The Uncanny Counter season 2

 So our favorite supernatural demonhunting noodle-cooks are back for a second season of South-Korean television.

And the first season was great fun, and not only because of it's unlikely setting!

 

And it starts immediatly with some action, as a school bus is hijacked by a demon possessing the driver.   The Counters rush into action, showing us what exactly they are all about again.  On the other side, the evil spirits are introduced as they wipe out the chinese Counter team, Hwang Pil-Gwang, who is the maffiosio leader of the band, the hawt Gelly who is the resident psycho and weirdo sadist Wong.

They make the move to Korea, intrested in the real-estate fraud that was central to season one.  Realising they need an additional Counter, the team recruits Jaek-Bong who fell in a coma after saving his date from Truck-kun.  Ma Jo-Seok on the other hand is a safety worker that rescued So Moon's grandma, and has become a personal friend together with his pregnant wife, and victims of the season one fraud.

Unfortunatly the evil spirits are trying to eliminate the men behind the scene, and Ma Jo-Seok's wife dies as a result of running into them, breaking his spirit.  But as the evil spirits and the Counters meet, the evil ones see what the Korean Counters are capable off and lust after their powers.  Pil-Gwang comes to the noodle shop, having tracked down So Moon, intend on unnerving him.  Their hide-out uncovered, the  Counters have to move bases and relocate to a warehouse courtesy of Jang-mul.

As Ha-Na and Jeok-Bong go for a jogging trip, in which she runs into her high school crush, Jeok-Bong's power manifests.  He can smell evil spirits and locate them that way.  Chasing the evil spirits, the Counters are split up, miss Chu and Jang-mul being confronted by Wong and Pil-gwang, saved at the last moment by So Moon.  Mo-tak also arrives and together with Miss Chu beat Wong and summon him to Yung.  But Pil-gwang (barely) escapes the same fate as he blackmails So Moon into letting him go by threatening to shoot Jang-mul.

Ha-na and Jeok-Bong face Gelly, costing the latter an eye but Jeok-Bong his sense of smell.  He returns to the village feeling himself useless, but the other Counters convince him to stay on the team with the help of his father, and his smelling power returns as well.  Pil-gwang and Gelly though learned that the pregnant lady they killed was a friend of the Counters, as Ma Jo-Seok steals a firetruck to go after the man he believes killed his wife and unborn child.  He ends up in jail, but as he tries to commit suicide an evil spirit is attracted to his rage.  It cannot possess him as he hasn't killed anyone, but latches onto his innerself.  

Unremorsefull at his trial, Ma Jo-Seok is kept in jail, and is visited by Pil-gwang as we learn more about his involvement in the residence fraud, and he sensed a spirit in Ma Jo-Seok.  He comes to tell him the (twisted in his favor) truth, in the hopes of kindling the spirit even more.  As they chase Gelly in a warehouse, they learn they where involved in the fraud, and that they have been betrayed by one of the others on in it.  It turns out the Red Roses criminal organisation is behind the fraud, headed by Chung-Jae, the second in charge of the fraud and the one that killed Min-Ji, albeit controlled by Pil-gwang... and not dead from a car accident as is publically believed.

Miss Chu in the meantime takes care of a small time criminal, who was her first "save" as a counter when he was being bullied, yet now became a bully himself.  Pil-gwang and Gelly revisit Ma Jo-Seok, fuelling his rage ever more.  He breaks out from jail, going after mr Park.  But his humanity keeps the evil spirit inside him still in check, preventing it from making him do his first kill and become ever more powerful.  But he kills his target in the end, Mr Park whom he thinks is still the murderer, and the spirit can take full possession of him now at last.  So Moon can nearly summon it, but Pil-gwang intervenes and whisks Ma Jo-Seok away.  In Yung, they learn that if Jo-Seok and Pil-gwang would merge, a complete evil spirit will manifest, far more powerful then anything the Counters encountered so far. 

Pil-gwang reveals to Ma Jo-Seok the true killer of his family, Chung-Jae is still out there, as Gelly realises Pil-gwang has abandoned her as she is seemingly no longer usefull to his plans.  As she seriously injures ha-na's crush, she is almost banished by Ha-Na but Pil-gwang comes to her rescue, not out of loyalty but because he wants to absorb her powers for his own.  Miss Chu is captured by the boy she saved long ago, as he wants to prove his loyalty to the crime syndicate, but Mo-Tak saves her.  The team goes after Ma Jo-Seok, who entered a hotel, where they walk into a trap laid by Pil-gwang.  Gelly strikes Moon down, erasing the moment of his rebirth from his memory and putting him back into a coma, as Jang-mul comes in to save the Counters, machine gun blasting.

In Yung, his "handler" Wi-Gen is trapped now in the White Ground, where she must find So Moon's soul and reforge their contract in order to return his powers.  But she can't find him, as he isn't actually in a coma, something Ha-Na finds out by entering his mind.  At the port, Mo-Tak manages to arrest Chung-Jae, while Ha-Na faces off Gelly again.  Locking her in a container, the blinded Gelly can't locate ha-na, who thanks to her training of her other senses can easily punch the psycho blonde around and summon her to Yung.  Ha-na manages to bring So Moon back, but he doesn`t strike a new contract with Wi-gen, instead returning out of his own free will to the Counter life.

With both Gelly and (unknown they are back) Moon's powers gone, Pil-gwang decides to go to plan B and absorb Ma Jo-Seok's powers instead.  But Pil-gwang is no match, and Ma Jo-Seok sets out to hijack the prisoner transport that carries Chung-Jae.  he nearly strangles his mother against his will, but the Counters luckily intervene.  Pil-gwang lures Ma Jo-Seok to the television station as he brings Chung-jae's decapitated head, and revealing he was behind the fraud all along.  He quickly snaps Pil-gwang's neck and absorbs him, but in doing so the spirit inside Pil-gwang takes over the one controlling him and making Ma Jo-Seok his new vessel.  

Now a complete spirit, Yung orders the Counters not to try and summon him, but eliminate him all together, something So Moon does not agree with.  He knows Ma Jo-Seok is still in there, and wants to save him.  And when Mo-tak's partner is seemingly killed, the good in Ma Jo-Seok heals him from the brink of dead, proving So Moon's hunch.  The evil spirit knows though where they hide, and he attacks their base.  So Moon wants to sacrifice himself to take the spirit down, but the other Counters won't abandon him, and So Moon enters his mind.  In there, he needs to fight the spirit of Pil-gwang, and on the verge of being defeated by the evil being, a light starts shining as Ma Jo-Seok's spirit intervenes, and So Moon actually manages to summon Pil-gwang out of the body.  He goes to look for Ma Jo-Seok, finding him in the crumbling realms of his thoughts.  But So Moon convinces the Yung to keep his promise and he can briefly see Min-Ji again in the spirit world, before returning to jail to serve a long sentence, strengthened by the thought of her.

In the aftermath, So Moon goes to Europe for six months to train Counters there, even finding Wi-gen's daughter.  And when he returns, they go back to business as usual...

Okay, so it was fun, BUT... a lot of rules are bended and even broken about spirits and Counter powers compared to season 1, creating plotholes.  Also, no matter how villainous Pil-gwang might be, he is rather two dimensional compared to the villain of season one.  Was this a good season, sure, but it just has those little issues that don't make it as awesome as the first one was.

Oh well, time to go cook some noodles now I guess!