Masked Prosecutor: Episode 5

by odilettante

In a surprise twist, the show actually starts to become really good. I almost can’t believe it’s the same show. Finally everything has managed to come together and not only make sense, but be entertaining as well. Plot wise (because there is a plot! Yay!), Min-hee continues to be awesome as she idealistically tries to fight against the heavy weight of corruption that threatens to smother everyone who comes in contact with Sang-taek (who, btw, is revealed to be super evil, but that’s no surprise to anyone), and Dae-chul’s secret identity as the “masked avenger” may not be so secret any more. Oh, and of course there’s lots of bickering. Of course.

EPISODE 5 RECAP

As Hitman Lee is being wheeled to the emergency room, Dae-chul hurries alongside the gurney, desperately telling the unconscious man that he needs to survive so that Dae-chul can find out why the hitman was ordered to kill his father.

Min-hee arrives at the hospital, angry that Dae-chul interfered with her case. She demands to know why he was there, but he’s not in the mood to discuss it. Instead, he tells her that her witness So-yeong was nearly killed, and to instead look into who leaked So-yeong’s secret “witness protection” whereabouts.

Back to the interrogation room, where Sang-taek sidesteps Min-hee’s questions by offering his own methods of how to get a confession out of someone: strategic beatings with an aluminum baseball bat. He pleasantly urges her to try it with him, but she just cooly says that he’s already confessed enough for her to lock him up.

But on the way to jail, the prosecutors from the Central Office request to meet with Sang-taek. As the two men sit in the back of the car, Hyun-woong warns Sang-taek that things are getting tricky since the witness is still alive, and he might not be able to protect Sang-taek, even with all his prosecutor clout. But Sang-taek reminds him that if he goes down, so does the backing for YK Electronics, Hyun-woong’s father’s company. If he falls, they all fall.

Hyun-woong worries about what will happen if Hitman Lee regains consciousness and reveals the truth. Sang-taek isn’t concerned, though, and matter-of-factly states that it won’t happen. He also trusts Hyun-woong to take care of the trial, since as a prosecutor, the courtroom is a familiar battleground.

At the hospital, Dae-chul keeps a close eye on Hitman Lee who’s still in the ER ward, willing him to stay conscious. Meanwhile, Min-hee’s busy making sure she’s got her men protecting So-yeong, who is recovering in her own hospital room.

Min-hee’s prepping for a press conference about the incident, knowing that the judge for the case is easily swayed by the news reports. But her section chief takes it from her at the last minute, and both she and Detective Park sit helpless as they listen to an entirely different spin on the incident.

Unlike her version, which was set to reveal the hidden corruption behind the case, the Chief of the Violent Crimes Division declares that Hitman Lee was actually a sexual predator who accidentally fell through the window as he was trying to escape. Min-hee’s eye-roll at this fabrication is the same as mine.

Dae-chul also isn’t buying the story either, and when they meet up at Ri-na’s office later, he snarks at her for the convenient fiction the police created. As they argue back and forth about who has more integrity, the police department or the prosecutor’s office, Ri-na interrupts, reminding them why they’re really here — to figure out why the Chief would lie about what happened.

It’s obvious to Dae-chul — someone with a lot of power has made a move. This means the only way they can win is through the trial by proving their case with evidence. That doesn’t seem so promising since So-yeong is still in the hospital, but Min-hee also knows there’s another witness out there who’s aware of the connection between Hitman Lee and CEO Park.

Our rapscallion thief Ho-shik is surprised to be called on as a witness, reminding them that in his line of business, he’s allergic to courtrooms. Besides, he’s headed to Hawaii tomorrow, so he won’t be available. He also has big plans for the night, as his girlfriend cheerfully waltzes up, showing off her home-made pregnant belly. Ho-shik marvels at how realistic it looks, and they set their con in motion.

At the police station, the drunk businessman (who they pretended to get in a car accident with) insists that he’s innocent, but Ho-shik points out his very “pregnant wife,” lashing out that restitution will need to be made if anything happens to their “baby.” Dae-chul, who had been secretly watching Ho-shik, arrives to poke the belly hard enough to show he knows it’s just made of clothes. Ho-shik agrees to be a witness, since it’s either that or be charged with fraud.

At the trial, Ri-na reveals the photos they have of Hitman Lee and Sang-taek together. Between those and Ho-shik’s testimony, she has a good feeling that this case will go their way, especially since it looks like Hitman Lee should regain consciousness.

Aw, the burgeoning Three Musketeers camaraderie between Ri-na, Min-hee, and Dae-chul makes me so happy.

Ho-shik returns to his home, muttering about how he was supposed to be in Hawaii by now, and doesn’t notice Sang-taek’s thugs waiting for him. They grab him and Thug #1 threateningly holds a syringe up to his neck, but quick-witted Ho-shik spots a couple of cops walking by and manages to kick his shoe at them and get their attention. That causes the thugs to sprint away, and Ho-shik lives to con another day.

At the Central Prosecutor’s Office, Hyun-woong warns Sang-taek that it might not be easy to get him out of jail. But Sang-taek calmly says that District Attorney Song will want to intervene, since Sang-taek’s deep pockets have paid enough for DA Song’s wife’s extravagant lifestyle, even if those funds can’t be traced to DA Song himself.

The news reports about Sang-taek have Joong-ho and Ji-sook worried that his company’s investments will be traced back to YK Electronics. If that happens, their careful house of cards will topple. But Hyun-woong reassures his parents that he’ll do everything he can to protect his family. Everything.

An irate Ho-shik paces at the police department, furious that because he agreed to be a witness, he was nearly killed. He demands they call out the prosecutor who ordered him to be a witness.

That’s an excuse for Min-hee to visit the Southern Prosecutor’s Office, where she conveniently runs into Dae-chul and casually asks him (yet again) why he’s so invested in a case that isn’t his — so much so that he’d coerce a witness into complying. He insists he only did it because Min-hee would lose face if the extra witness she promised never showed.

She finds it suspect that he would help so much without claiming any credit. He puffs up in pride, telling her it makes him seem pretty cool, since most women like it when a man quietly helps out behind the scenes. But she’s not most women, and says that if he wants to help her, fine — just be upfront about it. Aw, he’s so pleased that she wants to work with him.

Hyun-woong meets with Prosecutor Ma, that slimy bastard. He’s thrilled to hear that DA Song will also be there soon, convinced that he’s been chosen to be a part of their secret inner circle. Maybe he is. Hyun-woong’s little smile is a bit hard to read — is he laughing at the fool or just pleased to know this pompous ass will be on their side?

Dae-chul once again returns to the hospital, checking on the status of Hitman Lee. Detective Pi is keeping watch, and tells him he’s still unconscious, but the doctors have hope that he’ll wake up soon.

Soon is right. As soon as Dae-chul leaves the room, Hitman Lee’s eyes open.

Ohhhhh, it looks like one of Sang-taek’s thugs dressed as a doctor and gave him a syringe with a message from Sang-taek, reminding of his promise to take responsibility for what happened. This can’t be good.

Nope, it’s not good, because there’s a “code blue” and Dae-chul rushes back to the hospital room, desperate to try and resuscitate Hitman Lee. But Detective Pi and the nurse pull him off, telling him it’s too late. Hitman Lee is dead.

Ri-na finds Dae-chul quietly brooding about Hitman Lee’s death. She tells him not to give up hope — they still have another witness. But despite swearing to tell the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” or be subject to perjury, So-yeong stuns Ri-na by confessing that she didn’t see anything that night.

Min-hee and Dae-chul are also shocked by her answer, and Ri-na reminds her that she’s under oath, but it’s no use. So-yeong insists that the had lied about seeing the murderer earlier. Sang-taek, in the defendant’s seat, smiles in delight while Min-hee and Dae-chul glare at him.

Dae-chul gives Min-hee a ride to the witness’s home, where she confronts her, asking why she lied under oath. Apologizing, So-yeong says she was only trying to protect her family. Because of her agreement to be a witness, her family received a legal notice to close their dry cleaning shop, and her sister and brother-in-law also were terminated without notice from their jobs. Why should she sacrifice her family for Min-hee’s trial?

At the police station, Min-hee lays out the case, and you know things are getting serious when there’s a see-through evidence board.

As she hangs up the photos, she tries to piece together the connections: CEO Park was a criminal and was murdered; Hitman Lee was a criminal and committed suicide; but Park Gyu-chul (or Dae-chul’s dad, as we know him) was an innocent person who framed for murder and then killed. She’s determined to not give up on this case until they get to the truth — that is, until they can prove that Sang-taek is at the center of it all.

Dae-chul is beginning to narrow in on Prosecutor Ma, discovering that he’s somehow the one who authorized So-yeong’s family business to close. Prosecutor Ma is also busy trying to show off in front of his fellow prosecutors, telling them how important he’ll soon become. He’s especially boastful to Ri-na, reassuring her that with his newfound power he’ll be able to find a place for her behind him. But she just smiles and says she likes to stab rotten fish in the back, so he should be careful. I lub her.

She’s got no time for Prosecutor Ma’s ego, so she quickly leaves the dinner. But not fast enough to avoid seeing him swagger to his car, on the phone with Hyun-woong. But as soon as he hangs up and unlocks the car, Dae-chul is standing behind him, in his mask, ready for a beat-down.

Prosecutor Ma cowers in fear, demanding to know why he’s there. But our masked avenger has questions of his own as he slams Prosecutor Ma around, asking him why he unconstitutionally abuses his power and interferes with innocent citizens’ lives. With one last warning to make things right — and one last head-butt — Dae-chul leaves.

Ri-na hurries up to make sure the beaten and bloodied Prosecutor Ma is okay, and then rushes back inside to find out where the masked man went. She’s surprised to see Dae-chul exiting the front doors and she narrows in on the suspicious bag in his hand. Before he can drive away, Ri-na runs up to his car, opening up the passenger door and pulling out the bag.

A surprised Dae-chul leaps out of the car, but it’s too late — she waves the mask in front of his face, cooly asking him to explain himself.

Min-hee finds a witness to a rape that occurred thirty years ago — hmm, perhaps her mother’s? — but it’s a drunk bum who sneeringly tells her that he can barely what remember happened yesterday, much less something that happened so long ago.

The police officer in her carefully picks up on of his abandoned soju bottles as evidence (DNA, maybe?), and as he walks away, he recalls when a mysterious person had beaten him into submission. In the flashback he cowers as he stutters out that he didn’t actually see what he saw. The mysterious man slams down his aluminum baseball bat. Innnnnteresting, since we know who believes in that method of interrogation: Sang-taek.

Ri-na is furious that Dae-chul is acting outside of the law with his masked avenger bit, realizing that he’s the one behind criminals suddenly deciding to confess their crimes. He swears that his intent is honorable, but she reminds him that as a prosecutor, he’s there to protect the law, not work around it.

But Dae-chul shows her how corrupt the law truly is, since loopholes within it allows rich and socially high-ranking criminals to walk away with little-to-no punishment. She acknowledges that his intention is good, and she’ll let it pass for now, but if he wears the mask again for his own personal desire to play the hero, she’ll consider it a crime.

That night, as Dae-chul lies in bed contemplating Ri-na’s words, he hears a strange noise from the kitchen. Grabbing his own baseball bat (wooden!), he’s ready to attack the intruder — but it’s just Ho-shik, who tells Dae-chul that he’s going to start living there, since there’s nothing safer than a prosecutor’s house. Oh, I’m going to like this odd-couple living arrangement.

The verdict is in at Sang-taek’s trial — the judge declares him innocent. Min-hee is visibly disappointed, as is Ri-na. When Dae-chul encounters her outside the courtroom, he quietly tells her that this is the reason he wears the mask.

As Min-hee leaves the courthouse, Sang-taek’s car pulls up. He grimly gives her the “thumbs up” — until turning it into a threatening “thumbs down,” much like a Roman Emperor asking for a fallen gladiator’s death.

Min-hee’s more determined than ever to find something from Sang-taek’s past, and she goes to meet with one of the criminals he had arrested when he was still a detective. The man at first refuses to tell her anything, laughing at her desire to take down Sang-taek. But when she mentions the aluminum bat, that seems to hit a sore spot: “That hell he made me see; can you make him see it, too?”

Despite his informants keeping him updated on Min-hee’s investigation into his life, he feigns innocence when she meets with him. She tells him that she wanted to see if he’s really the man she’s discovered him to be. When he tells her that he became a police officer to uphold the law and protect the people, she shakes her head. No; he became a police officer to protect himself and hide his crimes.

She points out that he never intended to catch criminals to punish them. He just wanted to use them. He would release thieves and murderers so that he could have them use their skills to steal and kill for him.

Sang-taek spins it around on her — what was her reason for becoming a police officer? Was it to heal the wounds she experienced when she was younger? According to Sang-taek, there are two types of police officers: those who hate the crime and those who hate the criminal. Min-hee’s the type who will try heal her past wounds by finding someone who’s responsible for the same type of crime that occurred against her.

But the unflappable Min-hee quotes his words back at him, reminding him that he’s the type of person to brag that he can turn an innocent person into a murderer and a spy. Isn’t that the reason he put the mask on Park Gyu-chul, making that innocent man a murderer? Sang-taek sits up in slight surprise at her words, but he quickly hides it with his trademark chuckle.

Dae-chul goes shopping with his mom. Aw. Except, of course, Ji-sook doesn’t know that Dae-chul is her son and Dae-chul has to stifle the emotions of a friendly Ji-sook who wants to buy him a new suit as a “thank you” for his support from before. She also has a favor to ask him, since he’s “like a son” to her. Oh, ouch.

She asks him to watch out for Hyun-woong, and if things get difficult for him, to step in to help out Hyun-woong. Dae-chul promises that he will, but later he sits on a bench, drinking beer and contemplating that her “beloved son” Hyun-woong was the one who killed her ex-husband and Dae-chul’s father. He leaves the brand-new suit hanging on the playground and resolutely walks away.

Sang-taek and Hyun-woong have a late-night rooftop meeting. Sang-taek warns him that a vicious leech has dug itself too deep into their business and needs to be removed. As in, killed. That leech, of course, is Min-hee.

Hyun-woong thinks it’s a little too risky to try and mess with a police officer, but Sang-taek is convinced they need to get rid of her before she finds out too much. Thankfully Hyun-woong seems to have a bit of a backbone, and he calls out that if Min-hee dies, then Sang-taek dies, too. Sang-taek turns back around to tell him that it’s too late.

At that moment Min-hee is headed up to meet with Hitman Lee’s wife, who had called her to meet so she could reveal who was behind her husband’s death. As Min-hee waits for the elevator to take her up to the apartment, she pulls out her gun. Then puts it away, deciding she’s being overly cautious. But as the elevator doors open, Hitman Lee’s wife is pushed into her by Sang-taek’s thugs.

Min-hee pulls out her gun to shoot at them, but is delayed by trying to catch the very pregnant woman, and one of the thugs hits her over the head with a wooden stick, knocking her out. As one of the thugs leads Hitman Lee’s wife away, the other one picks up Min-hee’s gun. Pointing the gun at the unconscious Min-hee, he slowly puts his finger on the trigger.

COMMENTS

Now this is the show I’ve been waiting for! All the complaints I’ve had the last few episodes seem to have been addressed. Most notably, the fact that the show has been liberal with its identifying labels. Where were those in the first few episodes when I was trying to figure out who was who and how they are all related and what prosecution office they worked for?

The weird pacing problems in the first four episodes also seem to have sorted themselves out. Not only do I understand the case our heroes are working on, I’m actually caught up in rooting for our heroes as they try to stay one step ahead of Sang-taek’s web of power. These are no longer just paper cut-out caricatures to me. Especially considering how Min-hee took care of So-yeong — the way she cared for her was such a different side to Min-hee that we’ve seen before. It wasn’t just the police officer out to protect a witness — it was a very woman-to-women element of protection. After all, the reason So-yeong was even there that night was because of sexual coercion, and with Min-hee’s past, you just know that’s a crime she despises the most.

I loved that we got to see the soft and tender side of Min-hee. Her guard was down around So-yeong and those small directorial touches actually benefitted the episode instead of hindering it — such as the way Min-hee would carefully arrange the flowers at So-yeong’s hospital bedside. Or those little looks of encouragement in the courtroom. Which is why, of course, Min-hee was so devastated when So-yeong lied on the stand. While it was understandable (to protect her family who was being targeted by the long arm of the totally Un-Just Prosecutor’s Society), it wasn’t just about a detective being betrayed by a witness. It was also Min-hee feeling betrayed by someone that, perhaps, reminded her of herself. Or her mother.

I’m pretty sure that thirty-year-old case she’s working on isn’t just something that will lead back to Sang-taek (because who else is behind that aluminum bat?) — it also leads to her mother. Which is why I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Sang-taek was the one who raped Min-hee’s mother, and is therefore Min-hee’s biological father — which brings their verbal sparring contests to a whole new level.

I also really love that, instead of being frustrated about the plot, I can now enjoy all the small details that help to create the atmosphere of our Good v. Evil world. Such as our baddies are always seemed to be filmed in a darkened set (sometimes a little too dark, but hey, it gets the point across!). It’s like the show is determined to make us aware that there are layers of corruption and secrets just waiting to be dragged out into the light and revealed to the world. It’s all just a matter of how much Min-hee, Dae-chul, and Ri-na are willing to fight for it.

Or how they’re willing to fight for it. It’s interesting how the three can work so well together, considering Ri-na is all about supporting the law, whereas Min-hee distrusts how prosecutors can manipulate it to their purposes. And Dae-chul, well, we all know how he tries to get to the truth — hidden behind his mask and using his fists.

In a way, he’s not so different from Sang-taek. How much difference is there using your fists (and feet, and head) versus using an aluminum baseball bat? But it’s the results of those beat-downs that matter. Dae-chul zeros in on those who lie and abuse the system to protect their precious power and hierarchy, whereas Sang-taek uses violence to make sure innocent people take the fall for the people in power.

Then there’s Hyun-woong, who’s just ripe for speculation. How evil is he? Is he only doing it to save his family? What happens when he learns that Dae-chul is related to him by blood? Will he live up to his promise to do “everything” to protect his family if it now includes Dae-chul? How much does he believe in this Just Prosecutor’s Society and how much does he want to destroy it from within — because there seems to be a part of him that loathes the corrupt men in power. Honestly, there’s just so much about the show I could sink my teeth into and analyze now that I’m not longer distracted by the weak editing, pacing, and plot.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how the show has finally found its feet and I’m really looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes, since I’m now confident (instead of just blindly hoping) that this show will live up to my expectations. But I’ll just be watching them. Due to various circumstances, we won’t be continuing to recap this show. I know, I know — it’s a pity, especially since the show is now so dang compelling!

So for anyone who’s still on the fence about watching this show, I’d recommend finding a way to somehow skim through the first few episodes (*cough*read the recaps!*cough*) and then really start watching at episode five. Fingers crossed that the rest of the episodes continue along in the vein as this one, or I’ll have to hunt down a certain production team and wreak some masked vengeance of my own.

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