Those who think nothing much happens in LUCA except for people beating each other up had better give Beyond Evil a wide berth. In LUCA ep6 alone we get (among other things) the destruction of an important lab; Kim Sang-ho betraying a lead character yet again; and the hero introducing his new, very unsuitable girlfriend to his dismayed on-off flatmate. In contrast, all we get in Beyond Evil episode 3 is a remarkably subdued compendium of shifty behaviour and loaded conversations.

No behaviour is shiftier than Dong-shik scrubbing his basement down with a flagon of bleach. But even though he is interrupted by Ji-hwa and Jung-je’s visit, I think he did notice the drop of blood on the table. That he continues cleaning the table for quite a while before he hears the doorbell suggests to me that he left the drop of blood there on purpose. The spy camera he instals in his basement also indicates that he is laying a trap for someone.

And I don’t think it’s just some mysterious killer he’s trying to catch. I don’t know whether he thinks Ju-won killed anyone, but it’s obvious he has suspected JW of something ever since he realised JW recognised the skeleton in the field. I’m really enjoying these two disturbed men’s scenes with each other, and Yeo Jin-goo has shot way up in my estimation for picking such a flawed, unlikeable character to play. However, at the moment I think the scales are very much tipped in both DS’s and Shin Ha-kyun’s favour. It’s obvious DS knows a lot more about the situation than JW; more importantly, life has treated DS so much more badly, that my sympathies automatically gravitate to him.

To me, the most disturbing part of this episode is when Chief Nam tells DS not to forgive him for trying to beat a confession out of him 20 years ago. It’s just a tiny bit of dialogue, but it bears a deeply troubling load of ideas: how suspects could be tortured during interrogation; how much DS must have suffered; people’s lives being destroyed by over-enthusiastic cops (as Chief Nam warned JW in the previous episode).

But what is even more disturbing is DS’s response. It’s a bit difficult to unpack. On the surface it looks like he not only forgives Chief Nam but approves of his old methods and is himself perfectly willing to go further than that to catch the killer. But the bitterness in Shin Ha-kyun’s performance also suggests that DS forgives nobody – not Chief Nam, not the town, and certainly not JW or his father – for making such a terrible mess of the case, and that he will happily see all of them go to hell with him.