Longing For You seems to be a narrative based on some very intriguing ideas, but it is having trouble weaving it all into a seamless narrative. There is a serial killer, a hospital looking to start an organ transplant program, and there is also the murder of a boy who is often compared to Buddha for his goodness. Yet the characters are not that well written. This is just the fifth episode, and we don’t understand how two of the main characters, Young Joo and Jin Sang, are behaving so differently from their past selves in the previous episodes, without any rhyme or reason. Jin Woo’s death is not a good enough excuse because the series tried to say that Jin Sang had gotten worse after his death. There are also some randomly placed elements here and there, like Dr. Chu or Bae Min Gyu’s father, who seems a little inappropriate, or even Min Gyu himself, with a stack of evidence against him, yet none of it is enough for an actual arrest. These gaps in storytelling don’t allow this series to be as exciting as it could be. Either way, this is the recap of Longing For You episode 5.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens During The Investigation Of Jin Woo’s Death?
The video that Oh Jin Sang had received shows that Jin Woo did not die of an accident but was attacked in cold blood. To be completely honest, we are surprised that Jin Sang did not make more of a fuss when he saw this. The way Longing For You is writing its characters is a little irritating.
Jin Sang shows the video to Young Joo, and they both have it tested to verify that it is not fabricated. Upon getting proof that it is not, Jin Sang decides to start his investigation. He is acting in an uncharacteristically calm manner, and his first order of business is to butter up his senior to help him with his workload. Next, he goes back to Woojin, where a visit to his old workplace ensures their cooperation. Later at home, when talking to his mother, he comes to know that on the night Jin Woo died, he planned on making fish soup not just for Jin Sang and Young Joo but for Dr. Chu as well. It has registered in Jin Sang’s mind, along with the fact that the man continues to feel guilty about what happened to Jin Woo, which is why he regularly helps out Ms. Hong financially. Ms. Hong suspects that something is wrong with Jin Sang because of the way he is asking questions, but she doesn’t know what it is.
The next day, when Jin Sang goes back to Seoul, he meets his partner, Detective Yook, and asks him about the cufflink he found near Jin Woo’s accident site. The reason is that Mr. Yook is a “fashionista,” but we have only seen him dress in brown, black and olive green so far. Regardless, he leads Jin Sang to the company that manufactured those cufflinks, and when he follows that lead, Jin Sang finds that the cufflink was a limited-edition item, and only five of them were produced for a special event. Imagine the horror if it were a mass-produced thing! The major clue is that one of the buyers is Bae Min Gyu. The rest of the buyers are famous personalities, and one of them is abroad, making Min Gyu the most likely suspect, once again.
In the meantime, another problem has come to the surface. A press conference was being held to celebrate the success of solving the serial killer case. We are not questioning why this is happening a year after the case itself, but Young Joo receives a video of someone cutting open the ankles of a woman. This means that the person they had declared to be the murderer was innocent, and someone else was behind it all. The suspicion once again falls on Bae Min Gyu since the killer in the video is wearing a watch similar to his. Bae Min Gyu cannot catch a break, but he is still never on the hook because of his Assemblyman father.
The team leaders are not in favor of reopening the investigation, that is, until Young Joo threatens to leak a recording of them, placing the reputation of an investigation over possible public safety. It is all coming across as a bit weird since the team leader was instructed by Young Woon’s mother to take care of her son, who still can’t handle too much stress as his heart is likely in recovery mode. She sends food for him when he is at his team dinner, but he has gained enough swagger to ignore it. On a different note, Young Woon is more open to risk-taking after that one-year gap, and Young Joo’s inferiority complex is also quite toned down.
Does Bae Min Gyu Get Arrested?
Something is also not quite right with Chairman Yoo’s new funding for the medical program. We say this because they make sure that there is not a single mention of anything negative anywhere in the media. Ki Young is one of the reporters who has expressed doubts regarding the investment, and so far, we haven’t gotten a good read on him. He seems to annoy the prosecutors, but Young Woon’s mother calls him family and has gifted him a house to live in. Yet others think that he feels inferior to Young Woon, but Ki Young is far from a suck-up, and he does his job diligently. But he keeps throwing these shady glances at people and things that make us think he knows something he is not saying. Talking about shady things, Yang Hee Joo foolishly spills one too many secrets to Ki Young, and when on a stakeout outside Min Gyu’s house, Jin Sang and Mr. Yook suspect that Jinjin Medical Center is bribing the Assemblyman for favors.
Jin Sang is likely right, as the Assemblyman seems to mellow down regarding the arrest warrant against his son the moment he sees the boxes. Meanwhile, his son is on a date, and in his typical style, he is abusive towards the wait staff while his date passively looks on. At the end of episode 5 of Longing For You, Jin Sang beats up Min Gyu when his arrest warrant is rejected. The latter was taken to the hospital with a broken nose. Jin Sang knows that Min Gyu is probably not his brother’s killer since he saw the cufflinks intact on his outfit. However, when beating him up, he nicked Min Gyu’s phone, and Jin Sang saw an unregistered number calling him. The unregistered number has been a bit of a recurring nightmare, with it being the one that sent the video to Jin Sang in the first place. Maybe when he picks up, it will lead Jin Sang to his next clue.
Final Thoughts
Jin Sang is certainly not going to get in trouble for beating up Min Gyu because he has arranged something with the waitress. Meanwhile, Ki Young may start revealing his cards, now that we know he is the unregistered number. We are yet to see how this entire thing connects to the serial killings and Jinjin medical center or if they are all independent plots happening at the same time.
