Young Wallander Season 1, Episode 5 recap: A Munck family affair

Young Wallander Episode 5 recap: A Munck family affair.

Young Wallander Episode 5 opens with Hemberg and Kurt dining together at a quiet, intimate restaurant. Hemberg hardly seems surprised Kurt wasn’t able to take time off. He’s caught “the bug” as they say. Theories laid bare, Kurt is antsy to do something about Gustav, to find out what kind of man he really is.

The opportunity to that presented itself in the last episode when Mona mentioned she’d been invited to a black-tie gala in honor of Leopold Munck. Kurt offers to be her plus one, but he doesn’t tell her of his ulterior motives. If she finds out, it could jeopardize their relationship.

On the way to the event, Mona confesses what I anticipated based on Gustav’s previous comment, the two were once involved. Kurt tries to pry into their past relationship, wondering if he did anything unsavory. Mona doesn’t reveal much.

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The Munck residence is an opulent white house with obvious Roman architectural influences, it’s ostentatious — Gustav’s own words. Kurt didn’t get the black-tie memo either as he’s dressed in a business class suit and tie while every other male in the vicinity is adorned with a tux and requisite bowtie.

While Mona visits Leopold, Kurt wanders through the rooms and notices a row of portraits, each one is of a Munck male.

He makes an offhand comment about there being no women in the family and a nearby guest says it’s due to the fideikommiss.

Young Wallander Episode 5 recap: Kurt confronts Gustav and gets thrown out.

It doesn’t take long for things at the party to take a turn for the worse. Kurt can’t help but confront Gustav, and it gets him nowhere. All he does is succeed in pissing Mona off as she accuses him of using her to get close to Gustav. She takes the keys and drives off without him.

But Kurt’s night is far from over. Close to home, he spots Ibra running with his new crew and contacts Bash for help. Bash takes Kurt to a spot where he thinks Ibra’s initiation is being held. Except, instead, Kurt finds Ibra being beaten to a pulp. It turns out he decided not to do his initiation, so he’s being punished instead.

Kurt pulls his gun to try and get them to stop, but all of them have guns of their own. It’s not until Bash shows up and presents a mark on his neck that they back down. The two older men take Ibra home to Mariam. Beyond being physically beaten, he’s emotionally drained, too. Losing the contract has depleted Ibra of all of his hope. Kurt doubles down on his promise to take care of the man who caused all of this.

When he’s finally back in his apartment, Kurt searches fideikommiss online and prints out legal text he takes to Hemberg. It’s an old Swedish law about the transfer of wealth to the next generation. Leopold changed it so his fortune would go to Gustav, rather than his first-born Karl-Axel. However, the question remains whether his sons are aware of this change. Kurt notes that Karl-Axel didn’t seem like a man who lost a fortune at the party.

Hemberg notes that the man who manipulated Zemar into triggering the grenade in Hugo’s mouth is a psychopath. There is no indication that Gustav had ever done anything of the sort. Some as violent and calculating as the dog’s death or Hugo’s wouldn’t come from nowhere.

They need to connect a past incident to Gustav to find the missing connection. I’m not sure I agree with Kurt’s motive for Gustav in all this, but as Hemberg points out, a psychopath doesn’t need one.

Young Wallander Episode 5 recap: Isak identifies one of the drug dealers threatening him.

At the precinct, Isak is looking through mugshots to see if he can identify the dealers who threatened him. The one he recognizes is the same guy who beat up Kurt at The Cube — which has since closed down. Rask notices a familiar face in the image, it’s Dodo. Kurt points out they already swept him though and he came up clean. She theorizes that maybe they missed something.

On that note, Rask and Kurt dig through everything they have on Dodo. They know he has smuggled in weapons to Sweden for years and profited off of young people, but his money has been thoroughly clean as he’s sheltered behind layers of legitimate businesses. If Dodo really is behind all of this, why would he draw so much attention with Hugo? Why use Zemar when he has his own guys?

As Rask points out, the Zemar question is operating under the assumption that he told Yara the truth. Perhaps he did join Dodo’s criminal organization and just lied to her about it.

”Paint a bleak picture, why don’t you,” Kurt responds.

”My job, kid.”

Still, Kurt can’t give up on Gustav just yet, he’s like a dog with a bone. He uploads his flash drive full of everything they have on the billionaire’s life, determined to find something within its confines.

In his digging, the only thing Kurt learns from Gustav’s past is that he’s had some speeding violations and was expelled from boarding school for six months. What would a Munck have to do to get kicked out? Since he’s bored at home, Reza offers to help make phone calls to people who would have known Gustav back then, teachers, fellow students, etc.

In the meantime, Kurt visits Leopold’s estranged wife, Gustav’s and Karl-Axel’s mother, and the same woman who told him about the fideikommiss at the party. He theorizes she left Leopold because of the it, even though they never divorced. He also notices she left around the same time as Gustav’s expulsion.

Kurt attempts to pry further, insinuating she must have had a good reason to separate from her sons, who remained with Leopold. He also drives home how Gustav must have felt all those years in his brother’s shadow, knowing he wasn’t going to get an inheritance — irrelevant, alone, etc. But she refuses to divulge anything helpful.

Young Wallander Episode 5 recap: Rask & Kurt link violence to Gustav’s boarding school days.

Reza is back on his feet at the precinct the next day, and he comes bearing gifts for Kurt. He was greeted with a wall of silence by all of Gustav’s old acquaintances but did discover the one big thing that would guarantee suspension: an act of violence.

With that knowledge, Rask and Kurt come through medical records of kids who went to school at the same time as Gustav. Checking hospital records two weeks before Gustav’s expulsion date, Kurt finds a serious incident with photos showing severe wounds. No police report was filed. The police covered it up.

Even more damning? Rask found an old photograph of Dodo exiting one of the Munck Foundation buildings.

By chatting with Dodo, the detectives learn he forged a shipping contract with Munck Corporation. They control all of his exports and imports. Rask points out if it’s legit, it could be lucrative enough for Dodo to go straight. They can check to see if the Munck Foundation announced it to the shareholders, they would have to if it was real.

Then Reza calls Kurt with a big scoop. He found the victim from the boarding school incident, a man named Tomas Van Rosen. Tomas works in an upscale gun shop and after his story, I can understand why that appeals to him.

After some initial reluctance, Tomas finally opens up to Kurt about how he was tortured and beaten by the older boys in boarding school. One, in particular, beat him with a crowbar, wanting to see how much he could take before dying. Kurt tries to confirm the main assailant was Gustav Munck.

But Tomas says, no, “not Gustav.”

The way he emphasizes the name makes it sound like Kurt got the surname right, which would mean it was likely Karl-Axel! I had a feeling.

Odds & Ends

• Dodo says Hemberg lost his family over his obsession with bringing him down for years. He’s made passing remarks to Kurt about signing his soul away once he’s caught the bug, it sounds like he knows well the magnetism the job can have over you.

Season 1 of Young Wallander is now streaming on Netflix.