Busted S2E3 Recap: Odd Eye: Detective Team vs. Phantom Thief

In this episode: The team hires an intern and attempts to track down a valuable piece of jewelry before a famous thief can take it for himself.

Episode 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.)

***Recurring Character Appearances: Tae Hangho, Yoon Jonghoon (mentioned)

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

Since Kwangsoo abruptly left the team at the beginning of the season, the remaining members are looking for his replacement. Unfortunately, no one has responded to their online ad or their flyers (probably because it’s an unpaid position). While they mull this over in their office, they receive a mysterious package. It contains a roll of papers with riddles indicating a location, but the team gets another visitor before they can take a closer look. A young man introduces himself as Yook Sungjae; he found their flyer and wants to become part of the team. Since he seems pretty smooth and confident in his skills, the detectives immediately put him to work by having him solve the riddle – claiming that they’ve already done so, of course. He carefully reads through everything and says the clues lead to Changgyeonggung, one of several palaces in Seoul.

The team then receives a call from the sender of the package, aka their next client. She explains that her family owns a very special piece of jewelry – it used to be called the “Byeolanseok” (which means “starstone” according to Google Translate), but it’s now called the “Odd Eye.” It looks like a pair of mismatched eyes, one green and one blue. According to the client, the Odd Eye is in danger because a criminal called the Phantom Thief has all but declared it his next target. The clues in the package point to Changgyeonggung because that’s where the floor plans for the Odd Eye’s location are hidden. She requests that the team find those plans and bring them to her later that morning. The team agrees and takes Sungjae on as an intern for the time being.

After a brief encounter with a rather sassy security guard (Ahn Sangtae), the team splits into three groups to look at the different places each paper indicates. Jaewook forms a duo with Jongmin, while Sejeong pairs up with Sungjae. Jaesuk, Minyoung, and Sehun act as a three person team. I’m not going to note all the spots because they’re not that important in the long run; the takeaway is that each hidden location has a decorative red box that contains a little spray bottle. Most of them are just water, but one has a chemical that reveals a word in the bottom corner of each page. When they put all the words together, the message reads: “Go to Gwancheondae.”

The papers and the hidden words in the corner. (They’re not arranged in order in this screenshot.)

The team goes to Gwancheondae and finds a tube containing the floor plans with minutes to spare. However, security guard Sangtae shows up again and reprimands them for messing with public property. He confiscates the tube and orders them to write down their contact information, but abandons everything when he notices other palace visitors doing something he doesn’t like offscreen. The team retrieves the tube and opens it to find a blank piece of paper… looks like the floor plans got switched out at some point, most likely when they were all distracted with the guest log. That security guard is looking MIGHTY suspicious now.

They have no choice to go meet their client, a young woman named Jin Seyeon, and tell her that the plans got stolen. Thankfully, she has still has enough insider information about how to retrieve the Odd Eye. She reemphasizes that it’s an heirloom that has belonged to her family for hundreds of years, and adds that the CEO of SG Group took possession of her family’s fortune – including the Odd Eye. (I’m guessing there’s some chaebol/family-owned corporation drama as a backstory, but the show doesn’t expand much further on the topic.) For extra security, the man regularly changes the jewel’s hiding place and shuffles it between one of two different locations: The Pavilion in Sangam-dong and a house in Buam-dong.

The team splits up again to check the two different places; Jaesuk, Jaewook, Sejeong, and Sungjae go to the house. Seyeon works as a secretary for the company, so she was able to infiltrate the house and deactivate security for one hour. Of course, there are still some tricks to finding the Odd Eye. The group enters the first floor to find a miscellaneous array of items and red buttons. One of the red buttons opens the doorway to the rest of the house, but most of the others have unpleasant surprises – jump scares, spraying the detectives with water or fake snow, etc. This is definitely one of those tasks that plays up the slapstick aspect of the show.

A look inside the house.

Some highlights from this segment:

• Sungjae opens a wardrobe to find a mannequin dressed up as a ghost. He’s not that scared and even says it’s cute… but then freaks out when the head suddenly falls off.
• They find a huge box wrapped like a present, and lift it to find another box inside. After that, there’s a large upside down bowl, then a smaller one, then an even smaller one… you get the picture. The group is convinced something bad is at the end, so they waste tons of time playing rock paper scissors to see who has to remove the next bowl. But it’s just a fake out, because there’s really nothing at the bottom.
• Sungjae confidently presses a button and gets doused in water, immediately regretting wearing a white shirt with no layers underneath.
• One of the buttons looks like it will open a door, but it actually reveals a giant high-speed fan that blasts them all with gusts of wind. (Though Sungjae uses the opportunity to try and dry off.)

Sungjae gets soaked.

In the end, the group realizes that the correct button is the fire alarm – Jaewook had wanted to press it before, but they had discouraged him because they thought it was real. They pass through the hallway and go up the stairs to find the second room. This time, they must solve a kind of manual slider puzzle. Basically, they have to move the knobs around until they can get the silver and gold ones in their designated corners. It takes some trial and error, but Jaesuk eventually gets it.

The slider puzzle.

Jongmin, Minyoung, and Sehun head to the Pavilion. They must search the room and find the key that will open the next door, but they have to avoid being spotted by any of the toy cars or drones zooming around – and there are a LOT of them. If they get caught by a car or drone’s camera or laser, a giant eye will open up and admit a source of light. There is a big sensor right across from the eye; if it receives enough light, it will send a signal to call security. So, one member has to block the light from reaching the sensor while the other two look for the key. This mission is INFINITELY more complicated than one at the house, and it’s so difficult that I almost feel like it was designed to fail. But like the other group, it’s definitely good for laughs. Sehun manages finds the correct key, which takes them to another space downstairs where he plays a VR zombie game to unlock the second door.

Enjoy this GIF of Sehun awkwardly rolling around and trying to avoid detection. (Also, note how difficult this task looks!)

To pass the final security stage and deactivate the lasers protecting the Odd Eye, both teams must answer questions about the jewel – but the catch is that the correct responses can only be found at the other location. So, Jaesuk’s team can find the answers for Jongmin’s team and vice versa. The questions and answers are as follows:

Team	Question	Answer	Location
Jaesuk	“Which precious stone was cut to make the Odd Eye?”	Sapphire	There’s an informational pamphlet hidden in a book on a shelf at the Pavilion.
Jaesuk	“What is the name of King Jungjong’s cat?”	Kkodoorami 꼬두람이 (I used the Korean keyboard on Google Translate to type this out, and Google translated this name as “Bob” – which I find HILARIOUS.)	There’s a portrait of the cat at the Pavilion. They can tell it’s the correct one because the cat has a blue eye and a green eye like the jewels.
Jongmin	“In which year was the Odd Eye bestowed?”	1506	There’s a painting of the Odd Eye in the house that says it was created during King Jungjong’s first year. Sehun Googles it to get the exact date.
Jongmin	“What year was the 39th descendant of KD Group born?”	1958	There are commemorative wine bottles at the house that celebrate the birth of each heir. Every bottle has a descendant’s baby picture and. birth year on it.

It turns out that the Odd Eye was at the Pavilion; it’s in a smaller protective box that will explode if tampered with, so they decide the best thing to do is rendez-vous at a hotel and give it to Seyeon. Unfortunately, Ahn Sangtae shows up toting a gun and takes Seyeon hostage. He isn’t really a security guard, but an accomplice of the Phantom Thief… who is none other than Sungjae! He casually pulls a gun on Jaesuk and takes him hostage too. The team gives chase, but Sungjae gets a head start by grabbing the one available elevator and forcing them to run down a bunch of stairs. (I know from personal experience that waiting for an elevator in tall Korean buildings takes FOREVER.) Thankfully, a man who was searching for the Odd Eye – presumably someone from the SG Group – catches the team outside and hands over a GPS tracker that shows the jewel’s location every five minutes.

BETRAYAL!

Sangtae drives Sungjae, Seyeon, and Jaesuk to Digital Media City Station and takes off alone to go to a different location (not important for the rest of the story). Sungjae leaves his hostages to briefly board a train and grab a suitcase of money for his broker, then forces them to switch cars. Unfortunately, the team misses them by minutes. The next location is Sangam Park, which is SKETCHY AF. Sangtae calls Sungjae and warns him not to meet the broker alone, because apparently he’s a man whom Sungjae wronged in the past. So, he has Jaesuk do it in his place.

It turns out the broker is a familiar face – he sure looks like Ahn Ilgwon from last season, the culprit of Episode 8 who was murdered by the team’s client in an act of revenge. Although it’s the same actor, he’s playing a new character named Ahn Igwon… and he’s Ilgwon’s younger brother. (This is a joke because “il” and “i” are “1” and “2” in Korean.) Jaesuk hands over the briefcase of money and gets another one in return. I’m not actually sure we find out what’s in that briefcase – there are so many briefcases changing hands in this episode – but I don’t think it’s important to the story. I think the point of that whole interaction was more that Jaesuk met Igwon.

The team gets to the park and is immediately captured by a bunch of dangerous looking men, which means they fail to notice Sungjae escaping with an unwilling Jaesuk away in the distance. The men turn out to be Igwon’s thugs, who bring the team to him because Jaesuk asked him to deliver a message about his next location. Unfortunately, Jaesuk also told Igwon that the team would pay him 10 million won as compensation… which they don’t have because they’re poor. Igwon says that they can “pay up with [their] body” instead, meaning that one of the men can volunteer to get beaten up. (I was startled because I initially took that expression to mean something VERY different.) Thankfully, he settles for them opening a briefcase for him instead. How many briefcases does this guy have???

There are rings of various two digit numbers in bubbles; figuring out their pattern will determine the number that goes in the center. You have to add the two digits in each bubble together – for example, 34 would be 3+4 or 7. Then, you must add that number to the one directly across from it. So if 34 aka 7 is across from 40 aka 4, then the answer would be 11. (All the number pairs in the ring should have the same total.) Sejeong figures out the answer to one puzzle is 11 like I outlined above, and the answer to the other is 15.

Igwon tells the team Jaesuk’s message: Jaesuk overheard Sungjae saying that they were going to a “general store in Hapjeong.” They realize that he might mean Tae Hangho‘s General Store and rush off to catch up. Unbeknownst to them, the briefcase they opened for Igwon contains several bottles of poison and/or very toxic chemicals… and he seems to know who Tae Hangho is. These are fairly important details that will come up again towards the end of the season, so keep them in the back of your mind.

Sungjae does indeed go visit Tae Hangho, who isn’t that fazed to see he has two hostages in tow. Sungjae pays Tae Hangho his requisite ten thousand dollars to remove the Odd Eye from its protective box. While Tae Hangho is working, he receives a call from Yoon Jonghoon. “Did you do what I asked you to do?” he demands. Apparently the answer is “No,” because then he yells at Jonghoon, calls him a “punk,” and tells him to have it done by next week… or else. What connection would a CSI have with someone so clearly involved in criminal activity? HMMMMM. Another important detail to mentally file away for later.

Tae Hangho finds the GPS tracker in the Odd Eye and turns it off, but the team still manages to locate Jaesuk. Unfortunately, Sungjae has already escaped with the Odd Eye and Seyeon… who was in on it the whole time. Sungjae had pretended to let the hostages go – freeing Seyeon first – and then tied Jaesuk up further while she gleefully pulled a gun on him. Then the two left him with Tae Hangho, who wouldn’t release him because he didn’t have ten thousand dollars. Jaesuk is immensely frustrated because he can’t believe he’s been had. (Minyoung and Sehun had actually thought something was off with Seyeon earlier in the episode, but Jaesuk brushed away their concerns.)

BETRAYAL! (Part 2)

At this point, Tae Hangho pipes up and tells the team not to feel too down because the jewel is “back in Yook Sungjae’s hands.” Remember how Seyeon said the Odd Eye belonged to her family for hundreds of years and then was seized by the SG Group? Turns out she was lying. Her family is the SG Group, and they took over Sungjae‘s family, which is the KD Group. The wine bottles in the house showed the KD Group’s heirs, with Sungjae being the most recent one. (He actually said that there was a bottle of wine as old as him when they were in the house, which was a nice detail because the picture actually WAS of him as a child.) Seyeon and Sungjae fell in love despite the bad blood between the families, so she was really just helping him get back what rightfully belonged to him. But the team is still lowkey irritated by all of the shenanigans.

Next episode: The team meets a promising new candidate to replace Kwangsoo, but their rivals the Genius Detective team immediately try to recruit her instead.

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NOTE: All photos and GIFs are screenshots or screen captures from Busted! Season 2 Episode 3 on Netflix. Nothing belongs to me, and all images are used here for illustrative purposes only.