Running Man: Episode 286

by gummimochi

What starts off as a fun trip into the mountain quickly devolves into a case of theft, deception, and worst of all—elimination. Our cast will need to tap into their sleuthing skills to find out who made off with the missing diamonds and why. But the mystery won’t stop there because things will get more dangerous as the night grows deeper. Will they be able to find the culprit or will the case be forever unsolved?

EPISODE 286. Broadcast on February 14, 2016.

January 26, 2016. 10 PM. Our zombie expert—er, detective questions our cast members about the stolen diamonds. Everyone declares themselves innocent in one way or another, but there’s a common denominator in all of their stories: Kwang-soo invited them here.

January 25, 2016. 4 PM. Kwang-soo had won a trip up to a cabin in the mountains, so he’d invited everyone along. What luck for the usually variety bad luck charm, and how suspicious that it had to be used by the next day…

So that’s how everyone ends up on a bus at 2PM the following day, and Jong-kook smiles if this retreat turns out to be a group blind date. They pull up to the cabins in Gapyeong forty minutes later, and what the—is that a dance party?

The place is bumping with young people dancing to music and grilling meat, and Kwang-soo signs off on a form. Hmm, it looks too good to be true. A richly dressed woman joins the crowd: it’s actress Kim Ga-yeon (wife of pro-gamer Lim Yo-hwan), introducing herself as the owner of this cabin retreat.

She tosses her fur coat back and flaunts her diamond necklace. It takes a minute for them to catch on, and she says this teardrop necklace entitled “Tears of the Sun” costs over 20 billion won. Gary: “I’ve seen this at Gyeongdong Market.” Good god, don’t anger the woman.

She has Kwang-soo touch the necklace, and it seems the whole point of this exchange is to tempt all of them to take these precious jewels. With that, Madam Kim returns to her room and carefully places her baby in a safe by 3:26 PM.

Madam Kim rejoins the party, but when the scissors don’t work, she sends Jong-kook to her room—with very specific instructions—to retrieve another pair. Jong-kook is a man on a mission and enters the room at 3:47 PM.

Instead of grabbing the scissors and leaving, he helps himself to a tour of the house and sees the safe. By the time he leaves, it’s 4:00 PM.

Madam Kim sends Haha on another errand for more veggies, even though he says they’ve got plenty already, then Ji-hyo is given a task too. Really it’s just an excuse for everyone to see the safe, but Haha later says it was odd how the host was making her guests do work.

This means they all ran into Guest No. 99 before entering the room. Haha entered at 4:18 PM and Ji-hyo arrived at 4:30 PM. Kwang-soo came in at 4:44 PM and reached for the safe’s handle…

By 6:10 PM, everyone is separated into their private cabins, but the tasks aren’t over: Madam Kim has tasks for Jae-suk (blankets), Suk-jin (wine), and Gary (a remote control). Jae-suk is the only one sent to a different room. Suk-jin tries the safe’s handle, but it’s locked.

Over in his cabin, Haha says it feels like something big is about to go down, and Kwang-soo is feeling antsy.

A little later, Madam Kim comes running and screaming about her missing diamonds. Well that’s what you get when you deliberately flaunt it and invite people into your home. She cries that she found her safe cracked open and her jewels missing five minutes ago.

The police won’t be here for another four hours due to the snowy conditions, so she hopes everyone can help her find them in the meantime. When Jae-suk claims to be a detective, everyone tells him to back off.

Jae-suk and Suk-jin help Madam Kim inspect the crime scene, and Suk-jin makes the rookie mistake of touching the safe with his bare hands. Haven’t you seen any crime shows before?!

At least he admits that he tried opening it out of curiosity, and it seems Madam Kim made a careless error too by setting her passcode to “0000”. Everyone but Jae-suk had been in this room, and Jae-suk believes her to be the culprit. Was she eying the insurance money for these jewels?

Haha and Gary suspect Kwang-soo, since he was the one who invited them here in the first place. Many of the other members suspect him as well, but then Haha thinks of Guest No. 99—what was that guy doing here?

SpartAce and Kwang-soo are busy questioning the many other guests. One cabin claims they saw someone go by, perhaps an employee or the cleaning lady. Told that the cleaning lady has a master key, they talk to her, but she cleaned in the room in the morning and never lost her key all day.

Kwang-soo kills the mood by asking if she’s ever stolen anything before. Haha and Gary still suspect Guest No. 99 since it was odd he’d drink his coffee outside by himself. Turns out, he’s staying in the room next door.

Suk-jin is already there, and both Haha and Gary claim that they didn’t touch the safe. Haha believes that Suk-jin coming half-clean is his way to throw suspicion off of him. The young man can vouch that Jae-suk never entered the madam’s room, but then Haha says he easily could’ve sneaked in through the back.

Suk-jin thinks it’s possible: Jae-suk slips in and out and creates a perfect alibi for himself. While Haha and Gary talk about what these cases always look like in the crime shows, Suk-jin accidentally lets one rip.

A few of them go looking for the security guard, the first person they met once they arrived. The security guard claims he hasn’t left his cabin all day and has no master key. Jae-suk takes a look at the entry log, then the group seeks out the janitor.

Too bad his cabin is locked, and they notice that the janitor hasn’t picked up his morning milk and newspaper. Maybe the janitor wasn’t in all day, but his shoes are still here. Jae-suk peeks inside and sees the man lying on the ground, his nametag ripped off.

Everyone freaks out and Ji-hyo points out an open window. She climbs in and lets everyone else in, careful not to tamper with the crime scene.

Haha shivers at the thought that someone has been eliminated (they treat it as seriously as a homicide), and the guys immediately notice the smell. Jong-kook says the janitor was right-handed and tries to decipher the dying message written in ketchup. He doesn’t know what it means, but thinks it could be important.

Maybe it was Kwang-soo’s name written backwards, and when Kwang-soo’s asked if he saw the writing, he pauses and asks, “What’s a dying message? Is it a movie title?”

Photos are taken, and the cast notices the long hair still attached to the nametag. That means there’s a high chance it was a woman, and Gary thinks Madam Kim may have fabricated the entire thing.

He also thinks the dying message could’ve spelled out Madam Kim’s name, or it could be Ji-hyo. But Suk-jin says ousting a man of the janitor’s size would be difficult for a woman to do on her own… maybe she had an accomplice.

That has Haha thinking it could’ve been both women because diamonds are a girl’s best friend. The group discovers a few albums on the janitor’s bed (LeeSsang, Suk-jin, and Turbo) and the books contain many titles that pertain to Jae-suk, Kwang-soo, or Haha.

Kwang-soo believes that the culprit removed any evidence that would point to them. There was no trace of Ji-hyo in that room… except for the hair stuck to the nametag.

But then the bedroom contains major clues: the walls are adorned with photos of Madam Kim and there are scribbles about the diamond necklace. Among his notes, the janitor wrote that Madam Kim’s room could be accessed with a master key.

If that weren’t creepy enough, today was D-Day. Jong-kook believes that the janitor was attacked sometime during the night since he never picked up his morning newspaper, but then that would rule out the Running Man members…

Suk-jin discovers that the janitor suffered from debt, then lets another one rip. HA, the eliminated janitor moves at the smell. The master key is gone, and Gary believes they need to inspect everyone’s rooms, including his.

All the albums were sophomore albums, so they head to Cabin 2, aka Kwang-soo’s. Haha finds a long hair on the curtain, and Jae-suk finds the master key. Kwang-soo thinks he’s being framed by the real culprit.

The hyungs sit him down, and when Kwang-soo says he doesn’t know where the keys came from, Jong-kook punches him. Kwang-soo: “What the?! You actually punched me!” Jae-suk says he didn’t see it, then steps forward to block the view so Jong-kook can punch Kwang-soo.

The other guys join in too, and Jong-kook keeps punching. Kwang-soo says he wouldn’t hide the master keys in plain sight if he actually did it, but that’s when Jong-kook twists his fingers.

Finally, the hyungs entertain the possibility that Kwang-soo could’ve been framed. Jong-kook is a possibility too, since he was in Madam Kim’s favor. But then Jae-suk points out that Suk-jin has faced some bad investments recently.

Suk-jin goes into the chair, and Jong-kook tries beating an answer out of him. Haha mentions how Suk-jin specifically said he tried the keypad and that this whole farting deal is because of his anxiety.

Haha’s top three suspects are Gary, Kwang-soo, and Jae-suk; however all this talk gets Haha in the hot seat.

8:00 PM. Ji-hyo compares the hair found on the scene with the cleaning lady’s. It’s not a match— the hair found on the nametag is too long. Gary inspects a red car he’s never seen before and finds an old photo with a man and two young children.

8:20 PM. Jae-suk is off to find who planted the master key in Kwang-soo’s room. He later tells the detective that he saw something in the entry log: someone had signed off as “dongsaeng”. This eliminates anyone older than Madam Kim (Suk-jin and Jae-suk).

Ji-hyo is surprised to hear that the master key was found in Kwang-soo’s room, and tells Suk-jin that everything in the janitor’s room points to her, but she didn’t do it. They both think that this thing was self-fabricated by Madam Kim.

And then another scream—another person has been eliminated. This time it’s the cleaning lady, and the time is 9:33 PM. Jae-suk carefully removes her cell phone from her pocket which contains a frightening photo: the cleaning lady wearing the diamond necklace at 8:57 PM today.

Gary dismisses the possibility that the janitor and cleaning lady were in love. He thinks the cleaning lady tried it on, took a selfie, and then attacked. The only person who has been mysteriously missing throughout this investigation is Madam Kim, whose name appears in the call log for 9:03 PM.

Stranger still is that there’s an incoming message from Madam Kim on Kwang-soo’s phone, listed at 9:07 PM.

Jae-suk heads over to meet with Madam Kim, and gets a strange whiff… of ramyun. Hahaha. He confronts her about the call with the cleaning lady, and Madam Kim swipes the phone back and acknowledges the call was made.

They were talking about the overtime work the cleaning lady would need to put in, but then Madam Kim gasps to hear that she was wearing the necklace. At the question about having a dongsaeng, Madam Kim says she’s an only child. How about a close acquaintance then?

She says someone could’ve used the connection to get a discount here, but that still doesn’t explain why she called Kwang-soo.

He isn’t the only one who suspects the madam of foul play—Suk-jin discovers an insurance policy stating how much she’d collect if the necklace was lost: 10 billion won. Madam Kim says she had no idea her father set this up for her, but Ji-hyo still suspects that either the madam made everything up or her father sent someone—one of them—to steal the necklace.

Kwang-soo takes another look at his invitation and realizes that it was mailed out of Mapo-gu, not here in Gapyeong. At the same time, Jae-suk searches the janitor’s body for his cell phone, and Gary discovers something in someone’s wallet.

Finally the police arrived, led by violent crimes Detective Yeom, who coolly says he switched careers. Heh. Then he tells the others that he’s really the youngest of triplets. HA.

Detective Yeom meets with each member 1:1 and asks them all the same question: Who do they think is the culprit? Haha names Jae-suk and Kwang-soo, because they were the only two missing when someone screamed about the cleaning lady’s elimination.

Ji-hyo also believes it’s Jae-suk and Kwang-soo because those two always operated alone. She explains the strangeness of the untouched morning paper and milk along with the various clues found in the janitor’s cabin to bolster her claim.

Ji-hyo says she came across the insurance policy too, but doesn’t know whether or not to believe Madam Kim’s claim that she’d never seen it before. Suk-jin says the janitor had a premeditated plan to steal the necklace, and he thinks it’s Madam Kim.

Jong-kook thinks the same as Suk-jin, and Kwang-soo believes it’s Haha, not only because of the missing CD, but because Haha lives in Mapo-gu. Ha, Gary gets so caught up in the moment that he initially gives his legal name before switching to his stage name.

Gary thinks it might be Madam Kim and her sibling, the other child in the family photo in the car. He pauses when asked if he has any other ideas, and Detective Yeom tells him to think faster.

Jae-suk believes the culprit is Haha, because the “dongsaeng” in the entry log has to be someone Madam Kim knows. He also thinks the janitor was trying to write out “kiddo” in his dying message.

A little later, Detective Yeom says they were successfully able to nab the culprit and have recovered the necklace. The culprit? Madam Kim and Haha.

Everyone has Jae-suk and Gary to thank for this. Turns out Gary had named Haha as Madam Kim’s sibling; there was a family photo in Haha’s wallet—the same one found in the red car. He believes the two to be long-lost siblings and they were both after the insurance money.

In addition to the other clues, Jae-suk had shown the detective the contract made between Madam Kim, the dongsaeng, and the janitor. The janitor was supposed to get five billion won out of the deal, but he was ousted before that came true.

As it turns out, Haha and Madam Kim are half-siblings (yeah, we’ll just roll with it), and Madam Kim was enraged that their father wouldn’t leave a penny in their name. So she stole the necklace, and they decided to frame Kwang-soo and send him a fake invitation.

Unfortunately, the janitor overheard their conversation about the insurance fraud, and demanded money in exchange for his silence. The siblings paid a visit to the janitor on the 25th, and ripped off his nametag.

His dying message was the smiley-eyes emoticon Haha had used to sign the contract with. Madam Kim had planted the master keys in Kwang-soo’s room and ripped off the cleaning lady’s nametag.

Madam Kim had snuck into Kwang-soo’s cabin the previous night, and Haha had swiped the diamond necklace earlier that afternoon. He’d hidden it in the storage, and the cleaning lady came across it by coincidence.

So Madam Kim had gone ahead to eliminate her, and her hair and bobby pins were found at the crime scenes. Furthermore, only the book about Haha was placed upside down, and Haha’s music was missing from the CDs.

Although Jae-suk provided integral information, it’s Gary who was closer to the truth. Ahahaha, Jae-suk had thought that Haha and Madam Kim might’ve been lovers. Detective Yeom: “And I thought you were a pure-hearted man…”

Gary says his drama-watching addiction really helped him out this time (he loves My Daughter Geum Sa-wol). Jae-suk asks if Madam Kim can still hold her upcoming wedding in May (Kim Ga-yeon and her husband registered their marriage in 2011).

Because Gary figured out the big mystery today, he’ll be going on a Sherlock Tour… meaning he’ll be traveling to London with Haha. Looks like the squid and octopus will be touring 221B Baker Street together. Have fun, you two!

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