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Shorthand: A work in progress
Han Jung-oh – JO | Yeom Sang-su – SS | Oh Yang-chon – YC | Ahn Jang-mi – JM | Ki Han-sol – HS | Eun Kyung-mo KM | Lee Sam-bo – SB | Kim Nam-il – NI
How To Watch (Later): Not sure, I don’t see it on Viki, Kocowa, Dramafever, or On Demand Korea yet…perhaps Netflix?
Airing Time: March 11th, 21:00 Seoul
Countdown: EDITING & UPDATING
LIVE RECAP FOR TVN’s DRAMA, LIVE: EPISODE 2
OPENING
The new recruits are in the van and repeating the chant that they will do nothing today, they won’t react if they are pushed and all those things. They get to the cult and start their formation. Montage of their life as police doing nothing while getting beaten and hit by civilians. At the same time, Sang-su voices over a letter to his brother.
VO – Hyung, it is summer in Australia right now, right? Enjoy your summer, here it is so cold. I went out to suppress the demonstration. What is suppression…police get hit, your asking me why we get hit? That is right, if the police do something then we can get into big trouble. If they hit us or step on us, we don’t do anything. It is so cold, my legs and feet and brain are frozen. Even if my friend is hit and falls and is beaten, I don’t do anything, because that is what I am supposed to do.
All the while we continue to see a montage of the cadets staying information while people hit them and pull them and beat them.
TITLE: DON’T DO ANYTHING
The head policemen all have a meeting about the video of the nice police officer pushing a drunk man into the sidewalk. Some of the cops want to put it under the rug and other cops want to address it. They know who this drunk guy is, he has a lot of connections. JM doesn’t want this cop to get into trouble so she is asking all these other cops what to do about it. KM argues that they shouldn’t do an inspection. HS is for the inspection. They all leave.
Only JM and HS are left so she starts talking about menopause and how she wants to divorce her husband. HS gets up in a huff and tells her not to talk about personal things at work.
Then we cut to the locker room where the nice cop is changing. His dream is to just go to his hometown and live with his mother and have kids. He is so happy to see his mother on his break. MH is listening to him, but then when the nice guy leaves, MH sends him a text of the video. Then MH goes out and tells the nice policeman that he should confess and get the inspection by himself, otherwise he will report it.
CSI
YC and another cop are looking at photos and other information while they eat on the street. They have to investigate a case, but YC is interested in a different case. His colleague is yelling at him about this, even if they reinvestigate the case, the family members of the victim still won’t be happy. So it seems like YC has an unsolved case that he wants to investigate but their bosses want them to investigate a gangster case or something else.
YC drives off in a huff and his colleague chases after him while yelling at the car. YC stops the car and tells his colleague that he will solve his unsolved case, he will do it even if he retires. He is going to catch the criminal and he is going to report the boss and him to the media since they don’t want to investigate it. So they are all screwed if they don’t help him. If he wants to get promoted then he has to go there and help. He keeps driving off.
Another police officer is on a stakeout. YC calls him and the sunbae policeman says he needs to solve this case. He is eating in his car in the city as he talks to YC. So these two are the only two who will try and solve this unsolved case.
JM’S HOUSE
JM cooks dinner at home, but she only makes it for herself. Her home is in disarray as if she doesn’t have any time to clean it and she even takes the frying pan over to the table to eat from it instead of getting a plate. Her teenage daughter tries to eat some of her food but JM just tells her to make her own food. Her daughter asks her about her grandparents (?) and then she leaves. The son comes in after that and asks for some noodles, but the mother says he should make it, she is menopausal. She leaves and talks to her husband on the phone as she walks out.
They talk about their parents, it looks like they should visit them? I am not sure about this part. YC doesn’t want to do it because he is on a case. JM hangs up and calls him an A-hole before driving off.
Meanwhile, YC is working on the case with his sunbae. They find out that the criminal fixed his teeth, so the teeth marks don’t match. YC is so happy about this and starts to do a silent floor dance, but his sunbae said it’s not something to be too happy about. Then we cut to the grandparents at the hospital. The grandmother is in critical condition and the grandfather is taking care of her at the hospital. JM and the grandfather go to eat something and she tells him, “Aboji, I am going to divorce your son.” It looks like they are very close because she uses banmal to him as if he is her real father. She tells him that she will divorce his son and he won’t be able to talk her out of it this time. Aboji gets up to leave and JM tells him that she can give him a ride, but he just says he will leave. She yells that she will have his sons things delivered to his home, okay!
MOTEL
Cut to a motel where someone is angry that the volume is too high in the policeman’s room. He asks him to lower the volume and then goes back to his room. But something is strange, maybe this man feels like something isn’t right? He goes to the window and looks outside, but then he closes the window. That’s when YC hops on him right away and starts beating him up. He throws him around a bit which is when the sunbae comes in and starts reading the man his rights. But then the criminal gets free and puts YC in a choke hold. The sunbae pulls his gun and points it at the two of them, but he is nervous.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Another police officer comes from outside the window and puts a gun to the assailant’s head. He is busted! This is the cop that YC left on the street. In the distance, we hear the sirens of the backup cars. YC looks outside and tells the cops that showed up that they will all be promoted. Sunbae comes up to the window too and yells, Whoooo!
Then we cut to the policeman talking. The victim was angry that they caught the criminal because his loved ones are dead anyway. But the police officer is still happy because the people got justice and this man is behind bars.
CADETS
It is the end of a long day, the cadets have on their armor and are all sitting on the bus. One of the woman cadets says she has some bladder ulcer today and tries to get comfortable. Then a man comes in with a box of bread that gets passed around. They all eat the bread and then they hear that they will have to wake up at 3 am tomorrow morning in their uniform clothing, not their protective clothing everyone grumbles and they start to sing a police anthem song.
Meanwhile, YC goes to the convenience store and is about to buy coffee but decides to buy some beer instead. He buys several drinks and gets into his car with his sunbae. He gives the halbae sunbae the coffee and he starts to drink the beer, but his sunbae says he shouldn’t drink on the job. YC tells him they are done working for the day, but the halbae sunbae should drink the coffee (he’s driving).
Cut back to the cadets in the bus. They are still singing cadet songs. The old man and YC are also singing cadet songs. But then YC sees something going on at the beach. A drunk man is calling a woman’s name and walking into the water. They wonder what is going on, they should call the police. The sunbae doesn’t want to get involved but YC just tells him it sounds like he wants the guy to die. YC hops out and runs to this man, but the ajusshi is under the water now. The sunbae calls the police and yells at his sunbae to not get into the water, but YC has swam too far into the water by now.
The sunbae runs and tells YC that it is too dangerous to go further into the ocean, he should come out! But then YC goes under and doesn’t come up. The sunbae yells for him.
Then we see that YC rescued the man, he pulls him out of the water and starts doing mouth to mouth and CPR. But the sunbae is missing. The ambulance runs out to the water while YC is doing CPR, but he kind of wonders why they are doing that. Then he sees that his sunbae is not in the car anymore. He sees the ambulance people pulling him out of the water. But YC can’t stop giving this man CPR, so he just watches the ambulance people trying to resuscitate his sunbae, but they shake their heads.
YC is able to save the man who went into the water, he coughs up the water and YC goes directly to his sunbae and starts to give him CPR, but it looks like he is long gone. YC says his sunbae’s name…Woo Chung-i hyungnim!… as he continues to give his sunbae CPR.
Then we see the noona running to the hospital. YC’s Halbae is there and we see both of JM’s parents wheeled out at the same time. So YC’s mentor dies on the beach and his wife’s parents die at the same time in the hospital. Only YC’s father is there with her. JM watches her parents wheeled away and we cut to the cadets.
CADETS
This is the scene from the first episode where the cadets are eating their food outside amidst the snow. (Wow, I didn’t think we would see this scene again so quickly). No one is talking, everyone is just eating. Then we cut to them running in line formation at a school. They wonder why they are at a school. After that, we cut to a school protest. Students are occupying the president’s office so the police run into the building in line formation and stand to confront the students. The students are singing a song and peacefully standing there (Maybe this is like what happened at Ehwa Girls University). The police have to move the students from the building, they have to separate them.
The police are all like…what? They have to push these students out but they should never touch the other people? Some of the cadets start to move the students out, but SS and JO aren’t doing it, they are just watching. It is so different from what they were told to do for the last several days/weeks. But finally, it is SS and JO’s turn to pull some kids out so they reluctantly go grab some kids and try to pull them out. Jo grabs one and gets cut. SS tries to grab one of the kids, but they are fighting back and making it difficult.
At the same time, YC has the funeral for their fallen sunbae. YC is the acting family member since the sunbae only has young children. His daughter shows up to the funeral dressed in all black and tells him that Umma wants him to come to her parents funeral; so he gets up and walks a few meters to the next funeral and greets the guests who came. Then JM and YC sit and start to talk about this person who came in. Who is he? JM fills him in while looking at the photo of her mother and father. JM says little things about not knowing cousins and things so JM tells him to just leave to his sunbae’s funeral.
YC tells her that his sunbae died because of him and he shouldn’t have done anything that night. Then someone calls YC out and we see that YC’s appa arrives to pay his respects.
The friend shows YC the news which shows that an old policeman died trying to rescue a drunk policeman. The police heads have to give an apology statement about that.
So the media didn’t even report that they caught that criminal or saved a suicidal person, and only reported this fall news case. Perhaps there is some corruption in the higherups. The friend asks him if he was drinking that night.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
YC storms out of the funeral and punches the head cop in the face, he says he will kill him. All the cops have to hold him back. He yells that he didn’t kill him, why can’t he say that they rescued a suicidal person and solved a mystery case. Why did you do that! Why did you do that!
At the same time, JO’s mother is so angry that her daughter worked so hard for 3 years but only makes like $1500 a month. Jo hangs up. That is when SS walks up next to her and gives her a green popsicle. He wants to know if she knows him and she says everyone knows him since he is the tallest. SS tells her that everyone has a bet on her, she only has 3 points before she is kicked out. They shoot the breeze about that a bit and talk about their freedom after 8 months. He mentions that she got injured but she says she doesn’t want to talk about what happened today. She feels bad about it, why did they have to drag those students out? But she won’t quit the police because nothing will change.
SS also had a hand injury but he says the student was injured as well. Then he says he will be a policeman 2 days later! All their sunbaes’ bought drinks and fire sparkles for all the cadets so it is party time! The music kicks in and SS starts to do a sexy style dance where he moves his hips and then starts hopping up and down. A lot of other cadets run to them and they start to hop up and dance and shout. They are police now! They also have sparkles/firecrackers and swing them around as they dance to the music and celebrate.
MORNING
The next day we see SS, YC, and HR walking into their police station with the constable Kim Han-pyo. He gives them 10 minutes to change. We find out that our new cadets are in a training stage for one year, but we also see that SS doesn’t like HP speaking banmal to him since they are the same age.
While in the locker room, the guys talk about locker room things like things they did last night and almost getting killed because they stayed out late and why is SS so tall? They ask SS who his mentor is and how tall he is. He says he is 6’2 (?). All the other guys are short. But then one of the police punches a locker and says that policeman is a betrayer. That sunbae comes in, it is MH, the guy who sent his colleague to inspection.
In the girls’ locker room, JO and SS talk with their mentor about everything that is going on. She tells them that they are in charge of cleaning.
A homeless woman comes to the police station to sleep and they just let her sleep there. Then we see the new recruits trying to handle their batons. Their batons are horrible though. The man says he bought his stuff at an online shopping mall, that is why it is smooth. They go into the lunch area and start to talk about all their rules. Never bother their cook ajumma, that is the #1 rule. Everything must be kept in place in the kitchen. The cadets start to take photos of everything in the kitchen to make sure it is all in the proper place.
Then we see the cadets out with their mentors as they start to get the lay of the land. They are still trainees though so they have pressure to do their job well. HR goes out with two sunbaes and stumbles upon a drunk woman. HR stops the car hard and gets in trouble for it. The women get out and ask if this woman is okay, but they shouldn’t touch her or they might get into a lot of trouble.
It seems like most of the police’s job today is in handling drunk people because we see drunk people all over the station. There is throw up everywhere in the station as well. JO tries to clean it up and looks for something, but the cop tells her to just use her hands (gross!). Then we see her patting a man on the back as he throws up. But the drunk guy pushes her and she falls. One of the mentors, NI comes in and tells her that there is no excuse for women, she needs to do the job. He starts to pat the man on the back and lifts him up. JO is left to clean the toilet, but all the throw up splatters back on her.
(It looks like JO is getting all that she wants as she is treated the exact same as the men cops. She has to take care of the drunken men and clean all the throw-up and all those things. They aren’t telling her that she doesn’t have to do it because she is a woman.)
One of their superiors says they are lucky to just take care of drunken people, when he was younger they had a lot of stabbing incidents, drunk people are much better than that. But JO thinks that she didn’t become a police officer to do this kind of work.
JM’S HOME
JM is ironing the clothing quietly, her son tells her he will go to school now and leaves. YC goes to their daughter’s room and tells her to wake up, but she is all cuddled under the covers and doesn’t want to get up at all. He goes to the kitchen and tells YC that he is calling the dead police officers wife because she really thinks he was drunk and jumped into the water.
But JM isn’t talking to him. YC keeps talking but JM just tells him that they should divorce. He is stunned as he eats the rice off his spatula while looking at her.
POLICE DEPARTMENT
All the police are eating in the kitchen and HS tells them all that YC is going to their department. They all grumble because KM has a big grudge against YC so they will probably kill each other. The younger cadets talk about a place to stay and then the conversation changes to what the cadets want to do. SS says he wants to solve a big violent crime, but then everyone gets quiet. No one says anything. SS says all he has done for a week is find a lost dog and take care of drunken people. But everyone is still silent.
But then they immediately get a notice of a violent sexual crime and everyone rolls their necks. One of the cops yells at SS, they never talk about those things because it always happens! HS yells at them, I AM GOING TO KILL WHOEVER IS NOT IN THE CAR THE FASTEST.
They all run out like a comedy and gets stuck in the door as they try to get to the car.
Fade Out
COMMENTS
I didn’t update as much as I thought I would, I was just so caught up in the storyline and cinematography and quietness. This story is so melodic. There are so many places I could update, but it would be right in the middle of a scene that I was so into even though a lot isn’t going on.
I wonder of JM has breastcancer or has something else.
And honestly I dont nlame her for wanting to divorce YC he seems to be a good detective but laking the husband department.
Yes, it looks like no one likes it when he is at home.
Does anyone know what song is being played at 38:34 when they’re trying to get the students out of the way?
I’ll look into it for you Akat. Visit our music page to see if it is there, we don’t have a song at 38:34 of episode 2 yet, but it might have played at another time in the drama.
Thanks V, I’ll see if it comes up again in another episode. I’ll keep my eyes posted on the Music section if it ever comes up.
Here is a link to it: https://www.bah-doo.com/complete-live-korean-drama-music-list/
I actually don’t have access to Live videos since no one is covering it (One Demand Korea, Viki, Dramafever, ect.). I think Netflix might have it? So it might take me a while to find a safe link to watch episode 2. Do you have one by chance?
In ep 2, there’s a song that I can’t seem to find the name of. It’s when all of the cadets are at the college around 39 minutes in the episode. It has the phrase we’re better together. Can you help me find the song?