Post by humblestudent2 on Sept 5, 2007 20:44:10 GMT -5
Episode 8 Recap
(Begins: Evening, Day 12, Monday)
At the end of episode 7, Oh-soo had gone to the library to tell Hae-in something. It is after hours and the lights are practically all out – how can she shelve books in the dark, I’d like to know? Is this one of her psychic gifts? Maybe the books tell her where they are supposed to go
- and basically he wants to confess his crime to her, how he killed Tae-hoon because he hated and envied him for being brave. She says reassuring things to him, and he goes back to the police station and tells Team Chief Ban that he isn’t going to resign, and goes on to where the rest of the team have Jeong-yeon’s house staked out.
“Mothers”
Jeong-yeon shows up to meet her landlady and is nabbed without incident. Meanwhile, you will recall that she had left her daughter Sora with Seung-ha. Seung-ha has now taken the girl over to Hae-in’s house and wants to leave the child with Hae-in’s mother (whom he knows through his volunteer work at the church of course). Naturally Hae-in and her mother are willing to take the child in (and her mom invites Seung-ha to come to dinner tomorrow night), but Hae-in immediately recognizes Sora from her visions, and calls Oh-soo. She and Oh-soo and Seung-ha meet at the empty church (why? Oh well..) to discuss the situation.
Oh-soo tells Seung-ha and Hae-in of Sora’s mother’s arrest. Oh-soo asks how Seung-ha happened to be involved with Sora and her mother, and asks (reasonably) how come Seung-ha happens to be involved with all these cases. “Do you think I am involved with the mastermind somehow?” Seung-ha asks blandly. Seung-ha passes on Cha Kwang-doo’s theory about how the mastermind is pulling together everyone who was involved in the 12-year-old case, including Kwang-doo, and Seung-ha has just been dragged in as a result. When Oh-soo balks at this (“There were a lot of ways he could have gotten Kwang-doo involved without involving you in everything”) Seung-ha has a variant theory: the mastermind has brought in Seung-ha because he feels like he at least owes his puppets a decent legal defense, after they go out and kill people for him and all.
Hae-in points out that Sora must have seen whoever abducted her. Oh-soo doubts that this will do much good, because he must have used a disguise, but Hae-in is confident there will be some evidence leading onward.
At this point we see that someone is trying to spy on them, and Oh-soo charges out to try and catch whoever it is, but without success. When he comes back, he and Seung-ha argue politely over who is going to take Hae-in home. Hae-in says she feels awkward about this competition, but elects to go with Seung-ha because Oh-soo really has a lot to do. (This subtle "triangular" theme has been developing for a while. There's a lot of room for speculation about what Seung-ha and Oh-soo really feel for/about Hae-in and about what she feels for/about each of them.)
In the car with Seung-ha, Hae-in reveals more of her thinking. She thinks that the mastermind is deliberately leaving evidence that will lead Hae-in to him, reaching out to her because he really wants to be caught and stopped. “He is like the brother waiting in the dark tunnel for the sister to come and release him. He is in pain and wants to be freed.”* Seung-ha appears thoughtful on hearing this; after dropping her off, he goes to the official “park-and-think” spot on the Han riverbank, and then goes back and stares at the ring in the carved box** for a while longer before closing the box, possibly having come to some conclusion.
Hae-in, meanwhile, finds Sora awake and puts her back to sleep by telling her the tunnel story in which the sister goes into the tunnel and finds her brother turned to cold stone and awakens him with her love. Then she does a reading on Sora’s bear. She sees Seung-ha driving Sora back to his mother from episode 4 … the youthful Yeong-cheol, running from his persecutors, allowing a brief glimpse of his face … the “Thinker” from Rodin’s “Gates of Hell” … the exterior of an office building that I don’t immediately recognize, with some stone lettering which went by too quickly for me to catch it … then the adult Soon-ki, walking smugly through the Kang hotel lobby and shoving an envelope of money in his pocket (Episode 3).
Meanwhile the interrogation of Jeong-yeon has already gotten under way; Oh-soo gets there in the middle, and we see the events of her attack on Dae-shik in flashback, but there aren’t many surprises for us: she accused him of taking Sora, the duplicate bear was sitting there framing him for the kidnapping, he just taunted her and demanded his money and manhandled her, and ultimately she sprayed him with a lot of tear gas (and we get a CSI/”House” view of the interior of his bloodstream being messed up by this). She initially denies getting the gas gun in the express package, but it turns out that she thinks that it came from her husband; of course the mastermind sent it in the husband’s name. Jae-min checks out the return address and it turns out to be just “a mountain with pine trees”.*** Oh-soo has another idea, though – but I’ll get back to that in a minute.
“All in the Family”
Also that evening, Seok-jin calls back Oh-soo to try and find out what Oh-soo meant with his frantic phone call the previous day (Episode 7) about tarot cards and someone being out to kill him and/or Soon-ki. Oh-soo says he’ll talk to him “tomorrow”.
The next day, in the Kang hotel, Secretary Na Seok-jin is reporting to Heui-soo (Oh-soo’s brother) about all this. (Heui-soo has been told by his father to find out what is up with Oh-soo these days. By the way, Oh-soo has apparently not got the idea that if the “mastermind” is really out to get revenge for the Tae-hoon business, his own father might be one of the victims.)
OK, now, Heui-soo and Seok-jin are preparing to go out, and will meet Heui-soo’s wife (and Seok-jin’s lover) Na-heui, who is waiting down in the lobby. As she waits, who surprises her and is suddenly in her face? It’s Soon-ki, of course, who has shown up to lobby for that casino job. Now he is cheerily chattering in Na-heui’s face – “Hi, you’re Seok-jin’s girlfriend, aren’t you? Remember me from the other night? We haven’t properly met. Let’s all get together for dinner this evening!” With her husband seconds away, Na-heui stammers that she has to go to the ladies’ room and dashes out. When the two arrive in the lobby, Soon-ki continues to run at the mouth, telling Seok-jin “Your girlfriend was here, but she went to the ladies’ room.” Heui-soo catches this – “You have a girlfriend?” but snubs Soon-ki completely; Soon-ki seethes about this and mutters vague threats. Meanwhile, Heui-soo calls the absent Na-heui on his cell phone and reports to Seok-jin, “She’s in the ladies’ room.” His expression is unreadable and frightens Seok-jin – is he just irritated about waiting, or is he actually starting to catch on?
“Brothers”
Seung-ha decides that he can’t burden Hae-in’s mom any more with Sora, and calls his brother, Soo-gon, to arrange for her to stay with him in the country. He passes this on to Cha Kwang-doo, and tells him that he may act as Sora’s mom’s lawyer. Kwang-doo passes on to Seung-ha the information that Tae-hoon had a younger brother (which he found out in Episode 7) who might be a suspect. Seung-ha listens with a serious expression, then smiles and says, “Then maybe the younger brother will solve everything.”
Kwang-doo later goes to a government office (a “sub-district office” according to the screenplay and my dictionary) and comes out with an envelope with some papers and a very glum expression. He reports on something to Mo In-ho, but we don’t find out what it is yet. (Also, Soo-gon, who has come into town to get Sora, drops by to meet Mo In-ho and convey his thanks. Mo In-ho has advanced to principal, it seems and is now getting organic vegetables for his school from Soo-gon’s farm. You probably thought as I did that when Soo-gon told Seung-ha back in episode 3 something about his wife being involved with an organic vegetable society or something, this couldn’t possibly have any relevance to the plot, but we underestimated the writers’ ability to tie threads together.)
“The Prime Suspect”
As for Oh-soo, his attention is fixed on one person: Kim Yeong-cheol. He recognized the “running student” in Hae-in’s recent visions as Yeong-cheol, who was viciously harassed by Oh-soo’s little gang and in whose defense Tae-hoon actually died. He is convinced that Yeong-cheol is out for revenge on him and his friends. As soon as he was done with the questioning of Jeong-yeon, he zipped back to his house to dig out his old high school graduation pictures and snip out Yeong-cheol’s picture. The next morning he corrals Hae-in and shows her the picture. She thinks it is the running student she saw.
Oh-soo gets Min-jae to work tracking down Yeong-cheol; through his medical insurance, she discovers that he works at “Kil Publishing.” This is the same outfit that runs the online magazine “Issue & Issue” where reporter Seong Joon-p’yo is working! (Speaking of Joon-p’yo, he is apparently now on Hae-in’s trail – he goes to the Tarot Café and tries to pump Joo-heui for information about her, though she loyally clams up and warns Hae-in.)
Before they go on with things, Team Chief Ban feels it is time to reveal to the rest of the team what is really going on with Detective Kang’s personal involvement with the case, so they can decide as a group whether they want Oh-soo off the case or not. (The “team” consists of Min-jae, Jae-min, and apparently one other guy whose name I don’t know and I don’t even know if he’s had any lines yet. Maybe back during the Dong-seop business he said something. He was the one sitting nearest the camera on the right side.) Min-jae of course is 100% behind him; Jae-min has reservations; but they agree to keep him around. While Oh-soo is out of the room he talks with Seung-ha, who really is going to represent Sora’s mom; Oh-soo wants to arrange for Sora to see someone (Yeong-cheol) who may have been the abductor. Seung-ha is unenthusiastic; he is worried for Sora’s safety and will only allow it if her safety is completely guaranteed.
As the episode ends, on the evening of Wednesday, Day 13, Oh-soo goes to Kil publishing and finds Yeong-cheol there, working alone in the back corner in near-darkness. Meanwhile, Kwang-doo arranges to meet Chief Ban to pass on his information, and Seung-ha – who has met Hae-in to walk her home from the library – says he can’t stay for dinner after all, asks Hae-in to make his excuses, then, with Hae-in safely inside, makes a beeline into the darkness across the street and confronts the person who is watching her house: “Reporter Seong (Joon-p’yo)! What an unexpected place to find you.”
* See episode 7 recap. Is this the same tunnel story as Seung-ha’s tunnel story? If it’s a variant, which is the original? If it’s the same story, does the sister rescue the older brother or the younger brother, and what happened to the other one? Discuss amongst yourselves!!
** This is apparently a music box. The screenplay refers to it as an “O-reu-kol”. My Korean dictionary noted this with the word “orgel” in Roman letters. From Wikipedia: “In Japan, the word ‘orgel’ (japanese: オルゴール orugooru) is used for a music box. 'Orgel' is adopted from the dutch word originally meaning 'organ'.”
*** Hmm.
(Begins: Evening, Day 12, Monday)
At the end of episode 7, Oh-soo had gone to the library to tell Hae-in something. It is after hours and the lights are practically all out – how can she shelve books in the dark, I’d like to know? Is this one of her psychic gifts? Maybe the books tell her where they are supposed to go
- and basically he wants to confess his crime to her, how he killed Tae-hoon because he hated and envied him for being brave. She says reassuring things to him, and he goes back to the police station and tells Team Chief Ban that he isn’t going to resign, and goes on to where the rest of the team have Jeong-yeon’s house staked out.“Mothers”
Jeong-yeon shows up to meet her landlady and is nabbed without incident. Meanwhile, you will recall that she had left her daughter Sora with Seung-ha. Seung-ha has now taken the girl over to Hae-in’s house and wants to leave the child with Hae-in’s mother (whom he knows through his volunteer work at the church of course). Naturally Hae-in and her mother are willing to take the child in (and her mom invites Seung-ha to come to dinner tomorrow night), but Hae-in immediately recognizes Sora from her visions, and calls Oh-soo. She and Oh-soo and Seung-ha meet at the empty church (why? Oh well..) to discuss the situation.
Oh-soo tells Seung-ha and Hae-in of Sora’s mother’s arrest. Oh-soo asks how Seung-ha happened to be involved with Sora and her mother, and asks (reasonably) how come Seung-ha happens to be involved with all these cases. “Do you think I am involved with the mastermind somehow?” Seung-ha asks blandly. Seung-ha passes on Cha Kwang-doo’s theory about how the mastermind is pulling together everyone who was involved in the 12-year-old case, including Kwang-doo, and Seung-ha has just been dragged in as a result. When Oh-soo balks at this (“There were a lot of ways he could have gotten Kwang-doo involved without involving you in everything”) Seung-ha has a variant theory: the mastermind has brought in Seung-ha because he feels like he at least owes his puppets a decent legal defense, after they go out and kill people for him and all.
Hae-in points out that Sora must have seen whoever abducted her. Oh-soo doubts that this will do much good, because he must have used a disguise, but Hae-in is confident there will be some evidence leading onward.
At this point we see that someone is trying to spy on them, and Oh-soo charges out to try and catch whoever it is, but without success. When he comes back, he and Seung-ha argue politely over who is going to take Hae-in home. Hae-in says she feels awkward about this competition, but elects to go with Seung-ha because Oh-soo really has a lot to do. (This subtle "triangular" theme has been developing for a while. There's a lot of room for speculation about what Seung-ha and Oh-soo really feel for/about Hae-in and about what she feels for/about each of them.)
In the car with Seung-ha, Hae-in reveals more of her thinking. She thinks that the mastermind is deliberately leaving evidence that will lead Hae-in to him, reaching out to her because he really wants to be caught and stopped. “He is like the brother waiting in the dark tunnel for the sister to come and release him. He is in pain and wants to be freed.”* Seung-ha appears thoughtful on hearing this; after dropping her off, he goes to the official “park-and-think” spot on the Han riverbank, and then goes back and stares at the ring in the carved box** for a while longer before closing the box, possibly having come to some conclusion.
Hae-in, meanwhile, finds Sora awake and puts her back to sleep by telling her the tunnel story in which the sister goes into the tunnel and finds her brother turned to cold stone and awakens him with her love. Then she does a reading on Sora’s bear. She sees Seung-ha driving Sora back to his mother from episode 4 … the youthful Yeong-cheol, running from his persecutors, allowing a brief glimpse of his face … the “Thinker” from Rodin’s “Gates of Hell” … the exterior of an office building that I don’t immediately recognize, with some stone lettering which went by too quickly for me to catch it … then the adult Soon-ki, walking smugly through the Kang hotel lobby and shoving an envelope of money in his pocket (Episode 3).
Meanwhile the interrogation of Jeong-yeon has already gotten under way; Oh-soo gets there in the middle, and we see the events of her attack on Dae-shik in flashback, but there aren’t many surprises for us: she accused him of taking Sora, the duplicate bear was sitting there framing him for the kidnapping, he just taunted her and demanded his money and manhandled her, and ultimately she sprayed him with a lot of tear gas (and we get a CSI/”House” view of the interior of his bloodstream being messed up by this). She initially denies getting the gas gun in the express package, but it turns out that she thinks that it came from her husband; of course the mastermind sent it in the husband’s name. Jae-min checks out the return address and it turns out to be just “a mountain with pine trees”.*** Oh-soo has another idea, though – but I’ll get back to that in a minute.
“All in the Family”
Also that evening, Seok-jin calls back Oh-soo to try and find out what Oh-soo meant with his frantic phone call the previous day (Episode 7) about tarot cards and someone being out to kill him and/or Soon-ki. Oh-soo says he’ll talk to him “tomorrow”.
The next day, in the Kang hotel, Secretary Na Seok-jin is reporting to Heui-soo (Oh-soo’s brother) about all this. (Heui-soo has been told by his father to find out what is up with Oh-soo these days. By the way, Oh-soo has apparently not got the idea that if the “mastermind” is really out to get revenge for the Tae-hoon business, his own father might be one of the victims.)
OK, now, Heui-soo and Seok-jin are preparing to go out, and will meet Heui-soo’s wife (and Seok-jin’s lover) Na-heui, who is waiting down in the lobby. As she waits, who surprises her and is suddenly in her face? It’s Soon-ki, of course, who has shown up to lobby for that casino job. Now he is cheerily chattering in Na-heui’s face – “Hi, you’re Seok-jin’s girlfriend, aren’t you? Remember me from the other night? We haven’t properly met. Let’s all get together for dinner this evening!” With her husband seconds away, Na-heui stammers that she has to go to the ladies’ room and dashes out. When the two arrive in the lobby, Soon-ki continues to run at the mouth, telling Seok-jin “Your girlfriend was here, but she went to the ladies’ room.” Heui-soo catches this – “You have a girlfriend?” but snubs Soon-ki completely; Soon-ki seethes about this and mutters vague threats. Meanwhile, Heui-soo calls the absent Na-heui on his cell phone and reports to Seok-jin, “She’s in the ladies’ room.” His expression is unreadable and frightens Seok-jin – is he just irritated about waiting, or is he actually starting to catch on?
“Brothers”
Seung-ha decides that he can’t burden Hae-in’s mom any more with Sora, and calls his brother, Soo-gon, to arrange for her to stay with him in the country. He passes this on to Cha Kwang-doo, and tells him that he may act as Sora’s mom’s lawyer. Kwang-doo passes on to Seung-ha the information that Tae-hoon had a younger brother (which he found out in Episode 7) who might be a suspect. Seung-ha listens with a serious expression, then smiles and says, “Then maybe the younger brother will solve everything.”
Kwang-doo later goes to a government office (a “sub-district office” according to the screenplay and my dictionary) and comes out with an envelope with some papers and a very glum expression. He reports on something to Mo In-ho, but we don’t find out what it is yet. (Also, Soo-gon, who has come into town to get Sora, drops by to meet Mo In-ho and convey his thanks. Mo In-ho has advanced to principal, it seems and is now getting organic vegetables for his school from Soo-gon’s farm. You probably thought as I did that when Soo-gon told Seung-ha back in episode 3 something about his wife being involved with an organic vegetable society or something, this couldn’t possibly have any relevance to the plot, but we underestimated the writers’ ability to tie threads together.)
“The Prime Suspect”
As for Oh-soo, his attention is fixed on one person: Kim Yeong-cheol. He recognized the “running student” in Hae-in’s recent visions as Yeong-cheol, who was viciously harassed by Oh-soo’s little gang and in whose defense Tae-hoon actually died. He is convinced that Yeong-cheol is out for revenge on him and his friends. As soon as he was done with the questioning of Jeong-yeon, he zipped back to his house to dig out his old high school graduation pictures and snip out Yeong-cheol’s picture. The next morning he corrals Hae-in and shows her the picture. She thinks it is the running student she saw.
Oh-soo gets Min-jae to work tracking down Yeong-cheol; through his medical insurance, she discovers that he works at “Kil Publishing.” This is the same outfit that runs the online magazine “Issue & Issue” where reporter Seong Joon-p’yo is working! (Speaking of Joon-p’yo, he is apparently now on Hae-in’s trail – he goes to the Tarot Café and tries to pump Joo-heui for information about her, though she loyally clams up and warns Hae-in.)
Before they go on with things, Team Chief Ban feels it is time to reveal to the rest of the team what is really going on with Detective Kang’s personal involvement with the case, so they can decide as a group whether they want Oh-soo off the case or not. (The “team” consists of Min-jae, Jae-min, and apparently one other guy whose name I don’t know and I don’t even know if he’s had any lines yet. Maybe back during the Dong-seop business he said something. He was the one sitting nearest the camera on the right side.) Min-jae of course is 100% behind him; Jae-min has reservations; but they agree to keep him around. While Oh-soo is out of the room he talks with Seung-ha, who really is going to represent Sora’s mom; Oh-soo wants to arrange for Sora to see someone (Yeong-cheol) who may have been the abductor. Seung-ha is unenthusiastic; he is worried for Sora’s safety and will only allow it if her safety is completely guaranteed.
As the episode ends, on the evening of Wednesday, Day 13, Oh-soo goes to Kil publishing and finds Yeong-cheol there, working alone in the back corner in near-darkness. Meanwhile, Kwang-doo arranges to meet Chief Ban to pass on his information, and Seung-ha – who has met Hae-in to walk her home from the library – says he can’t stay for dinner after all, asks Hae-in to make his excuses, then, with Hae-in safely inside, makes a beeline into the darkness across the street and confronts the person who is watching her house: “Reporter Seong (Joon-p’yo)! What an unexpected place to find you.”
* See episode 7 recap. Is this the same tunnel story as Seung-ha’s tunnel story? If it’s a variant, which is the original? If it’s the same story, does the sister rescue the older brother or the younger brother, and what happened to the other one? Discuss amongst yourselves!!
** This is apparently a music box. The screenplay refers to it as an “O-reu-kol”. My Korean dictionary noted this with the word “orgel” in Roman letters. From Wikipedia: “In Japan, the word ‘orgel’ (japanese: オルゴール orugooru) is used for a music box. 'Orgel' is adopted from the dutch word originally meaning 'organ'.”
*** Hmm.
