Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Korean drama 'Signal": episode six recap and screenshots


 Air dates: January 22 to March 12, 2016 on tvN  Average rating: 8.8%

Main Cast:

Lee Je-Hoon as Park Hae-Young
Kim Hye-Soo as Cha Soo-Hyun
Cho Jin-Woong as Lee Jae-Han
Jung Hae-Kyun as Ahn Chi-Soo
Kim Won-Hae as Kim Gye-Chul
Jang-Hyun-Sung as Kim Bum-Joo
Lee Yoo-Joon as Jung Hun-Gi
Jung Han-Bi as Oh Yoon-Seo

 Thanks if you've continued on from the previous recap, you'll see it made sense to stop that one a bit early as many things from 1995 were cleared up. First half of the show went back and forth constantly between 1995 and 2015, we ended up thinking in the fifth episode that Lee may not have been as good of an officer as we thought but some of his deeds have been explained. Of course I really enjoy starting off with a pair(!) of Hye-Soo pics.



 Back in 1995 Oh Kyung-Tae had been wrongfully arrested in four burglaries, he was a mastermind safe cracker which is how the robberies took place. In 2015 the case was still unsolved but Park gave Lee some tips to help solve the case, one was looking for fingerprints on the mailbox at the last crime scene. Fingerprints were found and they were of Oh but in the fifth episode all signs pointed to Lee planting the evidence.
 More on that 1995 situation later but at the beginning of this episode it's a continuation of the kidnapping case which started in the previous show. After serving twenty years wrongfully in prison Oh has been released and within three days he starts his revenge. The woman he kidnapped was a thirty three year old who had survived the bridge collapse in 1995 that Oh's daughter had died in. She had been riding on a bus at the moment of the bridge collapsing and would have never been on that bus except for the fact Oh had been arrested.
 Oh had witnessed the collapse along with Lee but Oh had been handcuffed and couldn't jump down to the bus to save his daughter. Shin Yeo-Jin was the teenage girl who had survived thanks to her father who also was on the bus. However her father couldn't save Oh's daughter and he's wanted revenge on the elder Shin since that day.




 Oh has Yeo-Jin locked up in a freezer at an unknown location but for some reason has left her cellphone with her. She uses it to call home where the police have a stakeout and are able to trace where the call came from. After the collapse the Hanyoung bridge has been replaced and Oh has locked Yeo-Jin in a freezer truck next to it, right near where his daughter perished. Though Park had been taken off the case by his superior Ahn he's still been working on it and has had conversations with Cha.
 Park has already deduced why Oh wants revenge on Shin though it wasn't Shin's fault that Oh's daughter died in the accident, he had only time to save one person and naturally he saved his own daughter. Now that the location of Yeo-Jin is known Cha, Park and the entire force head to the Hanyoung bridge. Park still has his doubts about the kidnapping, why is Oh setting himself up so easily to be caught? But then he remembered a conversation he had with Oh's warden, he was a quiet prisoner who had become quite adept at electronics.
 Now Park has figured out why Oh wants to get caught and why he wants the force to find Yeo-Jin so easily. Cha is first on the scene along with the father Shin and they are able to locate the truck. The freezer door is of course locked but Cha is able to shoot the padlock off with her pistol. Watching from the bridge above is Park who has arrested Oh but he's not saying anything. Once again Park puts two and two together but it was just a tad too late. He runs down to the truck as Cha is entering it, he screams to her to flee but it falls upon deaf ears. As she turns on the light it sets off a timer and the truck explodes, killing Yeo-Jin and possibly Cha?




 Cha isn't officially dead but is barely hanging on at the hospital. There's nothing to be done so Park leaves and is back working on the cases: the Oh burglary one from 1995 and the current kidnapping case where Oh was the culprit. Last recap we thought that Lee had planted Oh's fingerprints at the final burglary scene but now it's come to light that he was innocent. The force wanted the case wrapped up quickly and had planted the fingertips plus they had a false witness who fingered Oh.
 Lee is furious at his supervisor and everyone else in his department who went along with the sham. He's on his own as his superior tells him if they're wrong he needs more than just words, he needs hard evidence. Lee's team had been at the scene of the fourth burglary and even though the area was surrounded the suspect was able to elude them. Lee can't figure out how that could happen unless there was no suspect, that's something Park has thought of too twenty years in the future.
 Park has informed Lee of the detective lying on their death bed because of Oh, now it's more imperative than ever that Lee find the right culprit so Oh can be cleared of the charges. Lee and Park have come to the same conclusion that the whole thing was a setup by Han Se-Kyu, he's the son of the fourth house that was burglarized. Park has also found out that all four houses had sons that attended the elite Taeyoung high school, could these smart teens have committed the crimes?




 All signs are pointing towards Han telling the police a lie about the burglary along with him falsely saying he saw Oh run from the scene. But Han's father is a bigwig in the DA's office and it's going to be very difficult for Lee to get any evidence to pin any charges on Han. This is really the first time that Lee and Park have worked so closely together, Park will do everything he can in 2015 but once the case files from an old case have disappeared.
 Not for long though as one morning Park's mate on the Cold Cases team Kim has slipped him the file, where he got it is a mystery. From that Park was able to find the high school connection but little else besides that. But that's just the beginning of Park's investigation, he's been able to get Oh to open up about the events in 1995 that happened prior to the fourth burglary. Oh was a deliveryman back then and had happened to deliver fish one day to Han's house just as he was coming home from school. Seems Han found out a bit about Oh's past and had set him up to be the fall guy.
 Park is making headway but him and Lee don't have a lot of time, they need to solve the case which could possibly change the future and save Cha's life. Lee has found a clue which is that the supposedly stolen goods haven't been fenced yet, he's been checking everywhere Han may have hid the goods but so far has been unsuccessful. But with Lee and Park so determined to solve the case it should happen quickly, probably in the seventh episode as the show closes with the pair still on the hunt for evidence to arrest Han. One other note, in 2015 Han now works for the DA's office so Park seems to have his work cut out for him.




 So much happened in this episode but think I did an okay job for once in keeping a recap somewhat short and not leaving any major details out. Every show has been solid but to me this was the best one so far as there's two cliffhangers going into the next episode. The rating for this show was 7.07% but by the eleventh episode it hit 10% and was able to stay over that for the remaining five shows.
 Like this pace of two shows a week, don't get burned out that way as the episodes are a bit longer than most shows as the rest of the series they're all over seventy minutes for each one. Will be back next week for two more recaps and sure I'll once again say that they were two fine watches, so far highly recommend this drama.

















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