Recap Korean Drama "Shadow Detective (2022)" Episode 4

Continuing the break-in from the previous episode, the hired mercenary wasn’t after Taek-rok but his neighbor, Yang Ki-tae. Taek-rok arrives at the scene in time and saves Ki-tae but gets caught up in the tussle. He races after him to catch hold of him but he escapes in a car waiting for him. Jin-han, who’d also reached the residence earlier, was trying to reach Taek-rok’s phone but the call didn’t go through. As soon as he calls out Take-rok’s name, the veteran comes running to him to follow the man dressed in black.

Jin-han thinks that they’re tailing Hyun-seok’s murderer but Taek-rok confirms that it’s actually the man responsible for the arson case. After chasing the car, they reach a narrow alley, with more goons reaching the spot to help the other men. The scuffle ends with the helmet-wearing man injured but Taek-rok is able to reach the source, the hospital director’s son An Ju-yeong, through his phone.

Receiving the signal from the hired party, An Ju-yeong prepares to leave his house and calls his father to intimate him about the same. However, Taek-rok had already asked Sung-a and Kyung-chan to station themselves outside his house, and when he makes a move the two catch him, taking him into custody under the claims of conspiring against someone’s life.

Once Ju-yeong is inside the interrogation room, Jin-han takes charge as usual and questions him as well as the higher-ups involved in clearing his name. He already knows that Section Chief Hyun-seok was involved but claims that he couldn’t have accomplished all that alone. Hinting at Chief Gwang-su present behind the glass, he asks him if some other Chief is also in the game. Before this, we also catch a glimpse of the hospital director approaching Chief Gwang-su in the dead of the night to ask for his help for his son.

Confessing that his son was the real culprit of the arson case, he bargains with him that he’d back out of the election candidacy if he helps him. Nevertheless, Chief Gwang-su gives Jin-han the green light to carry on with the investigation but it’s obvious that he has a trick card up his sleeve that he’s not revealing at the moment.

The Chief walks in on the interrogation later, stating that Jin-han’s off the case and that another precinct has taken over the arson as well as Hyun-seok’s case. When discussing the matter alone, Jin-han brazenly admits that Hyun-seok’s death was probably a planned murder and that he’s open to all possibilities, insinuating that he’s not crossed off the Chief from his list of suspects. The Chief doesn’t stay quiet either, he has his own threats to lay out against Jin-han. Meanwhile, Detective Bae is carrying out an investigation of his own in secret, looking up the past of Detective Jin-han.

Taek-rok informs Ki-tae that he found the actual culprit but couldn’t recuperate his compensation fee. Ki-tae is curious about how Taek-rok knew he’d be attacked. Answering that, the detective reveals that it had been his plan all along to lure the culprit.

Detective Bae finally voices his doubts by questioning Jin-han if he’d ever been to Geumo prior to his transfer. He thinks that Jin-han knew Hyun-seok well.

Jin-han and Taek-rok share the same thoughts about the Chief being involved somehow. Later, Taek-rok, Sung-a and Kyung-chan are back at the site of Hyun-seok’s murder looking for the small spy camera the veteran had found earlier. In the process of that, he has a deja vu looking at Kyung-chan’s agility in the woods. Taking a good look at him from various angles, he realizes that he’s the same size and height as the hooded figure. Asking him to run in the woods, he chases him down, recreating the same scene of the first night.

He then takes to questioning him as to why he joined their station and his connection with the Chief. Kyung-chan blurts out that his mother and the Chief were schoolmates so the latter pulled some strings for him. Initially, he did look up to Taek-rok but then he was suspected of having killed the Section Chief and even fabricated evidence, thus losing respect for him, especially since he never let them in on any information and compelled them to tag along without anything to grasp.

Sung-a then confirms that Kyung-chan was with her when the young victim’s body was being excavated but Taek-rok’s rising suspicions have him doubt everyone around him as he gradually loses control of the situation.

Sung-a can’t hold it back anymore either, pulling him aside she raises her doubts about why he was suddenly after old cases instead of vindicating himself. Pushing it all away, he walks away with further suspicions of Jin-han being the ‘Friend’ plaguing him, which does make him admit that everyone seems to be like him.

With Jin-han as the next target, he starts following him. Reaching out to his old acquaintance, one of the officials at Jin-han’s previous station, he asks him about the younger detective. His contact lets him in on the fact that both of them are so alike in shutting out the rest of the world. One crucial piece of information added by him is that Jin-han personally applied to Geumo Police Station instead of being transferred.

He then asks the forgery expert to trace his calls and checks up the record of his recent call history but Taek-rok’s name isn’t there. Jin-han is out fishing all thanks to Detective Han but Taek-rok doesn’t get the drift. Once they start talking, Taek-rok’s curious why he’d come by his place the other night.

Jin-han tells him about the hiker who put him in the cab and that he wanted to ask about him since he’s missing. Taek-rok finally gets it and asks if he has a photograph of him. However, Taek–rok still doesn’t let go of his doubts and asks Jin-han about his height which turns out to be the same as Kyung-chan as well as the ‘Friend’.

Jin-han starts letting him into his backstory about why he applied for Geumo. It all happened after everyone at the head office labeled him a traitor and forced him to resign. Exposing the bribes accepted by his former team leader, he moved to Geumo since he’d spent some time during his childhood there.

As the two are at it, discussing their suspicions of each other, the ‘Friend’ calls Taek-rok, and Jin-han gestures to him to put it on speaker. Looks like he doesn’t know that An Ju-yeong is a real culprit because keeps going on about the case. Hanging up the call, Taek-rok opens up to Jin-han about being blackmailed.

Shadow Detective Episode 4 Ending
The two hit the same tavern where Taek-rok shared tender moments with Hyun-seok back in the day to conjecture the identity of the ‘Friend’. Looks like the two have finally become a team. As the night deepens, Taek-rok heads back to his room and realizes that his old books have been tampered with, taking him back to the moment when Manager Gong told him that Detective Kwak had come to look through his stuff. However, it was someone else, so he goes through the security footage.

The ‘Friend’s voice claiming that he knows him well repeatedly echoes in his mind. Gathering that he must’ve gone through all his journals to understand his psyche, Taek-rok starts investigating his own room for any traces left behind by him. Calling Jin-han, he asks him to analyze the fingerprints in secret.

Both get in their respective cars, ready to drive away when Taek-rok gets a message from the ‘Friend’ – “Murderer…. Slam!”. The detetctive catches the hint and instantly gets out of his car and heads to check on Jin-han, whose car is out of his control and eventually rams him into a diversion, thus, toplling the car while Taek-rok screams in devastation from behind.

Shadow Detective Episode 4 Review
The fourth outing finally puts the two leading detectives on the same plane as they acknowledge their similarities, even though distastefully. Focussing more on the investigation bits, this episode portrays Taek-rok’s descent into madness as the reality facing him starts to blur out. We have to give it to the hooded figure, his incredulous unnamed persona has pushed all of Taek-rok’s buttons. Each day, the countdown drops a number, exacerbating the pressure on him.

Shadow Detective Episode 4
What I’ve come to admire about this show over time is that once Taek-rok is cornered by the blackmailer, his state of perplexity and helplessness is palpable to the extent that it makes you suffer along with him, wanting to pull him out of the mess. His internal monologue has been coiced out from the beginning and yet there are shades to him that we don’t know about. The viewer is ostensibly the only all-seeing entity and yet some of his traits are kept under wraps, making him an intriguing subject.

His trauma is projected as blurred visions to us, just like he deems them acceptable, pushing them further back into the pit out of his inability to deal with them. It’s almost as if we’re going through these motions with him. Most significantly, he is the detective but the premise of having turned him into a victim of the circumstances creates an astoudnign blend as it seems that he has the resources and the aptitude to get him out of this mess but he can’t really solve it alone, much like he can’t undo the impact of his traumas alone.