Zombie Detective: Episodes 9-10 Open Thread

by stroopwafel

There’s no rest for the weary after the traumatic events of last week, and our zombie detective comes to believe that there are some things he can’t fight. Reining in his growing appetite means that he’ll have to hone his self-discipline to a fine edge. Lives depend on his success, and luckily for our zombie, his faithful assistant is willing dedicate herself to his training.

 
EPISODES 9-10 WEECAP

Last week ended with a pretty big implication: that Moo-young finally gave into his zombie instincts and ate Hyung-chul.

At the funeral home, Sun-ji confronts Moo-young with the big question on her mind: Did Moo-young eat Hyung-chul? He answers her with a question of his own — what if he did eat Hyung-chul? Horrified, Sun-ji asks him how he could do such a thing, and Moo-young has a terse reply. “Because I’m a zombie.”

Moo-young resolves to leave town as fast as he can. The tough realization, though, is this: the life he’s been leading was never his. The office, the clothes, the money — all belong to the dead Kim Moo-young. Zombie Moo-young leaves even his cellphone behind, departing with nothing more than a backpack.

Sun-ji works out her emotions by screaming at the sky (“Is being a zombie everything? You should have held back!”), but really, she’s just feeling sad and a little betrayed.

She perks right up when Do-hyun gives her a call to inform her that Oh Hyung-chul’s autopsy report shows that the mangled-ness of his body was due to a gunshot wound to his gut. Sun-ji casually asks if the issue wasn’t with someone eating Hyung-chul’s corpse (which only freaks Do-hyun out a little).

Realizing that Moo-young never even so much as nibbled on Hyung-chul, Sun-ji rushes to his office only to find him gone.

News of Moo-young’s absence travels fast, and while Sun-young flips out over her little sis being unemployed once again, Sung-rok and Wang Wei have a celebratory cake. All the while, Moo-young’s picking ants to snack on while saying he should have taken a little money for himself lol.

When Moo-young gets distracted by the walking feast around him (a.k.a. lots of humans minding their business), we see the full events of what happened with Hyung-chul in that abandoned house. After Moo-young’s mother died, Hyung-chul had turned his gun on himself. But at the same moment Hyung-chul pulled the trigger, Moo-young had craved human flesh and was horrified with himself.

Night falls and Moo-young is desperately rifling through garbage bags for sustenance, when a passing woman catches his attention. He faints and goes full zombie, red eyes and all. When he wakes up from zombie mode, there are bones scattered next to him — chicken bones, whew –and he’s back in his office.

Sun-ji finds Moo-young at his office and confronts him about his sudden departure. Moo-young admits he didn’t tell her the whole truth about Hyung-chul because in the end, he’d felt a hunger for human flesh. But he doesn’t want to live like a zombie; he wants to be a real human. Moo-young gives her a heartfelt entreaty for help on how to live like a human being.

Well, animals can be trained, so what’s stopping zombies from being trained? Sun-ji reasons that if a zombie can learn to speak and to walk on a treadmill, then a zombie can do anything.

Sun-ji’s grand idea is a new guest: a dog trainer. The dog trainer gives Sun-ji and Moo-young a few pieces of advice on their aggressive, human-biting “dog.” He suggests building a bond between by taking “the dog” out for walks and trying to build up some self-control.

Walks are easy enough, but things go a little sideways when it comes to testing out Moo-young’s self-control. Sun-ji decides that handcuffing Moo-young and leaving out a plate of raw chicken to tempt him is a good test (though Sung-rok gets the wrong idea entirely when he peeks in on them and sees handcuffs).

The forced fast is set for 72 hours, but Moo-young doesn’t make it and the situation gets dangerous for Sun-ji when she encounters Moo-young in hungry zombie mode. He nearly takes a bite out of Sun-ji, but she manages to reset his zombie senses with a good whack to the head.

Once Moo-young’s returned to his normal zombie state, Sun-ji reaffirms her commitment to helping Moo-young live like a regular man. (She’s a better and braver person than me.)

Sun-ji brings out the big guns — all the frying pans from her sister’s house… and an apple. She’s realized that a good thump to the back of the head can stop Moo-young in his tracks, and with her athletic, shot-putting background, Sun-ji is confident she can act as a safety valve of sorts. She gives him a choice of tool, and he can’t stomach the pans so he tells her to use the apple to bring him down if necessary.

With that done, Moo-young has a request for Sun-ji (aw, he says she’s the only human he can trust). He needs help tracking down the real Kim Moo-young’s killer. After all, he real Kim Moo-young was the reason he was able to learn about his past self.

Moo-young’s tried to find out all he could about the human Kim Moo-young, but even a sweep of the office turned up almost no info.

Armed with a new mission, but not much knowledge, the dynamic duo are at a standstill. Enter Noh Poong-shik, fresh out of prison, and the man who dispatched the real Kim Moo-young in the first episode.

Poong-shik and Sung-rok are well-acquainted, and it turns out Poong-shik is a famous neighborhood veterinarian (or infamous, depending on who you ask). He finished serving time due to illegal medical waste dumping, but certain animal rights groups find his actions and records suspicious (he hunts as a hobby and his records of euthanized animals versus disposed animals don’t match up).

It’s a mixture of fear and respect that makes Sung-rok agree to Poong-shik’s order to tail and basically kidnap Moo-young.

Their first attempt to grab Moo-young goes poorly. They attempt to electrically shock Moo-young and then bring him to Poong-shik…but all that happens is that Moo-young gets an awesome new hairstyle, and they knock out the neighborhood’s electricity instead.

Attempt number two involves four masked men attacking Moo-young, but they’re no match for him. Across the way, Sung-rok sees the fight isn’t in their favor, so he decides to step in himself. He’s wearing a clown mask, but Moo-young figures out his identity right away (of course). Their one-on-one battle commences and Sung-rok’s actually not too bad a fighter, even though Moo-young has no problem parrying his blows. The bigger problem for Moo-young is that the scantily dressed Sung-rok looks delicious. Delectable and plump, even the mere scent of Sung-rok is intoxicating for Moo-young, and it turns on his zombie mode.

Understandably, Sung-rok freaks out at the sight of zombie Moo-young and is even more horrified when not even a little stabbing stops him. Somehow, Moo-young manages to leave the office without biting him and in a bit of perfect timing, Sun-ji sees him in zombie mode and stops him cold with a pan to the head (turns out her apple aim isn’t that effective).

The next day, as Moo-young and Sun-ji convene over the unusual way Sung-rok seems to affect him, they find a trove a documents and photos hidden in the office.

Everything pertains to what Kim Moo-young was investigating when he was murdered, and the photos were taken where zombie Moo-young had woken up. Oh no, Poong-shik is a vet, but he’s also a bit of a mad scientist and he was experimenting with creating zombies.

It hits zombie Moo-young that the real Moo-young recognized him as one of the results of Poong-shik’s experiments. With his last bit of energy, the real Moo-young had given zombie Moo-young the keys to solve his own case. With this knowledge, Moo-young resolves to track down Poong-shik, and find a solution to return to his human form.

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