ltspada
This review may contain spoilers
Very complex which may be a good thing or could be a bad thing depending on what you are after
7.5/10 is my rating. This is a 2021 South Korean mystery, crime, thriller television series with 20, 70 Minute, episodes.
There is a serial killer on the loose and no-one feels safe. After his mother and father are victims, Ko Moo Chi (Song Min-jae) bravely identifies the killer causing one of the most notorious killers to be sent to prison. Fast forward and now Ko Moo Chi (Lee Hee Joon) is a detective who will stop at nothing to get the bad guy. He is on a personal mission to put as many killers behind bars as possible. It seems there is a new serial killer whose crimes rival the brutality of the "head hunter" the killer who killed Chi's parents. After several chance encounters with another police officer officer, Jetong Ba-reum (Lee Seung-gi) who is known for his good deeds and many, including Chi, wonder if he has what it takes, in terms of a hardened personality, to make it as a homicide detective. Nevertheless they team up to stop this new serial killer. Oh Bong-yi (Park Ju-hyun) sees Ba-reum as stability in a life that has been far from stable. Their romantic pairing is something her grandmother wished for seeing handsome and kind Ba-reum as a perfect pairing for her granddaughter who is haunted by a traumatic past. Choi Hung-ju (Kyung Soo-jin) is an investigative journalist specializing in stories about killers. Her work has her working with Detective Chi frequently and he values her opinion. They were once romantically interested in each other but life events drove them apart. Will they catch the killer through their combined efforts before he can kill many more? Is everyone who they seem?
Spoiler alert***
What I liked about this series. It went very in depth on the psychology behind psychopathy. It showed very clearly how some psychopaths are experts at blending in with "normal" people and how those closest to them can be fooled. I liked the relationships between friends, former lovers, and even the interplay between the serial killers and the police. I thought all of the actors played their roles very well.
What I did not like about this series:
1) It was so complex that it made the story hard to follow at times. The plot twists were frequent and you had to pay careful attention to things that may have happened several episodes ago or you may miss the significance of the latest twist. It caused me to tune out several times to let the story play out a little bit and get back to normal.
2) I did not like the inconsistencies. For example the killer was a psychopath even as a child and had one of his father's mice (assumed). But if the mouse was his father's it did not make sense as he was in school when it showed him with the mouse and his father was put in jail before he was born. So, where did he get the mouse as a small child? Another inconsistency was when Bong-yi was rescued as a child by Ba-reum. He gives her a piggy back ride and they seemed to be about the same age. However, earlier in the show the Bong-yi commented on their age gap and it seemed to be significant, like maybe 10 years.
3) An event with new characters would happen in one episode and seem to conclude then several episodes later they would mention the names of the people involved in the episode. By the time I would figure out what event they were referencing, the story would have moved along.
4) I did not like that I felt I had no one to root for. I like Ba-reum early on but when he turned out to be bad, I was very disappointed. The rest had some serious character flaws, Bong-yi jumped to conclusions, Chi wanted to kill the bad guys and be judge, jury and executioner, and Chung-ju does not open up to anybody.
5) Loose ends. There were a lot of unexplained things. Such as the mouse, why did Ba-reum have a mouse. The mouse almost seemed to be controlled by Ba-reum when it attacked the snake - what was that about? We also never got the full story of what transpire to PD Choi as a young child. What happened to her brother? How did the serial killer get her to work with him? The Oz organization was mentioned frequently but when things wrapped up we never got the full story of who all belonged to Oz and why they joined. The pregnant lady who was identified as having a child with the psychopath gene at the same time that Ba-reum's mother was, what happened to her and her child? There were so many psychopaths it was hard to keep track of who was who.
6) Romance died. I know it was never fully intended to be a romance but there was a cute romance developing between Ba-reum and Bong-yi and then we found out the truth about him and that was that, as it obviously would be. But then even Detective Chi and PD Choi, they had a romance in the past and, at the end, Detective Chi indicates to another detective he still has feelings and might confess but then PD Choi and he sit down and talk about their feelings of guilt over the way things played out with the doctor. They sort of agree it sucks and they will live with that guilt then she just walks away and he drives off into the sunset in his egg truck. Felt like we had build up in both cases only to be let down in the end.
7) There was a lot of emphasis put on the psychopath gene and, while they mentioned that there was a possibility the individual may not be a psychopath but a genius instead, they never pursued that angle. It is not dissimilar to what, in reality, is known about psychopaths that there are thrill seekers who have that similar flatline emotional state but do not exhibit as murderers, they may be thrill seekers (extreme sports), highly competitive business or finance moguls, or other such adrenalizing pursuits. It was unclear if the Doctor was thought to have the psychopath gene, he was part of the experiment so you could assume he did, however it was not clear.
There is a serial killer on the loose and no-one feels safe. After his mother and father are victims, Ko Moo Chi (Song Min-jae) bravely identifies the killer causing one of the most notorious killers to be sent to prison. Fast forward and now Ko Moo Chi (Lee Hee Joon) is a detective who will stop at nothing to get the bad guy. He is on a personal mission to put as many killers behind bars as possible. It seems there is a new serial killer whose crimes rival the brutality of the "head hunter" the killer who killed Chi's parents. After several chance encounters with another police officer officer, Jetong Ba-reum (Lee Seung-gi) who is known for his good deeds and many, including Chi, wonder if he has what it takes, in terms of a hardened personality, to make it as a homicide detective. Nevertheless they team up to stop this new serial killer. Oh Bong-yi (Park Ju-hyun) sees Ba-reum as stability in a life that has been far from stable. Their romantic pairing is something her grandmother wished for seeing handsome and kind Ba-reum as a perfect pairing for her granddaughter who is haunted by a traumatic past. Choi Hung-ju (Kyung Soo-jin) is an investigative journalist specializing in stories about killers. Her work has her working with Detective Chi frequently and he values her opinion. They were once romantically interested in each other but life events drove them apart. Will they catch the killer through their combined efforts before he can kill many more? Is everyone who they seem?
Spoiler alert***
What I liked about this series. It went very in depth on the psychology behind psychopathy. It showed very clearly how some psychopaths are experts at blending in with "normal" people and how those closest to them can be fooled. I liked the relationships between friends, former lovers, and even the interplay between the serial killers and the police. I thought all of the actors played their roles very well.
What I did not like about this series:
1) It was so complex that it made the story hard to follow at times. The plot twists were frequent and you had to pay careful attention to things that may have happened several episodes ago or you may miss the significance of the latest twist. It caused me to tune out several times to let the story play out a little bit and get back to normal.
2) I did not like the inconsistencies. For example the killer was a psychopath even as a child and had one of his father's mice (assumed). But if the mouse was his father's it did not make sense as he was in school when it showed him with the mouse and his father was put in jail before he was born. So, where did he get the mouse as a small child? Another inconsistency was when Bong-yi was rescued as a child by Ba-reum. He gives her a piggy back ride and they seemed to be about the same age. However, earlier in the show the Bong-yi commented on their age gap and it seemed to be significant, like maybe 10 years.
3) An event with new characters would happen in one episode and seem to conclude then several episodes later they would mention the names of the people involved in the episode. By the time I would figure out what event they were referencing, the story would have moved along.
4) I did not like that I felt I had no one to root for. I like Ba-reum early on but when he turned out to be bad, I was very disappointed. The rest had some serious character flaws, Bong-yi jumped to conclusions, Chi wanted to kill the bad guys and be judge, jury and executioner, and Chung-ju does not open up to anybody.
5) Loose ends. There were a lot of unexplained things. Such as the mouse, why did Ba-reum have a mouse. The mouse almost seemed to be controlled by Ba-reum when it attacked the snake - what was that about? We also never got the full story of what transpire to PD Choi as a young child. What happened to her brother? How did the serial killer get her to work with him? The Oz organization was mentioned frequently but when things wrapped up we never got the full story of who all belonged to Oz and why they joined. The pregnant lady who was identified as having a child with the psychopath gene at the same time that Ba-reum's mother was, what happened to her and her child? There were so many psychopaths it was hard to keep track of who was who.
6) Romance died. I know it was never fully intended to be a romance but there was a cute romance developing between Ba-reum and Bong-yi and then we found out the truth about him and that was that, as it obviously would be. But then even Detective Chi and PD Choi, they had a romance in the past and, at the end, Detective Chi indicates to another detective he still has feelings and might confess but then PD Choi and he sit down and talk about their feelings of guilt over the way things played out with the doctor. They sort of agree it sucks and they will live with that guilt then she just walks away and he drives off into the sunset in his egg truck. Felt like we had build up in both cases only to be let down in the end.
7) There was a lot of emphasis put on the psychopath gene and, while they mentioned that there was a possibility the individual may not be a psychopath but a genius instead, they never pursued that angle. It is not dissimilar to what, in reality, is known about psychopaths that there are thrill seekers who have that similar flatline emotional state but do not exhibit as murderers, they may be thrill seekers (extreme sports), highly competitive business or finance moguls, or other such adrenalizing pursuits. It was unclear if the Doctor was thought to have the psychopath gene, he was part of the experiment so you could assume he did, however it was not clear.
Was this review helpful to you?
