Heartless City: Episodes 9-10

My feelings are torn about these episodes. On the one hand, there was a lot more action, and that’s always good in my book, but on the other hand, the narrative seemed to go down, especially with the gigantic twist at the end.

I was happy with episode nine because it finally felt like the story was moving again but it was more of the same with the cat and mouse game between Safari and Shi-hyun. I wouldn’t be mad if it had actually been interesting, but it was the same tug-of-war with Jin-sook in the middle that we’ve been having.

I’m a sucker for bromance and I like Soo, so I was glad we finally got to learn a bit more about him and his relationship with Shi-hyun. Soo’s been with Shi-hyun from the beginning, so it’s no wonder that he’s willing to make sacrifices for him.

I have to laugh at all these guys trying to protect Jin-sook, mostly because she’s proven that she can take care of herself.  Commissioner Min doesn’t seem like a bad guy, in fact, he seems really naive because he only sees people as good and evil, but I think that narrow-minded point of view is why I don’t trust him. As Hyung-min’s dad says, people aren’t clear-cut and the fact that Min only sees people in two ways clouds his judgement, just like it does with Hyung-min. He has a moral conscience, at least, as he proved when he was conflicted over if he should save Shi-hyun or not,  but his conversation with Jin-sook makes me think he’ll sell out someone if it means he can catch the “bad guy,” or at least that’s how it was in the past. Perhaps he doesn’t want to make the same mistake with Shi-hyun, seeing as how desperately he wants to take her out of this world.

Just because I really like Reporter Cha and felt bad for her, though she screwed up in episode ten.

Hyung-min actually didn’t bug me in these episodes. Maybe because he wasn’t so shouty and most of his screen time was with Reporter Cha or in flashbacks. Seeing how Hyung-min was in the past, it’s easy to see why Soo-min fell for him; that was probably the most I had seen him smile since this show started. I do feel bad for Soo-min, since she’s obviously tried to put distance between them because she knows she shouldn’t like him, but she can’t help but like him anyway.

Soo-min’s always been the thorn in Hyung-min’s side who was giving his girlfriend a hard time, so it’s easy to see why he wasn’t exactly emotionally supportive when she went undercover. That doesn’t justify his behavior, but considering how Soo-min always acted like a brat, he probably just thought she was overreacting to her situation. He finally seemed to realize how rough this is for her and was more dependable in these episodes, teaching Soo-min how to pick locks and attempting to make her favorite food. I’m not shipping them, I swear;  it’s just nice to see Hyung-min not barking at people and running around like a psycho for once.

I really like the unni-dongsaeng relationship between Jin-sook and Soo-min. Undeniably Jin-sook trusts Soo-min, but it looks like the line’s blurring for Soo-min as well. Even if it’s her job, I think Soo-min has really become close with Jin-sook. She’s lonely obviously, and Jin-sook is one of the few people she can talk to about her frustrations and who treats her well. It makes me wonder if she’ll be able to sacrifice Jin-sook so easily when the time comes.

I’m…not feeling Shi-hyun and Soo-min’s romance. I don’t know why, because I can see why they connect (he’s the soft-hearted gangster/cop and she’s the lonely, but bubbly hostess/cop), but I’m just not invested. I’m not even bothered by the fact that their relationship seems to be moving fast. We’re already at the halfway point, so it would be weird if there wasn’t skinship or feelings by this point.

Half of me wants to yell at Shi-hyun that he really doesn’t need to add another person to his list of people he needs to protect, especially since it keeps putting him in danger.  I think he knows that as well and that’s why he left the money for Soo-min after sleeping with her. Like Scale said, the deeper you dig into this world, more people around you get hurt, and Shi-hyun, after losing Kyung-mi, can’t handle that at this point. Unfortunately, feelings overrule logic for him most of the time so he ends up in a bind again in episode ten.

How many times is Meth Kim going to be arrested?

 

I know I wasn’t the only person laughing at Safari and Shi-hyun playing hide-and-seek in the library.

Soooooo, Safari’s actually a cop. WHAT IN THE WHAT? Seriously?  Seriously? I didn’t think they would kill Safari off and was wondering how they were going to keep him around, but that’s not how I thought they’d do it. Geez, I’m glad this show wasn’t called Undercover, since more and more cops keep popping up. My thing about this is, we’ve seen that Shi-hyun has some sort of moral code, despite the fact that he’s been undercover so long; he doesn’t kill innocents or cops. But Safari doesn’t; he kills people when he think he needs to, no matter who they are. He took out fellow officer Kang even though he didn’t have to since the higher-ups wanted him alive. I thought he was nervous about killing Kang before because Busan was mad about it, but now I’m wondering if it was because Kang knew he was undercover. I don’t think any signs point to it, and he could have possibly been morally conflicted over the fact that he killed another officer, but hey, there were no signs pointing to the fact that Safari was a cop, so at this point, anything’s possible.

The fact that he killed Kang and is willing to kill others without a second thought makes me wonder if he’s really a police officer or if he’s just abandoned any type of code because he’s been undercover so long and is willing to do anything to get what he wants, whatever that is, from Busan. This also kind of screws over that whole revenge plan Shi-hyun had going (though that seemed more of Min’s goal than Shi-hyun’s), so I wonder how it will affect him going forward, since he’s in too deep now to turn back.