Good Boy: Episodes 3-4

by Unit

We’re two weeks in, and our good boys are already working to build a case against our resident villain — who is turning out to be more evil than we assumed. In the meantime, we get into the familial backstories of some of our good boys that just might be connected to some villainy on a grander scale.

 
EPISODES 3-4

We resume with Dong-joo accusing Joo-young (and his wristwatch) for our premiere week’s hit-and-run case. As expected, Joo-young denies his involvement, and Gyeong-il is formally charged for the hit and run. Dong-joo begins to investigate amidst his friend’s silence, and Man-shik asks for Jong-hyeon’s help on the case. Coincidentally, the prosecutor in charge, KIM SEOK-HYEON (Kim Seo-kyung), is Jong-hyeon’s older brother — but the brothers don’t have a good relationship because Seok-hyeon is a little too gleeful about being the golden son who beats Jong-hyeon at everything.

Joo-young instructs a prison guard on his payroll to silence Gyeong-il — and speaking of payroll, Joo-young shackles gifts his top underlings (like Golden Bunny and Prison Guard) the same brand of his wristwatch as a symbol of his trust in them. Dong-joo doesn’t believe his friend committed suicide, and when he finds the watch among Gyeong-il’s belongings, he knows it belongs to the killer. Unfortunately, Seok-hyeon closes the case and Dong-joo is unable to get forensic evidence from the watch.

Furious, Dong-joo marches to the customs office to fling the watch at Joo-young, before delivering a series of “I know what you did” punches to his face. Afterwards, Joo-young has the prison guard killed as punishment for losing the wristwatch in Gyeong-il’s cell (while strangling the poor boy). Then he inducts Coach Oh into his inner circle by passing on the late guard’s watch to Oh.

Hanna’s interest in the wristwatches is piqued, and we learn she has one of them at home. It belonged to her late dad — a police officer, whose death is linked to a Russian mafia gang he was investigating. But the case remains closed and unsolved, and I wonder what the hope of the common man is if the cops can’t solve their fellow cop’s murder.

Hanna takes her dad’s watch to our resident pawnshop owner, GEUM-NAM (Park Chul-min), and we learn that only 12 of the watches are made per year. A few of them were smuggled into Insung years ago, and Geum-nam notes that Dad’s watch feels one gram heavier than it should. The extra gram might be concealing evidence that can help Dad’s case, but that’s just my theory.

Dad’s case is probably one of the reasons Hanna became a cop despite her mom’s desire for her to switch from athlete to celebrity. Mom has always been a stage parent, and her daughter’s wellbeing comes second to her fame and the resulting paychecks. Hanna was not in optimal condition at her last competition, and she lost the gold medal and a world record. But Mom didn’t even notice because she was negotiating, or rather, haggling a shampoo CF! Hanna grabbed a pair of scissors to cut her hair — and Mom’s shampoo dreams — and she still wears her hair short, and nurses a grudge against Mom till date.

Hanna’s dizziness returns in the middle of a crosswalk, and she stumbles. Thankfully, Dong-joo was trailing after her and he catches her before she hits the floor — like he did at her last competition. Hanna tells Dong-joo she’s been experiencing the migraine-like symptoms since middle school, and she’s on medication for it although she doesn’t experience it as often. He’s impressed that she won a lot of gold medals regardless, especially since it took him his all to win a single gold medal.

Hanna picked up Dong-joo’s medal from the pawnshop when she went to ask about Dad’s watch, and she returns it to him now. She also advises him not to get unnecessarily worked up when it comes to Joo-young, and to focus solely on nailing his target. “Go get that bastard!” Hanna says, and Dong-joo falls in love for the ten millionth time.

Hanna takes back her resignation — and it’s a good thing she’s staying on as a cop because Joo-young has set his sights on her since she was previously in possession of Lee Jin-su’s (the hit and run victim) document, and she might have seen the contents. While investigating the mole at the agency, Jong-hyeon discovers that Hanna’s records were pulled up, so he officially joins the good boy team — despite Dong-joo’s petty objections — in order to keep an eye on Hanna.

Back to Lee Jin-su’s case, our team steals the police commissioner’s sleek new ride as bait to lure a car smuggling ring, in hopes of finding the hit-and-run car. The team tracks the smugglers to their workshop — and just when they think they’re outnumbered, their rival team shows up on the scene because they have been dispatched to find the commissioner’s stolen car. Cue: a full-scale fight against the smugglers because each team wants to take the credit for apprehending the smuggling ring. Pfft. Monkey, the leader of the smugglers, manages to escape, but one of Joo-young’s men-in-black kills him outside the workshop. Hul! Also, it looks like this set of men-in-black were the same ones keeping an eye on Hanna’s house earlier on. Hmmm.

Monkey is dead, the hit-and-run car is gone, and Man-shik is in hot water for damaging the commissioner’s car in the workshop fight. Lol. But at least our good boys took down the smuggling ring — although the police commissioner takes all the credit. Heh. Further investigation into the smugglers reveals a large-scale operation that is connected to the Russian mafia and an armed Filipino group. Hmmm. Our good boys also surmise that Lee Jin-su discovered a paper trail of Joo-young’s shady deals with the smugglers, and that’s why Joo-young killed him. Great! Now go get proof, people.

Our good boys learn that Joo-young is about to make a run for it — via a foreign business trip he threatened his boss to send him on. Dong-joo and Jong-hyeon rush to stop him on his way to the airport, but they can’t exactly arrest him for murder because there’s no evidence. Joo-young blames Gyeong-il’s death on Dong-joo’s refusal to stay out of the hit-and-run case — and this hits twice as hard because Dong-joo already blames himself for Gyeong-il’s retirement injury which was a result of his punch in their last boxing match together.

Our team finds the hit-and-run car in a container at the port, and they can officially request a travel ban for Joo-young. The team commences a low-speed chase in a residential area — with Jong-hyeon on one end, Man-shik and Hanna on the other, and Dong-joo jumping rooftops to keep up with Joo-young’s car. Just watching Dong-joo’s multiple jumps makes my knees hurt.

The chase sequence climaxes when Dong-joo leaps onto Joo-young’s car to crack the windshield — and his own head when the impact flings him to the road! Thankfully, Dong-joo’s skull is intact despite all the bleeding. Phew! “You are not getting on a plane today,” he smirks at Joo-young, and even Joo-young has to be part awestruck, part dumbstruck at the craziness of his police officer nemesis.

There’s a lot going on in this show. I thought we were just dealing with a corrupt customs agent in cahoots with smugglers. But now the Russian mafia and other armed goons have joined the group, and more bodies are piling up! Police duties aside, our good boys have personal connections to the havoc these baddies have wrecked in Insung. There’s Hanna and her dad vs. the mafia, and Dong-joo and Gyeong-il vs. Joo-young. I’m not sure whether or not Seok-hyeon has ties with the baddies, but I sure don’t like the way he dismissed Gyeong-il’s case — and Jong-hyeon by extension.

The good news is, our good boys have decided to work together against Joo-young and his wristwatch cult. Jong-hyeon’s level-headed approach to investigations is quite the contrast to Dong-joo’s bulldozer methods, and Dong-joo stands to learn a lot from Jong-hyeon (and vice versa) if he just tones down his petty and one-sided beef. Petty Dong-joo is fun, though, and I can already see the sparks for an enemies to buddies bromance between him and Jong-hyeon.

 
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