Post by humblestudent2 on Aug 22, 2007 21:14:30 GMT -5
Episode 4 Recap
NOTE! This recap is a poor substitute for actually seeing the episode, which is full of interspersed story lines, split-screen work, voiceover effects, and sharp lines of dialogue.
For ease of understanding, I have re-sorted the action into a few overlapping threads.
1. "An intimate gathering of old friends"
As episode 4 starts, paroled homicide Kim Soon-ki and his old buddies (loan shark Yoon Dae-sik, corporate secretary Na Seok-jin, and violent crimes detective Kang Oh-soo - what a collection!) are having drinks at an upscale bar to celebrate Soon-ki's parole. And now Soon-ki's "benefactor" shows up - his appeals lawyer, Oh Seung-ha! Seung-ha is his usual smiling self: "An intimate gathering of old friends. I admire this very much!"
As the evening goes on, the "intimate gathering" becomes more and more acrimonious, as Soon-ki and Dae-sik both get drunk. Soon-ki first starts going on about Seok-jin's lover (whom we know to be Na-Heui, Oh-soo's sister-in-law), provoking an angry response from Seok-jin. (He goes out and calls Na-Heui on the phone. She is worried because although Soon-ki doesn't know her, he does know Heui-soo (her husband, Oh-soo's brother). Seok-jin gives her some empty reassurances, and signs off with "I love you", which Oh-soo overhears. Of course he doesn't know who she is, and just joshes him about it.)
Then Soon-ki gets even more unpleasant, bewailing his bad luck compared to his old friends, "but whose fault was it that I got involved in crime?" "Are you saying it was us?" retorts Dae-sik. After more insults they start throwing punches at each other in the bar, and Oh-soo hustles them out of there. Meanwhile Seung-ha observes all this unmoved. We don't see him leave, but we find out later that he paid the bar bill!
A couple days later, Soon-ki, who has apparently moved in with Na Seok-jin!, shows up at the fine hotel wearing one of Seok-jin's suits ("we're the same size!"), pokes around Seok-jin's office and Heui-soo's office and sits in Heui-soo's comfy chair and hints/states that he wants a nice job now! At this point Heui-soo shows up (there is a nice bit of business as Seok-jin first covers up the picture of Na-heui so Soon-ki won't see it, then has to uncover it when Heui-soo arrives). Soon-ki eventually walks out smugly with a fat envelope apparently full of cash; there is the strong impression that Soon-ki is blackmailing them. Seok-jin tells Heui-soo that he'll do something about Soon-ki but doesn't say what.
2. "The final confirmation"
Meanwhile, the morning after the “intimate gathering”, there was a re-enactment of the killing of Lawyer Kwon at Kwon's office, with the participation of the police team, Jo Dong-seop, with Seung-ha on hand, and Detective Kang Oh-soo playing the part of the lawyer, wearing a big paper nametag around his neck. Dong-seop leads them up to the point where he struggles over the knife with the lawyer (played by Oh-soo) ....
... and at that point, all of a sudden, Oh-soo starts to experience visions of, or flashbacks to, the struggle over a knife that led to the death of Jeong Tae-hoon, just as we saw it in Hae-in's vision in Episode 1. And he is seeing it all with the killer's eyes. He even resists holding the knife the way Dong-seop wants him to hold it, holding it, instead, as the killer of Tae-hoon held it. He is very rattled by this, to the point that Min-jae has to call him back to himself. We are left with the distinct impression that Oh-soo himself may well have been the killer of Tae-hoon.
Oh-soo tries to recover his composure in the washroom, but when he comes out, he runs into Seung-ha, who has been watching the whole thing with his usual clinical expression. They have an exchange in which Seung-ha says that the re-enactment of the crime is the true test of a witness's account, "the final confirmation."
"And did you find anything?" asks Oh-soo.
After a pause, Seung-ha replies "No," and gives him a big smile.
3. "The Gates of Hell"
On the night of the bar party, Hae-in, who is in possession of the single surviving "People change destiny" letter to Jo Dong-seop (with the "P'yo Joon-seong" return address), did a reading on it, and had a vision which consisted mainly of pictures of sculpted carvings of human figures, followed by a hand in a black leather glove holding a pistol. She called Oh-soo at the time to tell him about it, but he was at a loss. Gun crimes aren't so common in Korea - "This isn't America" - where guns are hard to obtain.
The next day the book that Seung-ha is waiting for (something by Carl Jung) is returned, and Haei-in apparently calls him to let him know. In the evening, after closing time, the last person in the building, Hae-in is leafing through an art book and finds the carvings of her vision. They are Rodin's "Doorway to Hell", inspired by Dante's "Divine Comedy". An informative article about this piece is here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Hell
I should point out that this work is not unfamiliar to the cultured audience in Korea, as a bronze casting of the plaster original is the centerpiece of the Rodin Gallery in Seoul :
www.rodingallery.org/rodingallery/rodin/english/05side/sitemap.html
Just then Seung-ha shows up. While they are talking, the lights, which are on a timer, all go out, leaving them in darkness. She gropes around for a switch; Seung-ha, however, finds it first, and turns the lights on, being at that time directly in front of her and in a position of intimate closeness to her. "You found it before I did," she observes. His response: "I am accustomed to darkness."
As they leave, Seung-ha asks why, in her Tarot deck, she painted the Galanthus (snowdrop). (By the way, I don't know where in her deck she does this.) She tells him the legend of how an angel gave the snowdrop to Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden, as a symbol of hope. I should say that there seems to be some chemistry of some kind between Seung-ha and Hae-in; but what kind it is on either side is beyond me at this point.
Hae-in gives this information to Oh-soo. He doesn't know anything about Rodin or even Dante, so she has to fill him in. "The most important figure in the sculpture," she says, "is the man on top, thinking with his eyes closed." (This is the figure we know of as "The Thinker." ) "When he opens his eyes, he will become the judged." Hae-in has the impression that the picture appeared on some kind of website, and Oh-soo puts Min-jae to work looking for it.
The next day, we see Seung-ha visiting the "Gates of Hell" in the Rodin Gallery. I don't think we heard Hae-in mentioning the sculpture to him.
Cha Kwang-doo (the "Director of General Affairs" in Seung-ha's office) reminisces about how he tried (12 years ago, as a police detective) to pursue the information in Hae-in's vision, but was angrily rebuffed by his chief. He goes to look up Hae-in to ask how she and her mother are doing. He knows (from Ban) that she is doing some work on this latest case, but he is shaken to hear from Hae-in that Kang Oh-soo is the detective.
4. The Journalist
Meanwhile, from the very beginning of the episode, there have been references to stuff appearing on the Internet about the Jo Dong-seop case, much of it apparently from the keyboard of reporter Seong Joon-p'yo whom we met last episode. He apparently works for a magazine (Issues & Issues) which at the moment exists only on line. This is apparently a project of a publishing house (with other, paper magazines) whose office is the place where the mysterious Young-cheol works (the stammering guy in the glasses, who gave Sora the stuffed bear).
Anyway, these articles, which are sympathetic to Jo and ask why he got such a hard sentence in the first place, are bitterly resented by Oh-soo's father, the hotel magnate Kang Kyeong-hyeon. He is willing to support Lawyer Kwon's family if they want to sue Joon-p'yo for this, and asks, "Wasn't he going to stop being a journalist?" There is some history there, as you will see.
In the course of all this, Joon-p'yo himself gets an express package - we don't see who it's from or what's in it.
Now, you may recall from last episode that Oh-soo hadn't given up on trying to find something out from the "P'yo Joon-seong" return address. Min-jae reports that the apartment block that is there now is three years old, and there used to be a private home there. The owner of that home was Park Sook-heui, a divorced woman who emigrated to Australia. That seems to be a dead end, but just wait!
When his attention is called to Joon-P'yo's Internet articles – particularly since Min-jae is surfing the Net trying to find anything to do with the case - Kang Oh-soo recalls this guy's history with the Kang family. A few years ago there was a bribery scandal involving Mr. Kang Dong-hyeon, the hotel magnate, which was exposed in articles by Seong Joon-p'yo. Mr. Kang sued him for libel and (influential guy that he is) won the suit, ruining Joon-p'yo, driving him out of journalism, and causing his wife to divorce him. His wife was Park Sook-heui! The return address on that letter is Seong Joon-p'yo's old address! At this point, they catch on that Seong Joon-p'yo is P'yo Joon-Seong written backwards (pointed out by ME in the Episode 3 recap).
Now Detective Oh-soo is convinced that Seong Joon-p'yo is Mr. X himself - he has orchestrated all this himself to get revenge on the Kang family. He dashes off with Jae-min in tow, ready to break into Joon-p'yo's house to get the evidence that he is sure is there, undeterred by the need for a search warrant and real evidence of Joon-p'yo's involvement and Chief Ban's orders and so on. But just as he is about to get out of his car, his cell phone rings --
But wait, I have to go back and fill you in on some other stuff!
5. "Over the Rainbow"
Let's get back to Oh-soo's old buddy, the loan shark, Dae-shik, whose cough is continuing to get worse. Oh-soo urges him to go to the hospital and get it looked at. Meanwhile, he is still calling the woman Jeong-yeon to get her to pay back her loan. He calls her at the restaurant where she works and warns her what will happen if she doesn't pay him in two days, now - her little Sora will be kidnapped. Just as she gets off the phone, she herself gets an express package! We don't find out what's in it.
Now another day has gone by. Dae-shik has gone to the hospital and they've told him he has asthma - the disease that killed his father, it seems. He tells Oh-soo that he is actually thinking of getting out of loan sharking and opening a stew place - if he gets his money back, that is.
But his chances of that don't seem good, because Jeong-yeon is apparently pulling up stakes; she has her phone turned off, and is telling her boss she won't be back. While she does this, however, she incautiously lets Sora play outside. A man's feet are seen walking up .... when Jeong-yeon comes out, Sora is nowhere to be seen, and doesn't respond to her frantic shouts.
In a fury, she calls up Dae-shik and demands her daughter back. Dae-shik tells her she's insane and indeed doesn't seem to know what she's talking about. But she doesn't believe it. We see her stalking through the darkened streets, her fists clenched.
Meanwhile, however, Sora actually turns up, lost and crying, and carrying her stuffed bear, in front of the police station. Cha Kwang-doo is apparently the first to really find her; then Seung-ha shows up immediately. He finds out her name - Jeong Sora - and where she lives, and will see if he can drive her home. In his car, Seung-ha calms her down and tells her she will find her mother again, just like Dorothy in the story. "Then are you the Wizard of Oz?" "That's right," he says, and puts a tape of someone (not Judy Garland) doing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" on his tape player as they drive through the darkened streets.
Now Dae-shik calls up Oh-soo to let him know that he's ready to do something about the obnoxious Soon-ki as a favor. This is the phone call that Oh-soo gets just as he is about to burglarize the journalist's apartment! Oh-soo tries to talk him out of it. Meanwhile, however, Dae-shik is absently opening an express package that came for HIM earlier in the day. "What's this, a child's picture?" he mutters, still on the phone. "And a stuffed animal.." (pulling out a duplicate of Sora’s bear). "What's written on the card??" demands Oh-soo. "It has a word in English..." Oh-soo tells him to stay there and he'll be right over.
But when Oh-soo gets to Dae-shik's office, still dragging Jae-min, he finds Dae-shik lying on the floor, unable to speak, gasping in - an asthmatic crisis? Something else? "You'll be okay!" Oh-soo yells frantically. But it doesn't look it. Dae-shik collapses, without signs of life; Jae-min, calling 911 on his cell phone, knocks the JUSTICE Tarot off the shelf, and it flutters to the floor, apparently taking with it Dae-shik's stillborn dreams of a respectable life in the stew business. END OF EPISODE!
NOTE! This recap is a poor substitute for actually seeing the episode, which is full of interspersed story lines, split-screen work, voiceover effects, and sharp lines of dialogue.
For ease of understanding, I have re-sorted the action into a few overlapping threads.
1. "An intimate gathering of old friends"
As episode 4 starts, paroled homicide Kim Soon-ki and his old buddies (loan shark Yoon Dae-sik, corporate secretary Na Seok-jin, and violent crimes detective Kang Oh-soo - what a collection!) are having drinks at an upscale bar to celebrate Soon-ki's parole. And now Soon-ki's "benefactor" shows up - his appeals lawyer, Oh Seung-ha! Seung-ha is his usual smiling self: "An intimate gathering of old friends. I admire this very much!"
As the evening goes on, the "intimate gathering" becomes more and more acrimonious, as Soon-ki and Dae-sik both get drunk. Soon-ki first starts going on about Seok-jin's lover (whom we know to be Na-Heui, Oh-soo's sister-in-law), provoking an angry response from Seok-jin. (He goes out and calls Na-Heui on the phone. She is worried because although Soon-ki doesn't know her, he does know Heui-soo (her husband, Oh-soo's brother). Seok-jin gives her some empty reassurances, and signs off with "I love you", which Oh-soo overhears. Of course he doesn't know who she is, and just joshes him about it.)
Then Soon-ki gets even more unpleasant, bewailing his bad luck compared to his old friends, "but whose fault was it that I got involved in crime?" "Are you saying it was us?" retorts Dae-sik. After more insults they start throwing punches at each other in the bar, and Oh-soo hustles them out of there. Meanwhile Seung-ha observes all this unmoved. We don't see him leave, but we find out later that he paid the bar bill!
A couple days later, Soon-ki, who has apparently moved in with Na Seok-jin!, shows up at the fine hotel wearing one of Seok-jin's suits ("we're the same size!"), pokes around Seok-jin's office and Heui-soo's office and sits in Heui-soo's comfy chair and hints/states that he wants a nice job now! At this point Heui-soo shows up (there is a nice bit of business as Seok-jin first covers up the picture of Na-heui so Soon-ki won't see it, then has to uncover it when Heui-soo arrives). Soon-ki eventually walks out smugly with a fat envelope apparently full of cash; there is the strong impression that Soon-ki is blackmailing them. Seok-jin tells Heui-soo that he'll do something about Soon-ki but doesn't say what.
2. "The final confirmation"
Meanwhile, the morning after the “intimate gathering”, there was a re-enactment of the killing of Lawyer Kwon at Kwon's office, with the participation of the police team, Jo Dong-seop, with Seung-ha on hand, and Detective Kang Oh-soo playing the part of the lawyer, wearing a big paper nametag around his neck. Dong-seop leads them up to the point where he struggles over the knife with the lawyer (played by Oh-soo) ....
... and at that point, all of a sudden, Oh-soo starts to experience visions of, or flashbacks to, the struggle over a knife that led to the death of Jeong Tae-hoon, just as we saw it in Hae-in's vision in Episode 1. And he is seeing it all with the killer's eyes. He even resists holding the knife the way Dong-seop wants him to hold it, holding it, instead, as the killer of Tae-hoon held it. He is very rattled by this, to the point that Min-jae has to call him back to himself. We are left with the distinct impression that Oh-soo himself may well have been the killer of Tae-hoon.
Oh-soo tries to recover his composure in the washroom, but when he comes out, he runs into Seung-ha, who has been watching the whole thing with his usual clinical expression. They have an exchange in which Seung-ha says that the re-enactment of the crime is the true test of a witness's account, "the final confirmation."
"And did you find anything?" asks Oh-soo.
After a pause, Seung-ha replies "No," and gives him a big smile.
3. "The Gates of Hell"
On the night of the bar party, Hae-in, who is in possession of the single surviving "People change destiny" letter to Jo Dong-seop (with the "P'yo Joon-seong" return address), did a reading on it, and had a vision which consisted mainly of pictures of sculpted carvings of human figures, followed by a hand in a black leather glove holding a pistol. She called Oh-soo at the time to tell him about it, but he was at a loss. Gun crimes aren't so common in Korea - "This isn't America" - where guns are hard to obtain.
The next day the book that Seung-ha is waiting for (something by Carl Jung) is returned, and Haei-in apparently calls him to let him know. In the evening, after closing time, the last person in the building, Hae-in is leafing through an art book and finds the carvings of her vision. They are Rodin's "Doorway to Hell", inspired by Dante's "Divine Comedy". An informative article about this piece is here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Hell
I should point out that this work is not unfamiliar to the cultured audience in Korea, as a bronze casting of the plaster original is the centerpiece of the Rodin Gallery in Seoul :
www.rodingallery.org/rodingallery/rodin/english/05side/sitemap.html
Just then Seung-ha shows up. While they are talking, the lights, which are on a timer, all go out, leaving them in darkness. She gropes around for a switch; Seung-ha, however, finds it first, and turns the lights on, being at that time directly in front of her and in a position of intimate closeness to her. "You found it before I did," she observes. His response: "I am accustomed to darkness."
As they leave, Seung-ha asks why, in her Tarot deck, she painted the Galanthus (snowdrop). (By the way, I don't know where in her deck she does this.) She tells him the legend of how an angel gave the snowdrop to Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden, as a symbol of hope. I should say that there seems to be some chemistry of some kind between Seung-ha and Hae-in; but what kind it is on either side is beyond me at this point.
Hae-in gives this information to Oh-soo. He doesn't know anything about Rodin or even Dante, so she has to fill him in. "The most important figure in the sculpture," she says, "is the man on top, thinking with his eyes closed." (This is the figure we know of as "The Thinker." ) "When he opens his eyes, he will become the judged." Hae-in has the impression that the picture appeared on some kind of website, and Oh-soo puts Min-jae to work looking for it.
The next day, we see Seung-ha visiting the "Gates of Hell" in the Rodin Gallery. I don't think we heard Hae-in mentioning the sculpture to him.
Cha Kwang-doo (the "Director of General Affairs" in Seung-ha's office) reminisces about how he tried (12 years ago, as a police detective) to pursue the information in Hae-in's vision, but was angrily rebuffed by his chief. He goes to look up Hae-in to ask how she and her mother are doing. He knows (from Ban) that she is doing some work on this latest case, but he is shaken to hear from Hae-in that Kang Oh-soo is the detective.
4. The Journalist
Meanwhile, from the very beginning of the episode, there have been references to stuff appearing on the Internet about the Jo Dong-seop case, much of it apparently from the keyboard of reporter Seong Joon-p'yo whom we met last episode. He apparently works for a magazine (Issues & Issues) which at the moment exists only on line. This is apparently a project of a publishing house (with other, paper magazines) whose office is the place where the mysterious Young-cheol works (the stammering guy in the glasses, who gave Sora the stuffed bear).
Anyway, these articles, which are sympathetic to Jo and ask why he got such a hard sentence in the first place, are bitterly resented by Oh-soo's father, the hotel magnate Kang Kyeong-hyeon. He is willing to support Lawyer Kwon's family if they want to sue Joon-p'yo for this, and asks, "Wasn't he going to stop being a journalist?" There is some history there, as you will see.
In the course of all this, Joon-p'yo himself gets an express package - we don't see who it's from or what's in it.
Now, you may recall from last episode that Oh-soo hadn't given up on trying to find something out from the "P'yo Joon-seong" return address. Min-jae reports that the apartment block that is there now is three years old, and there used to be a private home there. The owner of that home was Park Sook-heui, a divorced woman who emigrated to Australia. That seems to be a dead end, but just wait!
When his attention is called to Joon-P'yo's Internet articles – particularly since Min-jae is surfing the Net trying to find anything to do with the case - Kang Oh-soo recalls this guy's history with the Kang family. A few years ago there was a bribery scandal involving Mr. Kang Dong-hyeon, the hotel magnate, which was exposed in articles by Seong Joon-p'yo. Mr. Kang sued him for libel and (influential guy that he is) won the suit, ruining Joon-p'yo, driving him out of journalism, and causing his wife to divorce him. His wife was Park Sook-heui! The return address on that letter is Seong Joon-p'yo's old address! At this point, they catch on that Seong Joon-p'yo is P'yo Joon-Seong written backwards (pointed out by ME in the Episode 3 recap).
Now Detective Oh-soo is convinced that Seong Joon-p'yo is Mr. X himself - he has orchestrated all this himself to get revenge on the Kang family. He dashes off with Jae-min in tow, ready to break into Joon-p'yo's house to get the evidence that he is sure is there, undeterred by the need for a search warrant and real evidence of Joon-p'yo's involvement and Chief Ban's orders and so on. But just as he is about to get out of his car, his cell phone rings --
But wait, I have to go back and fill you in on some other stuff!
5. "Over the Rainbow"
Let's get back to Oh-soo's old buddy, the loan shark, Dae-shik, whose cough is continuing to get worse. Oh-soo urges him to go to the hospital and get it looked at. Meanwhile, he is still calling the woman Jeong-yeon to get her to pay back her loan. He calls her at the restaurant where she works and warns her what will happen if she doesn't pay him in two days, now - her little Sora will be kidnapped. Just as she gets off the phone, she herself gets an express package! We don't find out what's in it.
Now another day has gone by. Dae-shik has gone to the hospital and they've told him he has asthma - the disease that killed his father, it seems. He tells Oh-soo that he is actually thinking of getting out of loan sharking and opening a stew place - if he gets his money back, that is.
But his chances of that don't seem good, because Jeong-yeon is apparently pulling up stakes; she has her phone turned off, and is telling her boss she won't be back. While she does this, however, she incautiously lets Sora play outside. A man's feet are seen walking up .... when Jeong-yeon comes out, Sora is nowhere to be seen, and doesn't respond to her frantic shouts.
In a fury, she calls up Dae-shik and demands her daughter back. Dae-shik tells her she's insane and indeed doesn't seem to know what she's talking about. But she doesn't believe it. We see her stalking through the darkened streets, her fists clenched.
Meanwhile, however, Sora actually turns up, lost and crying, and carrying her stuffed bear, in front of the police station. Cha Kwang-doo is apparently the first to really find her; then Seung-ha shows up immediately. He finds out her name - Jeong Sora - and where she lives, and will see if he can drive her home. In his car, Seung-ha calms her down and tells her she will find her mother again, just like Dorothy in the story. "Then are you the Wizard of Oz?" "That's right," he says, and puts a tape of someone (not Judy Garland) doing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" on his tape player as they drive through the darkened streets.
Now Dae-shik calls up Oh-soo to let him know that he's ready to do something about the obnoxious Soon-ki as a favor. This is the phone call that Oh-soo gets just as he is about to burglarize the journalist's apartment! Oh-soo tries to talk him out of it. Meanwhile, however, Dae-shik is absently opening an express package that came for HIM earlier in the day. "What's this, a child's picture?" he mutters, still on the phone. "And a stuffed animal.." (pulling out a duplicate of Sora’s bear). "What's written on the card??" demands Oh-soo. "It has a word in English..." Oh-soo tells him to stay there and he'll be right over.
But when Oh-soo gets to Dae-shik's office, still dragging Jae-min, he finds Dae-shik lying on the floor, unable to speak, gasping in - an asthmatic crisis? Something else? "You'll be okay!" Oh-soo yells frantically. But it doesn't look it. Dae-shik collapses, without signs of life; Jae-min, calling 911 on his cell phone, knocks the JUSTICE Tarot off the shelf, and it flutters to the floor, apparently taking with it Dae-shik's stillborn dreams of a respectable life in the stew business. END OF EPISODE!