Our auditors must find 3.4 billion won that has gone missing after a failed redevelopment project. This new case dredges up old memories and tests allegiances as our heroes must decide who to trust in a game filled with liars. However, no matter who the suspect may be, everyone is the same before the auditing team as they comb through the details to discover the truth.
EPISODES 3-4
The show is shaping up to be a typical police procedural drama, but instead of detectives, the heroes are auditors. This week’s case is the housing redevelopment embezzlement, and the main suspect is the director of the housing division YOO MI-KYUNG (special appearance by Hong Soo-hyun). The neighborhood union representative ran away with the funds — essentially, the life savings of the poor residents — and it is up to Cha-il and his crew to figure out if Mi-kyung is involved in this crime or just another victim.
While Cha-il is his usual aloof self, Mi-kyung tears up the moment she sees her university sunbae, and rumors about their torrid (and nonexistent) love story spread. It only worsens when Cha-il interviews Mi-kyung outside of work hours, and someone posts photos of them online, accusing the team leader of sexual assault. In reality, the only one harassed that night was Cha-il by a very drunk Han-soo who begged his boss to love him, too, and gave him a tap on the butt for good measure.
The assault charges put a wrench in Cha-il’s plan since he now only has a week to resolve everything before Mi-kyung’s transfer request to Florida is granted. Thankfully, one piece of the puzzle is answered quickly when Mi-kyung’s ex-husband reveals himself as the photographer, and Cha-il realizes that the two are in cahoots. Their divorce is a sham, and the more our auditors dig into this case, the more Mi-kyung looks suspicious of embezzlement.
While the housing redevelopment project takes center stage, in the background, a secondary plot brews. The two Hwang brothers continue their fight for power, and though President Hwang Se-woong acts righteous, he is all too eager to hand over control of the audit team to Dae-woong in exchange for him bribing a vice-minister to smooth over an inspection. Dae-woong can sense the president’s duplicity, but he still accepts the deal in order to cover up Mi-kyung’s crimes and fire Cha-il for insubordination.
Caught in the middle of this battle is Seo-jin who turns out to be Dae-woong’s niece. Given their history, I get the impression that the two are not related by blood, but regardless of their genetic ties, they clearly care for each other as family. As a result, Seo-jin finds herself in an awkward position: side with her uncle who has no one to trust in the office or help Cha-il find the money for the victims who are her old neighbors. At a crossroads, Seo-jin waffles between the two, but ultimately chooses to investigate the case with Cha-il and Han-soo.
With the clock ticking and Dae-woong breathing down their necks, Cha-il agrees to find the money within three days, and if he fails, he promises to resign and pay the missing amount out-of-pocket. All our team leader wants in return is for Dae-woong to cancel Mi-kyung’s transfer, which he does. It seems a bit extreme for a salaryman to wager, but I guess the show has to manufacture tension somehow. The stakes must be raised!
With the combined efforts of the auditing team (it’s really just Cha-il and the rookies because the others barely do anything in this department), they manage to find the link between Mi-kyung and the union representative. This leads them to a mountainside restaurant where they catch him, and our heroes deliver the criminal to the police on a silver platter. Alas, the real detectives prove their incompetence as the union rep stays silent during the interrogation and refuses to implicate his partners. Things get even more complicated when Dae-woong sends over an attorney to keep the union rep quiet, so Cha-il shifts gears.
Turning their attention to Mi-kyung’s husband, the auditing team pieces together the random facts they gathered and figures out his laundering method. They then discover a fourth partner, a woman on the finance team of a different construction company who is currently having an affair with Mi-kyung’s husband. Armed with this new information, Cha-il informs Mi-kyung of her husband’s infidelity, but she refuses to believe him without concrete evidence. Thus, our rookies tail the husband and his affair partner, catching them entering and leaving a hotel together.
In the meantime, the husband hires two truck drivers to nearly run over Cha-il’s car, but at this point, near-death experiences must be par for the course in their line of work since our auditors brush it off as a mere inconvenience. They also chase cars, scale buildings, and jump on moving vehicles in order to catch their target, but when Cha-il opens the husband’s trunk, the money is missing. The camera cuts to Mi-kyung dressed to the nines and on her way to freedom after tricking everyone.
Just as our embezzling villain makes her escape, Cha-il apprehends her, revealing that he never trusted her from the beginning. They find the stolen cash in a parked car at the airport, and Mi-kyung is locked behind bars. Cha-il visits her in prison at her behest, but even after getting caught, she remains audacious and shows no remorse. She tries to appeal to his humanity, pointing out how much he changed, but Cha-il throws her words back at her. He chose to become the man he is today because of people like her, and he plans to show her how grave her sins are.
After the premiere week, I had adjusted my expectations for the show, but I’m still shocked by the lack of nuance in the writing and the slapdash plot. Our auditors act more like private investigators than number-crunching pencil-pushers, and at this point, I wonder if the writer just wanted to create a police procedural but without the limitations of the law. Our heroes do whatever they want from breaking into places, stealing documents, and stalking people all without a warrant because they’re auditors, and there’s little to no repercussions for their actions. Of course, this could all change as the story proceeds, but I doubt there’s any mind-boggling twists at the end of this road. The show is straight-forward, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but I do hope the next cases might be more interesting than this week’s villains.
That being said, I surprisingly don’t hate the show even if I find it to be a mixed-bag of tropes and plot devices that have nothing to do with auditing. From the very beginning, the show set out to be a fun and wild ride, which, in some ways, it accomplished. I’m also starting to understand the “comedy” aspect, even though some of the laughs may have been unintentional. On one hand, the show is serious and the acting matches that tone, but on the other, the sequences are bonkers and feel so unserious (e.g., the bike chases and Cha-il keeping up with a car on foot). I’m going to assume this juxtaposition is deliberate to emphasize how crazy the plot is and remind the viewers that, at end of the day, the heroes are still just auditors.
I also want to believe the show is leaning into its ridiculousness and playing up the unbelievable situations because it is much more enjoyable to think the people involved understand how silly the story is and are willingly embracing it. Granted, as the show continues, I may be eating my words if the cases become even less inspired and creative, but hopefully, it won’t come to that. The Auditors is definitely one of those dramas where I recommend leaving your brain at the door because trying to analyze it will only reveal its flaws, so instead of pushing back, I’m going to simply follow along and see where the story takes me. Plus, who knows, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised at the end.