Lookout: Episodes 3-4

by CandidClown

I like this show. I mean, I really like this show, to the point where I’m getting nervous because these first two/four episodes have boosted my expectations significantly, and we still have fourteen/twenty-eight more to go. I know better than this. I’ve learned it the hard way too many times. And yet, I really like this show! The second half of the premiere week kicks off as our heroine finally has a suspect firmly in her cross hairs. Tenacious and angry, Suji will stop at nothing to get justice for her daughter. But how far is too far?

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

We rewind to see how Do-han had not only manipulated Woo-sung into turning himself in for the murder he committed twelve years ago, but he was also watching a surveillance feed of his surrender at the station. Do-han then intentionally “ran into” the reporter who confronted Prosecutor Oh and planted evidence about the Woo-sung case for her to find. Tricky, tricky.

Back where we left off, Suji tracks down the high school student who brought her daughter to the rooftop. Grabbing his bag with Yoo-na’s special sticker on it, Suji demands to know if he was one who took her little girl up to the roof. (As he is now officially a suspect, let’s name him: This is YOON SHI-WAN, none other than the son of Chief Prosecutor Yoon.)

Either this kid is the world’s best actor, or we have the wrong suspect, because Shi-wan greets Suji innocently, recalling her from when he volunteered with her daughter at the center. He asks if something has happened to Yoo-na, but Suji gapes at him in growing horror at his easy lies.

She yells at him to stop pretending to know nothing and pushes him as she yells that he threw her daughter off the roof. As (bad) luck would have it, Shi-wan’s mother happens to be driving by and pulls over to confront the woman yelling at her son.

Suji flashes her badge and informs Shi-wan’s mom that her son is suspected of pushing a seven-year-old girl off a roof. Mom denies it at first, but when Suji shows her the surveillance picture, she seems to recognize her son immediately and stares at Shi-wan with wide eyes.

Shi-wan chimes in to ask if Yoo-na is all right, seemingly every inch the concerned oppa. Suji is once again speechless at his gall, and Mom uses the moment to collect herself. She steps up to argue that the detective can’t accuse her son with one blurry picture as evidence before telling her to send a formal request if she wants to interrogate her son further.

Luckily, Suji’s friend, Prosecutor Kim Eun-joon, catches up at that moment and promises to send that request promptly. Mom looks unsettled but says she needs to discuss it with her husband, name-dropping that he’s the chief prosecutor (and Prosecutor Kim’s boss’ boss).

Mom pulls her son away to the car, and Suji shakes off her shock to tell Eun-joong that Shi-wan is the one they’re looking for, citing Yoo-na’s sticker on his backpack as proof. She yells that he’s pretending to know nothing, but Eun-joong managers to talk her down, reminding her that they need to find evidence first.

Do-han visits Eun-joong’s empty office and subtly snoops through the flyers and notes regarding Yoo-na’s case. Eun-joong comes back and catches him, so Do-han slides on the cheesy charm and swears he’s just worried about the detective. He hopes that her daughter’s accident won’t affect her ability to work on Woo-sung’s case, but Eun-joong notes that Do-han sounds like he’s hoping it will.

In Prosecutor Oh’s meeting with Chief Prosecutor Yoon, he lays it out that as chief prosecutor, Yoon cannot defend his own son, and Oh does not have the authority to release Woo-sung. Wearing a bland expression, the chief prosecutor asks if he’s trying to strike a deal with him. Prosecutor Oh calls it something more delicate, adding that it’s the best plan to protect the prosecution office from scandal.

Yoon laughs (slightly) at that, pointing out that Prosecutor Oh, who ruined his reputation by putting the wrong man in prison, now wants to save himself. He calls Oh shameless and without conscience, though he admits that the world is full of people like that, and they’re all fools.

At this point, Prosecutor Oh is hanging his head, believing his plan has failed. Strangely though, Yoon turns to say that they can’t let one little girl who fell off a roof shake up their whole organization. Looks like Prosecutor Oh has his deal.

May 10, 2016

Suji and Grandma sit with Yoo-na, who has fallen into a coma. Suji asks her daughter to wait a little longer, promising to catch the bad guy soon. Suddenly, Yoo-na starts crashing, and they’re both ushered out of the room as doctors rush in.

Thankfully they’re able to stabilize her, but the doctor warns Suji that it might happen again. After the doctor leaves, Suji turns to head out. When Grandma asks where she’s going, she answers, “To catch that bastard.”

Suji and Prosecutor Kim go to the roof to look around where Yoo-na was pushed. Suji finds the torn remnants of the airplane that Yoo-na had wanted to throw (the one that we know Shi-wan ripped out of her hand). Suji recognizes the picture as a drawing Yoo-na made.

Going back to better times, we see Yoo-na hesitantly asking what her father looked like, since she’s never seen a picture. It’s a sore subject, but Suji smiles and tells her daughter that she looks just like her father while smooshing her face and making her laugh.

Getting an idea, Yoo-na jumps up to draw a picture of herself to send as an airplane so it can fly to her dad in heaven. This kid is gonna break me, I swear.

Up on the roof, Suji remembers the promise that she forgot: On parent’s day, the two of them were supposed to send the airplane off together. Suji sobs to realize that Shi-wan never lured Yoo-na up to the roof; she’d gone voluntarily. Eun-joong urges Suji to try and recall if there was anything off about Shi-wan, and she does remember that the boy had glared at her when he was volunteering.

Just then, fellow detective Jin-ki and Suji’s friend, Team Leader Soon-ae, call to say that they found CCTV evidence that places him at the scene. Eun-joong smiles at the good news and tells her to gather the evidence carefully before brining it to him so he can catch the bastard.

Unfortunately, Eun-joong’s plan hits a snag: Prosecutor Oh has handed Yoo-na’s prosecution off to Do-han, meaning he’s off the case. In his office, Oh reminds Do-han that they needs to push this through and promises that once Do-han “deals” with it, Prosecutor Oh will introduce him to Chief Prosecutor Yoon.

Do-han grins at his benefactor, but Eun-joong barges in, yelling at Prosecutor Oh for taking the case from him. Do-han actually tries to say that this was for Eun-joong’s sake, since there are rumors going around about his one-sided feelings for the victim’s mother, Suji. Do-han cozies up to Eun-joong and promises that he’ll handle the case real well.

Shi-wan and his mom voluntarily head to the police station for an interview. Shi-wan acknowledges that he was on the roof with Yoo-na, but he claims that he hid the truth because he felt so guilty that he couldn’t stop her from falling.

He then spins a brilliant sob story about how the girl had climbed up on the edge on her own, but she slipped, and he couldn’t grab her in time. He even works in that Yoo-na ripped up the plane herself because she was mad at her mom for not keeping her promise. Creepily, he looks through the window right at Suji and adds, “She tore it up saying that she hated both her mom and dad.”

Suji can’t take it anymore and rushes in, convinced that Yoo-na would never say that. Shi-wan pushes it too far when he says that he hopes Yoo-na won’t die from her accident. Suji lunges for him, and as the other cops hold her back, Shi-wan’s mom yells about their treatment of a minor. Their lawyer provides documents from Yoo-na’s doctor stating that, given her injuries, her testimony accusing Shi-wan can’t be trusted and is therefore invalid.

Amongst all the chaos, Shi-wan lowers his head, and Suji freezes to see that the little bastard is smiling as the adults fight around him. Before she can go at him again, she gets a call from the hospital. Oh no.

Eun-joong rushes to the hospital to find Grandma, Soon-ae, and Suji by Yoo-na’s side, all of them staring down at the small girl as the machines she’s hooked up sound out the dreaded monotone. She’s passed on.

Suji numbly looks down at her daughter’s still body, whispering that Yoo-na must have been in so much pain while waiting for her mom to keep her promise. Suji tells her that she can rest now before finally breaking down, her head falling on Yoo-na’s tiny chest.

Outside the ICU, Do-han stands listening to Suji’s sobbing, and we see that he himself is holding back tears. Taking a deep breath, he blinks away the small trace of humanity and calls Prosecutor Oh, forcing a grin as he tells him that there is no longer any witness to the crime, so he’ll be able to wrap things up quickly. But as soon as the call ends, his smile’s gone.

May 12, 2016

Chief Prosecutor Yoon is swarmed by reporters on his way to the courthouse, but Do-han smoothly deflects them towards him by introducing himself the prosecutor in charge of the case. He gives a lovely PC statement stating for lack of evidence, witness, or a motive, the case has been deemed an accident.

Do-han gives a tiny nod to Chief Prosecutor Yoon, but at that moment, a voice calls out, “You’re lying.” The flock of reporters clears to reveal Suji in her mourning clothes as she clutches her daughter’s memorial. She states, “My daughter was murdered. The son of Chief Prosecutor Yoon is the murderer.”

Suji and Yoon have a mini stare-off, but Do-han interrupts to smoothly apologize for her loss before telling her not to place that blame on an innocent student with a bright future before him. Suji spits back, “People like you don’t deserve to be a prosecutor.” That seems to strike a nerve, and Do-han’s mask flickers for a moment.

Suji turns back to the chief prosecutor and shouts that even without evidence or a witness, “Your son is a murderer!”

Yoon has had enough and instructs the guards to take care of the disruptive woman. The guard try to pull Suji away, and Yoo-na’s picture goes flying as she fights them off, yelling that Yoon’s son is the killer. Eun-joong appears and persuades the guards to let her go.

Suji tumbles to the ground and crawls to her daughter’s shattered photo. Even Do-han looks like he’s having a hard time watching as Suji hugs the picture to her chest and wails that her daughter was murdered.

 
EPISODE 4 RECAP

Suji trudges away from her daughter’s memorial, Yoo-na’s picture in her hand. She takes her police badge out of her pocket and barely spares it a glance before chucking it in the trash. Eun-joong, who is trailing behind her, quickly picks it out of garbage and asksw what she’s doing. She replies that all her life, she believed the wrongdoers would be punished, but now Yoo-na is dead and the law has let her daughter’s killer go.

Suji turns to Eun-joong and demands to know why she should keep the badge when it couldn’t even protect Yoo-na. Smiling hopelessly, she asks, “What good is the law? It only defends guys like [Shi-wan], and is controlled by men like Yoon Seung-ro.”

After her memorial, Yoo-na’s body is cremated. As Grandma and the other mourners weep, only Suji stands tall and dry-eyed, staring into the flames with conviction.

At the station, Woo-sung gets released scot-free, and Soon-ae watches as he walks away, muttering about having to release him on orders from higher-ups.

Social climber Do-han bounces around his office after Prosecutor Oh calls to inform him that he arranged a lunch meeting for Do-han with Chief Prosecutor Yoon. His literal happy dance is cut short when Eun-joong barges in to demand to know why Do-han dropped Yoo-na’s case.

Eun-joong yells that Do-han didn’t even let the police finish their investigation before forcing them to hand their results over to the prosecution. Do-han says that because the case lacked evidence, there was no point in pursuing Shi-wan: “He’s either not the culprit, or smart enough not to leave any evidence. Whichever it is, lawfully speaking, he is completely innocent.” Do-han even has the gall to finish his argument with a bounce and grin, like he did the right thing. Wow. Can I hit him? Please?

Eun-joong snarls that Do-han was planning to drop the case from the beginning and used it as a way to ingratiate himself with Chief Prosecutor Yoon. He grabs Do-han by the shirt, and the younger man starts flipping out about it being a designer brand and pulls away, causing the shirt to rip.

As Do-han practically cries over his pretty clothes, Eun-joon swears that this case isn’t over. “I’m never going to give up. I’m going to disclose everything that you have done.”

Eun-joong walks away from the whimpering Do-han, but suddenly, the smarmy persona seems to melt away and Do-han calls out, “How?” Offering to give him some free advice, Do-han leans in and whispers, “You cannot win against them playing by your rules.

Thrown off by the honesty, Eun-joong stares at Do-han until they’re interrupted by a man from the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office who has come to take Eun-joong in for questioning. Apparently, someone reported him for trying to frame an innocent boy (Shi-wan) as a favor for his lover (Suji). Eun-joong turns blaming eyes on Do-han, but interestingly, Do-han doesn’t look like he was behind this.

Ugh. Prosecutor Oh reports like a good lackey to Chief Prosecutor Yoon that he has taken care of Eun-joong so that he won’t dig into the case anymore. (Guess we know who reported him.) He asks what he should do about the child’s mother.

Expressionless as ever, Yoon deadpans, “She said my son is a murderer.” He calls the statement ridiculous. Yoon concedes that he can’t stop Suji from speaking, so instead, they have to make people stop listening to her. Prosecutor Oh catches on quick, hinting that they can spin the story into a single mother who neglected her own child into death. He smirks that the reporters will love that angle.

May 13, 2016

Suji eventually emerges from her room and finds Grandma diligently scrubbing the dirt (and blood) off of Yoo-na’s sparkly blue shoes. After knocking the shoe from her mother’s hand and reminding her that Yoo-na won’t ever wear the shoes because she’s gone, she tells her mom that she’s heading out. When Grandma asks where, Suji just responds that she has somewhere to go, and tells Grandma not to wait up for her.

At the police station, Soon-ae stares at her friend’s empty desk, sighing as her calls go straight to voicemail. Jin-ki asks after Suji since she was supposed to return from leave today, remarking that she never returned her weapon before going on leave.

Soon-ae decides to head over to her friend’s place to pick up the firearm, but she’s too late, as Suji is currently marching towards a high school, the gun swinging almost casually from her hand. I think we know whose school that is.

In the high school, Shi-wan sits in art class as a gaggle of admirers watch him draw a sketch of a fellow student. One girl off to the side seems particularly smitten with the handsome psychopath, as she’s currently sketching a giant portrait of him. Shi-wan sees her watching him and grins, aware of her crush.

At that moment, Suji enters the classroom and doesn’t hesitate as she strides up to Shi-wan and point her gun right between his eyes. Damn.

The students all exit in a mass of screams and panic. Shi-wan’s admirer also flees, but she whips out her phone and calls her mom, who turns out to be Soon-ae. Soon-ae immediately puts a siren on her car and goes tearing off to the school.

Do-han is having his much sought-after lunch with Chief Prosecutor Yoon, and he eagerly piles on the flattery for his senior. The chief prosecutor remains unimpressed, cutting through the bull to say that he knows that Do-han was the one pulling Prosecutor Oh’s strings. He claims to have seen hundreds of prosecutors like him, all of them using others to get promoted faster.

Chief Prosecutor Yoon calls them fools caught up with greed, refusing to call people like them prosecutors. Do-han’s cheesy grin fades slightly, and under the table, his hands clench into fists, vibrating with anger.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that when Do-han was a boy (his name was Dae-chul), his father was hauled away by the police. He was tortured (via water) to try and force him to incriminate himself, with a younger Yoon supervising the “interrogation.” When Dad maintained that he was innocent, Yoon nonchalantly ordered him dunked back under water.

Returning to 2016, Do-han gets his emotions under control just as Yoon receives a call and yells to hear that Suji is at his son’s school. He immediately rushes off, and Do-han stares up at a news billboard depicting Suji’s actions, looking conflicted.

At the school, Suji tells Shi-wan that this is his last chance to tell the truth, reminding him that he has no parents to hide behind now. Shi-wan maintains his innocent act, lip quivering as he begs Suji to believe him. Suji yells at him to stop with the lies; her daughter told her the truth, and she doesn’t need any more evidence than that.

Like flipping a switch, Shi-wan slowly blinks once, then drops the farce completely, dispassionately asking, “Why didn’t you fall for it?” He laughs as he says that everyone else did. Suji stares at his real face, and Shi-wan uses the chance to lash out with his drawing pen, stabbing her hand. He makes a break for the door, but Suji recovers and fires a warning shot into the wall by his head.

Elsewhere in the school, Shi-wan’s mom is having a meeting with the principle when they hear the gunfire. A teacher runs in to inform them they have a hostage situation involving Shi-wan.

Suji drags Shi-wan over to the window and pushes him until he’s leaning backwards out of it. Shi-wan rages at her to let him go, but Suji yells that Yoo-na probably said the same thing when he pushed her off the roof. Tears stream down her face as she demands how he could do that to her innocent daughter.

The police arrive, and Shi-wan’s mom comes running in with them. Shi-wan immediately starts blubbering, calling for his mother to save him, and Mom loses it to see her son threatened. She begs Suji to kill her instead, pleading earnestly to save her boy. Suji looks at the woman clearly torn, since she feels a kinship with her pain.

Just as things are looking pretty hopeless, Soon-ae arrives (thanks to a call from her daughter, who goes to the school) and carefully walks over to her friend. She asks Suji if she’s willing to kill a boy in front of his mother, yelling that Yoo-na would never want her mom to become a murderer.

Suji remembers all the times that Yoona had been proud of her for catching the bad guys. Thinking of her daughter, Suji shakily lowers her gun and lets Shi-wan free. Soon-ae literally tosses the child-murderer aside and rushes in to hug her friend as Suji breaks down, sobbing into her shoulder.

Soon-ae gently takes the gun from Suji’s hand. At the same time, Mom starts tugging her son out of the room, but Shi-wan looks back as Soon-ae handcuffs an unresisting Suji. Looking straight at her, his face breaks into a macabre grin. As Suji gapes, Shi-wan mouths, “I killed her.”

Suji’s face goes blank as her daughter’s murderer smiles boastfully. In one motion, she grabs a gun from the nearest cop and shoots wildly towards Shi-wan. She just misses, hitting a statue, but a pottery shard grazes his face.

Tackled to the floor, Suji writhes and screams that he’s the murderer, and as Shi-wan watches her wild anger, he looks actually scared for the first time.

Over at a crematorium, our mysterious priest, who has been communicating with Bomi and Kyung-soo (our surveillance and hacker team), stops to look at Yoo-na’s urn.

Next, a delivery guy arrives outside a rundown apartment, banging on the door impatiently. When there’s no response, he starts snooping into the envelope he’s meant to deliver. But before he can open it, his phone rings, and Bomi’s altered scary voice warns the man to leave the envelope alone.

The guy is sufficiently freaked out and drops the envelope in front of the door, hightailing it out of there. Bomi then proceeds to undo the seven locks securing her front door to grab the delivery. Inside the envelope is a picture of Suji and a note: Save her. She will join us.

Cue upbeat music as we check in with our skateboarding hacker, Kyung-soo. After putting up road detour signs, he shakes out a container of screws and nails onto the road, peppering the cordoned off area with a multitude of pointy hardware. Unfortunately, he steps on some and it pokes him through his shoe. As he hops around on one foot, he tips over and goes careening towards the literal bed of nails. Over the intercom, his cries and a resounding thud prompt Bomi to sigh, “How did you mess up this time?” When he doesn’t answer, she follows that up with an indifferent, “Are you dead?” Pfft.

Thankfully still among the living, Kyung-soo has managed to catch himself just before his face smacked into the many implements of impalement. He whimpers that he almost died, though he gets no sympathy from Bomi, who casually notes, “So you aren’t dead,” and then goes back to her snacking. He pouts at a CCTV camera and yells that he almost died, but she just quips back that he didn’t, in fact, die.

Complaining, Kyung-soo brings up their recruitment of Suji, wondering if they could ever make a cop understand them. Bomi answers that they’ll just have to convince her, adding that she can handle it, but Kyung-soo can’t, because he’s an idiot.

Kyung-soo glares at her through the nearby CCTV, “Who are you calling an idiot?” Bomi just asks if he’s been talking at her through the security camera this whole time… you know, the one that he himself turned off earlier so they wouldn’t get caught. He gives a sheepish, “Oh, right. I did.” Bomi shakes her head, “Idiot.” Love them.

Bomi notes that Suji’s car is approaching, and Kyung-soo grabs the detour signs before jumping into his truck to hide.

In the car, Soon-ae drives her friend away from the school. She looks at Suji’s handcuffed hands and says that she should have held back her anger for the sake of Grandma. Soon-ae admits that she has no right to say that she understands what Suji is going through, but she insists that she still has to live her life, even if Yoo-na is gone. Suji just stares despondently ahead.

Back in the truck, Kyung-soo wonders if it was a bad idea to dump the entire bucket of nails, causing Bomi to yell at him for not telling her sooner. Just as he starts to panic that they might seriously injure Suji, Soon-ae’s car comes around the bend, and he ducks down.

Sure enough, Soon-ae’s car hits the rough patch and all four tires go. She loses control, and Kyung-soo watches in horror as the car with their newest recruit goes spinning off the road and flips over.

 
COMMENTS

I am just so impressed with the way that we’re being smoothly led through the gauntlet of tears, laughs, sighs, and angry curses, without feeling the jolt of editing or the exhaustion of switching back and forth. Everything, from the directing, acting, pacing, script, and even the music, was lovely. I admit I’m not a film expert, and I give a very wide margin of error for these things, but this surpassed my normal standards and broke right into “Woah!” territory. I really hope this is just a taste of what we’ll be getting, and that it stays constant throughout.

My favorite thing so far has to be the complexity of the characters, although, I’m going to find it very hard to get onboard with Do-han. I’m a little worried that Kim Young-kwang has done too good of a job portraying Do-han as the sleazy prosecutor, to the point where I’m not sure I can like him again. I’m glad we got a bit of backstory on him, and I do appreciate those moments when the mask falls, but I can’t forget that he single-handedly stopped Yoo-na’s case and let a murderer go free, all for an introduction to Chief Prosecutor Yoon.

Now, maybe he has a backup plan to get justice – or at least revenge – for that poor girl. I’m willing to keep an open mind. That does not, however, help with the fact that I am physically snarling at him whenever he’s on screen. He better have a big plan up those expensive shirtsleeves, or else I might be spending the next seven weeks of my life ranting at a fictional character.

Conversely, I really enjoy our bad guys… in that I want to push both father and son off of a roof, repeatedly. What really unnerves me about the pair are their blank, expressionless faces. It’s creepy, but also fascinating. And the many references to the apple not falling far from the tree – are Shi-wan’s murderous tendencies hereditary?

We already know that has father has a distinct lack of empathy for human life, given what he did to Do-han’s father. Is there murder in his past, too? Questions, questions. It may be slightly masochistic, but I love me a good villain, and this show has the potential of delivering not one, but two!

Still, the cost of having those villains is never easy, and I’m so sad about poor little Yoo-na’s fate. I knew she was going to go, but I had no idea it would be so sudden, and without her mother by her side. When she passed, my first reaction was that it was too soon and that I wanted more time with her, but then I realized that that is undoubtedly what Suji felt, since she must have been desperate for just a little more time with her daughter. Their relationship was so precious that I miss it already, and I hope we have some more flashbacks so we can see Yoo-na again.

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