#although for some reason on tubi it says it came out in 2024 when it came out in 2014

[madegeeky]

Never thought I'd see a cop show be so fucking liberal and thoughtful as to acknowledge that a person who is diagnosed with psychopathy is not, by default, a serial killer. They have "persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits" (Wikipedia) but none of that means that they are going to (or have) become a serial killer. (The show uses the word "psychopathy" so that's what I'll be using.)

The basic premise of the show, which is the Korean drama Bad Guys, is that a detective uses 3 prisoners to help him fight crime, usually people who have killed repeatedly. There's the mobster, the hitman, and the aforementioned psychopath, Jung-moon.

It later turns out that Jung-moon has been framed for the serial killings that he went to jail for. He was framed, in fact, by the detective he is now working for because, well, he was a psychopath so that meant that it had to be him, even if there was no real evidence.

But it is wrong and the show specifically states that. It was wrong, the show says, that this was done to someone no matter what they were diagnosed with. It was wrong, the show says, that the detective assumed the worst of Jung-moon because of his diagnosis. It was wrong, the show says, that Jung-moon was sent to prison for years. It was cruel and awful and wrong.

And the show never refutes that Jung-moon has psychopathy! Never! No one ever calls it into question, tries to say that he didn't do the killings because he's not obviously not a psychopath. He has psychopathy but he still didn't deserve to go to jail or be treated the way he was treated. The psychopathy is never used as a reason to make it better or understandable that he was sent away.

They even have the detective apologize to Jung-moon! "I branded you as a psychopath, blaming everything on you," says the detective. "I'm sorry. Please forgive me." There's no attempt to make excuses, to pretend that there was another reason he thought it was Jung-moon. He straight up just admits that that was the only reason he targeted Jung-moon. And he acknowledges that this was wrong and cruel of him.

The detective then gives Jung-moon his gun and tells him that he deserves to be shot by the other man. And Jung-moon puts the gun to the detective's head and says, "I can't feel the emotions you fee. Because I can't feel those feelings, I wanted to learn them. Whether it's blame, sadness, happiness, I learned from you for the past couple months." And then Jung-moon doesn't pull the trigger. He's a psychopath. He has low empathy and low self-control and he still doesn't kill the detective.

I just wasn't expecting such a nuanced, respectful, and kind look at a character diagnosed with psychopathy from a silly little cop drama which is basically just a mystery with cops being overly dramatic and a fuck ton of fight scenes. It was just incredibly refreshing to see.