Recap on Brain Works Episode 2: What’s the situation?

Tons of bickering and many funny scenes, and a little teamwork, and now we can check off the first case as solved. However, just as our detective starts warming up to his neuroscientist teammate, a misunderstanding brews, and it looks like those two have a long way to go before becoming real partners.

Our chaotic duo is now on the same squad in Brain Works episode 2

Kdrama Brain Works episode 1 review

Picking up where we left off in Brain Works episode 1, Ha-ru announces the news about joining the team in a plan to get stuck to Myung-Se, the one he believes is why he got dismissed. For Myung-Se, it is the worst thing one could ever hear, and soon the two of them begin bickering as if they are little kids and are only stopped by So-jung’s arrival.

Myung-Se protests to So-Jung against Ha-ru joining the team. How could he be teammates with someone who keeps threatening him? However, when Ha-ru acts like a cute puppy and claims Myung-Se is rubbing salt in his wound by mentioning his recent dismissal, the tables turn.

So-Jung won. And who could blame her, though? Ha-ru claiming to be innocent is the cutest thing you could ever see. Protest as much as you want; Myung-Se, Ha-Ru will remain on the team.

Back at home, Myung-se’s situation is the same as when he starts complaining about Ha-ru to his daughter; she gives him the cold shoulder and starts fangirling about Ha-ru, deciding to hang his photo on the wall. Poor Myung-Se has no one to vent to now that Ha-ru both purposefully and inadvertently won everyone over.

Spilling the beans on the forged consent isn’t the only reason Ha-ru dislikes Myung-Se. Ha-ru spotted Myung-Se taking a money envelope from someone, which got Ha-ru thinking Myung-Se was yet another corrupt cop accepting bribes in return for doing favors.

He joined the team to kill two birds with one stone, get revenge on Myung-Se and reveal his corruption to the public. I know it is a fake out, but we have yet to see why Myung-Se received the money.

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Back to working on the case with the bickering mode going on

In the guitarist murder case, Ha-ru believes that the wife isn’t the culprit and asks her to come for questioning, not to interrogate her but observe her while Myung-Se and So-Jung question her. Ha-Ru notices the wife’s hand tremors and hyperventilation, which confirms his initial suspicions. 

However, to leave no room for doubts, he goes into the interrogation room and tells a story about meeting his wife at a party, which she surprisingly goes along with as if it was true. Ha-ru gets 100% sure of his suspicions. 

The wife has a brain condition that causes her to suffer from a memory disorder. In layman’s words, she makes up stories, and being an alcoholic only worsens the situation. The wife murdering her husband could be a story she made up, or the killer took advantage of her condition to cover his crime. 

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Anyway, the wife isn’t the culprit, and back to square one we go

With the wife out of the game, that leaves us with two potential suspects who are the only ones other than the wife to know about the guitarist’s Parkinson’s condition. The culprit is either the agency CEO or the late guitarist’s doctor, who fell in love with her patient during treatment.

With the CEO having a clear alibi for talking to his wife at the murder time, the probability of the doctor being the prime suspect increases. Her awkwardness and nervousness get the better, and she leaves Ha-ru and Myung-Se in the middle of the conversation.

Ha-Ru doesn’t buy her bare-faced lies about liking the guitarist only as a fan, and a video taken by the CEO of her throwing her mobile phone in the Han river only makes our trio suspect her more, and now, they have to bring her to the station.

 She neither picks up their calls nor replies to texts, so Ha-ru and Myung-Se go to her house, where she opens the door in blood-covered clothes, and the next moment she collapses on the floor. Behind her is the wife holding a knife. Did the doctor do it, or did the real culprit take advantage of both women to cover up his crime?

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Brain Works episode 2: catching the culprit

To find out the answer, Ha-ru and Myung-Se pay the CEO a visit, where Ha-ru plays a mind game with him, getting him to make all sorts of useless choices to exhaust his brain so he can’t lie through his teeth anymore. With two mobile phones in front of him, one of which is the same as the deceased guitarist’s phone, Ha-ru accuses the CEO of being the one who murdered the guitarist.

He called his wife at the murder time but used earbuds while putting his phone in the pocket and controlling the bracelet’s frequency using the other phone. He chose a spot with a CCTV camera to capture him talking on the phone and fake his alibi, but sure, that doesn’t get behind Ha-ru. 

The CEO might have gotten anxious, but not enough to come clean about his crime. Soon after Ha-ru and Myung-Se leave or, more accurately, pretend to, he digs a flowerpot for the other phone. As expected, Ha-ru and Myung-Se are there to catch him red-handed.

After a fight with Myung-Se, where our detective reveals his judo skills, the CEO is arrested. Before getting handcuffed, the CEO spots a pair of scissors, which he plans to use to hurt Myung-Se, but that won’t happen on Ha-ru’s watch, who kicks the scissors away and saves the day.

In the interrogation room, the CEO makes the same dull claims about doing that out of love for the guitarist, whom he didn’t want to lose his fame, and fans turn away from him. In an admirable scene, Myung-Se stands up to him. 

The CEO could have comforted the guitarist about always being there for him, even when his muscles start stiffening and he can’t play the guitar anymore. However, he didn’t do that because he saw the guitar as a cash cow, not a human.

Even after the guitarist’s death, the CEO kept obsessing over projects to use the so-called great end to get more money through commemoration projects.

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Another “rumor” is coming our way

The case is over, and the substation chief brags to the reporters about the neuroscientific investigations team catching the culprit. Still, he is soon outshined by Ha-ru, around whom the reporters gather when they spot him. Ha-ru claims to regret going too far as to forge a document for his research and promises to help the police in the meantime until he gets his old job back.

Myung-Se watches as Ha-ru talks to the reporters, but instead of getting mad and accusing Ha-ru is lying, Myung-Se lets it slide, as he starts viewing Ha-ru in a softer light after the scissors incident. The same can’t be said about Ha-ru, who spots Myung-Se getting another money envelope, but this time he photographs Myung-Se and tips a reporter off the so-called corrupt cop.

The article is out, but rather than Myung-Se getting shocked, it is Ha-Ru, who gets taken aback, and we have to wait until next week to find out what happened. On a side note, we get a few snippets of why Ha-ru is obsessive with studying psychopaths’ brains and the whole reason behind the psychopath rebuilding project.

 Ha-ru wants to develop a sort of cure to change how the psychopaths’ brains work and stop them from committing crimes. We also glimpse a death row inmate calling Ha-ru his son, but we have yet to learn the whole story.

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My thoughts on Brain Works episode 2

All in all, the drama looks promising. I was worried. First, we were getting a heavy-toned drama about crimes related to the brain, but the show did a good job exploring the topic in a funny and light-hearted tone, making me enjoy the ride.

The drama’s selling point is the continuous bickering between our two leads and how both men who want nothing to do with each other will eventually work together as partners. Looking forward to seeing the transition, but the slow-burn approach will do the trick better.

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