Mystery Queen: Episode 3

by Anisa

A new case in her neighborhood catches Seol-ok’s attention, but it’s not as simple as the police seem to think, and she’s determined to prove it despite Wan-seung’s best efforts. As she shows him repeatedly that she’s not the meddlesome housewife he thinks she is, hope begins to emerge for a new crime-solving partnership. Has our Sherlock finally met her Watson?

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

Once Wan-seung is gone, Seol-ok joins Joon-oh and his team at the crime scene they’re investigating, a burglarized home. Following the culprit’s footprints, she shows Joon-oh where he must have entered the house, gone up the stairs, and into the master bedroom. The room looks undisturbed to Joon-oh, but Seol-ok notices that the sheets have been changed, and there are sleeping pills on the bedside table; she also calls the design of the bedspread tacky.

A window above the bed is ajar, but it’s a two-story drop to the garden. She traces the footprints back downstairs to a middle schooler’s bedroom. Joon-oh tells her that no one was home at the time of the incident, and the thief was gone by the time the crime was discovered. Another room, belonging to the elderly grandparents, is clean and yields some jeweled rosaries, left untouched.

Wan-seung creeps back to the house and peers through the windows, gasping when he sees Seol-ok. Oblivious, Seol-ok asks Joon-oh what was stolen, and he tells her money and a bit of jewelry. Seol-ok says it’s strange that a burglar would take those but leave behind the expensive electronics and the jeweled rosaries, as well as a gold plaque in a glass case, worth at least three million won (about three thousand US dollars).

She tells Joon-oh that most thieves have a specialty, and they know exactly where to look to find the goods they plan to steal, whereas this intruder lacked focus and made a mess of the whole house. Joon-oh excitedly asks if it’s drugs again.

The strangest thing, she says, is that the culprit didn’t enter the bathroom as if knowing that there was nothing to steal, although all the doors in the house look identical. Even the footprints lead precisely to all the rooms. The culprit, she concludes, is someone intimately familiar with this house.

Wan-seung comes through the front door and sits down squarely on Seol-ok’s stack of eggs to glare at her as she announces that this house was the scene of something much worse than robbery: murder. Wan-seung laughs, and even Joon-oh smiles in disbelief.

Crime Scene Investigator Park asks her where the body is then; CSI Na confirms that she found no evidence of one in the house. Seol-ok says, “A person was killed in the master bedroom upstairs. And the body is—” Wan-seung yells, “Ajumma!” Seol-ok jumps and squeaks.

Looking furious, Wan-seung says that he knew something was up. He takes out his handcuffs and brandishes them at Seol-ok, reminding her of his promise to arrest her the next time she interfered in official business. Stunned, Seol-ok stares at him, and then at her poor crushed eggs. “Move!” she cries. He refuses, and she pushes him off her cart and onto the ground.

At the substation, Earnest Cop is sweeping the yard when Slacker Cop ambles up, scolding the younger man for raising dust when he just bathed—er, washed his hands after patrolling. They notice a student sitting outside the station, and Slacker Cop slips away inside to nap, leaving Earnest Cop to question the boy.

Meanwhile, Wan-seung accuses Seol-ok of committing terror against an officer of the law; she retorts that an officer of the law shouldn’t have sat on her innocent eggs. Wan-seung asks why on earth she and her eggs were even here, and Joon-oh says apologetically that he asked her to come and offer advice.

Wan-seung throws the eggy mess at him and yells at him to shape up—why is a police officer taking advice from a neighborhood ajumma? Seol-ok snaps that maybe it’s because she knows better than the police. He yells at her to stop watching so much TV, and she asks if he even went to police school. Both screaming at this point, he demands to know what university she went to, and she declares that she’s got a doctorate—what’s he gonna do about it? At this he shakes his finger at her, telling her that her book-learning won’t help catch any criminals.

They’re about to launch into another shouting match when CSI Park comes outside, berating them for contaminating the crime scene. The homeowner also arrives, asking what they think they’re doing. Wan-seung blames Seol-ok for the mess and apologizes to the homeowner, but he angrily tells them all to leave. Seol-ok urgently tells the man this isn’t a simple burglary, but that somebody died here. Wan-seung rubs his forehead in exasperation.

“Someone was killed? Then where’s the body?” asks the homeowner. Seol-ok perks up and asks why he mentioned murder when she only said someone died, but he irritably tells her to go away. She says that it’s a strange case and that they need to look into it more, but he tells her to get lost. At this, Seol-ok asks him bluntly why he’s stalling the investigation. He points to the mess with the eggs and tells her to leave before he files a report. Seol-ok tries to insist again that it was murder, but Wan-seung covers her mouth with a gooey hand and drags her off.

Wan-seung takes her to a clothing store and tells her to buy him a nice new jacket to replace the one she ruined, warning her that he grew up rich. She scoffs at him, but loses her smirk when she sees the bandage on his arm. She tells him seriously that she’ll buy him a jacket, on one condition.

Cut to Seol-ok peering at him through a pharmacy window as he grumpily buys a fresh bandage and puts it on his arm. She hands him the new jacket and thanks him for saving her life that day. He puts it on, saying he’s glad she knows before turning to leave, but she pulls his collar from behind, saying they’re not even yet.

Dong-ki calls to let Wan-seung know that he’s delivered Jang Do-jang to the prison. Wan-seung tells him not to let down his guard until the man is locked up, and then gets back to Seol-ok’s last task for him: buying her one hundred and fifty eggs at the neighborhood convenience store, which doubles as a small grocery. Wan-seung is grumbling about pampered prosecutors’ wives (she told him she needs the eggs for a full-body massage) when he gets a call from the substation.

Seol-ok excitedly comes over to him once he’s done, having deduced that the mom in the burglary case is missing, and that the son reported it. Wan-seung laughs, then asks her sharply how she knew all that—was she just chatting with Joon-oh?

Seol-ok points out that Wan-seung just gave her the information and plays back his conversation, which she recorded on her phone. He’s outraged, but she says the two of them were talking when he got the call, and she’s legally allowed to record a conversation she’s part of.

Wan-seung asks how Seol-ok knew it was the mom who went missing, and Seol-ok points out that the dad just threw them off his property. Wan-seung says her deductions aren’t so impressive after all, and Seol-ok retorts that he failed to make them.

They take the eggs to the register with Seol-ok saying that Wan-seung must investigate the house again; no crime can be completely erased. The store owner (the mother of the bullied son from the first episode) tells Wan-seung to turn himself in, whatever his crime, because he can’t fool Seol-ok. Heh.

Wan-seung tells Seol-ok that there’s nothing sinister about this—the woman simply left home. When it’s time to pay, the owner gives them a price, then raises it when she realizes that Wan-seung is paying. He pays grumpily, asking if they only give discounts to people with graduate degrees (Seol-ok hides her giggles). Before he leaves, Seol-ok asks if she can meet the kid, and Wan-seung leans close and whispers, “Not a chance.”

Wan-seung stops his car next to Seol-ok as he leaves and warns her not to come near the substation, or he’ll arrest her. She says she only wants to help, but he dismisses the idea and tells her to go home and make dinner. She tells him not to change his mind later, and he holds up his handcuffs at her before speeding off.

In front of the house where the crime happened, an old man scrubs the back seat of a car, then fiddles with a picture hanging above the dash of the missing woman and her son. The old man sees Seol-ok peeking in the window and gets out to ask her what she’s doing. She notices that the cloth he was using to clean it has dark red stains on it before he hides it behind his back. She asks if he lives in this house, and when he says yes, she says she’s relieved that he didn’t park illegally.

At home, as they pickle eggs, Seol-ok rants to Kyung-mi that the case will end up unsolved because the police won’t find the nonexistent burglar, and the murderer will get away. Kyung-mi complains about helping Seol-ok cook for her mother-in-law and reminds Seol-ok to watch her shop on Friday in exchange so that she can visit her son. She won’t get to see him for long this time; his grandmother has told him that Kyung-mi exchanged him for the money to set up her shop.

Kyung-suk arrives home and asks them why they’re pickling so many eggs and is incredulous when Seol-ok reminds her that she asked for them. Kyung-suk tells her she only wanted about five eggs, asking if Seol-ok has early dementia before floating off. The two friends stare after her, agape, and then Seol-ok asks if they should put the remaining eggs in the tub for a massage. “With your mother-in-law,” says Kyung-mi in a deadpan. “Do it.”

Later, Seol-ok calls Joon-oh and pleads for a phone interview with the boy, but Wan-seung tells Joon-oh to cut off contact with Seol-ok, or he’ll bite him. Seol-ok reminds Joon-oh that he’s the chief of the substation, and that the two men are both lieutenants, even if Wan-seung is his sunbae—as the highest ranked police officer at the station, he has nothing to fear.

Determined, Joon-oh goes back and places his phone face-down on the table where they’re interviewing the boy, CHA HEE-CHUL. Hee-chul says that he thinks his mom went to die, and when Wan-seung asks where she might be, he replies that he’d have found her if he knew. Listening in, Seol-ok sighs that he’s lost the chance to create a rapport with the boy, and true to her prediction, Hee-chul clams up.

Joon-oh goes outside to talk to Seol-ok, who asks again to come, but Joon-oh tells her that Wan-seung will kill him. So he goes back in with a bluetooth headset this time, strategically placed on the ear not facing Wan-seung. Hahahaha.

Wan-seung begins to lose his temper with Hee-chul. When the boy gets up to leave, Joon-oh asks him if his parents fight a lot, repeating Seol-ok’s words in his ear. Hee-chul says that he doesn’t trust the police. Seol-ok-as-Joon-oh lists the signs of physical conflict in the house, and asks if his father gets violent sometimes. Joon-oh asks if Dad often sleeps in Hee-chul’s room (based on the men’s cologne and clothing Seol-ok noticed there), and if that’s why Hee-chul thinks his mom planned to commit suicide. Hee-chul says that he saw sleeping pills in his mom’s room.

Wan-seung watches suspiciously from a station window as Joon-oh calls Seol-ok from his car. She tells Joon-oh that it wasn’t pills that killed the mom and tells him about the smudged blood on the master bedroom’s windowsill. An eavesdropping Wan-seung suddenly grabs the phone and yells into it, startling Seol-ok, who hangs up on hearing his newest threat to arrest her.

Wan-seung goes to headquarters to pick up the forensics report, stopping on his way to visit Kwang-tae and fill him in on recent events. Upon hearing that Seol-ok is Prosecutor Kim Ho-chul’s wife, Kwang-tae urges Wan-seung to arrest her for interfering with their investigation, but Wan-seung says she’s not at fault for her husband’s wrongdoings. Kwang-tae points out that Ho-chul is single—or is he pretending to be single? Wan-seung looks concerned for a moment, then dismisses it as none of his business.

Wan-seung goes to the forensics department next, where CSI Park tells him about the footprints at the crime scene. He also did a luminol test on “Teacher Yoo’s” recommendation; Wan-seung rolls his eyes and apologizes for the unnecessary work, but CSI Park says they found a small bloodstain on the windowsill. They don’t have DNA test results back, but the rare blood type is a match for LEE MYUNG-HEE, Hee-chul’s mother.

Wan-seung remembers Seol-ok saying they might be able to get prints from the bloodstain, and CSI Park confirms that they got a faint partial. Wan-seung reflects in disbelief that Seol-ok got everything right.

Well into her drinks at Kyung-mi’s shop, Seol-ok tells her friend that she’s the only one who appreciates her; she only wanted to help, but Wan-seung told her that an ajumma like her should just go home and cook dinner. “But I can’t even cook,” she cries as she eats the terrible-tasting lotus root she made.

Seol-ok says that she should have gone to university instead of getting married—maybe she’d get more respect then. Kyung-mi asks Seol-ok why she even bothers trying to help the police when they’re so ungrateful and tells her not to waste her time on them. Seol-ok says that Kyung-mi knows why.

“Back then and now, I’ve always been useless,” Seol-ok says mournfully. Kyung-mi scolds her for saying that, but Seol-ok says that she’s going to come back to reality—she’s just an unskilled housewife with a high school diploma, and she has to accept her limitations.

Arriving back at the substation, Wan-seung wonders to himself if Seol-ok is a psychic; or maybe it’s because she has a Ph.D? Lol. He asks Joon-oh about Seol-ok, who panics and swears he wasn’t on the phone with her. Wan-seung calls Joon-oh timid for taking his order so seriously and phones Seol-ok himself, but she doesn’t pick up. He asks Joon-oh where she lives, but he just assures Wan-seung that she’s stopped interfering in cases.

Wan-seung goes to the convenience store and follows the owner around, pestering her for the extra money she charged him for Seol-ok’s eggs. He threatens to report her for discrimination until she gives him the five thousand won (about five dollars) as well as Seol-ok’s work address.

Wan-seung arrives at Kyung-mi’s store and peers in the window, but it’s closed and empty. He calls her again (she has his number saved as “Idiot”), but she ignores his call, telling Kyung-mi who it is while warming her not to answer. Hearing the outer door open, the two friends go to the counter and find Wan-seung standing there. (Did he break in?)

She tells him to leave her alone now since she won’t bother him anymore, but he walks past her and into the back. Seol-ok asks how he found out she was here, worried that he went to her house, but he says he asked the owner of the convenience store. Kyung-mi, who is drunker than Seol-ok by now, slurs that he’s not a complete idiot before telling him that she went to Seoul University, so he’d better not look down on her friend. He nods, agreeing that of course the doctor’s friend would be a Seoul alum. Ha.

Seol-ok asks why he came and tells him to leave, assuring him again that she won’t interfere, but he says that she won’t live long forcing herself to ignore what she cares about—it’s okay to interfere sometimes. She stares at him in shock. He finds the door to her secret room and goes in despite her protests, marveling at her shelves of books on criminology and profiling as well as her files full of newspaper clippings about old cases.

He asks her what she majored in, and her vague answers leave him with the impression that she got her Ph.D in criminal psychology. He finds a photo album full of wanted posters, and she tells him her phone is full of them too, in case she ever runs into a suspect—although she hasn’t yet.

He moves on to a bulletin board covered in photos of violent crime victims, all of them young and female. Wan-seung eyes her oddly, asking if she gets excited when she looks at these kind of pictures. She says that she does—it makes her angry on behalf of the victims, and outraged that the people who did these things are still walking around on the streets. Isn’t that the reason he became a detective? She points to each girl, telling him about her life and how she was killed, vowing to catch their murderers.

Wan-seung looks away from her, looking disturbed, and tells her that she has too much time on her hands. Seeing the spreadsheet of MOs she made, he says the police have those already. She asks him if he expects her to hack into their system; she admits she’d love to, but it took her six months to learn how to use the spreadsheet program.

He finally asks her if she knows who Lee Myung-hee’s murderer is. It’s the burglar, she tells him mockingly. Wan-seung bashes his head against her investigation board.

They end up back at the victim’s house, where she shows him tire tracks in the yard and tells him to look for petals on the tires of the old man’s car, which is parked in the street. He finds them, and then matches them to the flowers in the garden at her request, grumbling the whole time. She tells him this proves the car went into the yard the day of the burglary and left tracks because of a recent rainfall.

Strangely, however, there’s only one set of tire tracks, as if the car exited the yard but didn’t enter—which means the other tracks were erased deliberately. Wan-seung realizes that this means the car was used to transport the body, and asks why the murderer didn’t just carry it to the car. “Because they didn’t have the strength. They’re old,” says Seol-ok. Besides, the prints in the blood were faint, like an old person’s.

They used dirt to cover the tracks, which explains the dry dirt in the wheelbarrow Seol-ok noticed when she first arrived at the crime scene, even though the yard was wet. And she knows they wrapped the body in the bedcovers because the ones on the bed were tacky, unlike Lee Myung-hee’s stylish and modern furniture and clothing. Wan-seung shares that he’s very fashionable too; he even matches his underwear to every outfit.

Seol-ok tells him he’ll find Lee Myung-hee’s blood in the backseat of the car, as they wouldn’t have put her in the trunk, which leads Wan-seung to deduce that it was a family member. Seol-ok is about to reveal the culprit’s identity when Kyung-suk calls Seol-ok, telling her to hurry home.

Seol-ok tries to dart off, but Wan-seung grabs her, demanding that she at least tell him who the culprit is. He asks if the in-laws did it, and she stares at him. “But why do you think they reported it as a burglary?” she asks him. From a window above, the old man watches them.

 
COMMENTS

Sherlock and Watson, working as a team! It was satisfying to see Wan-seung finally acknowledge that Seol-ok was right about everything, when he’s spent the entirety of their acquaintance dismissing her ideas and yelling at her to go home and make dinner. He has a streak of smug misogyny in him that makes him infuriating at times, but he also has a refreshing doggedness (hur) in pursuing his goals and a matter-of-fact charm that goes a long way in smoothing his character’s rough edges (a lot of which is down to Kwon Sang-woo’s charisma). I also appreciate that his bark seems to be a lot worse than his bite, which is evident from him giving Seol-ok endless “final” warnings without any real consequence, and the way he pays attention to every word she says, even when he’s annoyed by her. He refuses to take the opportunity to arrest her on some pretext at Kwang-tae’s suggestion too, despite their apparent enmity toward her husband. I just hope he learns some manners and humility in the near future.

Still, the star of the show is our Mystery Queen Seol-ok, and I find myself loving her more with each episode. The way she lights up when she discovers each new clue, her refusal to be intimidated by Wan-seung’s threats and badgering, even the way she solemnly announces her conclusions—her personality traits are unique and charming, and it’s so enjoyable to see the world through her eyes. I also like the way we’re given so much information about her life without it being spelled out directly.

Her relationship with her so-far absent husband, for example, is clearly unhappy, or at the very least dysfunctional; they seem to lead separate lives, and she’s obviously sacrificed her dreams for him and his family, and received little in return. She says she’s happy, but her regrets spill out in her more vulnerable moments. It must be stifling for someone with such a voracious intellect to be relegated to a domestic life she’s unsuited for, subject to the whims of her capricious mother-in-law. (Speaking of which, I enjoy the way the show uses Seol-ok’s situation and those of the characters in her small neighborhood to make a subtle commentary about the way society at large treats married and divorced women.)

Our heroine’s covert investigative missions do provide comedic fodder, but I hope that she can find the courage soon to honestly tell her mother-in-law about them, especially now that Wan-seung has accepted her as an unofficial consultant. (She’s going to have to confess to him about her fake doctorate at some point too, although I find endless amusement in that misunderstanding, and I’m in no hurry for it to be resolved.) Seol-ok has spent so long putting the needs of others before her own that she seems to do it automatically now; I wonder how much of that is the sense of inferiority she revealed when she was drunk, and how much is just done out of the desire to keep things peaceful at home. She doesn’t lack courage in other areas of her life, which is fortunate, since she’ll likely have a battle on her hands if she decides to finally pursue her dreams.

I’m very curious about Ho-chul, and I find it interesting that we’ve learned about him exclusively from other people so far. We’ve seen only Seol-ok’s perspective, so we have no idea what their dynamic is like and what he feels towards her; there’s also a distinct possibility that he’s not exactly a morally upstanding prosecutor judging from Wan-seung’s opinion of him, which could set up an interesting conflict down the line. Seol-ok facing off against her corrupt husband would give a personal dimension to her quest for justice, although I have a feeling that it’s already more than academic. Given the way she specifically collects information about young female murder victims, I wouldn’t be surprised if a tragedy in Seol-ok’s past was the catalyst for her career as an amateur detective. I’ll continue to gather clues until the show decides to reveal its secrets.

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