this show would be great if it weren't for the egregious and unrepentant police brutality. half of the cast is the one doling out the violence, and the other half happily defends the violence and remains friends with the perpetrators.

you might, like me, hope that they will learn through taejoo that violence is not the answer, that they are violating people's human rights, and doing way more harm than good. this seems to be the obvious arc from the first episode, as taejoo is introduced as a whistleblower for police violence/incompetence, and won't let someone go to prison with tampered-with/false evidence. that is an extremely likeable character. and yet, instead taejoo learns that sometimes, beating people into confessing (a method that does not work, there's a reason you cannot use confessions gained from torture) and creating false evidence is necessary. even the most reprehensible character, the asshole cop who's name i can't even remember because i hated him so much, who perpetuates rape culture, wouldn't help a woman being stalked if the others hadn't forced him, and nearly kills a man from "interrogating him" is one we are supposed to see as "the good guy". he's supposed to be a likeable rapscallion because at least he gets the job done. this is not background violence, or an uncritical portrayal of the police - when given the option of how to portray this violence, they explicitly defend it and double down on it each and every time.

because i have a brain, i can watch a drama that has cops beating people up, or intentionally disregarding proper procedure; most cop dramas (even asian dramas) contain these things, it's part and parcel of being a cop drama and being copaganda. it's in the cops' best interest for you to think that them having to do things legally is impeding "justice". but in those dramas i can think critically and understand that that is wrong, and not root for those characters, and most of the time it isn't the point of the drama. in fact, cop dramas are one of my favourite genres. i loved signal, and hoped this show would be similar!

but even thinking critically with this drama, and acknowledging the biases it is predisposed to have, i cannot defend it nor enjoy it. having watched all the episodes, none of which were aided by the egregious (and often-times comical) violence done by the police in every single episode, there's no conclusion to come to other than that this is the message we are intended to come away with - police have to beat people, and fake evidence, and torture people, because otherwise 'bad people' would be on the streets. bad people hurt people and deserve to be in prison no matter what it takes, and their human rights get in the way of that. but when a cop hurts someone, it's good, because they're a cop, and the bad people need to end up in prison.

i could talk about how i liked the characters, and the acting, but there's no character on earth that would let me look past such horrible violence and messaging, and i don't think this show really deserves the praise.