There are plenty of cases this week to keep our superpowered vet and detective on their toes. From an abusive owner to an underwear thief, this small seaside town may not be as quiet as once purported. With each culprit they catch and butt they touch, our detective gets one step closer to his goal, but an unforeseen danger lurks around the corner.
EPISODES 5-6
Assemblyman Cha’s case ends with a police station squabble and a disappointed Jang-yeol. His dreams of returning to Seoul through political connections are dashed away by Ye-boon who recovers the donor list from her grandpa’s room and places it back to its original location. Since nothing was technically stolen, the case is dismissed, and Jang-yeol moves onto his next big break: a string of missing fish finders.
However, before Jang-yeol can use Ye-boon’s powers to find the culprit, she strikes a deal with him to help her solve a case of her own. Recently, Shaman Park Jong-bae saved a puppy buried alive in the mountains, and Ye-boon wants to catch the cruel owner. Using this opportunity to leech off Jang-yeol, she has him “upgrade” her powers (e.g., a manicure, jewelry, and vitamins), and the pampering pays off. They find the owner’s location, and Jang-yeol arrests him after Ye-boon gives him a piece of her mind.
Now that Jang-yeol kept his end of the deal, he expects the same level of dedication from Ye-boon and forces her to learn Arabic in order to figure out the prime suspect’s memory. After a few sleepless nights, she manages to catch a few words, and with Sun-woo’s help (what can’t this man do?) she figures out the motive and passes it along to Jang-yeol.
Armed with this new knowledge, Jang-yeol approaches the suspect who turns out to be a pawn within a larger operation, and with Ye-boon’s powers, they find the criminals’ hideout. Unfortunately, Jang-yeol underestimated the size of the organization, and our duo ends up captured and bound. Though Jang-yeol boasts about being trained to escape situations like this, he flounders on the ground hopelessly as the criminals come back to finish them off.
The thieves throw Ye-boon and Jang-yeol into the ocean, and as our heroes sink to their doom, the original suspect jumps in and saves them. Rather than call for backup, Jang-yeol sees red and marches into the criminals’ den to beat them all up. This time, without Ye-boon there to distract him, he makes quick work of the thieves. Afterwards, Jang-yeol arrests the original suspect as well, even though Ye-boon pleads with him to reconsider, and our hardheaded detective sticks by his code that a criminal is a criminal no matter what.
Another crime disrupts the peace in this supposedly quiet town as the neighborhood ladies get into an uproar about their missing underwear. While the rest of his team busies themselves with this case, Jang-yeol receives a call from his old colleague in Seoul about Chairman Baek: a notorious drug dealer and the reason for Jang-yeol’s demotion.
On his way to Seoul, Jang-yeol offers Ye-boon a ride to her destination, but unbeknownst to her, he drags her along to his business first. Using the gum-on-butt trick, Jang-yeol has Ye-boon touch the chairman’s rear end, and then needles the chairman about his recent endeavors. Irked by Jang-yeol’s goading, the chairman decides to get rid of the annoying detective for good.
Back in town, the number of stolen underwear continues to grow, so Jong-muk orders everyone to devote their attention to this case. Though Jang-yeol complains at first, his passion is lit when he runs into the thief on a stakeout and gets beaten rather embarrassingly by him twice. Word soon spreads about Jang-yeol’s mishap, and our feisty detective is dead set on catching the thief, even if it means letting Ye-boon touch his butt.
Hoping that she can see something he missed, he allows her to peek into his memories, but instead of finding the thief, Ye-boon gets thrown further into his past. She sees Jang-yeol taking care of a young ruffian named Park Seung-gil — the same one who Jang-yeol saw during his failed raid — and it becomes clear why this betrayal hit him so hard.
With her upgraded powers, Ye-boon finds the underwear thief’s face from Jang-yeol’s memory, and they go out to catch him. Much like their previous encounters, the thief outruns Jang-yeol, but right when it seems like another bust, Da-eun’s brother (the lone male from Ok-hee’s crew) bursts onto the scene and runs after the culprit. Heh.
While Da-eun’s brother catches the thief, Jang-yeol takes a different path to cut them off, and a shadowy figure follows after him. Noticing his tail, Jang-yeol gets ready for a confrontation, but he stands in shock when Seung-gil steps into view. Before Jang-yeol can react, Seung-gil stabs him and runs off.
Chasing after Jang-yeol, Ye-boon happens to witness the entire exchange, but as she calls for help, he tells her not to tell anyone. At the hospital, the others ask Ye-boon if she saw anything, but she keeps her promise to Jang-yeol and lies to the detectives.
Once Jang-yeol wakes up, his room is filled with a never-ending stream of visitors from Ok-hee singing the OST of Run Hany to the town elders who speak in their usual roundabout way. Later that night, Ye-boon comes by the hospital to bring Jang-yeol some comics (unwillingly of course) and runs into Assemblyman Cha who is also here to see the detective. On their way to the elevators, they meet up with the group leaving Jang-yeol’s room, and Sun-woo looks tense as he watches the assemblyman. (Interesting… possible parentage mystery?)
As Ye-boon and the others ride the elevators, another passenger gets on at the last second, and Ye-boon instantly recognizes Seung-gil. She calls Jong-muk for backup, and though he advises her to stay away, she follows after him just in case. Distracted by her phone call, she bumps into Seung-gil in the stairwell, but to her surprise, he seems more worried about Jang-yeol than anything else.
While Ye-boon tries to escape, she gets into a scuffle with Seung-gil and touches his butt. She sees the same memories but from Seung-gil’s perspective, and she realizes that the young man was threatened by Chairman Baek and only wanted to save the nun who raised him. Realizing the truth, Ye-boon tells Seung-gil to share everything with Jang-yeol, but Seung-gil runs away when Jong-muk calls after her.
Ye-boon takes it upon herself to clear the air between the two of them and tells Jang-yeol that Seung-gil stabbed him in order to save him. It was not a coincidence that he survived the attack, but Jang-yeol reminds her that a criminal is still a criminal. However, when Seung-gil walks into his room covered in blood, Jang-yeol rushes to his side and cradles him in his arms as Seung-gil apologizes for what he did. In that moment, Ye-boon reaches out to see who did this and witnesses someone wearing a poncho stab Seung-gil.
While I do miss some of the more absurdist humor, I think the show is slowly hitting its stride and finding its tone. It’s lighthearted at times and surprisingly dark in others, but by strictly delegating moments to certain characters, the tonal whiplash is less evident. For example, whenever Ok-hee and her crew appear, I know what to expect from the show as is the case with Jong-muk and Hyeon-ok. The show is also quite good at inserting jokes to break the tension, and sometimes these small moments make me chuckle the most. My favorite running gag this week was Ye-boon getting excited every time she improved in her language skills, and as a result, she kept inadvertently sharing sad news with a smile on her face. She’s a bumbling fool most of the time, but she holds no malice which makes her relationship with Jang-yeol entertaining to watch. He’s also a bumbling fool — no matter how much he tries to deny it — and it’s the synergy between these two peas in a pod that makes their partnership fun to watch.
We learn a bit more about Jang-yeol’s past this episode, and unsurprisingly, our prickly detective has a bleeding heart. By showing his history with Seung-gil in quick succession, the pacing was fast which I appreciated, but I did think the show may have glossed over their moments too quickly. It was hard to emotionally connect with the characters, and the relationship felt a bit superficial. Consequently, some of the scenes were a bit cheesy and overdone especially since the show threw in so many tropes within a matter of minutes. The biggest setback of this approach was that the final scene didn’t pack as big of an emotional punch as I think it could have. Though Lee Min-ki still sold the scene (no complaints about his acting), I wish the show could have capitalized on this important moment more and make me feel invested in its characters aside from the comedy.