Lookout: Episodes 7-8

by CandidClown

I still like it! We get a nice dose of action in Episodes 7 and 8, not to mention some lovely team bonding amongst our vigilante crew. I’m also having a grand old’ time watching as Suji’s morals start messing with Do-han’s carefully laid plans. I don’t know if revenge is a dish best served cold, but these two may just kill each other at the dinner table. Who’s got popcorn?

 
EPISODE 7 RECAP

Suji jumps onto the kidnappers’ black van, hanging onto the luggage rails as the vehicle peels off. Bomi and Kyung-soo yell as her to hang on, but the kidnappers manage to push her off, sending her rolling into the road… right into the path of an oncoming semi-truck. Thankfully the semi stops just shy of smooshing the vigilante ex-detective. Suji limps back to her bike and zooms off after the van.

At the police station, Do-han rages at the detectives to catch Suji. They scatter obediently, but Soon-ae turns back to warn Do-han that they’ll do their jobs as police, but this time, Do-han better do his job as a prosecutor. He scoffs at her nerve, then death-glares at the CCTV screen, thinking, “What on Earth are you trying to start?”

Prosecutor Oh reports to Chief Prosecutor Yoon, clearly in the doghouse for Suji’s reappearance when he was supposed to have taken care of her a year ago. Stone-faced (or just wearing his normal lack of expression), Yoon orders Oh to take care of Suji without drawing any more attention.

Having lost sight of the van, Suji speeds down the road and asks her surveillance backup for the kidnappers’ location. Bomi snaps back that they have a bigger problem since her face was caught on camera, arguing that the police can save little Sae-bom. Suji asks if the cops are catching up to the girl, and Kyung-soo cuts in to say that the police have mobilized, but they’re coming after Suji. Crap.

Bomi instructs her to disappear quickly, but Suji balks at abandoning Sae-bom. She points out that both Kyung-soo and Bomi have lost someone they loved, so how can they sanction deserting this girl? Refusing to give up, Suji swerves to cut off the approaching police cars and continues after the van.

Kyung-soo jumps onboard with the rescue mission, and when Bomi remains silent, he snaps at her, “Do you want others to experience the same things that happened to us?” It’s enough, and she sends the van’s location to Suji while Kyung-soo hacks into the traffic signals, turning them green for Suji and red for her police pursuers.

Suji tracks the van into a parking garage. As she spirals up the levels, something feels off since it doesn’t make sense for the kidnappers to detour into this building. When Bomi confirms that Myung-hoon drives a truck, Suji guesses that it’s parked here and that Woo-sung had wanted his stolen daughter stashed in that truck.

Just then, Kyung-soo intercepts a text from Myung-hoon to Woo-sung. It reads, I did as you said. Keep your word. It’s accompanied by a picture of tiny Sae-bom locked inside a refrigerator truck.

Suji races up to a garage level full of parked refrigerator trucks. She starts banging on doors, but there are too many. Kyung-soo hunts through Myung-hoon’s social media accounts and sees that Myung-hoon’s truck has a leopard-print seat covering.

Using that clue, Suji finds the matching truck and pounds on the doors, hearing a terrified and freezing Sae-bom call out from inside, “Mommy?” The girl keeps sobbing for her mom, and it drives Suji into a frenzy. She attacks the locked door with a nearby sledgehammer, but only succeeds in breaking the hammer.

Desperate, Suji grabs a chain and hooks it to the back of the bike. As memories of her daughter flash through her mind, Suji revs the bike harder and harder until the doors wrench open. She rushes to the frosted girl, calling her Yoo-na and wrapping her in her jacket.

The cops finally catch up and assemble outside the garage. Do-han, who received a mysterious phone call tipping him off, drives straight past the police into the garage. He finds the truck and, off to the side, Sae-bom nestled in Suji’s jacket.

Do-han crouches down and kindly tells the girl that the cops will be here soon, but she corrects him that they were already here: “The woman who saved me.”

Said woman is once again barreling down the road, this time her sights set on Woo-sung. Bomi tracks him down to the supermarket where his wife works, and Kyung-soo combs through Woo-sung’s cloned phone to find that he’s been obsessively stalking his wife. Suji puts the pieces together and realizes that Sae-bom was just the bait: Woo-sung is after his wife.

Armed with the picture of Sae-bom in the freezer, Woo-sung confronts his wife. He instructs her to follow him quietly, viciously adding that the longer she stalls, the more her daughter suffers.

Bomi informs the team that the woman just got into the car with her husband. She says that now is the time to call the police so Woo-sung can be caught (per the Boss’s instructions), except Suji worries that Woo-sung could kill his wife before the police can catch him.

Bomi gripes at Suji for always doing things her way, but Suji just switches over to Kyung-soo and sweet-talks him into giving her the wife’s work address. Heh, Kyung-soo happily complies for his noonim, and Bomi calls out an irritable, “Yah!”

At Eun-joong’s office, the prosecutor is trying to be sneaky, faking a cold to slip away. His acting is laughably horrible and his coworker seems to buy his forced coughing as much as I do (not at all), but she graciously tells him to go see a doctor. Eun-joong ducks out, faking a dry-heave. Pffft. No wonder you stick to being righteous if this is you lying.

Once outside, Eun-joong calls Soon-ae to ask for a favor, since that Woo-sung’s wife had wanted to meet with him today but he can’t reach her. Team Leader Soon-ae is currently busy in pursuit of Suji, and tells Eun-joong of the kidnapping. Eun-joong panics that she has to find Woo-sung’s wife now before something happens to her. Soon-ae yells over her car’s sirens that she’s a little busy at the moment. “If you’re dying to go number one, then we’re dying to go number two!” Pah! Still love her.

When Eun-joong asks what is so important, Soon-ae hesitantly answers that they’re chasing Suji, who reappeared this morning to save the kidnapped Sae-bom.

Trapped in the car with her husband, Woo-sung’s wife begs him to let her daughter go. Woo-sung coldly answers that if she wants Sae-bom alive, then she has to die. Ah, so Woo-sung had found out that his wife told a prosecutor (Eun-joong) that her husband was a murderer. He’d admitted to his crimes while drunk and soon after, his wife took Sae-bom and left him.

Woo-sung’s wife looks absolutely terrified but insists that she couldn’t raise her daughter as the child of a murderer. Woo-sung answers that it doesn’t matter now, revealing his plan to deliberately crash the car on his wife’s side—killing her—then claim they had been frantically searching for their kidnapped daughter when he accidentally lost control of the car.

This brings us back to the show’s opening scene: Woo-sung driving like a maniac, his wife banging the passenger window and yelling for help from other cars, and Suji riding up behind them, weaving through traffic.

Bomi and Kyung-soo nearly have matching heart attacks as Suji careens to a stop at a busy intersection. She loses Woo-sung, and both women turn to Kyung-soo, asking if he can slow the car down at all. Caught between his noonas again, poor Kyung-soo pouts that no matter how good he is, he can’t stop a moving car! Then he cuts off his own rant, “Wait! There is something.”

Woo-sung speeds up, aiming directly for a streetlamp on his wife’s side. Thankfully, Woo-sung’s phone (which Kyung-soo cloned) connects to his car and pops the vehicle’s hood. Woo-sung crashes into several cars before spinning to a stop.

Suji catches up just as a truck is about to ram into the wife’s side. She rolls off her bike and flings it into the truck’s path, which slows its enough to stop it just inches short of smashing into the car. Woo-sung’s wife tries to escape the car, but he grabs her by the hair and drags her out.

Suji swoops up behind the bastard and karmically grabs his hair, then delivers a swift punch and kick combo that has him coughing up blood on the asphalt.

Woo-sung recognizes her as the detective from when he turned himself in, but she stonily answers, “Not anymore.” She then proceeds to punch him repeatedly until Bomi reminds her that this isn’t Shi-wan. Kyung-soo yells that the police are arriving and both urge her to run, nearly begging.

Sure enough, the cavalry plus two prosecutors (Do-han and Eun-joong) race onto the scene. Swearing, Suji spins Woo-sung around onto the car hood and raises her gun towards the incoming police. Soon-ae yells at everyone to stop, and Suji switches from aiming at the cops to the scumbag in front of her, using him as a hostage.

Do-han and Eun-joong push their way to the front, and Do-han snarks that the three of them have been here before, except this time, she’s no longer a detective. Suji gives a grim smile and rebuts that he still has his job, even though he works like an idiot. Zing.

Eun-joong tries to reason with her, asking her to stop and reminding her that Yoo-na would be heartbroken to see her mother like this. He promises to get justice, but Suji sadly answers that it isn’t something he can do on his own.

As Eun-joong plays good cop, Do-han subtly takes note of the nervous police officers moving in closer to Suji, looking alarmingly trigger-happy. Sighing, Do-han raises his hands and casually strolls forward to lean against the car. He calmly asks what good a man like Woo-sung is as a hostage, suggesting she just kill him.

Suji answers, “Then what about a guy like you? Two people almost died today because you let go of Kim Woo-sung.” Do-han loses his temper, slamming his fist on the car hood and yelling, “How dare you try to play hero?”

Straightening, Do-han glances back at the police and smoothly shifts his body over a bit more until he’s standing in front of Suji and covertly shielding her body with his own.

The two continue their angry banter, Do-han snarling at her to act like the fugitive she is and stop popping up. Suji fires right back that if he acted like the prosecutor he is, then she wouldn’t have to. She yells, “It’s because you could not catch, and would not catch these guys. I got him for you in your place!”

With that, Suji shoves Woo-sung into Do-han and makes a break for it. Cops and prosecutors chase after her, but as she dashes across a street, Suji is hit full on by an SUV, tossing her up and over the car. Everyone—including Do-han—gapes before rushing forward. But when they reach the opposite side of the street, Suji has vanished.

 
EPISODE 8 RECAP

Still at large, Shi-wan gets swarmed by admirers in the classroom as everyone rants that the cops still haven’t caught the “crazy woman” from last year. Shi-wan scoffs when they ask if he’s afraid, though his smile dies a bit when he looks at the news article.

Prosecutor Oh reports to Chief Prosecutor Yoon again, nearly drowning in sweat as he apologizes for not handling things and begging for another chance. Yoon pretty much ignores him, deigning only to tell the prosecutor to get out of his way before marching out, calling for a press conference.

Eun-joong takes Woo-sung’s wife to the hospital where the woman is tearfully reunited with her daughter. Suji watches the reunion from around a corner, smiling sadly at the mother who still has her child.

Eun-joong spies Suji, but before he can go to her, Woo-sung’s sister—who had been watching Sae-bom—tells him that she’ll testify against her brother. She apologizes for lying back when Woo-sung had killed that store owner, and promises to tell the truth this time.

At the prosecutor’s office, Chief Prosecutor Yoon is also on the phone, but all we hear him say is, “Good work.” He hangs up and heads in for a press conference where he bows contritely before the reporters.

Bomi breaks the bad news to the team that Woo-sung escaped from police custody. Bomi herself lost track of him when he ran into an alley. She worries that this means they failed their mission for Boss, but Suji reassures her that she’ll catch Woo-sung herself.

Bomi points out that Suji just keeps making a mess of things, but Kyung-soo comes to her defense since thanks to her, they saved a mother and daughter. Suji promises to take responsibility with the Boss if something goes wrong, but Bomi argues that finding Woo-sung isn’t the problem right now.

Suji checks her phone and watches Yoon’s press conference where he promises to catch the fugitive Jo Suji. Bomi yells that Suji’s face is all over the news and they didn’t work so hard to hide her for a year only for her to blow her cover. Kyung-soo hesitantly interrupts to say that he found Woo-sung’s mother’s house.

Do-han is firmly back in his smarmy prosecutor persona when he finds Eun-joong waiting for him outside his office. Eun-joong calls him truly shameless, accusing him of letting Woo-sung go under Chief Prosecutor Yoon’s orders.

Do-han lets his façade fade for moment and comes in close to say, “You won’t believe me, but I really want to arrest Kim Woo-sung.” Eun-joong doesn’t buy it, and Do-han bounces back, agreeing that Yoon must’ve released Woo-sung, though he insists then neither he, nor Prosecutor Oh had anything to do with it.

Eun-joong remarks that Do-han is being strangely honest today, but Do-han points out that even if he knows the truth, Eun-joong doesn’t have the power to do anything with it, especially when his opponent is the chief prosecutor. Undaunted, Eun-joong is still determined to reveal all, and Do-han mockingly encourages him before heading into his office.

Eun-joong calls Soon-ae, confirming that Yoon was behind Woo-sung’s escape. Walking away, Eun-joong misses seeing Do-han looking back from his office and murmuring that Yoon must have yet another dog stashed somewhere to have released Woo-sung.

Bomi runs surveillance on Woo-sung’s mother’s house and sees the woman take a taxi. Suji urges her to keep track of their only lead, and when Bomi asks how Suji plans on pursuing when the whole city is looking for her, Suji answers, “I’ve got you and Kyung-soo. If you don’t want me to get caught, you have to help me.” Bomi says grudgingly that she would let Suji get arrested, but then Suji might rat them out.

Turning serious, Bomi tells her to catch Woo-sung. “If you don’t, his wife and daughter will have to live in fear until he gets caught. Forever.”

Kyung-soo meets up with Suji to hand off a car, though he’s adorably reluctant to give her the keys, pouting about what she did to the motorcycle. Point. He notices that she’s injured from the day’s events and sweetly pulls out the med kit that he packed in the trunk, asking her to please not get hurt this time. Oh, you sweetie.

Suji trails Woo-sung’s mom to a house under construction. Sure enough, Mom meets her son inside and hands over the bag full of clothes, money, and things he can sell for quick cash. Woo-sung tells his mom that she’s the only one he can trust now, seeming to actually care for her. She heads out to get something for her son to eat, and Suji sneaks inside.

Suji creeps silently through the dark house, clearing each room and pulling her gun out. As she reaches for the final door, Woo-sung bursts out from behind it, knocking her back and sending her gun flying.

It’s an all-out brawl between the vigilante and criminal, both of them using fists, kicks, and anything they can grab to attack each other. Suji gains the upper hand with a neat Judo roll and starts wailing on Woo-sung, but he manages to throw her off.

The two start throwing each other into walls and furniture until Woo-sung grabs a glass bottle and smashes it into Suji’s head. Ears ringing, Suji barely has time to block as he swings at her with a jagged piece of rebar.

Suji ends up on the floor, Woo-sung above her, and he tries to stab her with the metal while she resists with all her strength. As they wrestle with the metal, Woo-sung sneers that she’s no longer a cop—she’s a fugitive.

As the metal inches closer to Suji’s face, Woo-sung taunts,

“I’m not someone you can catch. A prosecutor who’s very high up has my back. When I was detained, someone left a note under my food. It said if I recanted, the prosecutors would cover it up. So do you think you can touch me? Even if I were to kill you, I won’t get put away.”

Woo-sung presses all his weight down on the rebar. And just as it looks real bad for Suji, Woo-sung’s mom runs in. He freezes for a moment, but then tells his mother that Suji has to die or he’ll go to prison. Wow. He even asks his mom to help him kill her.

Suji uses the momentary distraction to free herself, and when Woo-sung attempts to strike back, his mom gets knocked down. The fight resumes. Suji manages to grab Woo-sung’s legs in a Judo lock, jerks him up over her head, and tosses him backward into a bookcase. Damn, girl.

Woo-sung is knocked unconscious. Suji stands shakily, only to turn around and find mommy dearest pointing the fallen gun at her. Trembling, the woman orders Suji to step away from her son. Suji quietly tells her that because of Woo-sung, an innocent man has been in prison for 12 years. Moreover, today Woo-sung’s wife and daughter almost died by his own hand.

Woo-sung’s mother refuses to believe that her son could ever do such a thing, but as Suji continues to list the evidence against him, she doesn’t see that Woo-jung has regained consciousness. Grabbing the discarded rebar shiv, he slowly rises up behind Suji as she coaxes his mother.

Suddenly a buzzing noise fills the room and Woo-sung jerks, then collapses to reveal Kyung-soo standing behind him, Taser in hand. Seriously, best teammate ever.

At the station, Soon-ae’s team is busy fielding calls of Suji sightings when Soon-ae gets a call from an unknown number. She answers it to hear Suji’s voice and quickly darts into the bathroom for privacy. Soon-ae rants at her old partner, but her voice starts to tremble as she asks how Suji could have become a criminal.

Both women fight back tears as Suji jokes that she can’t let Soon-ae catch her yet since she still has things to do. Soon-ae asks if Suji is going after Woo-sung just because Chief Prosecutor Yoon let him go to cover up for his son—but this is news to Suji.

Suji answers that she’s going to make sure Woo-sung is arrested so she can reveal what Yoon has done. She says she’ll text Soon-ae the address of where she can find Woo-sung, asking her to arrest him for good this time.

Later, Soon-ae follows Suji’s tip to arrest Woo-sung. Suji watches from afar, while Kyung-soo reports from a giant server room that he finished “setting everything up.” Suji tells her team that it’s time to “watch it all go down.”

The next morning, Chief Prosecutor Yoon speaks to a sea of reporters, confidently answering that they’re putting all efforts towards catching the fugitive Jo Suji—

Suddenly, every one of the reporters’ phones starts dinging with an audio message. One of them opens the link and we hear a recording of Woo-sung’s speech to Suji about the highly ranked prosecutor who helped him escape detention. She recorded it? Awesome.

Someone points up to a news billboard, where they see the confidential pictures of Kim Woo-sung and his most recent escape from custody. On a nearby rooftop, Suji watches Yoon’s reaction through a scope, a satisfied look in her eyes.

Kyung-soo asks how the broadcast is going and Suji congratulates everyone on a job well done. Even Bomi looks positively excited at the idea of bringing the fight to Yoon’s front yard.

Suji notes that they owe this to Boss, since he was the one who sent them after Woo-sung, which led to Yoon. Kyung-soo wonders if Boss knew this would happen, and Suji guesses that there is just one way he could have known: If their boss was very close to Yoon, say, a prosecutor, perhaps? Neither Bomi nor Kyung-soo can believe that, but Suji is more curious than ever to know what their boss is planning.

Down below, Do-han watches as Yoon flees the reporters, a small smirk betraying his victory.

As the news announces Woo-sung to be the killer from 12 years ago, the grandmother of the wrongfully imprisoned man dies peacefully, the mysterious priest by her side. Her last words were to say that she knew her grandson wasn’t a murderer.

Prosecutor Oh listens to Woo-sung’s recording over and over, and Do-han admits they can’t find the hacker who sent it. Oh wonders what he should do, since he’s in real trouble this time, so Do-han whispers that he should use his final card against Yoon.

Oh hesitates at that, saying that card will finish both Yoon and himself, but Do-han points out that one can’t be picky about what direction to head when they’re standing on the edge of a cliff. If he wants to survive, Oh needs to remind Yoon that he also has a blade to use against him.

Prosecutor Oh heads into the elevator to meet his master, and Do-han does his customary low bow to his senior. Nervous, Oh doesn’t see Do-han glance up, a deadly smirk on his face.

As the doors ping shut, Do-han straightens and murmurs that this scumbag can flail all he wants, but he’ll just sink deeper. Grinning like an evil Cheshire cat, he croons, “You are finished.”

 
COMMENTS

I’m really loving the contrasts and similarities between our two leads. Both Suji and Do-han have experienced great tragedy at the hands of one man, and they’re equally stubborn and determined for revenge. The problem with them working together, however, is that Do-han is willing (and fully expecting) to bend everything and everyone to achieve his goals, whereas Suji refuses to compromise her morals, or the integrity of others. It’s morbidly fascinating to watch as each of them heads further and further into revenge, without realizing the very different costs it’s having on their psyche.

Do-han is melting so well into his persona and so willing to sacrifice to achieve his vengeance that he’s not seeing how close he is to becoming the man he despises. Granted he hasn’t done anything truly horrific yet, but he is skating the border. Suji wasn’t wrong to blame him for catching and releasing Woo-sung: If anything had happened to little Sae-bom and her mother, Do-han would be partially responsible after knowingly releasing him a year ago. And the scary thing is, I don’t know if he just hadn’t considered that Woo-sung could hurt/kill someone again, or if he suspected it but wrote it off as an acceptable risk. (Another scary question: Which is worse?)

Conversely, Suji is so attached to her morals that she is risking herself and others needlessly. She may be a fugitive, but Do-han was right that she’s still acting like a cop. If she hadn’t chased after the van with Sae-bom inside and revealed herself to the world, then the cops could have focused on finding the girl, rather than getting distracted (or forcibly deterred) by hunting for Suji. In the end it worked out for the better, but Suji is going to have to learn how to bend a little bit before she breaks herself. Let’s not forget the last time she snapped and brought a loaded gun into a high school.

Ironically, these two may come to need one another, each one balancing and compensating for the other’s strengths and weakness. Suji can pull him back from the deep end, and Do-han can get the dirty work done that she could never live with. I don’t know if the show is planning on a romantic relationship, and frankly I don’t care either way since these two have amazing chemistry even as (unknowing) frenemies. But whether there is a spark, a friendship, or simply a deep mutual respect, I really want to see these two work together, and possibly even save each other.

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