Nine Puzzles - Episodes 1 & 2

The South Korean mystery thriller introduces us to Yoon E-na (Kim Da-mi), a high school student who walks into her home just minutes after her uncle has been killed. Traumatized by events, and unable to recall anything helpful about that night, young detective Kim Han-saem (Son Suk-ku) assumes she is responsible for the crime. One decade later, with E-Na now working as a profiler for the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency a new murder occurs which will further tie the two together, first because E-Na discovers the body and second because it occurs shortly after she was delivered an unusual puzzle piece delivered to the house just like the one left at the scene of her uncle's murder.

There are an awful lot of interesting aspects baked into the first two episodes of the series including the bookends of E-na's discovery of the body at the beginning of the first episode and events leading to a recovered memory at the end of the second episode (both exceptionally-well shot) which she's been seeking for a decade. We also learn both are outsiders. Ten years later, Han-saem is still a struggling detective passed over for promotion consumed with crime-solving, and E-na puts her big brain to work, often with an overly-cheery attitude, but is still haunted by events of those nights which changed her life and mostly thought of as weird by her coworkers. 

While its still unclear what the murders, set a decade apart, have to do with each other, the concept of the show pulling these unlikely characters together to solve the case is already taking shape. The choice of E-na's imagination putting herself in the killer's shoes to understand events is intriguing as it allows us to "see" her commit the crimes without being responsible for them. I'll admit to being hooked after a single episode and am very curious to see how events unfold as I'm assuming more bodies, and more mysterious puzzle pieces, are on their way.

  • Title: Nine Puzzles - Episodes 1 & 2
  • IMDb: link

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