Player: Episode 6

by Regals

When one of our con artists goes solo to deal with her old gang, she quickly finds herself in over her head. Luckily for her, the boys are more than willing to stick their necks out to come to her aid—if they can track her down before it’s too late.

 
EPISODE 6: “She’s a traitor”

After Ah-ryung escapes from Ha-ri’s pursuit, police arrest the shell-shocked Ha-ri and bring him to the station.

Prosecutor Jang arrives at the station to find out that Ha-ri told the police that he was undercover for the prosecution. Prosecutor Jang plays along with the story to get Ha-ri out without further trouble.

Outside, Ha-ri speculates that there must be a mole in Prosecutor Jang’s team given what was leaked to the media, and he warns Prosecutor Jang to be careful going forward as a precaution.

After Ha-ri leaves, Chief Maeng hands over the identification documents that Ha-ri provided to police upon his arrest. Curiosity drives Prosecutor Jang to order background checks on the documents to see what comes up.

Elsewhere, Ah-ryung delivers the payload to the gangsters, who unload the money into a truck labeled “Yeongseong Orphanage” so the money can be laundered. The young thug joins Ah-ryung in order to go pick up Young-ji now that Ah-ryung has fulfilled her end of the deal.

Meanwhile, the older thug celebrates with a group of businessmen over the success of Ah-ryung’s mission. The older thug expresses gratitude that President Park was able to connect the businessmen with Baek-seon’s operation so they could all make money together.

Back at con team headquarters, Ha-ri returns and finds Jin-woong and Byung-min relaxing, unfazed by Ha-ri’s run-in with the law. Ha-ri is right back to business too, and insists that they need to find out who took the money right away. Even though he saw Ah-ryung, he doesn’t mention that she was working for the other side.

In the prosecutor’s office, the corrupt deputy chief scolds Prosecutor Jang for investigating President Park. In response, Prosecutor Jang lies that they already finished that case, and makes a show of sending the whole team home to stymie his superior’s anger.

Elsewhere, Ha-ri and Jin-woong intimidate President Park’s lackeys into giving up information by threatening to kick them off the top of a building.

Their good-cop/bad-cop routine works, but even when the lieutenant names Baek-seon as the ringleader and the recipient of the money, Jin-woong still kicks him off the building.

Except… he was only kicking the men down a short drop to the next level below, not actually harming the men but just tricking them so they would talk. Ha.

The young thug, meanwhile, tries to convince Ah-ryung to return to their gang permanently, and mentions that they’re much better off now that Baek-seon is in charge.

Ah-ryung remains noncommittal, and stays focused on freeing Young-ji first. But the young thug cryptically says that while he said he would let Young-ji go, he never said she’d be free from her work.

Cut to the businessmen drawing lots to get first choice at a selection of prostitutes. Young-ji is among them and she’s singled out right away to provide her services.

Back in the van, the young thug reveals to Ah-ryung what Young-ji’s work entails, and Ah-ryung accelerates before suddenly slamming on the brakes so the young thug is incapacitated from the whiplash. She throws him to the curb before speeding off toward Young-ji.

Right before the creepy old businessman pushes himself onto Young-ji, Ah-ryung arrives and smashes a bottle over his head. She grabs Young-ji and together they flee the premises as a group of thugs chase after them.

As Ah-ryung escapes, she notices the money-laundering truck turning off ahead of her, and thanks to the distraction, she fails to see the other car blocking the road in front of her. She slams on the brakes to avoid it, but in doing so, the chasing thugs close the gap and trap the girls on the road.

The blocking car happens to belong to the director of Young-ji’s orphanage, and Ah-ryung hastily asks for him to help Young-ji escape while Ah-ryung deals with the remaining thugs.

But when the director shows his face to Young-ji, her face fills with terror, and the director’s face twists with a wicked smile.

Ah-ryung fights off a few thugs, but Young-ji’s screams cause her to lose focus, and she is quickly subdued. As Ah-ryung fades into unconsciousness, the last thing she sees is the director leading Young-ji away, and the scar that belongs to “Baek-seon” is clearly visible on the director’s arm.

Back at the office, Byung-min reveals all the intel they know about Baek-seon, who basically does anything and everything that can make him money, including beating the children of debtors who fail to repay him on time.

The team tracks the route of the van that got away with the money, and Byung-min notices it is suspiciously close to the orphanage that Ah-ryung asked him to find the day before. So the team decides to dig further into the matter.

At the orphanage, Ha-ri questions the director (who Ha-ri does not know is actually Baek-seon), on Ah-ryung’s visit the day before. Baek-seon can’t keep his story straight, tripping up multiple times on key details, and Ha-ri leaves the interview even more suspicious than he was before.

When Ha-ri collects the boys to go investigate further, the older thug counsels Baek-seon that Ha-ri is a cop, citing their previous encounter where Ha-ri pulled a gun on him. Baek-seon orders the thug to keep an eye on Ha-ri.

The boys scour the area for CCTV footage, and Ha-ri finds a camera near some fresh tire tracks, so they decide to see what the footage shows.

The boys tell the camera center manager that they work for the prosecutor’s office. When the manager is skeptical, they tell him to confirm it with the prosecutor’s office directly.

Of course, this means calling Prosecutor Jang, who takes a second to catch on to what Ha-ri is doing, but ultimately helps out and confirms to the manager that Ha-ri and the boys are telling the truth.

Convinced, the manager lets the boys view the footage, and it shows Ah-ryung dumping the young thug the night before. Ha-ri questions the manager about the route the van took after Ah-ryung ditched the passenger, and he confirms that the road goes straight to Yeongseong Orphanage.

Afterward, Ha-ri orders the boys to find out more about the young thug in the video, but before leaving, he asks the boys how they really feel about Ah-ryung.

We don’t see their answer, but we do see that they’re being followed by some gang members.

Meanwhile, the young thug taunts the now-captive Ah-ryung, slapping her hard across the face when she bites back a retort.

The young thug also reveals that Young-ji was never being held against her will; she actually proposed to pretend to be captive to coax Ah-ryung into helping out the gang. In exchange, the young thug offered to give Young-ji a job for herself, which turned out to be the prostitution gig.

While Ah-ryung reels from the revelation, the young thug gets a call ordering him to get rid of Ha-ri and the boys to stop them from snooping. At that, the thugs leave the girls tied up in storage to take care of Ha-ri and the team.

Now alone together, Young-ji apologizes to Ah-ryung for getting them into this mess, and reveals that she ran away from the orphanage because of Baek-seon. Ah-ryung, sadly, isn’t surprised to hear an orphanage director would abuse his position.

Upstairs, Baek-seon oversees the laundering of the money from yesterday’s deal. A noise outside puts all the thugs on alert, but there’s no trace of anyone spying on them.

However, in the prosecutor’s office, Prosecutor Jang receives the details of Baek-seon’s operation from Ha-ri, and he mobilizes his team to take action immediately.

That night, Jin-woong and Byung-min are cornered on a bridge by thugs, and Jin-woong springs into action, raring for a fight.

Back in storage, Baek-seon arrives to observe his prisoners, and when Ah-ryung talks back to him, she slaps her hard enough to leave her bloodied.

But he then turns his attention to Young-ji, creepily referring to himself as “dad” while he drags her out of the room.

On his way out though, the doorbell rings, and he answers to find Ha-ri at the door. Ha-ri manages to weasel his way inside with a story that he needs to discuss something urgently, and Baek-seon reluctantly lets the apparent detective into his place.

Meanwhile, Byung-min and Jin-woong fight off the horde of thugs, but they are overcome by the sheer numbers of men attacking them.

At Baek-seon’s, Ha-ri claims that he found out Ah-ryung never went to Yeongseong Orphanage, and when Baek-seon offers to make tea, Ha-ri notices the sleeve of his shirt is bloody.

At the bridge, Baek-seon relays the call to bring the men back to the house to take out Ha-ri. But when the young thug mentions Ah-ryung’s name, Jin-woong and Byung-min pop right back up with renewed vigor, and charge directly at the thugs again.

In the house, Baek-seon stealthily prepares a knife to wield himself, but Ha-ri catches him in the act. Having been caught out, Baek-seon starts to attack Ha-ri wildly.

Ha-ri manages to dodge the attack long enough to find an opportunity to disarm Baek-seon. With his opponent now without a weapon, Ha-ri quickly gains control of the fight, and beats Baek-seon into submission.

Ha-ri sprints down to the basement storage, and Ah-ryung can’t believe Ha-ri came all the way out to save her. When Young-ji asks who he is, Ha-ri coolly says “I’m Ah-ryung’s older brother,” and Ah-ryung looks touched by his words.

He manages to carry Ah-ryung upstairs, but Baek-seon is back on his feet, this time armed with a shotgun, which he fires at his couch to show that it’s loaded.

Baek-seon quips that there’s nobody who can come help them now, and Ha-ri agrees. “Nobody would even care if a guy like me died here,” he argues, but then he motions to Ah-ryung and adds, “but that’s too bad. She’s not like me.”

Flashback to when Ha-ri asked the boys for their opinion of Ah-ryung, and they echo the same sentiment: Ah-ryung is like their little sister.

Back in the present, Jin-woong tosses the young thug right through the glass door of the house and grabs the barrel of Baek-seon’s shotgun to disarm him. Jin-woong then knocks Baek-seon down with one shot.

The boys fuss over Ah-ryung being in such a distressed state, so Baek-seon makes his escape while they’re distracted.

Ha-ri leads the boys out to the freshly gathered thugs outside, and another large-scale brawl breaks out in the driveway. This time, the boys maintain the upper hand long enough for Prosecutor Jang and his team to arrive.

The prosecution arrests all the thugs, but Baek-seon escapes in his car. Ah-ryung chases after him in a separate car, and just when it looks like Ah-ryung is going to get level to him, Baek-seon speeds forward.

But he can’t handle the speed, so he loses control and careens into a barricade. The boys arrive soon after to see the wreckage, and Baek-seon is left unconscious inside.

Ha-ri realizes they didn’t manage to secure any cash for themselves from their heist, so they take Baek-seon’s wallet and fight over the small amount of cash he has inside. Pfft.

The next day, news reports reveal that Prosecutor Jang arrested Baek-seon, and he was able to connect Baek-seon to the three businessmen involved in the earlier deal, as well as President Park himself.

Meanwhile, Ah-ryung rides the train home alone again, but when she checks her social media profile, she sees that she has three new followers: Ha-ri, Byung-min, and Jin-woong. Ha-ri’s left an encouraging comment, and Ah-ryung lights to see it.

In prison, Baek-seon meets a lawyer (whose face viewers can’t see), and threatens to reveal all of the shadowy broker’s plans. The broker, via phone, orders someone to get rid of Baek-seon so he can’t talk.

Ha-ri arrives at the prison, posing as a lawyer, to meet Baek-seon and hear what he wants to say. But when Ha-ri opens the cell door, Baek-seon is strung from the ceiling, hanged in an apparent suicide.

 
COMMENTS

We’ve definitely moved toward a darker, more serious tone as the series moved forward. I alluded to the earlier pace as breezy and relatively light considering the kind of criminal activity involved (and how graphic OCN likes to be when depicting it). But as we go deeper into the conspiracy, we’re spending more time uncovering awful people who each seem to one-up the last in terms of their heinousness. Even without diving too deep into Baek-seon, there are significant undertones to his story that make my skin crawl just to think about. And that’s without even uncovering the full scope of the shadowy broker’s crimes so far, so it’s surely going to keep getting darker.

It’s odd, given that everyone knows Ha-ri is a con artist, that he seems to engender such strong loyalty among the team. You’d think Ha-ri would be the last person anyone trusts, but you get the sense that he genuinely would fight for everyone on his team the way he did for Ah-ryung (even if he pretends that’s not the case). Everyone was warned, in the beginning, not to trust Ha-ri because everything he says is a lie, but I would argue that Ha-ri’s deceitfulness is more a product of his desire for revenge than a pathological desire to defraud people.

In fact, if everyone actually finds out that revenge is Ha-ri’s ultimate goal, especially if Prosecutor Jang finds out, I think they’d be even more likely to trust him going forward. Which just goes to show how effective Ha-ri is at building loyalty. Even with seemingly nebulous motives, he still gets his team to essentially blindly follow him, and even gets Prosecutor Jang to cover for him when he needs it.

And it’s nice that Ha-ri can inspire loyalty, mainly because the camaraderie between the team members is really sweet to watch. Whether it’s playful banter or mild bickering during downtime, they seem just like a family, as they alluded to when they went to Ah-ryung’s rescue. And they all have each other’s backs, even if, like in Ah-ryung’s case, they only joined the team a short while ago. They’re willing to go to war for each other and it’s a feel-good relationship in an otherwise grim drama.

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