Showtime Begins!: Episodes 2-4

by mistyisles

Turns out, the skills (and ghostly assistance) needed to perform mind-blowing magic tricks aren’t all that different from those needed to solve murder mysteries. But our magician isn’t the only one with a few tricks up his sleeve, and he can only run from his higher calling for so long.

EPISODES 2-4 WEECAP

As we start to settle into the meat of our story, we learn what drives our two leads. For Cha-woong, it’s a deserted island he plans to build a home on and live all alone – no humans or ghosts allowed.

Seul-hae, on the other hand, is desperate to catch her father’s killer… who’s the very same serial killer (known as the Full Moon Killer) that Cha-woong’s grandfather tried and failed to catch. Seul-hae’s father had been the detective in charge of the case, and was killed in the scuffle that accompanied the shaman’s interference.

Seul-hae’s sure the killer isn’t dead, though, and will stop at nothing to find him, to the point her colleagues are all used to her dropping everything and running to investigate whenever news of a possible clue comes in.

But, backing up to where we left off, the only way for Cha-woong to convince Seul-hae he wasn’t the hit-and-run driver who killed her neighbor is to explain about the ghosts. And the only way to convince her about the ghosts is to show her they’re real by tracking down the neighbor’s ghost and having him tell Cha-woong information only he and his wife could know.

In the end, the two agree to work together to catch the real culprit, but Hee-soo is hot on their heels, following the lead of Cha-woong’s broken headlights. Just as Cha-woong and Seul-hae hone in on the culprit’s location, Hee-soo catches up.

He attempts to arrest Cha-woong, and knowing that the culprit is about to flee the country, Seul-hae has no time to explain. She tricks Hee-soo into getting out of his car, and takes off in it with Cha-woong. Needless to say, Hee-soo isn’t a fan of Cha-woong from that moment on.

Seul-hae and Cha-woong find the culprit just as he’s destroying the evidence of his hit-and-run, and Seul-hae nearly gets herself crushed to death trying to stop him from doing so. Upon watching her cry in frustration at the injustice, Cha-woong steps in. He and his ghosts scare the culprit into confessing, and the ghosts are even able to salvage the evidence.

The hit-and-run driver gets punished, and Seul-hae’s neighbor gets a touching send-off – and also gets to work for Cha-woong for a day to pay for baby supplies that Cha-woong delivers to his wife.

In the meantime, Cha-woong’s family spirit, the General, has finished ferrying the former shaman’s soul to the afterlife and arrives to demand Cha-woong take up his mantle. It doesn’t matter how Cha-woong tries to resist, either, because the General is fully prepared to torture him until he agrees. But, as it happens, there’s a loophole.

You see, Cha-woong’s shaman duties essentially build up karma points for the General, earning his way into the afterlife. For a fun little visual, the points are tallied on the General’s fan, which lights up with a new color each time Cha-woong earns points.

But when the General meets Seul-hae, he realizes she has an unusually powerful heavenly hotline, if you will. What that means is that the heavens are especially attuned to her feelings: if Cha-woong earns her gratitude, for example, he’ll also earn gratitude – and karma points – from heaven. No traditional shaman activities necessary. How convenient!

Cha-woong’s still not convinced, however, until he realizes the best way to earn more money is to get cast in TV commercials – and to do that, he needs the public’s favor. The solution? He agrees to join Seul-hae’s civilian police unit. But he doesn’t want to do any actual work, of course. No, he just wants to pay for things, do photo ops for recognition, and sit in the shade drinking iced tea.

But then a case is dumped in their laps. When Seul-hae walks an elderly man with dementia home, he presents her with a gigantic wad of cash, which he claims to have “harvested” from his backyard. Sure enough, there’s a whole fortune buried back there.

As we might expect by now, the elderly man passes away, and with the help of his ghost, Cha-woong and Seul-hae discover that his son has been running a top-secret gambling ring. They can’t exactly explain their investigation tactics, so they take it upon themselves to track down the man’s son without getting permission.

To that end, they don fabulous disguises and infiltrate a gambling den, where Cha-woong’s “magic” comes in very handy. The ghosts tip him off to the other players’ hands, and he covertly signals to Seul-hae so she can play her cards accordingly. The ghosts even swipe the winning card for him right out from where another player has hidden it in her purse.

But Hee-soo, once again just a step behind, raids the gambling den while they’re there. In the scramble to escape, Cha-woong grabs the wrong money bag… which doesn’t have any money in it at all. Oops.

Still, they manage to put together enough clues to figure out where the elderly man’s son is holed up. Cha-woong insists on going in by himself with just the ghosts. And, side note, I love that his code for “the ghosts will help me” is to wave his hands, strike a pose, and say, “You know… Showtime.”

But the real reason Cha-woong wants to confront this guy alone is because he wants to offer him a deal: Cha-woong will let him get away in return for the exact sum of money he lost while running away from Hee-soo’s raid.

The man acts like he’ll take the deal, but comes at Cha-woong with a knife instead. The ghosts are occupied elsewhere, and Cha-woong isn’t much of a fighter, but thankfully Seul-hae decides to check on him and leaps to the rescue just in time.

As she does, Cha-woong gets a flash of what might be an ancient memory: a woman who looks just like Seul-hae jumping in front of a sword. Ohhh I smell a past-life connection!

The General all but confirms it, as he later remarks to himself that the two of them remind him of two other people he once knew. Interesting – if Seul-hae sacrificed her life in the past, that could very well explain her special favor with heaven, too.

To make things even more interesting, there’s a creepy side story going on in the background about a fisherman who took in a man who seems to have lost all his memories. The amnesiac can hear some kind of summons no one else can, coming from a bottle hidden deep underwater.

Eventually, the bottle ends up on the fishing boat, where it entices the amnesiac to open it. A dark spirit emerges, possessing him and causing him to murder the other fishermen, including his adoptive father. And unless I’m mistaken, that’s our Full Moon Killer.

While the tonal shifts are slightly jarring at times, I appreciate that Showtime Begins! fully commits to whatever tone its employing at a given moment. The aforementioned creepy storyline is straight out of a horror movie, while the comedy bits are played to the hilt, and the emotional moments hit hard (in a good way!).

But one of my favorite things so far is the super fun chemistry between Seul-hae and Cha-woong. Both when they’re working as a team and when they’re bickering, they play off each other perfectly. She cuts him down to size when he needs it, and he comes through for her when it really matters (not that he’d ever admit it).

A perfect example of this is near the end of Episode 4, when Seul-hae tentatively asks if he’d accompany her to visit her father’s grave for his memorial day, hoping he might see her father’s ghost. Initially, Cha-woong refuses, cooking up every excuse he can to explain why he’s too busy. But when the day actually arrives, he pushes to end his scheduled activities early so he can accompany her anyway. But, of course, he insists it’s only because he had extra time on his hands and nothing better to do.

Then, as they stroll through the gravesite, he spooks her with ghost stories that she only halfway buys. But when a ghost comes straight toward her, Cha-woong grabs her in a hug and spins her out of its path.

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Showtime Begins!: Episodes 2-4