Another murder-of-the-week hits close to home for Team One, but this time it’s our lead detective with a personal connection to the case. When two new deaths reek of a murder cover-up, all clues point to the very cult at the center of her father’s last case.
EPISODES 11-12
After waiting until daybreak for Oryun Manager to show up at their secret rendezvous spot, Kang-hyun is called in to investigate a body found washed up on the shores of the Han River. At first glance, it appears to be a simple drowning case, but a cursory search of the body reveals a very familiar tattoo located on the dead man’s abdomen. It’s the mark of Oryun Community, the same suspected cult that, one year ago, Hyung-joon believed to be behind the mass suicide he was investigating. Hyung-joon’s case on Oryun Community, however, is what led to him being framed for accepting bribes and dismissed from his position as chief detective.
In the present, Kang-hyun and Jun-young meet with the drowning victim’s family. His mother is notably skittish and panicky when discussing Oryun Community, but his sister scoffs at any mention of the (*exaggerated air quotes*) “meditation center” that her brother joined prior to his death. And when she learns from the detectives that her brother — a skilled swimmer who’d crossed the Han River multiple times — died from drowning, she immediately demands an autopsy.
At the same time, Team Two is investigating an apparent suicide, but the dead man is none other than Oryun Manager, who definitely didn’t kill himself — no matter what the suicide note found in his pocket might say. As the last person to have spoken with Oryun Manager before his death, Kang-hyun is called in to meet with the chief detective and the leader of Team Two to explain why she had been in contact with Oryun Manager. She wasn’t harassing him — like she did after her father’s scandal — was she?
While she’s explaining the situation and her theory that he was murdered, the police captain barges in on the meeting. He — very suspiciously — knows Oryun Manager is dead despite no one telling him through the official chain of command, and Kang-hyun immediately picks up on the discrepancy, demanding to know just who told him the victim’s identity. Captain responds by putting her on probation and telling Team Leader Two and Chief Detective to hurry up and rule the case a suicide. Well, I think it’s safe to say we all know who really accepted bribes and framed Hyung-joon one year ago.
Thankfully, the cult doesn’t have the entire police force on their secret payroll, and there are still detectives on Kang-hyun’s side. Team Leader Two, for example, “accidentally” leaves his case files unattended so Kang-hyun can take a peek (and pictures) of them before she clocks out and starts her own off-the-books investigation. And when Team Leader Two asks to keep the case open for a little longer before ruling it a suicide, Chief Detective approves the extension. It probably helps that they both witnessed Captain’s totally sus behavior, but either way, we can count on them (along with Team One) to be among the good guys.
Meanwhile, Yi-soo, who took some personal time to visit his mother’s urn and make peace with her death, returns to the station to find out that Kang-hyun has been put on probation. Frustratingly, Jun-young still hasn’t accepted Yi-soo as part of the team, which not only hurts Yi-soo’s feelings but forces him to revert back to his dumb chaebol persona in order to kiss Captain’s ass and find out why Captain put Kang-hyun on probation.
After that whole exchange, I felt like Yi-soo needed to take a shower and rinse off all the bullshit. It really is a testament to how far Yi-soo has come as a character that we can now see past his facade and feel sad for him when he has to revert back to it. At the same time, his ability to charm and manipulate people is one of the many (and much needed) skills he brings to the table. In the game of “good” cop versus “bad” cop, Kang-hyun and Jun-young are both very much “bad” cops, and they need Yi-soo as their foil to soften people and make them more willing to talk. It makes for a great symbiotic relationship, and once Jun-young unwads his whitey-tighties, he will see what an asset Yi-soo is for the team.
After Yi-soo has caught up and understands the significance of the latest case, he puts Jung-hoon in charge of investigating Oryun Community so he can get up to speed, and in the meantime he seeks out Kang-hyun. He finds her at her special spot overlooking the city, and this time he brings her coffee and comforts her with his silent companionship. When she’s ready to talk, he tells her he will fight by her side because he trusts her and her father. She’s clearly touched.
Although it wasn’t a romantic moment — not in the classical sense — there was a subtle shift in their relationship as Yi-soo reciprocated Kang-hyun’s earlier support with his own. They vibe together in a way that feels as though it could naturally evolve into a strong companionship — either romantic or platonic. (Although we all know which one I’m rooting for.)
Without Kang-hyun around to provide a buffer, Yi-soo has to force his way past a gatekeeping Jun-young in order to be involved with the investigation and attend Drowning Victim’s autopsy — where Yi-soo witnesses the obvious sexual tension between Jun-young and Ji-won. Jun-young may not have heard Yi-soo’s mumbled reaction to their flirtations, but we all picked up on the fact that Yi-soo’s jealous. Much to Yi-soo’s annoyance, Jun-young is extremely close with Kang-hyun, and now he has something going on with Ji-won? What makes Jun-young so popular? (*chaebol grumbling intensifies*)
But back to the case at hand. Ji-won confirms that Drowning Victim’s cause of death is, indeed, drowning, but — and this is the important part — he did not drown in the river. Thus, he died somewhere else and someone — his likely killer — threw the body in the river. The problem with this theory, though, is that there are no signs that he’d been drugged or restrained. So how does such a strong swimmer drown?
Team One’s investigation has hit a dead end, but then Team Two discovers that both their dead guys had been texting each other. The two detective teams begin working together and exchanging evidence, which is how Yi-soo gets his hands on Oryun Manager’s suicide note and finds the hidden message in the note instructing the police to perform an autopsy on his body. There’s just one problem: Oryun Manager’s wife, who is also a member of the cult, denies their request for an autopsy because she believes in the faux religion that (conveniently) dictates they should not desecrate their bodies with a knife.
While Team One and Team Two conduct their official investigations, Kang-hyun recklessly goes undercover and infiltrates the Oryun Community. She enters at the cult’s compound with other new recruits under a false identity, and after everyone is asleep — and drugged — she sneaks out of her room and breaks into the cult leader’s office to dust for fingerprints and hide cameras. It’s on this secret spy mission that Kang-hyun runs into Yi-soo. He, too, decided to take matters in his own hands. Turns out, Cult Leader will meet privately with anyone willing to pay his exorbitant fee, and Yi-soo was willing.
Cult Leader is young, attractive, and charismatic — as one would expect of someone able to convince a bunch of vulnerable people into buying (literally) into his cult, but I got a good laugh out of how the mythos of his false religion is founded upon an accident with a Truck of Doom, which supposedly gave Cult Leader the ability to see past and future lives. The reality, however, is that he’s a former pyramid scheme worker who found a new elaborate way to con people out of their money. Unfortunately, you don’t become a cult leader by being dumb, and he quickly figures out that there are members of his congregation out to expose his crimes.
Kang-hyun and Yi-soo aren’t the only ones undercover, though. Ki-suk’s fellow investigative reporter has also infiltrated the cult and risen to the level of a manager, but when Undercover Reporter omits Kang-hyun from the list of new recruits that she gave Cult Leader, both Kang-hyun and Undercover Reporter’s covers are blown. Cult Leader has his goons kidnap Undercover Reporter, and when Kang-hyun sees the kidnapping from her dorm window, she rips off her wig and glasses like Clark Kent preparing to save Metropolis.
She calls Yi-soo for back-up, and together they put up a solid fight — until they’re both knocked unconscious. When they wake up, they’re bound, and Cult Leader, like any good comic book villain, monologues about how he’s going to get away with murdering them. Yi-soo tells him to not be so cocky. His company’s top secret stealth drone has been hovering the cult compound ever since he arrived, and the police are on their way. Cult Leader laughs at the absurdity of Yi-soo’s claim, which he assumes is a desperate attempt to stall for time, and pushes a button that triggers a freaking trap door. You’d think a villain with his own trap door and dunk drowning tank wouldn’t question the probability of a chaebol having his own stealth drone?
Down below, Yi-soo and Kang-hyun fall into an enclosed space that is rapidly filling with water. Well, now they know where Drowning Victim died, but the scary reality is that they might end up like him if backup doesn’t arrive fast enough. Yi-soo, who has freediving experience, is calm and level headed, but Kang-hyun, who cannot swim, is terrified. He does his best to soothe her and assure her that she will be fine, but when he dives under to try and find a way to drain the water from below, she panics in his absence and is unable to keep herself afloat. Yi-soo abandons his attempt to drain the water in order to help keep her head above water, but Kang-hyun has already inhaled water and fallen unconscious.
Thankfully, Team One and Team Two arrive on the scene with a SWAT team that’s willing to lay down their careers in order to rescue their fellow cops — even though a lack of solid evidence technically makes their search of the compound illegal. (I guess video evidence acquired from a top secret drone doesn’t count.) Team One hears Yi-soo pounding on the trap door, and while Jun-young hunts for the magic button that will open it, Kyung-jin and a small contingency of cops shoot holes in the pipes and drain the water. Inside the tank, with the water level down, Yi-soo performs CPR on Kang-hyun until she coughs up water. Whew! She’s alive!
Aside from the ridiculousness of a trap door that leads to the villain’s personal death tank, I loved everything about these scenes. From Kang-hyun’s vulnerability and weakness to the way the drama showed — rather than told — how Kang-hyun’s near-death drowning was triggering for Yi-soo, whose mother was found submerged in a bathtub. Any other drama would have spliced this scene with more flashbacks to the night his mom died to really drive home the parallel, but I’m glad that Yi-soo’s panic and fear of losing another woman he cares about was not diminished by scenes from the past.
Along that vein, I also appreciate that the act of him performing CPR was not romanticized — as often the case in other dramas — as being their first kiss. As should be the case when performing CPR, there was nothing amorous about that scene, but there’s no doubt that the experience has brought Kang-hyun and Yi-soo closer. Yi-soo is on the verge of identifying his feelings, as indicated by yet another surge of jealousy that hits him when he watches Jun-young comfort Kang-hyun after their rescue. (But the way Kyung-jin offers him a consolation hug is downright adorable.)
Although Kang-hyun is still shaken up by her near-death experience, she’s given the honor of cuffing Cult Leader. At the same time, Ji-won who has finally been granted permission from Oryun Manger’s widow to perform an autopsy, finds the small USB he swallowed before his murder. On the USB are files proving Cult Leader was a criminal and a murderer, and there was an additional video exposing Captain as his co-conspirator. Since a high-ranking officer was arrested, the police once again have egg on their face, but Chief Detective suggests that they reinstate Hyung-joon senior superintendent.
With that, the case rooted in Kang-hyun’s backstory comes to an end, and I’m a bit surprised — both with the speed with which the case wrapped up and also with the fact that, once again, Flex x Cop seems to be breaking the K-drama mold. If a big mystery involving Yi-soo’s mom’s death wasn’t going to be this drama’s endgame, then surely the case tied to Kang-hyun’s backstory would drag out until the end, right? Nope! So… what’s left for our story?
My guess, in between murders, is that our characters will be building and bridging relationships. The gap between Jun-young and Yi-soo is already closing and becoming a reluctant bromance. After Yi-soo helped Team One find closure for Kang-hyun and her father, Jun-young finally asked Yi-soo out for a drink, and it’s during their meal that Yi-soo broaches the topic of Kang-hyun and Jun-young’s relationship. Jun-young laughs at Yi-soo’s assumption that they’re romantically involved because he has his eye on someone else. (I wonder who that could be? *smirks*) Given how Yi-soo reacts when Jun-young turns the table and accuses Yi-soo being interested in Kang-hyun, I think it’s safe to say that the Kang-hyun x Yi-soo ship is about to set sail.
In the category of bridging relationships, there’s Yi-soo and his father. Following his dinner with Jun-young, he may have returned home to a silent house — a stark contrast to Kang-hyun who is having a lively family dinner across the street — but Chairman Jin does call Yi-soo to confirm he’s all right after his recent brush with death. The call is short and awkward, but Chairman Jin’s sincerity is apparent. One can only assume, then, that the man who climbed the wall around Chairman Jin’s house and dropped dead in his front yard will be at the center of the case that helps rebuild Yi-soo’s relationship with his father.