“The First Responders” is a 2022 Korean action-thriller streaming on Netflix. The series is written by Min Ji Eun and directed by Shin Kyung Soo. This story about firefighters features Kim Rae Won, So Ho Jun, and Gong Seung Yeon in leading roles. Lieutenant Jin Ho Gae, notoriously known as Jindo Dog, has been demoted for assaulting a criminal. Right from his first day at the Taewon police station, he hasn’t been able to catch a break as new cases keep coming to him. The firefighting team in Taewon works closely with the police team as various cases arise that require joint operations. So far, Jin has solved three cases: an abduction, an aided suicide, and a brutal, cold-blooded murder. Firefighters Song Seol and Bong Do Jin are the aces of the fire crew, and together with Jin, they make a great team called “The First Responders.”
Spoilers Ahead
Who Was Behind Ye Seul’s Accident?
Detective Jin finally finds time to sleep at home after solving the murder of Tae Hoon, who lived at his rental house before him. However, he gets an emergency report at midnight and has to leave right away. A young girl, Choi Ye Seul, has gotten into an accident, but the case is more complicated than it looks.
Ye Seul has been hit by a car and has bounced up on the roof of a bus. Fortunately, she is still alive, and the firefighters escorted her to the hospital. Seol has to do a procedure on Ye Seul that she is not permitted to do to save her life, but she gets scolded by the doctor regardless. Ye Seul has severe injuries, and the doctor has to perform brain surgery on her. Only from the tire marks and the broken glass of the headlight did the forensic detectives manage to find the car model that hit Ye Seul. There are no CCTVs on the road where Ye Seul was hit, and that’s why there is no way to find the car’s license plate. The detectives check all the cars of the same model in real time through surveillance cameras and find the one that has a damaged bumper and a broken headlight.
Officer Baek and Jin follow the car into the parking lot of a mall, but there are too many cars of the same color and model. Finally, they find the car, but it has smoke coming out of it. The firefighters have already received the report and have arrived at the location. They save the man inside the car, who claims that he tried to kill himself because he feels guilty for hurting a kid.
The detectives are relieved that they found the culprit sooner than expected, but Ye Seul’s doctor has news for them. Ye Seul has sixteen fractures on her body, and they don’t look accidental. Ye Seul’s hit-and-run case has also become a child abuse case. Ye Seul only has a mother, and both of them seem close to each other, which makes it difficult to believe that her mother could be abusing her. However, a painting by Ye Seul gives them a clue. Ye Seul’s painting has a male figure in it, and her mother tells the detectives that he is her ex-boyfriend and Ye Seul used to call him uncle. She also says that he was a con man who left after stealing her money and that she has no picture of him. The detectives try to track the conman just by using his burner phone number, and they manage to do so. The con man in question is Dong Chul, the man who hit Ye Seul with the car.
Detective Jin is enraged and has to find evidence that Ye Seul’s mother and Dong Chul planned this “accident.” Ye Seul’s mother pretends not to know Dong Chul when they have been dating each other. As suitable to his name, crazy Jindo dog, detective Jin manages to find video evidence of Dong Chul running the car over Ye Seul’s legs from a delivery man’s bodycam. The detectives bring both Ye Seul’s mother and Dong Chul for interrogation and tell them that Ye Seul is brain dead. They lie further and tell them that they have said something against each other, and when they bring Ye Seul’s mother and Dong Chul in front of each other, they reveal their crimes while arguing.
Ye Seul’s mother and Dong Chul have been abusing Ye Seul to get insurance money for themselves from Ye Seul’s injuries, and this time, they wanted to disable one of Ye Seul’s legs to get more money. Ye Seul innocently wanted to help her mother and ran towards the car to get herself hit when Dong Chul tried to run the car over her legs. Dong Chul and Ye Seul’s mother confess to their crimes, and only then does Jin tell them that Ye Seul is not brain dead. Ye Seul’s mother’s eyes shine for a second, thinking about the insurance money, but she is not going to get any of it as she will stay in prison for the rest of her life.
Why Does Anna Become A Target?
A loan shark from the Daemoo group attends the funeral of one of his debtors and threatens the mother of the deceased debtor to get her to pay back the loan. However, the loan amount mentioned on the paper is way more than what the mother had heard from her daughter. The mother and many others have filed a lawsuit against the Daemoo group for the illegal interest rates on the loan amount. The prosecutor in charge of the case against the Daemoo group has asked Anna for help, and she asks them to stall for some days. She can analyze the contract papers based on the type of paper used to determine if they are forged. On the other side, Detective Jin from her team has dressed up as a thug to meet with another thug to sell him burner phones.
Detective Jin reaches the location, and there are more criminals present. The criminals are expecting to get a robbery job, but the contractor announces that they need to murder people and will receive six times more money. One of the criminals drops out, and Jin is about to do the same, but he changes his mind and agrees to do the murder. The contractor confiscates everyone’s mobile phones and sends Jin with the youngest criminal, Choi, to buy needed materials. Choi gets seizures in the store, and that’s when Jin encounters Seol, who is also there shopping. Seol recognizes Jin when he takes Choi away from her, but fortunately, she doesn’t call him by his real name. The contractor takes all of them to the biochemical laboratory at Hankuk University and reveals his plan to blow up the entire fourth floor. The target is Anna, who is analyzing Daemoo’s contract papers, but the contractor has planned to blow up the entire floor to not make it look like a personal attack.
Jin has put a shampoo bottle in Seol’s shopping cart, and when she reads that it has SOS written on it, she wonders if Jin is in trouble. Dojin had seen Jin wearing the get-up of a thug, and hence, he reached out to Pil, who also noticed Jin’s unusual behavior. He had given Jin a GPS tracker, which led them to an open field where Jin had left his car. Dojin had also seen Jin chatting with someone on a shady website, and he told his younger sister, Anna, to hack it. Anna is in the same building as Jin, and Jin’s cover has been blown because of his nonstop chatter and attempts to meddle in the job. He has been locked in the computer room but is already aware of their plan. The contractor brought the bombs, which exploded after coming into contact with water and placed them in the corridor of the fourth floor under the sprinklers. The plan is to set fire to the building first, which will activate the sprinklers and blow up the entire floor. Jin accesses a computer and sends a message to one of the computers in the lab, and Anna happens to receive it. Jin informs her of everything that he knows.
Dojin calls Anna to hack the chat room, but she already knows what is going on and asks Dojin to call the emergency services immediately. Anna hacks the air conditioning system of the building and cuts off the oxygen flow, which puts out the fire before it reaches the fourth floor. The firefighters had arrived by that time and were trying to break open the entrance to the fourth floor. Jin is a detective, and if he has a doubt, he needs to go to the bottom of it. He tells Seol about the remote controller that the contractor had, and Seol guesses that it is the one used to control the sprinklers. This means that the fourth floor is still a danger zone. While others contemplate what to do, Jin finds the water chamber and freezes the sprinkler machine by pouring liquid nitrogen over it. However, the contractor has already used the remote, and half the bombs have already blown up.
‘The First Responders’ Episode 5: Ending
The firefighters save the rest of the civilians, and Dojin’s sister, Anna, is the only one injured because she was completing the final analysis of the contract papers. She insists on going to court regardless, and Dojin has to give in to her determination. Dojin has to escort her from the ambulance, where both she and Jin are being treated by Seol. The contractor has to get rid of Anna and the evidence she has, and hence, he attacks the ambulance, but Jin brings out his Jindo dog personality and arrests him after a fight. Anna shows her analysis in court, and the Daemoo group loses the case. “The First Responders” is quick and determined in their work field. Detective Jin has been on a secret mission, and that is why he has transferred to Taewon. However, the mission can be life-threatening for him.
