Adjusting to the new recruit while he acclimatizes to their dynamics, our trusty team settles into a steady synergy. An apparition fades into the mundane, and an old case rears its unwelcome head. Our hero’s unresolved past has caught up with him, baring the buried scars within.
EPISODES 3-4
Investigating the series of tunnel accidents, the team uncovers a three-way ruse behind the supposed ghost sightings. After a crash, a tow company will swarm the flustered driver, ushering them towards a repair shop. Then, while their damaged car is being fixed, a rental company will offer them a temporary car — only to covertly smash it up and demand compensation. All three business owners are in cahoots to fleece unsuspecting drivers, ruled by the iron fist of the car rental thug.
All that’s left is to figure out how exactly the crashes were engineered. KAIST graduate Yeon-ho explains the topography of that particular junction makes it prone to accidents, which points to why most incidents occurred on rainy days. As for the few clear days, Yeon-ho realizes that only the specific stretch of road where the accidents occurred had been wet.
Miraculously, the team’s prayers indeed call forth rain, prompting Yeon-ho to crack a rare smile. That night, So-hee dons a disguise and drives a beat-up car — courtesy of the used cars dealer from last week — to deliberately crash it and lure the scammers out.
Meanwhile, Yeon-ho’s investigation once again leads him straight into the lion’s den, where he discovers sacks of calcium chloride in the garage of the car rental. The gangster boss notices him, but So-hee — who’s there as part of her undercover plan — covers for Yeon-ho just in time, calling out for her “husband.” HA.
With Yeon-ho’s deduction that the scammers scattered calcium chloride on the road to retain moisture from the sprinkler truck on sunny days, the scammers’ jig is up, and our trusty TCI team arrests them in another slick sequence. Chae-man tries to fight but gets kicked in the nuts for his trouble, LOL, and I love that the squad simply delivers the sniveling baddies to Yeon-ho for him to cuff.
This week, we learn about the pasts that shaped our protagonists into who they are today. When So-hee’s taxi driver dad offers Yeon-ho a ride home, he learns that So-hee had essentially grown up in the backseat after her mother’s passing, and she now drives the car that was her father’s first taxi. Having heard about Yeon-ho’s solitary nature from So-hee, Dad invites him to eat with them sometimes when he doesn’t want to be alone. Aww.
As for Yeon-ho, we find out why he only rides his bicycle no matter where he goes. Back when he’d been a fresh graduate, he’d taken his eyes off the road briefly while driving back to Seoul from his parents’ home. That moment of inattention led to him crashing into a newlywed couple, killing the bride Hyun-soo and carving an indelible trauma into Yeon-ho. Notably, Chae-man had received disciplinary action in the case, though we aren’t privy to the reason why.
Three high-schoolers had given witness statements in that case, and one of them has grown up to become the misogynistic womanizer YANG JAE-YOUNG (Heo Ji-won), who’s at the center of our next case. His employee KIM MIN-JOO jumped out of his speeding car along a highway, suffering severe injuries, but the TCI team can’t pursue the case because Jae-young has threatened her into silence.
Instead, smart cookie Yeon-ho thinks out of the box and initiates a tax investigation to seize Jae-young’s car, since it’s actually the property of his father’s company. Talk about nepotism backfiring, ha. Alas, Jae-young won’t be an easy opponent, because he also has connections in the form of PYO JUNG-WOOK (Kang Ki-doong). Not only is Jung-wook another of the three student witnesses, but his father is also the current Deputy Commissioner General of the police force.
Not much progress can be made on Jae-young’s case for now, so the spotlight turns to a different case of the week. There’s been a hit-and-run, and the unfortunate victim was run over by two different cars. Witness accounts describe him as a belligerent drunk, and it’s up to our team to retrace his footsteps that night.
It’s great to see our TCI squad find their groove with their new recruit, because their synergy is perhaps the best part of this show. Now that Chief Gu has realized his case of mistaken identity — the son whose boots he ought to be licking is Cha Hyun-ho, not Cha Yeon-ho, LOL — our team is going to have an uphill battle ahead of them.
I like that the show surprised me by putting Yeon-ho in the perpetrator’s seat rather than assigning him the typical victim sob story, because it gives his character trajectory — and redemption arc — an interestingly compelling slant. He’s made his mistakes, and now he’s atoning for them through every avenue that he can.
Yeon-ho isn’t the only one still mired in the past, because there’s an anonymous sender mailing out the news article of the accident — not just to Yeon-ho, but also to Jae-young, Jung-wook, and Hyun-soo’s father. Jae-young suspects the third witness, but the several lingering shots we got of Chae-man this week make me wonder if it’s him. Perhaps our papa bear also has mistakes he wishes to make amends for? With So-hee dragging the frail Yeon-ho into judo training — and Shim So-young’s hilarious special appearances as a different role in every case — I’m looking forward to even more heart, humor, and honorable crime-fighting next week.