Taxi Driver – K-drama Season 2 Episode 12 Recap & Review

The Playground of Evil

Episode 12 of Taxi Driver Season 2 starts with Do-gi taken into police custody upon Guard Jang’s orders. Go-eun, Kyung-goo and Jin-eon watch as Do-gi is taken away while the mother of the minor arrives in an ambulance and takes her son and his friend away. The woman yells at Guard Jang for letting her son in and Jang blames his inferior guard for letting something like this fly.

Jang learns that the kids had gotten a pass into the club from Windy. Jang asks Windy’s schedule to be wiped off which triggers the escort. She finds Jang in the VIP room and slaps him across the face for causing her a monetary loss. Jang tells Windy that the club could handle anything like rape or assault but letting minors inside is where they draw the line.

Windy attacks the chief guard with her heel and breaks a glass bottle on his head as revenge when Yoo Moon-hyun, the chief in charge of Black Sun walks in. Moon-hyun separates the two while Jang gets a call from the cops. Detective Jang Jin-ho tells Guard Jang about Do-gi’s arrest. Meanwhile,  as Senior Officer Jo Min-geon interrogates Do-gi, Detective Jang claims that Do-gi was to be arrested on charges of molestation.

Do-gi is locked up and left in shock. At the same time, Go-eun tries to find as much information as she can to help Do-gi when she spots the journalist from earlier that night going inside the police station. The journalist, Kim Yong-min, somehow helps release Do-gi from lockup. Over a meal and some drinks, Yong-min and Do-gi bond and the journalist shares how he saved Do-gi using CCTV footage.

Do-gi praises Yong-min for bravely being beaten up by the guards at Black Sun in order to expose them. Yong-min tells Do-gi that he should stay away from Black Sun and asks him to mind his business going forward. Meanwhile, at the Rainbow Taxi headquarters, the group tries to take their guesses about what was going on at Black Sun and Go-eun reveals that the club had six owners, all of who were not the real owners but people who posed to be the owners of the nightclub.

Do-gi decides that the best way to look into the club is to use a different method other than as a guest. Park Hyun-jo, the Chief of Police, is also one of the owners of the club in one of the VIP rooms with Victor where the idol thanks the cop for saving him from a DUI. Hyun-jo signs the revenue chart for the month and Black Sun’s monthly business is 5.64 million dollars.

Hyun-jo tells Victor that the club keeps making profit month after month while the idol invites the cop to his comeback party which will be at a private resort with women that are to Hyun-jo’s liking. Kyung-goo and Jin-eon manage to take one drunk guard down from outside the club while Do-gi abducts two others in his taxi.

Moon-hyun is angry that Guard Jang is not able to handle the other guards well and calls someone to get replacements from the gym. Do-gi is one of the men working out at the gym that Moon-hyun’s assistant is at and is selected, all thanks to his aggression as he beats two other gym-goers.

At the club, Guard Jang is shocked to see Do-gi as one of the new guards but the taxi driver lies his way out of the argument by stating that he acted out of instinct that day. Moon-hyun likes Do-gi’s attitude and asks him to report any other minors that are seen in the club directly to him. Guard Jang narrates a set of rules for the bouncers telling them that men and women who looked a certain way were only allowed inside the club.

Since 12am was their peak hour, only VIP males are allowed to enter the club and VIP women who looked like models would be granted access to the club after 12am. Windy mocks Jang and the two bicker right in front of the junior guards. Do-gi is Guard #9 and is placed on the main dance floor. As per instructions, he is not to intervene even if there were fights on the dance floor.

CEO Yang finds Do-gi as the guard this time around and seems happy to see him. During his break, Do-gi chats up with the other members of the revenge crew but Guard Jang spots him there. Do-gi puts on a scene and kicks Jin-eon and Kyung-go out of the club in order to face in front Jang. Jang is shocked that CEO Kang wanted to meet Do-gi and calls him inside the club. Jang tells Do-gi that he was now going to work with the VIPs.

Do-gi, like the other guards, has to protect the alcohol bottle that has his employee number (#9). If the bottle shatters, breaks or is stolen, Do-gi has to pay for it. Do-gi follows the VIP that was holding bottle #9 and enters the VIP room. Do-gi notices that the VIP clients are middle-aged women who are being entertained by male escorts. As luck would have it, CEO Kang is in the same room as well and is talking to Ha-joon, who is also on his way inside the club.

By chance, a superior guard calls Do-gi out and exchanges his employee id with him. Now, Do-gi is guard #2 and is made to wait outside where Ha-joon notices him leave the VIP area but does not make much of it. Do-gi witnesses two guards drag a drunk VIP client into a car and is made to drive the woman home. In her VIP room, CEO Kang gets suspicious when she finds someone else wearing the #9 badge.

She ends up breaking the bottle and a few more frightening the guards and the other guests. Ha-joon stops her as the two discuss the bishop’s arrival. Ha-joon puts on a show to entertain the guards and fights three of them all by himself. He manages to single-handedly beat the men up and the VIPs are entertained by the guards being beaten up. CEO Kang agrees to fulfil Ha-joon’s wish as per their deal.

Meanwhile, Do-gi is worried about the client that is passed out in his car but notices that a car was following him. He whispers and asks Go-eun to run a check on the number plates and learns that the car belongs to Journalist Kim Yong-min. Do-gi tries to escape Yong-min’s tail but the journalist bangs into the vehicle.

The other guards inside the car recognise Yong-min while the journalist rams into Do-gi’s vehicle in an attempt to stop him. Yong-min loses his balance and is about to be dashed by a truck when Do-gi uses his vehicle to save the journalist. Do-gi uses pepper spray on the guards who come to check on him and beats them up. He tells Do-gi that they needed to take the girl to the hospital ASAP.

At the hospital, Yong-min tells Do-gi that the girl was drugged and would have been taken somewhere where people would have sexually assaulted her. The doctor claims that the girl had drugs in her system and adds that she had alerted the cops about it. Yong-min is pissed and the female cops arrest the woman while Detective Jang Jin-ho reads the woman her rights while she is still sedated on drugs.

Do-gi and Yong-min watch as the girl is being taken away and the journalist seems pissed. He rushes back to the car where the guards have just woken up from being passed out. Do-gi pretends to be passed out too as the other guards are worried about losing the drugged girl. After his shift, Do-gi meets with Yong-min at his house in order to discuss the case he was working on.

Do-gi learns that Yong-min had been working on exposing the Black Sun for a long time. Upon Do-gi’s insistence, Yong-min reveals that he was trying to avenge the death of his friend, Choi Seung-eun who was killed after he tried to expose Black Sun. The incident was reported as a suicide but Yong-min knows it was staged to look like one.

Yong-min blames himself for the incident because he drove Seung-eun to the Black Sun night club where drugs worth millions were being pedalled. Back then, a troubled Seung-eun had called Yong-min asking for his help but had reportedly killed himself before even meeting Yong-min.

The cops show Yong-min some footage of Seung-eun alleging that he had died by suicide after being overwhelmed by loans and debt. Yong-min claims that Seung-eun had seen something he should not have at the nightclub.

After that, Yong-min pledged to find out what had happened to Seung-eun. Upon inspection of the tapes, Yong-min notices that Seung-eun does not have the spy cam pen he was given and that his entire demeanour had changed after leaving Black Sun. Yong-min was also framed by Black Sun and was fired from his job.

The journalist claims that he was filming himself on the rooftop, hoping that the Black Sun guards would kill him so that the video could draw some public attention towards the wrongdoings of the nightclub. Do-gi leaves Rainbow Taxi’s contact information for Yong-min before going back to the headquarters.

Go-eun and the others claim that fighting Black Sun is way out of their capabilities while Do-gi is certain Yong-min was also after the same target they were after. Sung-cheol holds a neutral stance on the situation and claims that the nightclub – Black Sun – has the answers to all their questions.

Sung-cheol claims they should take them on as clients while Do-gi reassures Go-eun that it will all be okay. Later that night, Do-gi drops Yong-min back home after taking on his case and the group brings the taxi M5283 back into business as the episode comes to an end.

The Episode Review

I know that Ha-joon is the bad guy here and what the Black Sun nightclub was up to is totally wrong but I have to say that the man looks good as a psychopath! After seeing Shin Jae-ha as a psychopath in Crash Course in Romance, I am certain that the man has a knack for negative characters.

This time around, the Black Sun case, as well as that of Officer Choi Seung-eun’s death, is much bigger than the Rainbow Taxi revenge crew’s pay-scale. However, I am sure there is nothing this group can’t do. I still am hoping for Ha-joon’s redemption arc when he will come out to help the revenge crew so I’m still being hopeful.