Psychopath Diary: Episodes 7-8 Open Thread

by missvictrix

Our pretend psychopath gets entangled with a copycat killer this week, and circumstances continue to perpetuate his fantasies about himself — and continue to do the opposite for everyone else. With some important facts revealed, our characters are knit even more closely together, and things are fixing to get dangerous.

  
EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP

The good news is we get some more super silly humor this week, to mix with all the psychos and killings. The bad news (at least for me) is that the show seems to have settled into weekly plot arcs, where we get a new murder, case, or scenario that’s the main storyline of the week. If there’s one thing I dislike it’s episodic TV, so I’m hoping to ignore this and concentrate more on the overarching story. That story, of course, is about our fake psycho thinking he’s a real psycho, and everyone around him still thinking he’s a doofus.

With Bo-kyung now on the special homicide task force with her profiler “uncle” (who I’m strangely suspicious of), she gets to profile and investigate to her heart’s content. And though the next kill (a lovely nurse) seems like it has the earmarks of In-woo, Bo-kyung thinks otherwise. And of course she’s right, being the heroine and all.

It’s the nurse’s husband who turns out to be the copycat killer. In fact, he’s quite a fan of our killer’s ways, including the poisoned vitamin drink. Like In-woo, the copycat takes joy in crushing “weak” people, and who better to set his sights on than the kind-hearted Dong-shik? Dong-shik attended his wife’s funeral, defended him, saved him from suicide, and in short, was a kind and upstanding human. What does he get for it? He’s targeted as a weak victim in need of killing.

Like much of the Dong-shik action in this drama, it’s rife with misconceptions. Dong-shik acts the psychopath with the copycat killer, but he doesn’t buy it for a second. And even though Dong-shik gets in some impression punches and terrorizes the copycat killer to the best of his abilities, it’s Dong-shik that’s the doofus yet again. It’s Dong-shik that falls down an open manhole. It’s Dong-shik that gets saved from falling off a rooftop by Bo-kyung grabbing him by the hair (lol). In short, nothing is changing for this poor boy, except in his own perceptions.

This whole copycat killer subplot is really one giant swoop of action for two purposes. The first is so that In-woo can learn that Dong-shik genuinely believes he is the killer, and is not the threat that In-woo feared.

The second is that Dong-shik falsely declares that the copycat killer (taken care of by the Truck of Doom) was indeed the serial killer. He’s trying to protect himself, but what he’s really doing is leaving an open playing field for In-woo. Uh-oh.

In-woo, who is growing awfully fond of pointing his shotgun at people in broad daylight, is on cloud nine now that he knows Dong-shik is an amnesiac who thinks he’s a psychopath. In-woo even chucks in some awesome analogies from Aesop’s Fables — The Ass in the Lion’s Skin — and I love the drama for adding this nice layer of allegory to a story about just that.

Speaking of, Yoon Shi-yoon continues to do a marvelous job in this role. There’s no lack of space for him to act in, and it’s his performance that’s keeping me watching. I also really like the doofus-level interactions between him and his adoring gangster lackey Chil-sung. It’s all completely ridiculous, but the contrast between the dumb comedy and gruesome killer content is how Psychopath Diary makes such an interesting drama sandwich.

Although there’s no lack of action in Psychopath Diary, the plot hasn’t moved forward all that much, so I was happy for the developments we saw this week. The most bone-chilling part for me so far is Bo-kyung’s father and his horrifying reaction to seeing (and recognizing) In-woo.

It was awful a few episodes ago where he wet himself and had a seizure, but this week it happens again, and it’s even worse. The bone-chilling part comes in when In-woo takes on the role of a benefactor, all the while terrorizing this poor man because of the secrets that he holds. (Doesn’t he see this guy isn’t a threat?)

We inferred last week that In-woo was connected to the father’s accident, but this week we see in scary flashbacks that Bo-kyung’s father was on In-woo’s tail during what was his first kill. The drama could have stopped there, but in a very implausible turn of events, Bo-kyung and Dong-shik return to the accident site (completely intact from eight years ago!) and find her father’s notebook.

Was this really necessary? Regardless, it pushes the drama forward, and narrows the gap (read: safety) for Bo-kyung as she starts to dig a little too deep. In-woo is one of the most merciless villains I have met in a while, and while I’m excited to see what happens when he and Bo-kyung finally face off, it might be from behind a pillow.

 
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