Down in the Dumps
Episode 9 of Inspector Koo begins right where we left off. Kyyung-Yi confronts K about Je-Hui’s whereabouts. However, K has other plans. She makes a power play with Yong Sook, deciding they should team up and work together. Specifically, she presents herself as Yong Sook’s personal assassin. Kyung-Yi throws a spoon at K’s head before skipping out, hurrying away to try and find Je-Hui. However, Kim and his subordinates appear and chase her down. Everntually she’s thrown into the trunk of his car and knocked out with knockout gas. “Hey, that’s a bit cliché!” She says, before falling unconscious. After throwing her in a barrel and knocking her down a massive hill (courtesy of a Donkey Kong-esque graphic), the gang try to find where Kyung-Yi may be. Well, she’s still alive – just. Kyung-Yi awakens to find herself stuck in a precarious situation, balanced on a thin bit of metal hanging over a large disposal unit. With Je-Hui’s ghost watching on, Kyung-Yi slips down and plummets to her doom. She’s still alive though, and Santa remains determined to try and find her before it’s too late. Meanwhile, K is given a new alias in Kassandra Alonso, a Spanish resident on the way back to Seoul. Despite relaxing for a day, she’s forced to travel back home again. Unfortunately the house she’s given to stay in is almost like a prison. The windows barely open, the perimeter is covered with cameras and there are high, electrified wires atop the walls. K is resourceful though and finds a way out…or almost does anything. The high walls covering the exterior of the house are also electrified on the top. As she touches them, she comes crashing down to the ground with a hard thud. With K now stuck in a pretty precarious situation, working as Yong Sook’s assassin, our cold businesswoman works hard to keep up pretenses at the children’s home. The thing is, she’s close to snapping. Her son Hyeong-Tae is being blackmailed and that forces her to dispose of him, making sure he leaves emptyhanded. Instead, she turns her attention to K. Yong-Wok has her first assignment, which comes in the form of a “very bad man” she needs to gain intel from. She uses balloons and a gas mask to obtain crucial information over the identity of a guy called “Rabbit”. Meanwhile, Kyung-Yi uses some ingenuity to escape her predicament, climbing back out the waste unit. It takes her a long time and just as she’s about to reach the top, Je-Hui and the gang arrive to help her up the final steps. Je-Hui is alive after all. It turns out K let her live. As we cut back in time, we see K actually held Je-Hui hostage, tying her up and knocking her out. When she regains consciousness following a fainting episode, Je-Hui broke the news that Yong-Sook is after her. She even threatens Je-Hui’s daughter and uses her as collateral. The thing is, she has a rule not to hurt children but it’s something that immediately sparks Kyung-Yi into action. Kyung-Yi wants to find out exactly what K is after and that comes from meticulous research conducted by the team. Specifically more information on Geon-Wook. They eventually find him in his apartment, living in squalor. Of course, the gang take him and immediately start questioning the guy over his ties to Jun-Hyeon. It turns out the security footage from the ship was completely wiped clean. There’s definitely something going on with this, and now Kyung-Yi is adamant K is involved. Eventually they let him go. Je-Hui meanwhile, keeps up pretenses and continues her campaign for Seong-Tae, talking about how amazing he is. After, Yong-Sook questions her ties to Kyung-Yi but she keeps her cool, not letting on that she’s still alive. That evening though, Kyung-Yi and the gang receive a package that just so happens to hold what they’re looking for, all gift-wrapped and ready to go! But what is it? And who is inside? All will be revealed!
The Episode Review
Inspector Koo has been a strange kettle of fish. The show has tried really hard to emulate the best parts of Killing Eve but then it gets caught up in its political side-gig, which is dominating proceedings here. The mish-mash of ideas sometimes works really well but (like this chapter) stumbles when it should be flying. Half this chapter is taken up with Kyung-Yi in the dumpster, seeing a spirit of Je-Hui hanging about before revealing that she’s actually alive. The quirky tone doesn’t quite match the atmosphere either, which feels like it should be gearing up toward the end-game now but instead appears to be meandering around without much rhyme or reason. The promise of this K VS Kyung-Yi fight seems to have petered out and instead, we’re left with this political game as Yong Sook uses K for her own diabolical means. Maybe there’s an end-game to all this but with three episodes to go, there’s an awful lot riding on this now. Still, we’ll have to wait and see what the next episode has in store for us.
