Flex X Cop 2024 K Drama Episode 9

Episode 9 of Flex X Cop starts with the I-so going through hypnosis and remembering his mother’s death. I-soo confronts his father for lying to him about his mother’s death, and in a flashback, we witness the events as they unfold surrounding his mother’s suicide.

I-soo’s father arrives home to the house where he lived with I-soo and his mother and finds I-soo unconscious on the bathroom floor while his mother is dead in the bathtub. I-soo’s secretary, Jeong-hyun, is also around, and his father has to leave before the police arrive.

I-soo is taken to the hospital and is diagnosed with aphasia, and no matter what the doctors do, he does not get better. To protect him, his father decides to use hypnosis to remove the memory that traumatised him. 

Moreover, his father says that Jeong-hun had suggested they tell I-soo the truth, but he refuses because he knows that I-soo is still immature and childish. On the other hand, I-soo blames him for his mother’s death since his father chased her out when she was pregnant to protect his position.

Myeing-chul claims that he loved I-soo’s mother, but I-soo responds that his actions are not of love. I-soo cannot enter his house afterwards, and Gang-hyun finds him crying outside his gate. She takes him to a place she normally goes to when she is distressed and asks him not to blame himself since he will never know the reason why his mother decided to commit suicide. Jeong-hyun arrives later and takes him to a hotel to sleep.

The next case is introduced cinematically in Kim Young-hwan’s shooting set. The shoot is about mysterious killings in 1926 in Eastern Hotel with the main character Han Yu-ra. Everybody leaves after the shooting except Yu-ra, who is sitting alone in the dressing room.

The following day, the crew arrives early to prepare the set when they find Yu-ra seated at the bar counter lifeless and are bewildered even more when I-soo’s friend, Young-hwan, enters the room, seemingly unaware that his shirt is covered in blood. 

Meanwhile, I-soo does not show up to work, and Gang-hyun thinks he might not show up again. The supervisor assigns Yu-ra’s murder case to team 1 with strict instructions to keep the reporters in the dark. However, Gang-hyun had made a deal with reporter Gi-seok to give him an exclusive on her next case in exchange for him not broadcasting about the death of I-soo’s mother.

I-soo neither takes calls nor responds to messages from his friend and Gnag-hyun. He tells Jeong-hyun that he is not in the mood to do anything and is not planning on reporting to work but wants to disappear somewhere. Jeong-hyun tells I-soo that his mother was his subordinate and Hansu Pharmaceuticals. She was wark, kind, and hardworking, and when she was at a crossroads, she chose to leave the company and raise I-soo well. 

Team 1 arrives at the murder scene with the forensics team, and Young-hwan is taken in for questioning as the main suspect. After investigating the scene and following the trail of blood to where Yu-ra was murdered, Gang-hyun’s theory is that Young-hwan killed her in the dressing room using the costume designer’s scissors and then carried her to the bar.

The crew are not helpful since they claim nothing about Yu-ra and her relationship with Young-hwan and that they all left the set around 10 the previous night. Later, Yu-ra’s manager arrives, and he says that he left without Yu-ra since she said someone was picking her up. When asked about Young-hwan, the manager says that Yu-ra met him privately several times.

Gang-hyun leaves to question Young-hwan while Jun-young and Kyung-jin question the staff individually. 

I-soo is still at home wallowing due to the recent realisations, and he thinks back to his mother telling him that his name means “good hands” and that he should always lend a helping hand to people in need. He finally checks his phone and learns about his friend’s arrest, so he returns to work.

Young-hwan tells him that he did drugs the night before, and that is why he slept on set. Although all the evidence, including Young-hwan’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, indicates that he is the suspect, Gang-hyun cannot figure out the motive. 

I-soo thinks they should find someone more powerful than Young-hwan to make the employees talk. They might know something but are unwilling to say it for fear of getting fired. The following day, I-soo asks Gang-hyun to accompany him to the company and is surprised to find out that he is the CEO and Young-hwan is his shadow running the company on his behalf. 

Using monetary incentives, I-soo gets the staff to open up, and they think that the culprit is Yu-ra’s co-star Namsu. Rumour on the internet is that they were dating but broke up, which led to a deep hatred towards Hansu from Yu-ra. Namsu’s fans were bashing  Yu-ra on the internet, blaming her for the breakup, and the staff witnessed their arguments several times on set. One of them also heard Yu-ra threatening to reveal something about Namsu.

On the day of Yu-ra’s murder, Namsu’s manager left with the other staff, and Namsu stayed behind in his car, saying he had somewhere to be. Gang-hyun and I-soo got Namsu’s address and visited him at home. 

Namsu is an infuriating character, and while talking to him, I-soo barely manages to hold himself back. There is another woman in his apartment, and she says that Namsu was with her on the night of the murder. Meanwhile, Ji-won updated Jun-young on the autopsy results, and there is DNA found under her nails that is not Young-hwan’s.

In addition, threads of clothes were found in her wounds, meaning that her clothes were changed after she was killed. 

The team meets back at the police station and joins Jun-young, going through the behind-the-scenes footage from the filming set, and Baek Sang-hee is seen slapping Yu-ra. I-soo asks for the details of Sang-hee’s make-up artist, and she confirms that Sang-hee hit Yu-ra that day.

Moreover, Sang-hee did not have a good relationship with Yu-ra; according to the make-up artist, she envied her. Sang-hee was a famous actress before taking a break after marriage, and she only got back into acting after her divorce and would be jealous of the younger characters playing the lead. In addition, she always got into quarrels with the directors and writers looking to get more lines.

The make-up artists also tell them a rumour about actresses who had fought on a filming set, and one of them got a scar on her face, and it is believed that Sang-hee is behind it. Jun-young takes a sample of Sang-hee’s DNA and takes it to forensics. 

At the end of the episode, I-soo and Gang-hyun get the DNA results from Jun-young as they are waiting for Sang-hee to meet them at her house, and the results are a 99.99 per cent match. Sang-hee comes down the stairs, all dressed up and asks why the detectives are at her house and have not caught the culprit. 

The Episode Review

The episode feels frustrating since the writers hooked the audience on the mystery of the death of I-soo’s mother, only for it to be forgotten as soon as he finds it out.

The psychiatrist made it seem like making I-soo remember how his mother died would be her revenge for being abandoned by the people she helped when she was arrested. However, I-soo confronts his father about it, is sad for a few days and then goes back to work, and the death seems to be forgotten.

Did his mother just commit suicide, and there was no foul play or some twist to her death? Although frustrating, in some ways, it gives a refreshing look into the narrative. Usually, we expect that some bigger conspiracy leads to her death, but in Flex X Cop, she just committed suicide.