The eight episode was about the play of emotions because that is what is making the characters tick in Season 2 of The Uncanny Counter. We also liked that we saw a glimpse of the old Mo Tak, who had become our favorite in Season 1. However, the show-stealer continues to be Hwang Pil Gwang, and we cannot understand why he is not getting more screen time. On a different note, we would like to partially take back what we said earlier about the Counters’ world not being explored enough in Season 2 because there are some glimpses of it. For now, here is a recap of episode 8 of The Uncanny Counter.
Spoiler Alert
How Do The Counters Stop Ma Ju Seok?
We are happy to report that Ha Na is able to save Do Hwi from Gelly and Pil Gwang. However, once he is healed by Mae Ok, she does the best thing she can for him, which is to erase all the memories he has of her. This will ensure that he will be safe going forward and will not get entangled in the dangers of her life. On the other hand, while Jeok Bong has smelled a chance for himself, his sense of smell in detecting the spirits has once again weakened. This time, Mo Tak deduces that it is because he plucked his nose hairs, which are what apparently catch the smell of things. Luckily, his hair seems to grow back by the end of the episode.
Elsewhere, Mae Ok is really invested in Jae Yeol. But the man is just out to save his skin. That is why he hands her over to Lee Chung Jae, as the latter suspects that she might be with the police, and they may have tracked him down. But as expected, Mae Ok and Mo Tak are too much for the goons to handle, and they get away from there. Their next stop is Lee Chung Jae himself, yet when they reach the golf course he is at, they find Ma Ju Seok already chasing him around. Mae Ok tries to protect Chung Jae, while Mo Tak deals with Ju Seok. As expected, Ju Seok is too strong for him and would have killed him if the spirit had completely taken over him. There is still a hint of the man left inside who just wants justice and not bloodshed. Mo Tak recognizes this and tries to tell Ju Seok that the law will punish Chung Jae, but this is when Ju Seok asks a question that makes even us think: does anyone else have more of a right than him to punish Chung Jae? This was the personification of Ma Ju Seok’s rage: that everyone responsible for his wife’s death paid their due, and he made them do it.
Chung Jae gets away because So Mun arrives in time, and Ju Seok knows that he cannot fight them all together. However, the spirits and even Pil Gwang taunt Ju Seok for not being able to kill people when he should. Pil Gwang manipulated Ju Seok to believe that the Counters, who are standing in his way, are just as responsible for what happened to his wife, and they need to be killed if Ju Seok hopes to do right by Min Gi. Ju Seok is really on the brink of things, and Pil Gwang’s logic is hard to argue with. Meanwhile, So Mun tells his grandmother that Ju Seok is not coming back. He has accepted him as an evil spirit and knows that he can no longer be a part of their lives.
What Does Gelly Do To So Mun?
In episode 7, Gelly decided to take a good hard look at what her partnership with Hwang Pil Gwang meant to her, and she raised the right questions accordingly. She must have debated the situations, but we doubt that she thought much about how the worst of them could come true. When Hwang Pil Gwang decided to kill her instead of saving her, he declared that he considered her to be more trouble than worth, and at the end of the day, she was a means to an end for him. He would have certainly killed her if Ha Na had not created the distraction to save Do Hwi. In light of her situation, Gelly needed a new plan. Frankly, we doubt she has anything to her name. The money swindled by them all is under Lee Chung Jae’s control, which means that Gelly cannot even steal her share and run away to make her own life. As for Ma Ju Seok, he is more under Pil Gwang’s control, and Gelly cannot possibly turn to him for any help. But she has to do something, and that is when she realizes that Ha Na’s memory might help her. When they were fighting, Gelly realized that Ha Na gained her powers when she came back from a coma. That is probably how all counters must have gained their powers.
At the end of episode 8 of season 2 of The Uncanny Counter, Jeok Bong is determined to help the Counters; therefore, he walks around town sniffing the areas to see if he can find any trace of the evil spirits. That works, and he finds that they may be in a hotel. He calls over the counters, and they go to the topmost floor, which ends up being the biggest mistake. It turns out that this is a limitation of the counters’ powers. The area of their power is physical, and when Mun tries to summon the territory, he finds that it just doesn’t reach the height of the highest floor. The territory rises from the ground and not from any arbitrary point, meaning that it can only reach a certain elevation, and the place they are all at is way above it.
Without the territory to strengthen them, the counters are at a disadvantage, but they get into a fight with Ma Ju Seok and Hwang Pil Gwang. It is an almost even match, and Mun just about gets the opportunity to exorcize them when Gelly saunters into the picture. She is not there to defeat anyone but to check a theory, and when she touches Mun, she finds that even he got his powers the same way as Ha Na. Therefore, Gelly makes a gamble and erases Mun’s memory of how he got his powers in the first place. That ends up with Mun being stripped of his abilities as a counter. One way to explain this is that being a counter is part of a partnership between the human and the spirit. When all memory of the spirit goes away, so does their presence and the powers that accompany them. Gelly did this because she did not want Pil Gwang to get Mun’s powers. She fought in the best way she knew how, and honestly, it was a masterstroke, infuriating Pil Gwang and the Counters alike. The coming episodes of The Uncanny Counter will tell us the result of this.
Final Thoughts
It looks like The Uncanny Counter Season 2 is picking up steam as the ending approaches, and we appreciate the pacing of it right now. As we pointed out before, it is the play of the emotions that makes it so interesting, which means that the conversations and the strategizing have taken on more importance than just empty action. Hopefully, it will lead the show to a good place.
