GG Precinct – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Episode 3

Episode 3 of GG Precinct begins with a flashback to 2001 where Chang and the to-be Commissioner are interrogating Shui-yan. Shui-yan toys with them and offers to reveal the idioms that he used on the 2 students he killed.

However, he will only tell the to-be Commissioner. Chang is forced to cover his ears and turn around. Shui-yan calls the to-be Commissioner closer and closer and once she is near his face, he attacks her. The guards have to rush in and save her before dragging away Shui-yan.

At present, Yumi’s manager, Lin Pai-sheng reports that she had fought with Hsieh Cheng-ta, a stalker fan before her death. Shu-fen gets the search warrant and the precinct barges into Cheng-ta’s house to find it empty. However, Cheng-ta has defamed all of Yumi’s merch and written insults over her photos. The neighbours also add that they had heard Cheng-ta fighting with Yumi.

Tzu-ching notices that Ming-han is missing and we see that he is at Yumi’s place. He hears someone and a hooded guy attacks. A chase ensues with the hooded guy trying to drive off and in the process, running over Ming-han twice. However, the cop is resilient and he finally catches the hooded guy who turns out to be Pai-sheng, Yumi’s manager.

Meanwhile, Chang visits Shui-yan who has been moved to the precinct’s jail cell so that they can keep an eye on him and also have him consult on the case. Chang recalls how Shui-yan had toyed with them before and asks him how he knew what the third idiom would be. The killer is ready to reveal but he will only tell Tzu-ching.

At that moment, Tzu-ching and Ming-han are bickering as she believes Cheng-ta is the culprit while Ming-han believes Pai-sheng is the one. Chang tries to mediate but the argument increases as Cheng-ta arrives at the precinct. He is a delivery boy and while on the job, he saw news channel reporting the GG Precinct harassing neighbours while trying to enter Cheng-ta’s home. However, he has arrived to report that Pai-sheng is the killer.

Chang finally gets Tzu-ching to calm down by sending her to Shui-yan as he will only talk to her. Ming-han interrogates Pai-sheng while Chang himself will question Cheng-ta. At that moment, the coroner is crying over Yumi when he recognises Cheng-ta from the concerts and tries to attack. Chang calms him down and brings him on board as a Yumi expert to question Cheng-ta.

The delivery boy explains that he is a huge fan and would often deliver at Yumi’s place. Once, he saw that she was tired and offered to bring her some tea. While she waited for him, she was on the call with her manager and as he arrived, he overheard her fighting with Pai-sheng. It seems Pai-sheng was ripping her off and she wanted to change managers.

Upset that Cheng-ta overheard her fight, she runs inside while he bangs on the door to explain that he simply has her tea. On seeing the neighbours come out, he runs off.

Meanwhile, Pai-sheng has a different version which he tells Ming-han. He was at Yumi’s because he always goes to her place and sells the gifts her fans give her. With her dead, she anyway wouldn’t need the gifts anymore. However, during that call Yumi is upset that Pai-sheng has publicized her address for gifts which has led to creeps like Cheng-ta coming over.

She says she wants to go back home to Japan and he is furious as he reveals he has spent all his money trying to make her famous and enrol her in Chinese courses. He claims that Cheng-ta heard Yumi calling him a creep and chased her till she ran inside. Once the neighbours chased Cheng-ta away, Pai-sheng cut the call. However, it is the Chinese course that catches Shu-fen and Ming-han’s attention.

He also has a poor vocabulary so they deduce that he isn’t the killer. He gets offended and claims he put Yumi in the most expensive course run by Huang Hsien. Ming-han connects the dots as he realises he had been doodling on Hsien’s idiom book which had irked Shui-yan when they had first met.

Meanwhile, Tzu-ching questions Shui-yan who hits a nerve as he accurately guesses that she is working hard to be accepted by her male peers but it is difficult. She deflects by asking how he knew about the third idiom. He asks her to come closer but when she hesitates, he gives in and explains that his idiom course book had a set of idioms in a particular order.

The first was “phoenix and unicorns”, the second was “third for knowledge” and the third idiom in his book was “tie your hair up.” Both Tzu-ching and Shui-yan conclude that the killer must have been his student. She tells the precinct to look into the two suspects’ school records and shows Shui-yan their photos in case he recognises one of them. But at that moment, Ming-han barges in with Hsien’s idiom book and asks Shui-yan if he knows Huang Hsien.

As Cheng-ta leaves the precinct, he asks someone where Hsien’s Chinese course is being held. It cuts to Hsien’s classroom where a couple of students and a man pray to Shui-yan’s idiom book at the end of GG Precinct Episode 3.

The Episode Review

GG Precinct Episode 3 has us conflicted as this chapter is pretty cool and a little annoying as well. We’ll get the bad out of the way first and that unfortunately is in the form of Tzu-ching. Even if Shui-yan hadn’t commented on the gender inequality, we can see how she is working hard to be taken seriously by her male peers, especially the cocky Ming-han who thinks that she is a joke.

Being an undercover cop who played her part too well and a female captain to a primarily male team, she must work twofold to prove her worth. However, this is shown by her acting equally as childish as Ming-han and being foolish. We get that this show is a comedy, but she would have been a better foil to Ming-han by being the serious counterpart, which she actually was in the first 2 episodes. 

But enough of the character analysis as the unfolding of the mystery definitely is the highlight of this episode. Both the suspects have enough reasons to be the killer but it is the way it builds up to a whole new suspicious character was pretty fun to watch. Yet, we cannot count out Cheng-ta as he is somehow connected to Hsien who clearly knows Shui-yan.