As we catch up with them at the beginning of this new season, the members of the team are all reeling from the devastating conclusion of season one. It ended with a massive stand-off, during which the bullied corporal Cho Suk-bong (Cho Hyun-chul) put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Season two adds a handful of new characters, but most of the time it is busy revisiting the events of the previous season and filling its running time with numerous callbacks – several from minor characters we struggle to remember and some of which feel superfluous, like the extended return of Ko Kyoung-pyo’s D.P. member Park Sung-woo.
While cautiously resting on its laurels, the show seems to be evading the fact that it doesn’t have much to add to its own discussion. And why should it? It already eloquently and extensively explored military abuse in Korea two years ago.
The series does attempt to expand its argument in one new direction and that is where the new characters come in.
These include Ji Jin-hee’s churchgoing villain, General Gu Ja-woon; his right-hand muscle, Oh Min-u (Jung Suk-yong); and the cold military brass turned idealist human rights lawyer Seo (Kim Ji-hyun), who happens to be the ex-wife of Son Suk-ku’s character, Captain Lim Ji-seob.
Representing the indifference and self-preservation of the military, Ja-woon orchestrates several cover-ups, both hiding the military’s many deficiencies and labelling military-abuse victims that turned violent as mentally unstable.
The most violent among them is Kim Ru-ri (Moon Sang-hoon), a friend of Suk-bong’s who is mercilessly bullied in his unit and unloads an assault-rifle clip in his dorm one evening, killing two and injuring 11 more.
Ru-ri’s act, which was hinted at at the end of last season, and his subsequent escape and capture, take place very early in the new episodes. While somewhat histrionic, these events give the start of the season some energy, which it struggles to recapture as it continues.
The D.P. quartet, which includes An Jun-ho (Jung), Han Ho-yeol (Koo), their empathetic superior Park Bum-gu (Kim Sung-kyun) and his superior Ji-seob, remain a lively bunch to follow.
However, whereas they began as contrasting characters starting on different pages last season, season two finds them on the same empathetic page straight away. Lacking significant internal conflict, the squad occasionally struggles to hold onto our attention.
Another new tangent the show explores is queer identity in Korean society. It does this through the case of deserter Jang Sung-min (Bae Na-ra), a gay recruit who has been performing as a drag queen while on the run.
Sung-min’s episode suffers from awkward comic strokes while Jun-ho and Ho-hyeol look for him in Itaewon, Seoul’s multicultural district, while the message that accompanies his tragic story is trite and heavy-handed.
Beyond that case and an ill-fitting episode involving a landmine explosion by the DMZ (demilitarised zone), the show largely sticks with D.P. going up against the cartoonish villain Ja-woon.
Season two of D.P. is by no means bad television. It’s well performed, beautifully produced and occasionally flows very well, but it’s a significant step down from where things left off.
There seemed to be plenty of reasons to return to this world, but in retrospect, did this story have anything left to say?
During a climactic court case, Ja-woon exclaims to his opposing counsel Eun that she doesn’t seem to be sure of her main argument. Sadly, this is a charge that could aptly be levelled at the show as well.
D.P. season 2 is streaming on Netflix.
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