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This review may contain spoilers
nice packaging, weak inside
the drama starts off with a really oppressive and atmospheric tone. the protagonist is sent to a small town where crime seems like a distant rarity. however, a series of brutal murders of defenseless women soon begins, with the killer operating under the guise of a scarecrow.
we're introduced to the main character as an honest, dedicated, and principled police officer with a complicated past. but as the story progresses, it gradually spirals into chaos — both in terms of logic and writing quality. the screenwriters try to show how cruel and unjust the system is, but they do it quite lazily. in real life, thousands of police officers worked on this case for years (2 million man-days and over 21,000 people interviewed), while constantly making serious mistakes — torturing suspects, falsifying evidence, and ruining innocent lives. in the drama, all this complex reality is reduced to a bunch of dumb cops and one arrogant prosecutor who just keep repeating the same errors over and over.
what frustrates me the most is the development of the main character. comparing how he was presented at the beginning with who he becomes in the middle and final episodes, it feels like two completely different people. he stops acting according to his sense of justice and ends up no better than the system he's supposedly criticizing. yet the show tries to force us to sympathize with him just because he sheds a few tears.
the other characters are also poorly written. in some episodes they behave as initially presented, and then suddenly do things that feel completely out of character. a clear example is tae-joo's sister. he was the only one who had always taken care of her, but as soon as she learns she has a father who knew about her existence, she immediately runs to him and to the person who killed her fiancé. she becomes indifferent to tae-joo himself, and they stop communicating. then they randomly throw in a car accident and coma. it all feels like it was written on the fly.
the biggest failure is the serial killer. he's barely developed at all. we never learn why he did what he did or what drove him, even though this was supposed to be one of the main themes. i was hoping for a smart cat-and-mouse game between the antagonist and the police, but there was nothing close to that. even the scarecrow didn't work as a symbol — instead of becoming a powerful metaphor for police incompetence, it just turned into a joke.
we're introduced to the main character as an honest, dedicated, and principled police officer with a complicated past. but as the story progresses, it gradually spirals into chaos — both in terms of logic and writing quality. the screenwriters try to show how cruel and unjust the system is, but they do it quite lazily. in real life, thousands of police officers worked on this case for years (2 million man-days and over 21,000 people interviewed), while constantly making serious mistakes — torturing suspects, falsifying evidence, and ruining innocent lives. in the drama, all this complex reality is reduced to a bunch of dumb cops and one arrogant prosecutor who just keep repeating the same errors over and over.
what frustrates me the most is the development of the main character. comparing how he was presented at the beginning with who he becomes in the middle and final episodes, it feels like two completely different people. he stops acting according to his sense of justice and ends up no better than the system he's supposedly criticizing. yet the show tries to force us to sympathize with him just because he sheds a few tears.
the other characters are also poorly written. in some episodes they behave as initially presented, and then suddenly do things that feel completely out of character. a clear example is tae-joo's sister. he was the only one who had always taken care of her, but as soon as she learns she has a father who knew about her existence, she immediately runs to him and to the person who killed her fiancé. she becomes indifferent to tae-joo himself, and they stop communicating. then they randomly throw in a car accident and coma. it all feels like it was written on the fly.
the biggest failure is the serial killer. he's barely developed at all. we never learn why he did what he did or what drove him, even though this was supposed to be one of the main themes. i was hoping for a smart cat-and-mouse game between the antagonist and the police, but there was nothing close to that. even the scarecrow didn't work as a symbol — instead of becoming a powerful metaphor for police incompetence, it just turned into a joke.
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