Recap: Train Episode 1
We’re baaaaack! Sorry it’s been so long. Life is hard in a pandemic and my kids have been monopolizing all the computer screens in the house while schooling from home. I feel like I’ve finally got a handle on things enough to get back to writing recaps so here we go with episode 1 of the OCN drama, Train.
Train: Episode 1 Recap
We open on a scene of a cat on a seemingly abandoned railway. The cat doesn’t move even though the train crossing lights and bells start going off. Suddenly there is a train coming out of the tunnel. The cat clearly did not feel the vibration on the tracks.
April 8, 2008
The scene switches to a school girl walking in the rain. She enters a dark house and calls out to her dad. Meanwhile a boy runs in the rain calling out for his father. The girl sees an empty case on the floor and steps into a pool of blood.
The boy finds his father dead in the street, an apparent victim of a hit and run. The girl finds her father dead on the floor. At the funerals the two watch each other mourn alone in their respective memorial rooms.
The police study the crime scene of the girl’s father’s death. The empty jewelry case was apparently stolen and the girl’s father was strangled to death with the necklace before being hit on the head. (Personal note: this feels fake. There was a lot of blood to have come out from a head wound supposedly suffered after the heart had ceased beating. We’ll see if that comes back later)
The boy receives his father’s belongings and the murder weapon necklace falls out of the jacket pocket. He recognizes it immediately having just recently read the headline and seen the picture of the jewelry box and necklace.
Present Day
A person in a raincoat walks along the train tracks in a downpour. They pull a small suitcase along behind them. The person stops and the camera closes in on a blood-covered wheel on the suitcase.
Prosecutor’s Office
Two women sit in an office. One has clearly been injured. Prosecutor Han Seo Kyung (Kyung Soo Jin) hands the injured woman a cup of coffee while a man bursts into her outer office. Officer Seo Do Won (Yoon Shi Yoon) is angry that his arrest warrant for a rapist has been rejected. The injured woman in the office appears to be the victim and she has changed her testimony to say that the sex was consensual. The officer accuses the prosecutor of corruption.
Meanwhile the assailant has been allowed out of his holding cell since no charges will be made. Officer Seo sees that the young man has multiple traffic violations. Later that night, he watches for the criminal to get behind a steering wheel while drunk. Officer Seo leads the man on a chase through the streets that ends with the drunken man t-boning the cop car and taking off. They know that the evidence of the rape is still in the black box of his car. If they can arrest him in the car, the black box will be put into evidence. Injured, officer Seo calls for back up. The young chaebol is finally caught when his car gets caught on the train tracks. The young man sees that his car has stopped on what appears to be a human skeleton. He tries to run and winds up uncovering another skeleton.
Mugyeong Train Station
By the next day, 4 corpses have been uncovered near the train station. The police suspect a serial killer is involved. The station has been closed for 5 years and there are no CCTV cameras in the area. The bodies have been found packed up in suitcases.
Back at the police station, Officer Seo gives a report on the serial killer to his boss. She then hands him a leave of absence form and tells him to sign it. His actions of the night before are going to have consequences. They have found evidence of multiple rape victims. Unfortunately, there is also evidence of Officer Seo’s reckless behaviour. It doesn’t appear that it will effect the rapist’s case, but Chief Oh Mi Sook is concerned about Officer Seo’s mental health. He assures her that he is taking his meds and getting counselling. She allows him to keep working, for now.
Meanwhile at the train station, forensics is going over the site. Officer Seo orders his subordinates to see if there are any ex-convicts living in the area and to search the missing persons reports. He goes to speak with a member of the forensics team who appears to be a close friend. Word of his reckless car chase the night before has gotten back to her and she is not amused.
All of the victims appear to be women, and have been found with their jewelry. This would seem to rule out robbery as a motive. They find a cat’s body buried near the tracks. One of the police officers notes that it looks as though the cat has been run over by a train. This seems odd given that there have been no trains here in 5 years.
The Morgue
In the morgue, the doctor confirms that all of the victims were women and were killed with blunt force trauma to the head. In all cases it appears that the women were hit repeatedly, even after they would have already been dead. Prosecutor Han pulls out a 12 year old case file and notes the similarity to an old murder.
She notes that the culprit for the case was never found. The doctor says its possible that the head injury was the same but it is hard to tell from pictures. She notes that the prosecutor’s name appears in the file. Prosecutor Han is the young girl who’s father was killed in the first murder.
Police Chief’s Kitchen
It’s Prosecutor Han’s birthday and Chief Oh has prepared a meal. The Chief has pictures of herself with Prosecutor Han and Officer Seo all over her apartment. She appears to be hoping that Seo Do Won will show up for the birthday dinner. Han Seo Kyung tells her not to wait.
After dinner, Han Seo Kyung leaves the Chief’s home and walks out into the night. She debates calling Seo Do Won but doesn’t. She arrives at home to find Do Won changing a light bulb in front of her house. He acts friendly, as if there hasn’t been strife between them for the last 3 years. Inside the house, Do Won show’s Seo Kyung a video from near the crime scene. It appears to show her stepbrother, Lee Sung Wook. She realizes that this might have to do with the serial killer case. Do Won wishes her a happy birthday before he leaves.
Han Seo Kyung follows him out the door and throws a bag of his stuff at him. She demands to know why he’s back now after 3 years. Apparently they lived together for 10 years before that (Is he the boy who’s father died in the hit and run?), and then he just disappeared. Seo Do Won has come back after 3 years acting like a totally different person. He has given no explanation for the 3 missing years. Do Won tells Han Seo Kyung he left because she confessed to him and tells her to throw out the bag of junk.
As Do Won drives away mad at himself, and we see that there is a birthday cake sitting in his passenger seat (jerk. idiot. 바보 야). His phone rings and the results are back on the partial fingerprints of the victims. They aren’t enough to identify without something substantial to compare them to.
Mugyeong Station
A man stands in the dark near the abandoned station. He sees the unburied cat’s body and begins to rebury it. A police officer comes to tell him to leave and the man pushes the officer away. When Officer Seo arrives at the address Han Seo Kyung gave him for her Stepmother’s home, he sees the officer returning the man to his home. The stepmother seems like a delight 🙄
Stepfamily’s Home
In her restaurant, Officer Seo asks to speak with Seo Kyung’s stepbrother. The mother tries to kick him out, but invites him into her home when she realizes who he is.
Turns out Seo Do Won took Han Seo Kyung into his home after her father’s death. Her stepmother was abusing her and her stepbrother was trying to molest her. The stepbrother suffered a head injury while drunk driving a few years back and has brain damage now. The mother laughs at the idea that her son with the mentality of a toddler could have possibly killed 4 people and hid the bodies without anyone knowing. Officer Seo goes to speak with stepbrother Lee Sung Wook, who seems to remember Seo Do Won.
Officer Seo asks Sung Wook about the abandoned station and asks him if he has ever seen somebody there pulling a heavy bag. In response, Sung Wook plays with his train set and repeats the words “Danger. Mirror. Traffic Light. Stop”. Officer Seo rolls his eyes, but as he looks around the room, he sees that the words are written repeatedly all over the walls. Sung Wook says that a train will be coming to Beijing Tower.
Mysterious Moment Break
Police Station
The police officer who was attacked by Sung Wook says that the man appeared to be burying a dead animal. Officer Seo realizes that it must have been the cat they found earlier in the day.
Back at the stepfamily’s home, Stepmother is hiding something in a hole in the wall. She hears her son come in and stops him from trying to leave the house.
In the morgue, something strange has been discovered. The clothes the victims were wearing were from clothing lines never manufactured. One outfit comes from a company that has not existed since before the manufacture date found in its labels.
Going through the crime scene photos, Officer Seo realizes that the locations where the bodies were found exactly matches the train set up that Lee Sung Wook has in his bedroom. The one that he said a train would be coming to soon. He rushes off back to the station. While forensics officer Lee Jung Min (Shin So Yool) positively matches the partial fingerprints at the crime scene to those of Han Seo Kyung’s stepbrother Lee Sung Wook.
Mugyeong Station
Officer Seo goes back and matches all the fallen train signs to the ones from Lee Sung Wook’s bedroom. He finds the “Danger, Mirror, Traffic Light, and Stop” signs near where each body was found. Officer Seo calls back to the office and tells them there is a fifth victim somewhere called Beijing Tower. Han Seo Kyung arrives at the abandoned train station in time to hear him.
Seo Do Won tries to tell her that it wasn’t her stepbrother who killed her dad (he thinks it was his dad who did it, remember? The case was never properly investigated because the police believed it too and you can’t pursue a dead man for a crime in Korea). Do Won tells her about her stepbrother’s head wound and that the crime seems different from her father’s death. He says they need to find the Beijing Tower. Han Seo Kyung sees the sign for it near the station.
They split up to investigate the tower (idiots! are you new?) We see that Lee Sung Wook has escaped from his mother and is back at the train station. Seo Do Won has a searing headache suddenly while walking near the tracks. He gets hit over the head by a shovel wielding Lee Sung Wook. Han Seo Kyung continues to search the site for another body. She finds more and more signs for Beijing Tower posted around the site. She finds another bag inside of a large container. Opening it, she discovers another body, this one is definitely not a skeleton though.
Han Seo Kyung tries to call Seo Do Won, but he is bloody and disoriented laying on the train tracks. Lee Sung Wook is coming in the direction of the Beijing Tower that houses the fifth dead body. Suddenly, the old clock in the train station comes to life and the railway lights and warning bells start up. On the floor near the newest body, Seo Kyung finds a train ticket… a recent train ticket… and the train is coming.
Final Thoughts:
Whoa. Just whoa. This drama has me on the edge of my seat. There is a lot going on, but while there is definitely a mystery I am not finding it confusing so far. The characters are interesting and I am really curious what the full plot will be. On the downside it seems somewhat obvious what’s going on at the moment. I’m hoping that there is more to the story than we’re getting at first glance. If you are a fan of the drama Signal, you might want to give this drama a chance.
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