Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.
Itaewon Class
(ě´íě í´ëźě° / Itaewon Keullasseu)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10
Hi everyone!! Being jobless has given me a lot of free time to watch a lot of series very fast, lol.
I admit I was in a bit of a rush to watch this series and I finished it within a week. Since this was one of the most hyped 2020 Netflix K-Drama and I was really excited to finally start on it.
In stark contrast to The King: Eternal Monarch, which I watched before this, Itaewon Class was as much a breath of fresh air as it was a snap back to reality. It took me the first couple of episodes to really get into it, anxious for the actual story to start. But all in all, I found it quite good and refreshing and mostly very interesting for reasons I will elaborate on in this review.
Because I knew it to be such a hyped and popular drama I was initially a little hesitant to state some more critical opinions I had about a couple of issues depicted in this series, but after reading some fellow reviews on MyDramaList, I was stimulated to still write them down. That is, after all, why I started writing and uploading drama reviews.
I do find it important to note that when I started watching, I had no idea what was waiting for me. If I had a notion of what the story would be about, I was completely wrong about it. It surprised me in more than one ways, and I will try my best to write a good review that’s not just one big summary (which I have a tendency to).
Itaewon Class is a 16-episode series on Netflix, each episode a little over an hour long. The story is about Park Sae Roy (played by Park Seo Joon), a slightly odd but very determined and just guy, who loses everything because of his ill connections to the Chairman of a very influential company, Jangga, and his son. When he tries to build his life back up from scratch, this Chairman keeps making things hard for him, determined to eventually get him on his knees. The main storyline revolves around Sae Roy’s plan to take revenge on this Chairman, his son, and his company Jangga, which is the biggest national food supply company. It’s a long and hard road, because the Chairman is a powerful opponent and he can pull strings like a puppet player. The issue of ‘bringing someone to his knees’ poses a recurring thing throughout the story, because it is the most conservative way of admitting defeat to one’s opponent and the two main leads are very traditional in their ways and principles.
Okay, just to get into a little more detail: Sae Roy grew up with his father (played by Son Hyun Joo), who was an employee at Jangga. As a teenager, Sae Roy wants to become a police officer, and he has very strong moral principles, due to his father’s upbringing. When he transfers to a new high school, he finds out that he’s in the same class as the son of Jangga’s Chairman, Jang Geun Won (played by Ahn Bo Hyun). What’s more, Geun Won is a big bully who can just go around harrassing people at school and do whatever he wants without getting reprimanded by the school staff. He is the Chairman’s son after all. Sae Roy doesn’t stand for this behavior. On his first day at his new school, he sees Geun Won bully a classmate and he goes to him to tell him off. When Geun Won scoffs and pushes him away, and when their teacher blatantly ignores what’s happening, Sae Roy loses his temper and punches Geun Won in the face.
As a result, he and his father have to face Geun Won’s father, Chairman Jang Dae Hee (played by Yoo Jae Myung). He tells Sae Roy that he will revoke his suspension from school if he gets on his knees and apologizes for punching Geun Won. Sae Roy refuses, sticking to his principles, saying he doesn’t feel sorry for punching someone who bullied a classmate.
So Sae Roy ends up getting expelled on his first day of school and his father resigns on the spot in front of the chairman, expressing his pride for raising such a just son. Even without the job at Jangga, he has enough money to start his own restaurant, and they start their new life together, father and son.
On his way back from deliveries one night, Sae Roy’s father is hit from behind by a car, falls with his scooter over a railing down a steep cliff and dies almost instantly. As fate has it, the person driving the car is no one other than Geun Won, who was driving under influence. Even though he didn’t mean to kill anyone, let alone Sae Roy’s father, Chairman Jang stops his son from turning himself in and tells him he will ‘take care of everything’. In the end, someone else ends up in prison and Geun Won never even has to testify. The detective in charge of the hit-and-run, Oh Byung Hoon (played by Yoon Kyung Ho) is forced to drop the case as his superiors have all been bribed by the Chairman.
When Sae Roy coincidentally finds out it was Geun Won driving the car that killed his father, he goes to the hospital and beats Geun Won bloody. For this, he is sent to prison for 3 years.
The series is divided into different parts. The part I just summarized is the first part, a flashback to 15 years ago from the point in the present where the series starts, when Sae Roy is in high school. It then skips to 2 years later, when he gets out of prison early for being an exemplary inmate. After that, it skips to 7 years later when he has managed to secure a building to start his own pub. After that it skips to another 4 years later I believe, when he manages to franchise his pub and creates a company for it. I may be missing one time leap, but anyhow this is how the series is structured.
When Sae Roy gets out of prison, his high school friend and first love Oh Soo Ah (played by Kwon Na Ra) invites him to come to meet her in Itaewon, a very lively district in Seoul with lots of clubs and pubs which is also very popular among foreigners. When he arrives there during Halloween night, he is amazed by the joyful atmosphere. He decides there and then that he wants to start his pub in Itaewon. He meets Soo Ah, who is about to start a job at Jangga. She knows what the company means to him as she went through a big part of his past with him – she was also very fond of his father since he managed the orphanage where she grew up. However, it’s still a great job opportunity. We only find out at the very end of the series what Soo Ah’s ultimate goal is for working there, but until then she gradually climbs up to becoming one of the Chairman’s most trusted employees, almost family. She was in the same class as Geun Won (and Sae Roy for that one day) and Geun Won has had a crush on her ever since, even though she’s not in the least interested in him.
The relationship between Sae Roy and Soo Ah is very interesting in itself. They seem to like each other, but Soo Ah keeps pushing and pulling and playing hard to get with him. Sae Roy very openly tells her he likes her multiple times, and knowing this gives her a certain confidence, but for some reason she never reciprocates his feelings, she keeps waiting. When they meet in Itaewon she jestingly says she likes rich men, and then Sae Roy promises her that one day he’ll become rich and make her quit her job at Jangga. But Soo Ah’s position is very complicated. Even though she cares a lot about Sae Roy, she is also part of Jangga and she also has to participate in Chairman Jang’s schemes to get in Sae Roy’s way. I think in the beginning we are led to be cautious of Soo Ah, since we really don’t know what her exact intentions are – why is she working at Jangga? Is she really on Sae Roy’s side? So in that respect she is a very interesting character in my opinion.
Sae Roy tells her that in 7 years, he’ll start a pub in Itaewon, and to get there he will first work his ass off in all kinds of jobs from fishing boats to factories. What he also does, and this is very characteristic of Sae Roy’s character, is read Chairman Jang’s (auto?)biography. To get a better understanding of him and his business. I think this was really good because it showed how serious Sae Roy was about his revenge plan and how far he was willing to go. Even though he wanted to bring the Chairman down, he still agreed he was a great businessman and he thoroughly read his book, not out of spite but to actually learn from him. Sae Roy was just an amazingly mature character, he didn’t just barge in screaming ‘REVENGE!!’, no, he really made a plan to slowly but surely catch up with Jangga and beat the Chairman in the thing he was most proud of: business.
When Sae Roy and Soo Ah meet again by chance 7 years later, Soo Ah is baffled to see he actually secured a building to start his pub in Itaewon.
When he first starts out, Sae Roy has two employees, Choi Seung Kwon (played by Ryu Kyung Soo) and Ma Hyun Yi (played by Lee Joo Young). Seung Kwon used to be in prison with Sae Roy. He used to be a thug, and he thought Sae Roy was really annoying. But after Sae Roy showed him that being an ex-convict didn’t mean your life was over, he came to work for him and now serves tables at his pub. Hyun Yi used to work in a factory that Sae Roy worked at and is hired as the cook. Seung Kwon and Hyun Yi have a friendly but bickering kind of relationship.
The pub’s name, by the way, is Dan Bam, or ‘Honey Night’. When asked about this apparently ‘lame’ name, Sae Roy explains this is a reference to his father. In the flashback when he has just been expelled from school, he drinks his first glass of soju with his father and when he says it tastes sweet, his father notes that ‘that means that he’s had an impressive day’. The whole notion of soju tasting either sweet or bitter depending on the situation you’re in when you drink it is also something that keeps coming back. With this name, he wishes to turn everyone’s night from bitter to sweet. I thought it was a lovely way of showing respect to his father.
When it’s just the three of them, they don’t have a lot of business. It’s hard to bring customers in and the inside of their pub looks like nothing, plus the food isn’t that great.
Just as they’re pondering what to do, they meet Jo Yi Seo. Yi Seo (played by Kim Da Mi) is a young genius high school student who is also a very famous blogger. She earns a lot of money with promoting small businesses and places on her social media and has a lot of followers. As she’s gifted in athletics, music, studies, anything, she’s accepted into several good universities. Her best friend is Jang Geun Soo (played by Kim Dong Hee). Geun Soo is Chairman Jang’s illegitimate son who has broken away from the Jang family because he was always treated as an outcast. He now lives a freer life and he has a crush on Yi Seo. When the two of them plus one other friend go clubbing in Itaewon one night, they try to get into a pub even though both Yi Seo and Geun Soo are still minors. Dan Bam is the only pub that lets them in, and only because Seung Kwon doesn’t want to turn away the handful of customers they got that night. When the plus one friend starts making a fuss over the measly quality of the pub and its food and gets into a semi-fight with Seung Kwon, the night seems already ruined enough. However, it turns out someone spotted Yi Seo through the window of the pub and reported the pub to the police for serving minors. In addition to Yi Seo and Geun Soo feeling bad, Dan Bam is forced to suspension for two weeks.
In these two weeks, Yi Seo offers her skills to the pub. Instead of going to college, she requests to become the pub’s manager to help them out with their marketing and redecoration. She starts coaching Hyun Yi on cooking and promotes the pub through her social media, causing it to become more popular. Geun Soo also starts working their part-time, partly because he feels guilty for indirectly causing the pub’s suspension. The team is lastly joined by Kim Tony, a half Korean half Guinean part-timer. With this team, they start working hard so that they are able to open the new and improved Dan Bam after their suspension period ends.
Yi Seo was a very refreshing and eccentric character. She seems like the kind of friend that’s super fun to hang out with, loves to party and have fun and not worry too much about the future. But at the same time, there’s a deeper layer to her that is kind of bored with life and will probably ditch you once she’s bored of you. Maybe that’s the reason she lives so freely, going her own way. There’s not a lot that actually genuinely interests her and she feels like ‘life’s a chore’. As a child, teachers and others have worried that’s she apt to become a sociopath, and she kind of is. She doesn’t seem to care if she comes across as inconsiderate or unfriendly to others, even people she’s close with. Despite his feelings for her, Geun Soo often remarks how mean she can be.
However whimsical Yi Seo may be, her interest is piqued by Sae Roy and his persevering big dreams. She initially declares him a fool when he says he wants to franchise the pub and become bigger than Jangga, but as she spends more time with him and the team, she finds herself falling for him and his ideals. She becomes determined to help him achieve his goals. I don’t find it hard to believe that Yi Seo is a popular character with viewers, exactly because she’s so non-mainstream. I have to admit I found her very refreshing and cool, despite the occasional dip in my sympathy for her. I do have to point out a couple of moments where my respect for her plummeted, though.
As I said, there were some themes and issues in this series that I’ve never seen a K-Drama deal with before, such as racism and gender identity. Although I appreciate they went for an inclusive concept, I couldn’t help but think that these particular themes could’ve been dealt with way better. Introducing Hyun Yi as transgender and Tony as half-Korean was exciting, I really hoped they would make a point of normalizing this, allthemore in the environment of a district like Itaewon. But after they were introduced as such, it seemed like that was all there was to their roles. They each had one ‘arc’ in which they got their own little struggle and after that they just disappeared into the background again. Which was a pity, because Hyun Yi was an absolute pearl and Tony deserved more than just being ‘the foreigner’. The way his role turned out, I find myself wondering what the purpose of it was at all.
Maybe I take it this way because I’ve had a similar experience when I was studying in Japan. I participated in two performances of a college theatre group and in the second play I was given the role of ‘foreign exchange student/part of the protagonists’ friend group who started studying Japanese because she liked samurai and ninja’ but I didn’t really get any character development besides just being the funny foreigner using old-school Japanese samurai words. Tony felt like this to me. He only got some nods in agreement and whenever he was feeling down, the significance of his feelings was kind of dismissed by all the other ‘more important things’ that were going on. Even though he was fluent in Korean, and he was legally half Korean since his father was Korean, his dark skin labelled him as a foreigner and no one could ever see him as Korean, no matter how good everyone’s intentions were with him. Also, for the racism theme, I’m talking about things like everyone immediately turning to Tony when some foreign people walk in, because they just assume that he speaks English. Turned around, that would be like working in a restaurant and two Chinese people walk in and you just turn to the nearest Asian-looking person to say ‘You’re Asian, you probably speak Chinese right?’ So that really didn’t sit well with me. Not all western-looking people speak English, y’all! Stop being negligent and get your facts straight. Just ask around the team and ask ‘anyone who speaks English here?’ It’s not that hard.
N O R M A L I Z E. Sorry, haha.
For Hyun Yi, of course I was apalled by how she was treated when people found out she was transgender – come on people, these aren’t the middle ages, gender identity is an actively discussed topic at the moment. I was really proud of her for finding the courage to still step up in front of people and come out proudly, but afterwards it just kind of disappeared from the story altogether. After she herself had proudly stated ‘I am transgender’, suddenly all the tension and weirdness people had toward it was gone and it went back to the main story as if to say ‘we got that part over with, back to the real story now’.
BUT. The point I wanted to make was how disappointed I was in Yi Seo’s character when it came to these two cases. The way she was introduced as a free-spirited open-minded modern girl, I couldn’t believe how racist and discriminating she acted towards them. When Tony wasn’t allowed inside a club because he looked African, and he tried to plead that he was Korean, she didn’t help him get inside or even stand up for him, she just straight out told him ‘Dude, how can you be Korean, you have dark skin’. And when they found out Hyun Yi was transgender, the first thing Yi Seo pointed out was ‘having a transgender as a cook will make people uncomfortable’.
Like, I couldn’t believe she of all people would belong to the group of people who frowned upon things like that. And when she eventually ‘apologized’, it didn’t come across as sincere at all. She just got away with a quirky ‘Eonni~ You’ll forgive me right~ You know I love you~’ and she literally just elbowed Tony casually like ‘Oh btw sorry’. The second thing that bothered me was that she actually promised Tony that she would help him look for his father (which was the reason he came to Korea) and then she didn’t even lift a finger. A little later it’s revealed that Sae Roy is spending months hanging up flyers to search for Tony’s dad and even helps him get a visa to stay in Korea (!) and Yi Seo never did a single thing to help Tony with anything. After agreeing to hiring him she didn’t even glance back at him. Things like that really pissed me off about her. She was able to get away with a lot because she was ‘just a kid’, but at some points things she said were really hurtful and she just wouldn’t take responsibility for them or reflect on them.
When she starts developing a crush on Sae Roy, Soo Ah naturally becomes her rival, and Yi Seo just starts treating her like a jealous child. When Soo Ah is about to kiss Sae Roy one time, she literally jumps in and grabs Soo Ah by the mouth, being all like ‘You can’t kiss someone without consent, that’s against the law’ —- while she literally kissed Sae Roy herself “without his consent” when he was passed out drunk after a drink one night. Girl….
In fact, this was one of the few K-Dramas I’ve watched where I actually didn’t need romance. The story in itself, of Sae Roy in his journey to revenge, was strong enough to stand on its own. Sure, let Yi Seo have her one-sided crush on Sae Roy and let him stay oblivious to her feelings (and female attraction in general) because he’s not paying attention to it. I wasn’t even that into him and Soo Ah getting together, because she’d already been keeping him waiting for forever.
But in the last few episodes, especially with the kidnapping at the end, I really felt like the series could’ve done without. Soo Ah could’ve just gone to the police with all the materials she’d gathered at Jangga throughout the years and it would still have happened without Yi Seo getting kidnapped for no reason and Sae Roy having to bend the knee to the Chairman for no reason.
Honestly, I felt like the series was just getting to where it was going and then the whole kidnapping thing came and it got me all confused, because this suddenly added a whole new angsty dramatic plotline which was so different from the entire vibe of the series up to that point.
Before getting ahead of myself, let me explain. So, at one point, Chairman Jang is determined to get Yi Seo on board at Jangga. Geun Won hears about this and slips in, determined to convince her himself to prove his worth to his dad for bringing her in. Instead, Yi Seo manages to get his confession of killing Sae Roy’s father on record. She releases it online and Geun Won is trialed again for what he’s done 15 years ago. Chairman Jang chooses the Jangga Before Son card and literally throws Geun Won under the bus, claiming in a national press conference that his son was guilty of everything, leaving himself out of the equation. Geun Won is then sent to prison for 7 years, but he gets out earlier for being an exemplary inmate, just like Sae Roy. Even though I really hoped he would’ve seen the light while he was there, getting back out he seemed to have turned into an even bigger idiot and monster than he was before. He actually kidnaps Yi Seo in order to lure Sae Roy out to kill him. As in, he actually attempts murder.
Just when I was so glad to watch a fairly safe contemporary drama with no murder attempts like in The King, this part threw me off so much. It was like suddenly the whole series changed into something else. He manages to hurt Sae Roy badly and takes Geun Soo (who followed Sae Roy) hostage together with Yi Seo. Then he threatens to kill Yi Seo ‘for causing him to go to jail’.
I mean, this guy was either getting his facts completely messed up or he was just soft in the head. No matter how aware he was of how his father had fed him to the lions, he still wouldn’t accept his father to be the source of his misery. In the end, his plan fails, Sae Roy beats him again and he’s just sent to prison again. Fat lot of good that last attempt was, my friend.
Despite being a jerk, I did find Geun Won a very interesting character. Because at some points you couldn’t help but realize that this is how his father raised him to be. He wasn’t evil to the core. When he hit Sae Roy’s father with his car as a teenager, he came to his father because he did feel guilty and terrible about what he had done – he was willing to turn himself in.
But he was raised by a father who had always let him do whatever he wanted. If he made trouble, he never had to apologize or do anything because his father would ‘deal with it’. That’s how he was raised. So part of me also felt kind of sorry for him. He was a buffoon, and made fun of a little because everyone knew he wouldn’t be able to take over the company. He was literally not smart enough. But there were such interesting layers to his character. When he wasn’t hissing through his teeth to hide his own embarrassment (or just to seem intimidating), there were moments where you could see him realizing what was happening to him and how his father was treating him. I believe he was just stuck in a position he couldn’t get out of and in an attempt to either break out of it or prove his worth he just made things worse.
The scene with the chicken was one of the most blatant examples of this. Right after Sae Roy is sent to prison, his father takes him to their livestock farm and tells Geun Won to twist a chicken’s neck, imprinting on him the idea that Sae Roy is like livestock and that they shouldn’t be hesistant or ashamed to eat livestock (his favorite saying being ‘the strong prey on the weak’). You can clearly see in this scene how much this messes Geun Won up. He initially doesn’t want to kill the chicken, but then his father’s words fill him with this crazy rage and he twists the chicken’s neck. The ‘Sae Roy is livestock’ quote is so clearly imprinted in his mind that he keeps repeating this several times when he lashes out, like some sort of mantra. And on the other hand, during a blind date one time he is hesitant to eat chicken because ‘he isn’t so fond of it’, which also suggests that he’s still not completely okay with what happened in the chicken coop.
When Geun Won goes to jail the first time, Geun Soo suddenly steps up. Yi Seo has rejected his feelings, said she’s in love with Sae Roy. However, her words, ‘If you really want me, take over Jangga’ keep him determined to win her back. At the time, it was a really mean comment, allthemore because she knew about Geun Soo’s relationship with his ‘family’. But for some reason he has taken those words seriously and actually attempts to get into Jangga in the hope of getting her affection, even though it was obviously a mean joke.
Even though Geun Soo used to work at Dan Bam and was close to the team and fond of Sae Roy (and vice versa), he suddenly starts working for Jangga and pulls some mean tricks to thwart them.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what he was playing at. I first thought he joined just to spite his father, but then he actually started doing backhanded stuff and I was like, ‘Uhm… what?’ But I never truly believed he would follow in his father’s footsteps, I kept thinking he had some kind of plan. It was just incredibly naive of him to take Yi Seo’s words seriously, I couldn’t believe that was the real reason he started working there. But what was interesting was that he seemed way more fitting for the job than Geun Won, he seemed way more like his father than Geun Won. And this only pissed off Geun Won even more – it’s also probably why he took Geun Soo hostage as well, even though he still wouldn’t hurt him because he was family (way to be ambiguous, bro).
Having listed a couple of double-sided characters, let me just get straight to what I found most interesting about this drama. It was by far the ambiguity of people. The fact that no one is either good or bad, black or white. Every single character in this drama had good and bad traits, some of which were hidden better and deeper than others.
Sae Roy is depicted as the ultimate good guy. He has a strong sense of justice and follows his moral principles, but the fact remains that he’s out for revenge. He loses his temper. Although the reasons for these eruptions are always justified by what has been done to him, being vengeful (wrath) is still one of the seven sins.
Chairman Jang is depicted as the ultimate bad guy. But his initial reason for starting his company came from a very good place: to feed his family. As his business started growing bigger, he became more greedy and ambitious and he started to lose sight of his base purpose. Heck, he even ends up discarding his whole family for the company. Apart from that he is a petty old man, and despite being probably the oldest character in the show, he acts the most like a spoiled little child.
As much as I didn’t like him, as much as I didn’t respect him, I kept looking at him thinking ‘isn’t there even a shred of humanity left in this man?’ He used to be good. He used to care about his family. He treats his mosted trusted people well. That’s it.
The most pettiful thing he did was make Sae Roy go on his knees just for information on Yi Seo’s whereabouts after Geun Won kidnapped her. After all those years of their cat and mouse game, he settled for this petty excuse to get him on his knees? I was so happy when Sae Roy pointed this out to him, like ‘I can’t believe I wasted so many years of my life plotting revenge against an old grouch who would use the kidnapping of my loved one as an excuse to get me to my knees’.
There is something to say for every single character. I liked how the series played with human morals, how every single person is a complicated being. Because it made everything so much more unpredictable and exciting. I’d think I knew a person and then the next moment they suddenly did something that made me go ‘…wait what?!’
In the end, Sae Roy gets his revenge, but I still think they could’ve done without the whole kidnapping thing. Because Soo Ah literally had everything in hand to bring Jangga down. Soo Ah, not Yi Seo. Soo Ah revealed that, in her ten years working for Jangga, she had been gathering evidences for everything that could prove the Chairman’s corruption: borrowed-name stacks, embezzlement, slush funds, illegal requests, bribery… She gathered everything and brought it to the police. And then Jangga was done for – but then Sae Roy was in the perfect position to take over the company.
Oh my, I’ve forgotten a major thing: the title. ‘Itaewon Class’ is the name they come up with for when they start franchising Dan Bam. Taking the initials IC, they build an overarching company and ultimately lift it so high it can rival to Jangga. As the CEO of IC, Sae Roy ends up taking over Jangga, but not after bringing the Chairman to his knees.
I need to talk about two more important characters before approaching my conclusion.
Kang Min Jung and Lee Ho Jin. Kang Min Jung (played by Kim Hye Eun), was the daughter of Chairman Jang’s former business partner and as such she was like a daughter to him. She used to be on good terms with Sae Roy’s father as well when he was still alive, expressing her concern for when Jangga decided to stop funding the orphanage he was managing and offering to try and change the Chairman’s mind about it.
She was a director at Jangga, but she starts working with Sae Roy in secret to bring him down. Aware of everything the Chairman has done, and out of respect towards Sae Roy’s later father, she is willing to put her faith in Sae Roy and they make several attempts to undermine him, but they fail. When the Chairman finds out she’s been working against him, she’s exiled to Pajin, and that’s where she literally passes the baton to Sae Roy. While in Pajin, she becomes acquainted with Oh Byung Hoon, the detective that used to be on Sae Roy’s father’s hit-and-run case. After this incident he quit the police force and is now living in the countryside with his 10-year old daughter, supplying food exclusively for Dan Bam as a way of settling his debt with Sae Roy since he still feels very guilty about how he was forced to drop the case. He and Min Jung become closer at the end of the series, and I thought it was cute how the little daughter kept trying to push them together, haha.
Lee Ho Jin (played by Lee David) was the classmate that Geun Won was bullying when Sae Roy punched him in the face. He grew up to become an asset manager and he ends up working with Sae Roy and Kang Min Jung as their financial manager. Even though he’s still somewhat scared of Geun Won, I thought it was really nice he became such a big person and didn’t let the fact that he was bullied define him. I didn’t even realize this, but as he said in the end, he’s important because the feud between Sae Roy and Geun Won started with him. And he was just a very loyal and likeable character.
So the ending is very wholesome, Sae Roy’s revenge is wrapped up, everyone makes up with everyone, everyone gets their own closure. Soo Ah quits Jangga and finally starts living her own life as she’s always wanted. Ho Jin visits Geun Won in prison to get his own closure and to also basically tell Geun Won to suck it, I really loved that. It was like, ‘Hi, remember me, I’m the nerd you used to bully in high school. I’m now a financial manager for the guy who took over your dad’s company. Have a nice day.’
And Sae Roy and Yi Seo end up together. As I said before, I would’ve been fine if this didn’t happen. It doesn’t occur a lot, especially in K-Drama, but in this case I really didn’t need there to be romance. The story wasn’t about romance. And it felt a little forced at the end that Sae Roy ‘suddenly’ realized that he loved her too, after rejecting her for 4 years straight.
I also was a little annoyed by it because some part of me didn’t want Yi Seo to get to him like that. I really liked their dynamic as a business team, and her occasional flirtiness was fine as long as he just kept dismissing it, but I don’t know, it just felt like she got everything she wanted and I kind of didn’t want that, haha. She was already rejected quite harshly one time, which was mean because Geun Soo basically made Sae Roy reject her in front of the whole team out of jealousy that she hadn’t chosen him. And as awful and hurtful as that was, I still couldn’t help thinking it was a lesson for her. But she kept blatantly telling Sae Roy she loved him, flustering him until ‘suddenly’ he felt the same way. So it felt a little forced to me. Also, I didn’t ship them. But I just felt like, if they went for pushing them together, there would inevitably be a kissing scene at the end, which there was.
But I just didn’t feel it. I’m sorry if that offends anyone, but I need to be honest about it. The romance part between Sae Roy and Yi Seo, along with the whole kidnapping/attempted murder arc could’ve disappeared as far as I’m concerned, because it just distracted from the main storyline being wrapped up. Geun Won should’ve just stayed in jail. It didn’t do his character any good that he was let out and then went mad and was sent back again. It felt like they just wanted to fill up the final episodes.
I think one of the most important quotes of this series was ‘children will follow in their parents’ footsteps’, because this was what shaped the characters of both Sae Roy and Geun Won. They were both guys of the same age, but because of their upbringings, they couldn’t have been more different. And I also think it came back even with Detective Oh and his young daughter. He felt so guilty about being forced to drop a case, but he eventually decides to tell his daughter about this because he doesn’t want her to think of him as perfect when he’s done something like that, and also to just be honest to her – because he wants her to grow up without shame for her father.
There were two parts that made me cry. The first was when Hyun Yi was representing Dan Bam in a cooking contest and Geun Soo released the fact that she was transgender to the press to make her vulnerable before the final round. The scene where she and Sae Roy were sitting together and she broke down and Sae Roy hugged her… And then I also cried when she won after still showing up despite all the bad press.
The second time was when Sae Roy, after Geun Won’s murder attempt, was in a coma for a while and in his subconscious he meets up with his dad. When they’re at the edge of a bridge (it’s always a bridge, isn’t it?) and his father is about to cross it (presumably to the afterlife), Sae Roy says he’ll stay. The conversation they have there, until the point where Sae Roy wakes up from his coma and just starts crying uncontrollably… G O O S E B U M P S.
Park Seo Joon made this series for me. His modest acting as the simple and slightly naive but still determined Sae Roy was so endearing! I actually prefer these kinds of roles for him. I also really liked him in Fight for my Way, and though I just adore him in anything he does, I think this kind of role fits him the best. A humble guy strengthened by life experience in the real world rather than academic studying, finding and making his own way in the world. He is such a good actor. I’m really glad I got to see him in this drama, he was so real and engaging. The way he stroked over his head like that when he was flustered. The way he didn’t keep his emotions to himself and wasn’t afraid to cry like a man T^T You couldn’t help but root for him, as he was some sort of tragic hero. I subconsciously starting referring to him in my head as a male Candy Candy; the most pure and just guy ever who just keeps meeting bad luck on his way. But the most important thing was that he never backed down. He was the embodiment of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. He kept coming back, stronger than before, and the way he ultimately left the Chairman on his knees was just ENDBOSS.
Kim Da Mi is a film actress and this apparently was her first drama. I think she handled the whimsical role of Yi Seo very well, it came very natural to her. I’m wondering if, like Kim Go Eun, she’ll start appearing in more dramas from now on. Anyways, she really portrayed the multi-layered character well – I’m even using a screenshot of her from the series as a reference to a new portrait drawing I’m making.
I believe I have seen Yoo Jae Myung in more dramas (according to DramaWiki he’s in eg. Hwarang and Strong Woman Do Bong Soon), but I don’t remember him. He did seem familiar, though. For some reason he reminded me of Marvin ‘Krondon’ Jones III (who plays the bad guy in Black Lightning). I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the expression on his face or something. I felt like at the end, when he had to play the Chairman sick with cancer, he started overacting a little, being all over-coughing and making his face tremble and stuff. But he did manage to make me dislike him throughout the whole show, so I guess that’s a job well done, haha. What I did appreciate about him was that he was able to acknowledge his own pettiness. He really started acting like a child sometimes, and whenever he was flustered by something he would just sort of laugh it away as if it was nothing. He just didn’t want to admit to his own weakness, to the possibility that he could be beaten. But when he heard that Sae Roy was hurt in a hit-and-run, just like his father (before he finds out it was Geun Won’s doing), he doesn’t laugh or anything, he was just surprised. So I do think that he wanted to settle things with Sae Roy through business as well, and not by physically hurting him.
I’ve seen Kwon Na Ra in multiple things and she’s starting to grow on me a little as an actress. I really liked her performance in My Mister, and she was also the second female lead in one of my favorite dramas ever, Suspicious Partner. I thought she portrayed the double-edge of her character very well in this series. I was constantly wondering which side she was on. In the beginning it seemed like she would actually sell Sae Roy out, but in the end she really was loyal to him until the end. Even though it hurt when she found out Sae Roy has shifted his feelings for her to Yi Seo, she got over it like an adult and wished him lots of happiness. When she goes her own way at the end of the series, she starts her own restaurant and isn’t fazed by Yi Seo when she comes to spy on the place. Also, when Yi Seo is all like ‘Me and Sae Roy are dating now’ in her face, she was just like ‘Girl, you don’t faze me, as if I didn’t know that already, just take care of him’. And then there was that PARK BO GUM CAMEO!!! I swear, I’d seen it briefly before when checking the casting list on DramaWiki but I’d forgotten about it. I was so excited to see him, he’s such a puppy. I am loving these cameos, first Kim Soo Hyun in Crash Landing on You, now Park Bo Gum in this one… Love it.
Apparently Ahn Bo Hyun was also in Descendants of the Sun, but I don’t remember him from there (in my defense, it’s been 4 years since I saw it and it was way before I started writing reviews). Anyways, I was impressed by his performance. He gave the evil bully such layers, he was both pathetic and pure and naive and a buffoon. He was clearly born into the wrong family. I really believe that with at least one loving family member, he would’ve been less ill-behaved and less attention-deprived. I mean, the scene where his father hugs him right before exposing him… the look on his face when the Chairman is suddenly like ‘I’ve never given you a warm hug’. Geun Won actually looked scared there for a moment. As in, you could see in that second just how afraid he actually was of his father. And then he hugged him and you could see him soften into a boy who never got any attention from his father until now. And then these feelings are completely crushed. And he’s STILL not able to see his father for what he is. Or maybe he is and he’s in denial. Anyways, I found his character very double, very interesting, well done.
I didn’t know Kim Dong Hee, but for some reason he kept reminding me of Jin from BTS, lol. He’s only 21 years old, but he was able to portray a quite mature character as Geun Soo. I really liked his integer acting, and although he started doing some mean stuff to his former colleagues at Dan Bam, I never stopped having sympathy for him. I feel like he understood more than what others gave him credit for. I just wished he wouldn’t get hung up on Yi Seo, knowing how she was he should’ve known he wouldn’t stand a chance. On the other hand, I think Yi Seo treated him very unfairly, but he manages to keep his head up. Props to this young new talent!
I hadn’t seen Ryu Kyung Soo before, but I really liked Seung Kwon. Once you got to know him past his intimidating looking face, he was a really loyal friend and I think he was the first one to really get along with Tony and still kept in touch with Geun Soo after the left Dan Bam. In the end he proved himself a really cool director, staying behind while Sae Roy and Yi Seo escaped from the kidnappers. He even managed to beat his own former gangster boss – that just goes to show that he really ‘followed in Sae Roy’s footsteps’ as Sae Roy ‘raised’ him to be more than just an ex-convict.
Ma Hyun Yi was my absolute bae in this series. I was so happy to see Lee Joo Young again after Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo! She’s so gorgeous! I just wish she would’ve gotten a little more depth in her story. The whole ‘transgender’ thing was great, but it was only mentioned in words and we don’t get to see her perspective on anything, or even on how she grew up feeling she was in the wrong body or something. It was all just expressed in words, and when the little chapter was over, no-one mentioned anything about it again. I felt like introducing the theme of gender identity in a K-Drama – which is rare – could’ve been a little more of a breakthrough. Now it just felt like they put it in just for the sake of putting in some contemporary theme to make it interesting. The same went for Tony. Don’t just put in a foreign character if you’re only going to give him one line in each team meeting, and always just ‘I agree with it.’ It just felt forced. I was happy when he turned out to be the grandson of the grandma lady who turned out to be a big investor who even stood above the Chairman, but then it felt like they only created his character to make that link.
I really wished that, when choosing to address these issues, they would’ve stuck with it as one of the main themes in the story, and not just as a passing case before putting it away again. If that was their intention with this ‘inclusivity’, it wasn’t as successful as it could’ve been. Still, since it was one step in the right direction, I do appreciate that they tried. Just try even better next time.
I kind of wished the romantic relationship between Seung Kwon and Hyun Yi would have been more dug out. Like I said, the story didn’t need romance, but for them I would’ve been fine if it would’ve just happened in the background. It happens, though, because Seung Kwon is clearly fazed by Hyun Yi when she publicly comes out and he even tells Tony ‘Hyun Yi transcends the standard laws of nature by being who she is’. I’m not sure if this would be considered a compliment for a transgender person, but at least he made it clear in his own clumsy way how special he thought she was.
All in all, it was an interesting series to watch. I didn’t like it as much as I thought, though. Going by the recommendations I got from people to watch this because it was ‘so good’, maybe I was expecting a little too much of it. But it was still very good. I really liked Park Seo Joon’s acting and how unique the series was. It definitely set itself apart from other, more mainstream series. It was really educational as well, as it shows the makings of a business and what kind of tools you need for promotions and marketing and getting funds. The revenge plot as the main story through which the main character learns, rather than just lives in wrath, was very unique. And I think it was also mainly about friendship, loyalty, teamwork, and most of all: hard work pays off.
I’m not going to take some more time for the next drama, because I believe it will be a tear-jerker to say the least. You can maybe already guess which one is next. Anyways, I’ll see you again with the next review! Bye-bee!! ^^
