Recap Korean Drama "The Uncanny Counter" Season 1 Episode 3

With a new spirit on the loose, episode 3 of The Uncanny Counter begins with the team briefing Mun on what to expect and reminding him to follow Ha-Na given she’s the one with the highest powers. As they reach the target area, the team go over the clues they have, including a description of the stonemason and the teenage girl.

This brings them to Sinwang Stonemasonry with saws buzzing loudly disguising the cries of those inside. Outside though, Mun discovers a strange glowing essence emanating from the ground and marvels at its wonder; glimmers of the territory bleed through.

Not long after, Mun hears sizzling from a barbecue nearby and follows the noise inside. As he does, the schoolgirl does her best to escape from her captor. She scrambles away, just as Mun shows and blindsides the murderer. As he reaches out and touches the man, Mun suddenly sees flashes off the past including how this man is responsible for many missing people, including those on the Missing Person poster handed out by the woman beforehand.

This momentarily lapse of concentration gives the man an opportunity to escape, prompting Mun to head out to try and track him down. Standing atop a tall tower, he spies the man from afar taking off with this schoolgirl. Mun pleads with Mo-Tak to hurry and eventually the group begin fighting.

The strange glowing we saw suddenly starts duplicating, signifying the beginning of the territory encapsulating them. Mun takes advantage of this and uses hiss strength to knock the man down, pummeling him relentlessly until Mo-Tak intervenes and tells him off for almost killing the guy.

Together, Mae-Ok tells Mun that he needs to summon the evil spirit. With the team’s guidance, he does just this and manages to transport it to Wigen, who enforces the Yung power. Mun is there too and as this man tries to grab Mun, he’s thrust into an eternal prison courtesy of Wigen’s powers.

After he meets a messy end, the hiking couple who were brutally murdered at his hands show up before Wigen. She introduces herself and tells them she’s their guide to thee Afterlife. As they stand together, the pair thank Mun for his help and ask him for a favour just before they go. A favour we find out right at the end of this episode.

Back at the stonemasonry, Mun apologizes for his emotional outburst as the police and paramedics are called to the scene. When they show up, thee team hide out and watch from afar as they work. Mun mentions how his parents were officers too and So-Gwon was his father’s name. This rings a bell for Mo-Tak but he can’t quite put a finger on exactly where he’s heard that name from.

On the way back, Mun contemplates whether to tell the lady handing out flyers the truth about those she’s looking for. As the team go back and forth over this, we then cut back and see more of Mo-Tak’s past.

Specifically, 7 years ago as we see him awaken from a coma but with amnesia. He awoke from this after 7 months and thee doctors marvel at his amazing recovery. As Mo-Tak gets dressed, he happens to have a business card stashed in his pocket – that addressed to So Gwon. Now it starts to make sense how they knew each other but while the puzzle pieces are there, they’re not quite aligned in a way that makes perfect sense just yet.

In the car, Mun happens to be fast asleep but as he rests his head on Ha-Na’s shoulder, she takes the opportunity to cheekily touch his hand and check out his past. As she sees the car crash first hand, she quickly takes her hand back and gasps.

Meanwhile, Hyeok-U and the other boys are berated by their superiors as they discuss the beatings they took. As he lines them up, Joon-Gyu asks whether he wants them to sort out Mun and “the girl”.

At school the next day, the bullies are every bit as insufferable as before but this time Mun has the upp-erhand and sticks up for a fellow student, grabbing their rucksacks and launching it across the street a crazy distance. On the back of this, Ung-Min and Ju-Yeon take Mun up to the roof and question him over his changed persona.

Mun eventually admits that he can walk now and shows his friends first-hand. A teary hug then follows as they realize they can now do sports and other things they were never able to do before.

Not long after, Mun comes face to face with the strongest people in Hyeok-U’s crew. Given how intimidated Hyeok-U is by these men, they’re all shocked when they see Mun single-handedly take them all out. Joon-Gyu and the others chuckle to themselves in frustration before eventually deciding to follow through with their original plan of blindsiding him and Ha-Na some time in the near future.

With Mun now a hero overnight (meddling in human affairs, anyone?), he heads out with his friends after class and begins learning how to ride a bike. Only when a truck passes on the road, he has flashes to the past.

At the noodle bar, Ha-Na feeds back what she managed to see from Mun’s past. She remembers the mayoral election – which happens to be the same date Mo-Tak went in his coma. Of course, he was the man atop the rooftop so whatever led up to that point is still unknown. Anyway, they’re interrupted by Jang-Mul who returns to the bar with the intent of meeting Mun first-hand.

Well, he doesn’t have to wait long as Mun shows up. Jang-Mul hands over his “Counter Card”, which is essentially a makeshift credit card and even a device for shutting off and disrupting CCTV cameras. It turns out the card he’s been given has absolutely no limit and as Jang-Mul himself puts it, he’s the team’s “sugar-daddy.”

Jang-Mul drives Mo-Tak to the police station. He wants to know exactly who tried to kill him and in doing so, exact his revenge on those who wronged him. At the front desk, he signs some documents and sees several irregularities regarding his case.

Mo-Tak apparently attempted to “commit suicide” when he fell from the roof and worse, the report states that he drove under the influence before he did this. This investigation was conducted by one, Kim Jeong-Yeong.

Predictably, Mo-Tak phones through to speak to the detective in charge but in doing so, recognizes a man, Chang-Gyu, from the past who happened to be on the rooftop the night Mo-Tak “jumped”. When Kim shows up too, she berates Chang-Gyu but he simply rips up the wanted poster given he’s just recently been taken off the list.

Mo-Tak inevitably brings this up with Kim, whom he speaks to outside and berates for her sloppy investigation. For now though Kim simply walks away. Mo-Tak instead turns his attention to the hospital and asks a woman there to phone So-Gwon. The phone rings but when no one picks up, he instead collapses to the ground as a strange ghostly apparition appears and knocks him down to the ground.

Meanwhile, Mun and Ha-Na arrive to meet Hui-Yeong, the woman handing out flyers from before. Ha-Na reaches out and with a telepathic connection to Mun too and the pair manage to connect them both so they can speak from the afterlife and say goodbye one more time.

Unfortunately Hyeok-U and the other bullies decide against going after Mun and instead track down Ung-Min and Ju-Yeon, beating them both down with weapons and goading him to show up before he kills them both. Telling him to go to the derelict factory, Mun looks set to explode with rage.

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The Episode Review

With Mun’s troubles looking set to get worse in the future, the mystery surrounding Mo-Tak is the glue that seems to be holding everything together. We know fragments of what happened in the past but piecing together the events of that fateful night that Mo-Tak was cornered will be an intriguing piece to this puzzle.

With little of Mae-Ok this week, the decision to split the team up during the second half is a good one and really helped to break up the action. Speaking of which, the action during the first half of this episode worked really well as the team start to coordinate their efforts and work with Mun on these spirit cases.