One Final Song At The Karaoke Bar
Episode 9 of Extracurricular begins with Dae-Yeol phoning Ji-Soo and telling him he’s keeping Gyuri captive. At the same time, Mr Lee and Min-Hee arrive at Jaeik’s house (one of Mr Lee’s contacts) who helps patch him up. While he recovers, Min-Hee threatens to call the police and tells him it’s a better alternative to dying. Meanwhile, Ji-Soo is bundled into Dugi’s boot and brought to meet Dae-Yeol. At the same time, Dae-Yeol and Munji start looking through Ji-Soo’s accounts and realize that he and Gyuri are both just school kids. Dugi pulls up and opens the boot but Ji-Soo is ready for him, using the taser to knock him out and steal the car for himself. He drives it into Dae-Yeol’s garage where Gyuri stabs Dae-Yeol in the stomach and holds Munji up at knife-point. Gyuri bides her time and manages to slip away before things get too hectic. Racing away in the car, Gyuri and Ji-Soo realize they’re in serious trouble and try to come up with a plan. Alone, Ji-Soo and Gyuri finally see each other the same way but just before they kiss, a siren wails in the distance stopping them from taking the next step. Realizing it’s just an ambulance and not a police car, Ji-Soo starts laughing uncontrollably; a maniacal, hopeless giggle that turns into quiet contemplation as he wonders just what they can do now. When Min-Hee awakens in the morning, she finds Mr Lee gone and instructions for her to stay. Only, she defies this and instead heads into the station and speaks to Detective Lee about the incident, and in particular the van featuring a cartoon character on the side. Meanwhile, Ki-Tae gets a hit on the chatroom surrounding Min-Hee’s whereabouts (that being the karaoke bar) and rushes out with a whole gang of kids on their motorcycles. At the same time, Gyuri arrives at the building and pays some girls outside to join her while she gets ready to confront the gang. She plants a phone in Dae-Yeol’s office but unfortunately is blindsided by Dae-Yeol himself who knocks her down to the ground. Just before being choked out completely, Ki-Tae arrives with his gang and seizes his opportunity, rushing inside as Gyuri manages to slip away. The fight rages on but Dae-Yeol chases after Gyuri. Although Ji-Soo arrives to help, it’s no good and he finds himself captured too. Mr Lee saves the day though, a beaten and bloodied mess. He fights through the corridors with brass knuckles and saves the duo from Dae-Yeol’s wrath. He tells Ji-Soo that he hopes they never meet again and slips out of view. Shocked, Ji-Soo leaves the building with Gyuri while Mr Lee heads up to the roof with Dae-Yeol. The pimp stabs him through the stomach and beats the man down but Mr Lee manages to get the upper-hand and kills Dae-Yeol. Outside, Detective Lee arrives at the karaoke bar, having followed the registered address for the van, and calls for back-up when she sees the fight inside. They arrive at the scene and start handcuffing the different teens while Detective Lee heads to the roof and sees the devastation first-hand, including Mr Lee seemingly dead and Dae-Yeol lying in a pool of his own blood. The penultimate episode to Extracurricular delivers one heck of a fight sequence in the hallway and this crescendo of drama encapsulates some of the bigger storylines this season and does a great job exploding that into action. Mr Lee’s redemption angle and the manner he saves Gyuri and Ji-Soo here is a great touch while Ki-Tae arriving with his gang to get retribution on behalf of Min-Hee is the anchor for a lot of the drama that spills out after. Seeing Detective Lee continue her investigation adds a continued presence of danger for our duo to deal with and given the ending to this one, there’s certainly plenty of scope for a dramatic finale to follow.
