Show. We need to talk. We are only on episode 6 and you’re already making me bargain with the drama gods for a reset. This was a doozy people. Our heroes screwed with time and they screwed with it really bad. We need that reset and we need it fast. Let’s just dive over the edge and get into it.

I’m a little pressed for time so this won’t be as step by step as last week. I’m just going to highlight the important parts and try to keep it as understandable as possible.

Our time ripples continue: The burglaries go from cold case to solved. How does this happen? I’m not 100% sure of the exact rock that started this ripple into motion. Did they really not dust for prints at the 4th victim’s house or bring the witness in to look at mug shots in the original time line? I guess maybe they didn’t because after Jae-han kicks up a ruckus, they do those things and both the eyewitness and the prints point to Oh Kyung-tae, the man who was friendly with Jae-han.

Jae-han goes to arrest Oh Kyung-tae but his daughter is there to defend her dad, saying he didn’t do it. Kyung-tae knows he has to go in so he tells his daughter to trust him and sends her off, where she unfortunately gets on the bus that ends up in that accident they showed us during the last episode.

The bridge collapses (Dang, who made that bridge? Did this really happen? Because that’s scary.) and the bus plummets to the road below. Kyung-tae is handcuffed to the car and wakes up to find his daughter bloody and in the bus below. Jae-han frantically tries to get down there to rescue her but there’s just no way.

Kyung-tae can hear the rescue workers on the police scanner say there are two girls still trapped in the bus, and they’re running out of time because there’s a gas leak. He also has to listen to the father of the other girl pressing the workers to pick a girl and save her (emphasis on his daughter, of course). The workers make that hard call they really never want to be faced with, and save the daughter of the man who was on the bus.

Leaving Kyung-tae’s daughter behind and the bus explodes just seconds after everyone else is free of the crash. Dude, her opening her eyes and looking up at her dad was SOOO heart wrenching. Gah, I wanted to jump over the edge and save her.

So now we have Oh Kyung-tae in prison for the burglaries, his daughter is dead. And, of course, Jae-han is devastated. The little girl was close enough to him to call him uncle. His next conversation with Hae-young pretty much consists of I totally messed up. These walkie talkie transmissions are from the devil and we need to stop.

This is all being relayed to us so we can understand why after serving his sentence, Oh Kyung-tae kidnapped that woman. She’s the other girl in the bus. Remember the one the worker’s rescued instead of his daughter?

Once the police establish that it was Oh Kyung-tae that kidnapped her, they set up shop to wait for his ransom call. They do get a call, but it’s not Kyung-tae, it’s the kidnap victim. She calls her parents and is able to describe that she’s in a vehicle and she’s freezing. So now they know she’s in the back of a freezer truck and because her phone’s on, they’re able to figure out the vicinity.

Hae-young has been working his own angle the whole time by talking to Jae-han and trying to figure out what Kyung-tae’s end game is. The police think it’s money, because that’s his M.O. This is when Hae-young finds out about the rescue worker’s saving the one daughter over the other and he calls Soo-hyun to tell her that the kidnapped girl in the freezer isn’t the target. The dad is.

Soo-hyun calls the parents house and finds out Dad’s missing. Hae-young says the most likely place is the bridge where that horrible accident took place. We see that Kyung-tae sent a text with a picture of the kidnapped girl and told Dad to meet him at the bridge.

While the police scramble around Kyung-tae tells the dad it’s his turn to watch his daughter die. He lets him know that he tested how cold it was and it took rats five minutes to die. How long with it take his daughter?

Soo-hyun drives to the bottom part of the bridge where there is a memorial and finds an abandoned truck with the kidnapped victim’s dad desperately trying to get inside.

Hae-young runs to the top of the bridge where now there is only Kyung-tae because the dad is down below trying to save his daughter.

While Hae-young starts to arrest Kyung-tae, he thinks back to the things he’s learned while interviewing the guard at the prison where Kyung-tae served his sentence. And it dawns on him that all still might not be as its seems and runs down to where the truck is below.

At the same time he’s running, a group of police find the kidnapped daughter in a completely different truck.

Not the truck Soo-hyun is currently opening up.

Not the one she’s freaking getting inside!!!!

Not the truck that has something rigged in the top that… expletive, expletive, expletive… EXPLODES. Yes, people. You heard that right. The truck explodes with my favorite bad ass cop, Soo-hyun, inside with absolutely NO way she could survive.

Here is where I paused and messaged Kmuse and was like… THEY KILLED HER!! I know our hero has a hook up with the past that could reverse this, but I’m still shaking. I’ve seen shows where time really won’t give you back what you want, so it has me freaked out.

Now it’s Hae-young’s turn to be absolutely devastated but he has the opposite reaction from Jae-han’s.

He realizes he has to use the heck out of the walkie talkie and to put things back the way they’re posed to be, and he has to do it NOW. I’m with Hae-young. Fix it!!!

Hae-young knows he has to be ready for the next transmission so he reviews the case files and finds that all of the sons of the residence burglarized went to school with each other.

Side note here: Detective Lee is no longer a weasel to me. Even though he has no idea why Hae-young’s still be researching the burglary case after Soo-hyun is dead, and no matter what they find, it won’t bring her back. He’s the one that gives Hae-young the file that wasn’t available before. (I have no idea where he got it.)

At the same time (ish?) Jae-han finds out that they never really found a print on the mailbox (this is part of the evidence that sent Kyung-tae to prison) but his fellow police officer was told to rush it because the higher ups wanted to the case closed. After lots of very technical research (read Jae-han talks to all the officers at the 4th burglary and draws a map of where everyone was) he determines that there wasn’t anyone to chase the night of the 4th burglary. So that “eyewitness” lied. The eyewitness had access to all the residence which were homes that would have been hard for a regular thief to enter, and he was the one that pointed out Kyung-tae. Jae-han goes to his house to question him, and of course he’s a pompous ass.

It’s sad because after Jae-han questions this punk, he gets in trouble by his boss. The one person who had to know that the night all those police went running around looking for a suspect, there really wasn’t anyone to chase. Which is probably why in the original time line the police didn’t do their job. But I’m sure you guessed it. The punk, Han Se-kyu is the son of a powerful person, Head Prosecutor. So Jae-han is told to leave him alone.

When Hae-young and Jae-han finally talk again they pass back and forth information about the burglary. It is pretty cool when you think about it, except for how many people who seemed to have died because of their little chit-chats. You know, just that.

They realize that the only way to get this guy is to get hard evidence and they’ll need a warrant for that, but they’ll need evidence to get one… see their problem? They decide that Kyung-tae is the key to taking this guy down. He was picked out of those mug shots for a reason, and they have to find that connection.

In 1995 Kyung-tae is in prison and will not see Jae-han, the man he thinks is responsible for his daughter being on that bus to begin with. In 2015 he’s back in jail and has no reason to deny a visit from Hae-young.

So they decide that Hae-young will go question him. And before they sign off, Hae-young pleads with Jae-han to solve this case. Jae-han has no way of knowing that the cop who died, Soo-hyun, is someone he cares about. Or will, because in 1995 she doesn’t seem to be at his precinct yet.

It’s pretty heated to begin with because Hae-young is still very emotional about Soo-hyun’s death. Heck, I’m still extremely emotional. He pretty much tells Kyung-tae he did all of it for nothing. Both father and daughter are alive and well, and an innocent cop is dead. A cop that might have been one person that would have listened to him about his innocence.

Because Hae-young knows he’s innocent. He asks Kyung-tae if he wants to get revenge on the person that framed him and was out there living happy while he sat in prison and was the real person who prevented him from saving his daughter. (Guys, I could post screenshots from this convo for days. Every frame both of these guys are just brimming with emotion.)

With that he gets him on to talk. Hae-young walks him through the days of each of the burglaries. And Kyung-tae finally remembers that he delivered fish to the residence where the 4th burglary took place. He’d pumped into the guy who eventually framed him, and in the process touched the mailbox. The rich boy was driving a red sports car and that’s the information Jae-han seems to focus in on since the rich boy is currently being carted around in a completely different car.

The episode ends with Hae-young watching the rich boy all grown up, still rich and surrounded by minions.

Jae-han, despondent after being told over and over to just let the case go, asks Hae-young if it’s different in 2015. If the rich and powerful have to pay for their crimes. And Hae-young replies that it is different.

At least it will be this time… They’re going to catch him.

Jae-han totally agrees.

My Thoughts:

As a viewer you come into a time travel/time bending drama knowing that fate or the universe doesn’t like it when you start messing with the past. It’s going to bite you in the ass and probably take the person you love the most. (Or turn them into your niece so you can’t marry them.) So I’m not surprised that Signal went there by killing someone. But we’re only in episode 6 and they already took Soo-hyun from us. Yes, I know. She’s the lead and she’ll be back by next week. But dang, they sure grabbed me by the heartstrings, dragging me through the rest of this episode.

Show, don’t mess with me too much. And Jae-han, I’m really counting on you. Don’t let me down.

Until our next transmission, Drama Geek, out.