Bad and Crazy (2021)

Bad and Crazy: Episode 1

A status-chasing police officer is hounded by a mysterious figure that seems to revel in tormenting him. He's on the brink of big-time success, but getting the promotion he's been longing for may mean turning a blind eye to the suffering of people around him.

EPISODE 1 RECAP

A man sinks into the ocean while a whale swims above his lifeless form. But in his mind, he's in the middle of a bloody boxing match, in which he takes hit after hit, and his underwater self reacts to each blow. As his opponent grins and goes in for the knockout, the man opens his eyes underwater – and then comes up gasping in a bathtub. He heaves a sigh of both relief and annoyance, and vows never to drink so much again.

This is police officer RYU SOO-YEOL (Lee Dong-wook). After getting cleaned up, he heads out to the parking garage, where to his horror he finds his car all banged up in a clear act of vandalism. He tears into the security officers for letting this happen. But when they review the security camera footage, they see that the person who attacked his car was Soo-yeol himself. He stares at the video in disbelief.

When Soo-yeol finally arrives at the police station where he works, he's met by his junior colleague (and ex-girlfriend), LEE HEE-GYEOM (Han Ji-eun). She's upset that he's about to interrogate her superior, and though he tries to walk away from their quickly escalating argument, she throws him to the ground.

Picking himself up and trying to play off the embarrassment, he makes his way inside and, along with his partner, YANG JAE-SUN (Cha Shi-won), heads straight to the interrogation room. Soo-yeol greets the suspect, officer KIM GYE-SHIK (Lee Hwa-ryong), with a proffered handshake, saying, "It's an honor to meet you." But Gye-shik responds glumly, "This isn't exactly an honorable occasion, is it?" Soo-yeol can't argue with that, but he still tries to keep things upbeat and casual.

The investigation concerns the death of Gye-shik's partner, Tak Min-soo. According to Gye-shik, Min-soo had gone to meet someone on the fifth floor of an abandoned building, and asked Gye-shik to wait for him below. Suddenly, Min-soo screamed and fell to his death, landing just a few feet away from where Gye-shik was standing. Spotting a man looking over the edge, Gye-shik raced up to the fifth floor to catch him. He succeeded, but the man stabbed him with a shard of glass and tried to run away. Gye-shik shot him in the thigh, accidentally causing him to also plummet to his death.

Soo-yeol listens to the story, then starts poking holes in it. He points out that Min-soo and his alleged murderer were known to be on good terms, since the other man was a two-time drug dealer whom Min-soo had helped rehabilitate. Then Soo-yeol switches gears. He asks what Jae-sun would do if someone were to murder him, prompting him to say he'd go crazy and destroy them.

Gye-shik insists he only shot to wound, not kill. But Soo-yeol reminds him they were on the fifth floor with no guardrail – of course the impact of the bullet would send him toppling over the edge.

He keeps provoking Gye-shik until Gye-shik shouts, "Was I supposed to let him get away? He killed Min-soo!" Soo-yeol shouts right back in face... and then flips a switch and calmly notes that Gye-shik lost his temper just from talking about the incident, so he must have been even more furious in the moment. He goes on to say they found no evidence that the man Gye-shik shot actually killed Min-soo. And, notably, there were three people present that night: Min-soo, the other man, and Gye-shik.

While Gye-shik seethes, we move to the other side of the one-way mirror, where Commissioner KIM SUNG-HO (Han Ki-joong) chuckles to another officer that Soo-yeol could stand to go a little easier on Gye-shik – but that Gye-shik deserves this.

Later, the other officer, Soo-yeol's superior KWAK BONG-PIL (Sung Ji-roo) pours Soo-yeol a congratulatory drink. He reveals that Gye-shik had gotten the commissioner's nephew jailed for drug use – the very same nephew Soo-yeol was drinking with last night, and not by accident. Bong-pil assures Soo-yeol that if he gets Gye-shik suspended, he's sure to land a big promotion. Soo-yeol claims he's in this for justice, not promotions, but they both know that's not true.