Man oh man, the mayor is so bad. And I have to say, I really like Kim Joo-hun in his role here. I’ve seen him too many times as a second lead love interest where I thought he just didn’t quite fit (because, truthfully, he gave me a little bit of a creepy vibe). With this character, creepy comes in handy and he is playing it perfectly. So perfectly that as terrible as he is, I’m liking it.
So much of what happens this week tilts around the change in alliance — or pretend alliance — between the mayor and our heroic OTP. When the mayor figures out that Mi-ho and Chang-ho know about his crimes, he assumes that Chang-ho must be working with Big Mouse and blames Chang-ho for drugging Joo-hee. From there, he stops taking calls from our leading couple and starts setting up antagonizing situations for them. Oh, he also orders them to be killed.
It starts with the new warden who replaces Warden Park. WARDEN GAN (Kim Dong-won) is appointed by the mayor at Chang-ho’s request so they can work together to find Big Mouse. Chang-ho then starts bossing around Warden Gan, making him super angry and ready to devise his own methods for uncovering Big Mouse. Once the mayor stops the niceties with Chang-ho and Mi-ho, he allows the new warden to go ahead with his methods. Namely: tell the entire prison that Chang-ho is a fraud and take away all inmate privileges until they find the real Big Mouse. This causes some upset, but Chang-ho still has a few supporters — which is good because they stop him from being beaten to death on at least two occasions.
He claims he’s Big Mouse and that he framed Chang-ho as Big Mouse in order to save his life. When the VIPs wanted to kill Chang-ho for his involvement in their case, “someone” told Big Mouse to save Chang-ho and turning him into Big Mouse was the way to do it. But, at some point, the tables turned and Chang-ho started dragging Big Mouse down.
Room Leader Noh’s wish to Chang-ho in the beginning (back when Chang-ho was claiming to grant wishes) was to find out information about his missing daughter. Now, he tells Chang-ho that he wants Dr. Seo’s paper for the same reason (which makes me wonder: when are the other wishes going to come up again? Aren’t they related to the story somehow?). After some negotiation, and a few threats, the two cook up a plan to get Chang-ho out of prison so he can help find the paper from the outside. The plan is simple: he will turn in Big Mouse.
When it’s evident the guards are about to kill them all during the riot, Chang-ho calls Ji-hoon and tells him to come collect Big Mouse. Chang-ho hands over Room Leader Noh (with his agreement), as well as the blood samples Mi-ho took from the prisoners, and the mayor is there to witness the whole thing (he had stopped by to find out why Warden Gan wasn’t answering his phone). Chang-ho and Mi-ho know the mayor wanted the blood samples and they become antagonistic. Everybody now lays their cards out, making it clear there’s bad blood (literally and figuratively).
Because Chang-ho identified and turned in the real Big Mouse, the charges against him are dropped and he’s freed. His notoriety also brings him a bunch of clients and he rents a giant new law office and starts wearing a new suit every day (finally!). His team can start getting down to business solving Dr. Seo’s murder case — and they have the inmate blood samples to do it. As it turns out, the vials they gave to Ji-hoon were phonies. The big deal about the blood is that it provides evidence of all the cruddy stuff going on at the hospital and the prison, even without having Dr. Seo’s paper in hand.
Since Big Mouse/Room Leader Noh wants to expose the truth about the paper and Dr. Seo’s murder, Chang-ho becomes his attorney. At a press conference, Chang-ho makes it clear that the VIPs (soon to have an appeal trial) are at the bottom of a tower of criminals. He stops short of saying the Elder is at the top, but off-camera says that Hye-jin told him who the boss is (they still don’t know she’s dead, btw).
The show has now set us up for a head-to-head stand-off between the mayor and Chang-ho. Chang-ho knows Mayor Choi is the one that ordered him killed, as well as knowing the mayor’s involvement in the murder of Dr. Seo. There’s also a battle coming between the Elder and his NR Forum “family” and the Big Mouse/Big Mouth team. The mayor, as we know, is an adversary of the Elder as well, but pretends to be on his side in order to carry out a revenge plot having to do with his grandfather’s death. With all these elements in place, we’ve got a three-way showdown that’s about to boil over.