Busted S1E6 Recap: Battle of the Detectives

In this episode: K’s team aren’t the only detectives in town! An intense rivalry is born as the cast faces off against another group of intelligent crime-solvers in a race to find a painting.

Episode 6 Guest Stars

(I apologize for the not-necessarily-flattering quality of these photos – I mostly work with GIFs, so it’s a little harder to screenshot good images than I thought. But the aim is really just to give names to faces here.)

An Important Note

I’ve tried my best to summarize everything in these recaps, but sometimes there are parts of an episode or the overall story that aren’t clear to me. I’m in Korea, so I have Korean Netflix – they have English subtitles for all the dialogue, but not necessarily all of the captions and titles they put in the show. I’m sure that sometimes I miss things, and sometimes I may arrive at the wrong conclusion. But I’ll make sure to highlight the parts where I’m confused or unsure about certain details.

***WARNING!*** THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE EPISODE/SERIES AHEAD. These recaps are written summary style – I’m writing as if I’ve watched these episodes for the first time, but this is primarily aimed towards people who have seen the series before and want to refresh their memory or find answers to certain questions. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SERIES AND ARE PLANNING TO, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

Episode Recap

After the seriousness of the last few episodes, we’re treated to a rather light-hearted and comedic one. The whole premise of this episode establishes a rivalry between our heroes and the Genius Detective Team. The new competition is a group of six: Jung Jaehyung, Lee Jangwon, Shin Jaepyung, John Park, Wendy, and Lee Juck. I don’t really know anything about them besides Wendy, but apparently Jangwon and Jaepyung are both KAIST graduates – which means they are incredibly smart.

Two curators for a Seoul art museum separately approach both groups – Min Jiyoung reaches out to our detectives and Choi Yeongwan contacts the Genius Detective Team. They explain that they are hiring the teams to track down a valuable painting. The painter, Cesar Elle Kim, was supposed to send it for an auction – but she passed away before she could. The two women are also rivals who are trying to outdo each other at work, which is why they are enlisting the help of the teams (though it appears that each woman is doing so without realizing the other has the same plan).

Everyone arrives at the museum and is surprised to see each other. The insults fly almost immediately, so it’s safe to say that they will not being getting along. The director of the exhibit Kim Beomsu explains that Cesar Elle Kim was not only an artist, but she was also a mathematician and an architect who incorporated that into her work… heavily implying that the teams will have to be really smart in order to find her last painting. The teams have to find the painting by 9 p.m. and bring in to the auction on a boat – fancy!

The museum director wants to test the teams’ artistic senses, so he presents both of them with a sequence of four paintings. The paintings contain secrets, and the teams have to search the museum for a fifth one that will match the theme. The Genius Detective Team quickly deduces that the pattern is a Fibonacci Sequence – which is when you add the previous two numbers together to get a third. They also notice that each painting has an activity that starts with the letter B.

The Fibonacci Sequence: 3+5 = 8, 5+8 = 13, 8+13 = 21

Sadly, our detective team does not figure that out at all. Jaesuk and Sejeong think the painting need to have a dog in it, and run off to find one of those. The rest work on trying to figure out the flow patterns of the water in each painting. Creative guesses, but unfortunately wrong. Though personally, I think that their set of paintings made it harder to determine the Fibonacci sequence – they didn’t contain as many people, so it wasn’t as easy to see the increase. But it’s okay because both teams still gets copies of Cesar Elle Kim’s notebook.

Essentially, the last painting of Cesar Elle Kim is her self-portrait. The teams have to sort out all of the hints that she wrote in her notebook and find several different locations throughout Seoul. At those places, they can find a clue about what she is wearing in the self-portrait; there are eight in all. Writing everyone’s name out is going to get really confusing, so I’ve made a table of the subgroups that visit the different locations. Also, I arranged the recap in the order of the places they visited and interacted with – so it’s not the exact same as the cross-editing in the actual episode.

Team Jaewook (K’s Detectives)	Jaewook, Kwangsoo, Sehun
Team Jaesuk (K’s Detectives)	Jaesuk, Jongmin, Minyoung, Sejeong
Team Jaepyung (Genius Detectives)	Jaepyung, Lee Juck, John
Team Jaehyung (Genius Detectives)	Jaehyung, Jangwon, Wendy

Location #1: Cesar Elle Kim’s Workroom

Possible Clues: 2
Teams: Jaewook vs. Jaepyung

Notebook Clue	Puzzle/Mission	Item Discovered
“I visited my workroom in a long time. My secretary mixed up the schedule memo I wrote. I’m not sure I’ll have the time to sort it out.”	Rearrange the memos in the correct order by reading them and figuring out the sequence of events. The order is also the combination to a locked drawer.	Silver glasses
“I found some of my old works in the workroom where I first started to learn art. I made it thinking of the Trojan Horse. My pet is always here with me. I’ll make sure to paint my pet in the painting.”	There is a giant sculpture of a horse on the second level of the workroom. Next to it is a table with clay animal heads. The “Trojan Horse” reference means they have to break them open and discover what’s inside.	A mug with an iguana on it (indicating Cesar Elle Kim had a pet iguana)

Team Jaewook arrives on the scene first, but they barely have any time to deduce what they need to do before they’re interrupted by Team Jaepyung. Jaewook tries to solve memo puzzle before the other team gets there, but he fails and is forced to yield to them. Meanwhile, Kwangsoo and Sehun can’t figure the other clue out… but they happen upon it by accident while they’re trying to sabotage the clay animal heads and make them look unrecognizable. There’s trickery all around as the Genius Detectives steal the glasses that are hidden in the drawer before Jaewook can see them, but they eventually call a very short-lived truce.

Location #2: Apple Tree Restaurant in Insadong

Possible Clues: 1
Teams: Jaesuk vs. Jaehyung

Notebook Clue	Puzzle/Mission	Item Discovered
“3 groups were already here so I had to wait 36 minutes to get inside the famous restaurant in Insadong. As soon as I stepped inside, I saw an astonishing history. Eve, Cézanne, and Isaac changed history with this small thing. I can’t just pass by when I found their history here. I will leave something I was going to put in my painting.”	Deduce the location of the restaurant. The notes reference Adam and Eve (and the apple of temptation), artist Paul Cézanne (who frequently painted apples), and Isaac Newton (who supposedly figured out the gravity by watching an apple fall). At the restaurant, they must search the giant tree and find what the artist hid.	Pink scarf (tied to one of the branches of the tree)

Not much happens here except for more attempts at sabotage. Team Jaehyung gets here first and attempts to confuse Team Jaesuk by moving the scarf from the branches and tying it to the bottom of the tree, but Minyoung sees right through it. (Side note: this place looks SUPER aesthetic, so I need to remember to check it out next time I go to Seoul.)

The scarf (as seen through Wendy’s phone).

Location #3: See-Through Cafe in Itaewon

Possible Clues: 2
Teams: Jaewook vs. Jaepyung

Notebook Clue	Puzzle/Mission	Item Discovered
“The Itaewon that Hayoung introduced me to was indeed, See-Through. I decided to drink a cup of painting. After I drank the painting filled with stars, it felt like the color was completely conveyed in my eyes.”	They have to go to See-Through and order “a cup of painting.” The menu lists different famous painters for latte art, so they must deduce that “a painting filled with stars” means Starry Night and order the Van Gogh.	The color of her eyes (it’s the same blue as the latte art)
“She has an unconventional appearance, and the drawing on her fingernails reminded me of my childhood days. [HSFFO HSBQF]”	HSFFO HSBQF is a code: if you shift one letter over, you get “GREEN GRAPE” in English. So they have to find a waitress with the matching nail art (they all have different fruits.)	Green grape nail art

This cafe has some seriously impressive latte art! Another place I want to go to. However, there’s an important catch: each team can only order one cup of latte art. Since the menu lists the painters and NOT the paintings, the team has to figure out that the notes refer to Starry Night and order “Van Gogh.” Team Jaepyung gets it correct, but Jaewook blunders and orders Da Vinci instead… ending up with the Mona Lisa. And the owner is insistent that they can only get one cup. (I was wondering why they couldn’t just look Starry Night up on Naver or something, but the blue in the latte art does look a touch different from the real painting.) In order to fix their mistake, Jaewook calls Minyoung and gets her to charm the owner into making them a second cup. He says he’ll do it if she comes, and Kwangsoo goes to find a random lady next door and coerces her into pretending to be Minyoung, which is hilariously awkward.

Location #4: Avant-Garde

(I’m not exactly sure where this one is, but Google says there’s a bar in Itaewon with the same name so maybe it’s that.)

Possible Clues: 2
Teams: Jaesuk vs. Jaepyung

Notebook Clue	Puzzle/Mission	Item Discovered
“I touched something firm first. Then I touched something mushy to the left. Diagonally from something cold is something sticky. I was thinking of adding the slippery one in my painting, but went with what was between the sticky one and the slippery one instead.”	There is a wall of hidden objects that the teams have to feel without seeing. They have to make a grid of all of the objects and then find the one they need based on the artist’s descriptions. They can only take one item out of its box, so they have to choose correctly.	Red/wine colored beret
“The painting I found restored my childhood memories and gave me a fun inspiration.”	There are ten paintings of hawks. Ten is “yeol” in Korean, and “mae” is the word for hawk. If you put them together, you get the Korean word for “berry” (“yeolmae”).	Berry brooch

Touching hidden objects is a fairly common variety game, so we spend a lot of time watching everyone get freaked out at what’s potentially behind the curtain. Once again, Minyoung proves herself fearless while the men are squeamish – she touches everything without hesitation. And Jongmin proves himself adept at eavesdropping, though he didn’t *quite* get the right clue from Team Jaepyung – he said “ten birds,” which is not a homonym in Korean like “ten hawks” is.

The formidable wall of hidden objects.

Location #5: A Mini Stop Convenience Store by the Han River

Possible Clues: 1
Teams: Jaewook vs. Jaehyung

Notebook Clue	Puzzle/Mission	Item Discovered
There’s no direct quote for this one, but the teams mentioned that the artist participated in a ramyeon eating contest and won a prize for it.	The first team to arrive has to beat the record for eating ramyeon (4 minutes and 5 seconds), and the second team has to beat whatever time the first team came in at.	Ring Pop

As if eating ramyeon in basically four minutes isn’t tough enough, the person doing it has to eat all the noodles AND drink the broth. Korean ramyeon can be incredibly spicy, so it’s definitely hot in more than one way. Jaehyung manages to do it in 3 minutes and 31 seconds – forcing Jaewook to beat that record instead (but he pulls it off with just seconds to spare).

I can’t even imagine trying to do this.

Once all the clues are gathered, the teams have to read the notebook again and figure out the location of their final destination: the first word/number/symbol of each passage creates an address. Arriving separately (Genius Team before K’s Team), they are directed into separate rooms but must take on the same challenges. The first involves a lot of math, since Cesar Elle Kim was also a mathematician. There are numbered tiles that are red on one side and yellow on the other. They have to follow the instructions and flip certain tiles: first even numbers, then multiples of three, then multiples of five. After all the steps are finished, the number of yellow tiles left provides the code to the next room. KAIST graduate and math genius Jaepyung solves this by doing calculations in his notebook and then directing his teammates, while K’s Team spends a lot of time fussing and infighting. But they both get it eventually.

Figuring out the tile flipping puzzle.

The second puzzle is related to architecture and involves a lot of teamwork. The teams have to stand on a large scale. One side has different sized weights, one for each letter of the English alphabet. The other side has fifteen spaces. The mission is to keep the scale balanced and transfer the weights to make three English words. (They can be any words as long as they have five letters and none of the letters repeat.) They have fifteen minutes to accomplish this – however, they will lose a minute every time they lose balance and a side of the scale hits the ground. It also makes a noise that scares the heck out of everyone. Once again, the Genius Team completes this relatively calmly while K’s Team descends into absolute chaos.

Definitely not easy.

The Genius Team finishes their tasks first, and are led into a room filled with self-portraits. The final mission is to use the clues they have found to find the EXACT self-portrait, since the paintings all have different colors. K’s Team joins them soon after, so it quickly devolves into a race to who can find the right one first. Both teams grab paintings and head to the boat, though Minyoung chooses a painting for our detectives before the Genius Team. Here are all of the clues ones again:

Clue	Location
Silver glasses	Workroom
Pet iguana (green)	Workroom
Pink scarf	Apple Tree
Blue eyes	See-Through
Green grape nail art	See-Through
Red/wine beret	Avant-Garde
Berry brooch	Avant-Garde
Ring Pop	Mini Stop

The truth is revealed at the auction: K’s Team chose the right painting, so they win! (Hilariously, the Genius Team pasted two of the wrong self-portraits together to try and make one that looks correct.) The Genius Team is understandably frustrated, since they got everything correct and were even first to the final mission… but were essentially defeated by sheer luck. But they’ll have a chance at redemption next season.

The correct painting.

Next episode: the team enters the world of magic shows when a magician vanishes in the middle of his own trick.

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NOTE: All photos and GIFs are screenshots or screen captures from Busted! Episode 6 on Netflix. Nothing belongs to me, and all images are used here for illustrative purposes only.