Mrs. Cop: Episode 14

by LollyPip

We’re finally getting some forward movement in the story, and if President Kang’s Mi Rae City plans aren’t any clearer, at least now his motivation to bring Young-jin down makes a lot more sense. They both have good reason to get revenge on the other now, and both start to take action towards stopping their enemy. The burning question is, who will make the first move and get the upper hand?

EPISODE 14 RECAP

Young-jin’s team catches up to Jae-won just as he’s about to board the boat and escape, and Jae-won pulls his gun on Do-young and Jae-duk in desperation. President Kang tells his son not to shoot, and Jae-duk uses the momentary distraction to pull his weapon.

Jae-won panics and shoots, and Do-young fires off two shots in return. Jae-duk is only grazed, but Jae-won takes both bullets in the chest. That’s when Young-jin and Jong-ho arrive, in time to see President Kang cradle his son in his arms as he dies.

Kang stands and starts to walk towards the team, sobbing at them for killing his son, and Do-young warns him not to come any closer. Jong-ho has to physically hold Kang back, but he manages to warn to Young-jin that he’ll get revenge before he breaks down.

President Kang grieves deeply for his son, unable to let him go no matter how hard he tries. At the funeral he dissolves in tears, collapsing from days of refusing to eat. Later his lawyer tells him he needs to turn himself in, but he can’t stomach the idea of seeing the people who killed his son and tells her to delay the police.

Jae-duk makes the decision for him, bringing a squad of policemen to take President Kang to the station whether he likes it or not. He’s under arrest for obstruction of justice, and Kang only moves when they try to take him by force.

Chief Yeom tries to convince Jong-ho to let President Kang go — after all, his son is dead, and by a cop’s hand… how much more should he suffer? Jong-ho insists Kang should do time for attempting to smuggle Jae-won out of the country, and he’s shocked when Young-jin agrees with the chief this time.

She doesn’t want Kang to go free, but she also doesn’t want him to go to jail for something so minor as obstruction of justice when she knows he murdered her father. She wants him put away for good, and she wants to make sure it’s done right.

Young-jin meets with President Kang in the interrogation room and tells him that she’s letting him go. He’s not the least bit grateful, and growls that he’ll never forgive the person who killed his child. He tells Young-jin that she should have killed him as well — he’ll make her regret that he’s still alive.

She returns the sentiment, and says that some things must be repaid… things such as revenge for the death of a parent. She softly tells Kang that she hasn’t even started, and to be on the lookout for her. Unwilling to touch him, she tosses him the keys to his handcuffs and orders him to get out.

Do-young sits at home alone, upset over having killed someone, when Jin-woo sends her a text asking her out for a drink. She doesn’t answer, and awww, he’s waiting downstairs at the entrance to her building. He sends another message that he has something to tell her, adding that he knows she’s upset. He calls her his partner and “work wife,” and that if she considers him her partner in return, she’ll come out.

Ohthankgoodness, she does meet him, and they go to Jae-soo’s restaurant for drinks. They stay so late that Jae-soo tells them to just help themselves and goes on to bed, but first she thanks Do-young for saving her husband’s life. That seems to lighten Do-young’s mood a bit, especially when Jin-woo confirms that if she hadn’t shot Jae-won, Jae-duk would have died.

Jin-woo reveals that it’s just over a year since his girlfriend died, and that before he joined Young-jin’s team, he was drinking every day. He tells Do-young that they would go mountain climbing together, and that there was an accident. They had anchored themselves on an unstable rock and both of them were in danger of falling. His girlfriend cut her rope to save his life, but had fallen to her death as a result. Oh, that’s heartbreaking.

He admits that he wanted to die, and even tells her about the time he nearly ended his own life. He asks Do-young if this was her first time killing a person, and says that he hasn’t killed anyone in the line of duty yet — but he thinks she knows how she feels.

Do-young answers that she used to think bad people would be better off dead, so now that she’s killed someone, she doesn’t know why she’s so upset. Jin-woo says that it’s because he was still a person, but Do-young interrupts, angry. She spits that Jae-won was a murderer who permanently crippled a cop, then tried to flee and escape punishment. Why should she have to feel bad for killing someone that despicable?

Jin-woo assures Do-young that she made the right decision in the heat of the moment, and she asks again why she should feel responsible. Jin-woo says it’s nuts to feel responsible for doing the right thing, but that if she didn’t feel badly about it, she wouldn’t be human. No matter what, a human life was lost, and feeling badly is the least they can do for the person who’s gone.

Do-young fights it, saying that if you do something worth dying for, then you deserve to die. She doesn’t want to regret her decision to shoot. Jin-woo insists that it will be harder for her if she doesn’t, telling her to just feel sorry and move on. Do-young cries out, “I’m already sorry!” and it opens the floodgates.

After letting her cry for a minute, Jin-woo says that’s enough of being sorry — that’s all that punk deserves. He pours Do-young another drink while she collects herself, and I love the way he looks at her, with so much respect in that moment.

President Kang is bordering on obsession, unable to think of anything but those who killed his son. Of course he fully blames Young-jin, though Secretary Yoon advises him to wait, because if he goes after Young-jin now he’ll be the prime suspect. Kang points out that pitchers still hit batters with the ball even though they could be removed from the game for it, because it demoralizes the other team and you can always claim it was a mistake.

He thinks it’s a good, if risky, strategy, so he plans to throw the ball, and where it lands is beyond his control. With a crazy glint in his eyes, he tells Secretary Yoon to find people with certain skills who won’t talk.

Jae-duk and Se-won locate a nightclub owner for a case, and suggest they all go clubbing (haha, Jin-woo claims in a deadpan voice that he’s the best dancer). The man they’re looking for is called Mabbaki, but we’re not told what he’s wanted for. The team all go to the club posing as customers, and oh man, none of them can dance.

Young-jin spots Mabbaki pretty quickly and warns her team to be on the alert — these are pretty tough men. They corner Mabbaki in the back rooms where Young-jin introduces herself as Extrasensory Choi, her nickname among criminals, and it’s clear that Mabbaki’s heard of her.

Later at the station, Jae-duk brags on how tough Young-jin was in her early days, fighting gangsters with no fear. He says that Jin-woo should remember, since he was one of them…. what? They don’t explain, and Jae-duk goes on and on about Young-jin’s awesomeness to the extent that Do-young thinks he’s telling fish stories, but apparently they’re all true.

Young-jin talks to Mabbaki about President Kang, Mabbaki telling her that Kang doesn’t live by any of the codes that most gangsters follow. He sees money and he goes for it, no matter what. He used to be one of them but he shut that down and went into construction, using threats to win bids and using his money to manipulate.

Secretary Yoon puts President Kang’s plan into motion, hiring several men to follow her. One man follows Nam-jin when she takes Ha-eun on a little date with her boyfriend, lurking and watching. He gets close to the kids when they slip away from Nam-jin, and Ha-eun seems to sense something off about him.

Nam-jin calls her sister, who meets them at the police station and whew, the kids are okay. The lurker turns out to be Jae-young’s dad, desperate to see his son after being kept from him by his ex-wife. They’d gone to sit in his car and Nam-jin had been scared, but everything checks out.

Young-jin, Nam-jin, and Ha-eun cuddle on a bench in the park, enjoying each other’s company and Ha-eun’s safety. Ha-eun is jealous of her friend, wishing that she had a dad, too. She talks about being envious of her friends and their fathers, and Young-jin’s face looks haunted for a moment. But she snaps out of it and assures her daughter that she can do anything a dad would do.

She tells Ha-eun that her dad is watching her from heaven, but Ha-eun smiles at that and says she knows she doesn’t have a dad. She fusses at Young-jin not to try so hard, which is so mature from such a little thing, though Young-jin and Nam-jin play it off lightly.

Do-young and another female officer, a friend of hers, borrow Young-jin’s car and are cut off on the road by a reckless driver. The other officer complains about Do-young’s reaction, saying she’s gotten less feminine since moving to the Violent Crimes Division. The driver cuts them off again and Do-young is now furious.

She yells at the other driver for being reckless, and he just grins and cuts them off a third time. He swerves dangerously to keep her from passing him, until they all finally pull over and Do-young gets out to confront him.

There are two men in the car, and two more men drive up behind them and brandish knives at the women menacingly. Do-young doesn’t have her gun on her person, but she fights off the men barehanded and runs for the car. She grabs her taser and knocks one thug out with it, shoots another, but the third man gets in a kick to her face… ouch.

Young-jin and Nam-jin talk about Ha-eun back at home — Nam-jin is more worried about her niece growing up without a dad, since she’s the sister who doesn’t really remember their father. It affected her a lot, and she even tried to run away to become an actress, which the two sisters laugh over now.

Young-jin tells Nam-jin again to study hard for the civil service exam next year, but Nam-jin has decided to give up on that. She wants to go for her original dream, and try theatre.

Do-young takes down the guy attacking her, and sees the last thug kicking her friend as she huddles in the street. Do-young grabs one of the men’s belt and goes after the final man, neatly flipping him to the ground and tying his hands with the belt. That was awesome.

President Kang is disappointed to hear that Young-jin wasn’t in the car when the hired men attacked, as he’d hoped. Now he’s worried that the cops know it was him, and will fight back. He tells Secretary Yoon to watch Young-jin closely to see how she reacts.

Even though the fight was caught by the car’s black boxes, the attackers claim they were the victims and threaten to sue. One of them says to Jin-woo’s face that he’ll get revenge on Do-young specifically, which infuriates Jin-woo.

Do-young earns a lot of admiration from her teammates for taking down four men at once, but she’s upset that they claim she attacked them first. Jin-woo knows they targeted Young-jin’s car specifically, and Jae-duk recognizes one of the thugs from a bust of President Kang’s construction workers. It connects him to President Kang, and it’s proof enough for them that the attack was retaliation for Jae-won’s death.

Emotional as always, Jae-duk wants to assign security to Do-young and Young-jin, but Young-jin nixes that immediately. If they reveal that they know what President Kang is doing, he’ll back off and they won’t be able to catch him at it. What they need to do is find evidence that those men took money to attack them.

She gives everyone instructions except Do-young, who she tells to go home and rest. Of course Do-young refuses, saying that she can’t rest until her attackers are caught anyway, and I love that the rest of the team don’t even try to argue with her anymore.

The team gets to work looking for evidence that the men who attacked Do-young were paid, and while on stakeout, Jin-woo notices Do-young’s pain patch on her neck loosening and gently smooths it down for her. He asks if she was scared, having seen the black box video, and in answer she asks if he’s scared of gangsters.

“I’m scared of you,” is his answer, explaining that he worries about her because she has no fear. He says it’s because she’s his partner and she smiles with satisfaction, though something about the way he looks at her so tenderly makes me think it’s more than just partnership.

President Kang and Chief Yeom meet again, and Yeom insists that he told his people not to take any action on the night Jae-won died. Kang sneers that Yeom should manage his people better, and Yeom retorts that Kang should have managed his son. Touche.

President Kang tells Yeom to figure out a way to fire Young-jin, and Yeom quips back that he told Kang long ago that he can’t control Young-jin, and advised him to avoid her. Kang tells Yeom that Young-jin knows he killed her father, but there’s something she doesn’t know — the detective in charge, Chief Yeom, was on his side.

Kang says again that Yeom needs to fire Young-jin if he wants to save her life, getting so worked up that he’s nearly screaming. Shocked by Kang’s out-of-control behavior, Yeom whispers that he’s a gangster thug, and Kang fires back that Yeom is a corrupt cop.

Jin-woo pieces together that the leader of the KL Group union, Kwon Sung-chul, is also the boss of the West Incheon gang. In fact, most of KL’s union is made up of West Incheon gang members. They couldn’t find a money trail, but they did find that all four of Do-young’s attackers went to school together and belonged to the same gang.

They need to get the men to talk, and so far none of them will say a word. They settle on one man, Chun Dae-il, as the weak link, Young-jin having noticed his nervous tics, and figuring he’s the one that will be easiest to crack.

Jin-woo interrogates Dae-il first and of course he uses physical intimidation, grabbing the man and slamming him against the wall. It’s all an act though, with Jin-woo as Bad Cop, and Young-jin enters the room to play Good Cop. She tells Dae-il that his friends escaped from the hospital, asking him where they went.

Dae-il sticks to his story that he has no idea, and she asks him why they would run if they were the victims as they claimed. It throws him off and he starts to rub his hands together, his tell that he’s about to break. They walk him back to his cell, and he sees his friend signing a confession. Young-jin tells Dae-il that his friend confessed and was set free, but that he’ll probably do a few years for keeping silent, and the man finally snaps.

Yeom thinks about President Kang’s comment that he was on Kang’s side when Kang killed her father, and he makes a call. He meets with Secretary Yoon alone and says he’s come up with a plan, but that he needs Yoon to do something first.

Yoon goes to Mabbaki’s club and slaps Mabbaki several times in the face. Mabbaki seems to know what this is about and sends his bodyguards away. Yoon asks why he went to the police station, asking if he mentioned President Kang’s name to the police. Mabbaki lies that he didn’t and gets slapped again, and again he just accepts it. Yoon tells him that he’s here to tell Mabbaki how to save his own life.

President Kang’s lawyer notifies him that his construction workers are interfering with the Mi Rae City work site, and he tells her to handle it. Secretary Yoon comes in to say that he spoke to Chief Yeom, and that once the loose ends are tied things will be fine. President Kang cackles his pleasure over Yeom’s obedience, and tells Yoon to “hand the western district over to the Ilsan gang.”

A box is delivered to Young-jin’s house, which Nam-jin signs for. Secretary Yoon whispers something to President Kang that makes him smile like the cat that got the cream. Chief Yeom is shown a statement of testimony and tells the man carrying it to investigate thoroughly. And in his club, Mabbaki throws a beer bottle in frustration.

Back at the station, Young-jin tells her team that they got a statement from Dae-il and will be going after the KL Union leader Kwon Sung-chul. The man who gave the statement to Chief Yeom stops them and introduces himself as Lieutenant Seo from Internal Affairs, and shows Young-jin an arrest warrant. She’s under arrest for receiving bribes.

COMMENTS

Ah, so this must be Chief Yeom’s big plan to get Young-jin fired. I’m guessing he coerced Mabbaki into making a statement that he bribed Young-jin, which they’ll use to discredit her and have her removed from her job, for good this time. I was wondering which of them between Young-jin and President Kang would make their move first, and though I was rooting for Young-jin, this does make things more interesting as we move into the final weeks of the show.

Now Young-jin not only has to prove that President Kang killed her father with absolutely no evidence against him, but she’s got to do it while keeping herself from going to jail. I have to admit, that was well-played by President Kang and Chief Yeom, and Young-jin’s going to have to do some super fancy footwork to stay out of serious hot water. With her own boss willing to throw her to the wolves to save his own neck, her best hope will be to quickly discover that Chief Yeom is dirty and have his illegal activities outed before he and President Kang can take her down.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but I feel like Mabbaki may be the key to solving this situation. If I’m reading the situation correctly and he did make a statement that he bribed Young-jin, he doesn’t seem happy about it. I don’t know if I missed it or if the show didn’t say, but I didn’t quite catch how he’s tied into President Kang and his business (other than Kang being a former gang member and Mabbaki being a current one), but clearly the relationship isn’t a good one. The way Secretary Yoon treated Mabbaki was so condescending and insulting, I actually felt sorry for the guy. Mabbaki doesn’t even seem to be a bad guy, so hopefully his conscience will kick in and he’ll be willing to help Young-jin.

I can’t hide that I’m sorry that Jae-won is dead, because I was hoping he would stick around and be creepy and gross for a while. His reappearance breathed some life back into the show this week, and gave Young-jin and her team a common goal to focus on. But I actually like the direction his death has given to the story. I’ve been wanting a good solid reason, on both sides, for Young-jin and President Kang to go after each other, and the vague “I have a bad feeling” they’ve both given as their motivations up until now has been wearing thin for quite some time. It’s not enough just to think Kang is a bad guy when Young-jin had very little proof to go on, and at most all Kang has felt towards Young-jin is mild annoyance and the knowledge that she’s the daughter of the cop he killed.

But now they both have concrete, intense reason to want each other’s blood, literally, and I love it. Young-jin may not have solid proof, but she’s Extrasensory Choi and she trusts her instincts enough to feel confident that her deduction that Kang killed her father is true. And while Young-jin may not have pulled the trigger that killed Jae-won, it was her team member that was directly responsible, and that’s enough for Kang — who already hated her — to put the blame of his son’s death squarely on Young-jin’s shoulders. They both have a loved one to avenge, and finally their antagonism towards each other has a laser-focus that gives their hatred a real purpose. Their confrontation where they each insisted that their loss was the greater one was so delightfully tense and shivery, and that was when they were both still holding it in — I can’t wait until they really get wound up and go at each other. It’s going to be glorious.

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