-seo for someone else, and though our detective is grateful for the mix-up initially, her lies get her caught in a pickle when the others pressure her to join the competition since she used to dance.

Reluctantly joining the stage, Min-seo bobs along to the music until she notices the other competitors breakdancing, and not to be outdone, she starts making a ruckus with her unconventional moves. While everyone is distracted by Min-seo’s flailing around, Yoo-bin presses another classmate for more details about the father and learns something interesting.

Back in high school, the father had a quarrel with a friend which turned into relentless bullying. It became so bad that the other student dropped out of school, but the father continued to harass him. Then one night as the boy tried to escape his bullies, he ran into the streets and was struck by a truck. The victim survived, and the incident was buried with a mass school transfer as the only punishment.

It seems our team has a new suspect, but a quick search reveals that the student died three years and his only living relative is his older sister. Her apartment is empty, though, and according to her boss, she quit three months ago. This might be another dead-end for our detectives, but thanks to Joong-ryuk’s inexplicable charms, the boss goes out of her way to get them the CCTV footage they need.

As they compare the video of the sister to the one Min-seo and Tan-shik found of the kidnapper, everyone thinks it’s a bust since their culprit impersonated the girl’s uncle and looks like a man in the sketch. Only Yoo-bin disagrees, suggesting that the person could be a woman, and gets their gaits analyzed to see if his theory is true. While not conclusive, the NFS agent tells Yoo-bin that it’s a 60% match, but none of this matters since the special investigation team already solved the case.

According to the special investigation team, the kidnapper is the ex-con Yoo-bin ruled out. A second ransom note was delivered, and this one had the ex-con’s prints all over it. However, our violent crimes unit knows something doesn’t add up, and Jung-hwan stands at a crossroads: stick with his team and keep silent or inform the others for a chance to get scouted to headquarters. As he wavers between these two options, the resident ex-daycare student tells Jung-hwan to not disappoint him by betraying his friends.

Thus, the special investigation team wastes their time going after the ex-con while Jung-hwan infiltrates the real kidnapper’s place with his team. Inside the sister’s childhood home, he finds evidence of the girl being held hostage, but before he can call for backup, the sister hits him over the head. With each smack, Jung-hwan pops up to recite the Miranda warning, but the joke turns dark as the sister continues smashing his head until he falls unconscious.

The sister runs out with the little girl, but Joong-ryuk catches up in time to stop her car — quite literally. He lifts up the front with his superhuman strength, but the bumper eventually falls off, allowing the sister to get away. The only way now to stop her is for Jung-hwan to shoot the car, but ever since his selection match, he hasn’t been able to pull the trigger. Even his wife noticed how he seemed to resent his family for holding him back, but as Jung-hwan points his gun and remembers his family, they no longer become a burden but his motivation. He takes the shot, and the car comes to a screeching halt.

Our detectives arrest the sister, and during the interrogation, she explains why she did it. Since the incident, her parents passed away from shock, and her brother remained comatose until he died. While her world fell apart, she saw the perpetrator enter the restaurant she worked at with his family, looking happy. She wondered why only the victims had to suffer and wanted him to experience the same pain she felt. However, she couldn’t bring herself to kill the little girl since she was innocent of her father’s crime.

As the kidnapper is taken away, the father asks if he can speak to her for a second and drops to his knees. He apologizes for what he did to his friend all those years ago, and the sister sobs as she holds the lollipop gifted to her by the little girl.

The case is closed, and the special investigation team is sent packing with their tails between their legs. Not one to burn bridges, though, Jung-hwan sends the leader off with a gift and a heartfelt note, but given the context, it reads as deriding rather than flattering. Guess his dreams of moving to HQ will have to wait for another time.

I found this week much more interesting both in terms of character exploration as well as plot. Keeping the case contained to two episodes really helped with the pace, and instead of having Jung-hwan have a personal connection to the kidnapping, it acted more in tandem with his struggles as a father and as a cop. It came to a nice conclusion where his shift in perspective helped him realize that his family actually pushed him to be better rather than stopped him from reaching his full potential. While I still think the underlying issues within his family haven’t actually been addressed, there were some glimmers of growth which I appreciated.

As for the case, I did miss Yoo-bin’s more Holmes-esque detective skills and the gags associated with that, but overall, solving the case didn’t really seem like the main takeaway from this week. Unlike the first two cases, the kidnapping incident touched on a variety of issues that ultimately stemmed from a broken judicial system. Because the bullies were left unpunished, the victims became vengeful, resulting in a cycle of violence. In the end, our heroes were able to catch the culprit, but was that enough? Honestly, though, I don’t think the show intends to answer these questions, and I’m fine with that because I came for the jokes. While it may not be as funny as I hoped, it still gets a few good chuckles out of me, and as a breezy watch, it serves its purpose.

 
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