Note: This post is going out a bit late because I was unable to resolve a problem with strange white lines appearing in the screenshots. (You can still see some of them.)
Requested By
What do I know about this series going into it?
Never heard of it; according to AltarielDax, it is Korean.
Recap
The opening credits consist of a series of animations that introduce us to the characters: Honey Night, Manager, Law of Jungle, Chief of Strategic Planning Team, Jang Family, Honey Night again.
This will not be enough for me to learn who they are.
A young man with a bandage on his forehead kneels before a much older man, clearly expecting to be beheaded. The old man cackles mockingly and asks, “What happened to your ambitions?”
Bandaged Man asks instead where somebody from the Jang family is (I didn’t catch the given name fast enough). The old man, still laughing, signs his name to something, mentioning that he is going to “desert my son again”. He then asks Bandaged Man: “How does it feel?”
“I feel pathetic,” says Bandaged Man. “But how do you feel? Does this make you happy? Gratified?”
He continues: “I wanted revenge on you, Dae-hee. That’s what kept me going, what inspired me. Inspired me to kneel before you now. But now I regret it: You’re nothing but a disgusting old grouch and I wasted my life pursuing you.”
He gets up, turns, and walks away. Jang Dae-hee does nothing, and the soundtrack swells, treating this as an inspiring move.
So I don’t understand anything so far. Is Jang Dae-hee threatening Bandaged Man’s loved ones or not? Is he threatening Bandaged Man himself or not? How is he letting him just walk away?
Elsewhere, a group of thugs have surrounded a young man and a young woman. Their target is the woman, and the man is trying to protect her. She picks up a shovel to defend herself; he picks up a length of pipe. “We attack on the count of three,” she says. “One, two, three!” And she drops the shovel and runs off, leaving her friend to his fate. “Good luck!”
Bandaged Man gets in the car with his friend, who is driving. “We still need to save Yi-seo,” he says.
Back at the thugs, they stab the poor abandoned man and leave him gasping on the ground. But he won’t give up so easily; as they turn away, to pursue the woman, he grabs one of their ankles. They’re impressed with his tenacity and are about to beat him up some more, but their leader realizes this is just another delaying tactic to keep them from chasing after the girl (revealed to be Yi-seo – is this a flashback scene?). The leader tells the others to leave the brave, misguided kid alone, and kneels down next to him. “Be happy you have Jangco,” he says. “You got everything you wanted.”
The thugs get in the car and chase down Yi-seo, who is stupidly running along the side of a road where they can easily find her instead of cutting across the farmland. As soon as they reach her, when it’s too late to be an effective means of hiding, she does cut across a field to the road on its other side. By th time she gets there, she sees two cars approaching from opposite directions: the thugs in one, Bandaged Man in the other. The thugs swerve away at the last minute.
Bandaged Man steps out of the car. “Boss?” she asks, surprised. They talk for a bit, for some reason lacking any urgency.
Oh, here they are. The thugs get out of the car. “Ready to die?” they ask.
Bandaged Man (who I’ll call Boss from now on, since that’s the name she’s giving him) warns the thugs that he called the police before they got here. Some of them decide they actually believe this, and drive away; two remain, and Boss’s friend (named Seung-kwon) stays to fight them off while Boss and Yi-seo limp down the road, still utterly failing to cut across the farmland just in case Seung-kwon loses the fight.
When they’re some distance away, they stop and share a tender moment. He confesses that he loves her. She doesn’t reciprocate, however, purely out of a desire to prevent me from learning his name. And I was right about the farmland; shortly afterwards, the thugs’ car finds them and tries to run them down.
Boss hurls a rock at the car, forcing it to stop. He tells Yi-seo to leave, but she refuses to abandon him. He insists, however, and gives her his phone: “The cops will call soon, tell them where you are!”
We alternate between the two fistfights: Seung-kwon against three thugs, Boss against just one1. Boss is losing his fight; the thug punches him over and over again into the hood of the car, telling him to die like his father did. But Seung-kwon is winning, telling one of the thugs he’s beaten up that he regrets having worked for him because “a real boss takes responsibility”.
Yi-Seo continues running along roadsides until she finally collapses, exhausted – but that’s when the police arrive. She waves them down.
Boss and his opponent have exhausted themselves, but they struggle to their feet to resume fighting. Boss remembers Yi-seo saying that she’ll die if he dies, which inspires him to not continue the punching and kicking but rather to grab a handful of sand and throw it in his opponent’s eyes.
There is a flashback to Yi-seo and Boss on a bridge. Yi-seo is nihilistic: life is pointless, a chore, uninteresting, and you die at the end. Boss calls her bluff: “Just die, then.” She didn’t expect that answer, and he continues: life isn’t predictable. Seung-kwon fought him, but now works for him as a waiter; Yi-seo herself tried to shut down his pub but now works for him as a manager. Every day is full of excitement and surprises!
And that’s how I learn that, despite the vibe of the opening scene, this isn’t about mafia families but about a restaurant. I don’t understand. What is the plot actually about?
The flashback continues, and Yi-seo confesses – well, not love, but that her heart beats when she’s around Boss and he makes life fun.
The flashback ends. Boss and his opponent are lying on the ground once again, and finally the police arrive, guided by Yi-seo.
There is a montage in the denouement: a woman holding a file in the police department; somebody being hauled away; a police raid on a building; a media report about an investigation of Jangga Co. for embezzlement and other financial crimes, with Jang Dae-hee forbidden to leave the country. Boss wakes up in a hospital bed and Yi-seo embraces him.
Wait, how is this the denouement? There’s still an hour of runtime left!
With the montage over, Dae-hee meets with his lawyer and he says he’ll take responsibility for all of the charges: affiliation with gangsters, incitement to murder, kidnapping, bribery etc. The lawyer, a Mr. Kim, reports that the “pub owners” want to cancel their contract, saying something about the Olympics. Dae-hee’s other assistant, says the board of directors want to sell the company off before it goes bankrupt under these investigations. Dae-hee is horrified at the idea: the company is worth almost nothing right now, this is the worst time to sell it! But the assistant corrects him: a firm offered a reasonable price.
In Chungcheong prison, “Lee Ho-jin” meets with a prisoner, who is either Boss without the bandage or one of the thugs, I can’t tell which. Lee is the financial manager of the company that is taking over Jangga Co., and taunts the prisoner: you used to bully me in high school, and look where we are now.
A man and his very young (seven-ish) daughter pull up in front of a house. (I recognize the man as having been in the police car that found Yi-seo.) His wife, Kang Min-jung, is about to get into a car; she’s moving to Seoul “to work at the head office”. He offers to give her a lift to Seoul and she accepts. The daughter, Hye-won, makes snide comments throughout; maybe they aren’t husband and wife, but she’s pushing for him to ask her on a date.
Lee Ho-jin meets the woman I saw holding the file earlier. Contrary to what I thought, she’s not a police officer: she was a whistleblower against Jangga Co., probably the Ms. Ho mentioned earlier. I’m still not following any of this, though.
Back to Dae-hee. He’s furious at the developments: How can we let that little brat run Jangga Co.? He tries to call in political favors to stop it, but nobody is willing to associate themselves with him anymore. The assistant, who turns out to Dae-hee’s son, reminds him: You used to always say “the strong prey on the weak”, and we are now weak.
He kicks his son out. I’m Jang Dae-hee! I am not weak! It will not happen!
In the hospital, a recovered Boss is getting lectured by Yi-seo’s mother. She orders him to take better care of her: “How could you let her get kidnapped?” As she is about to leave, he calls her “mother”, which brings her up short. And after she does leave, he tells Yi-seo he loves her. “Wait, say that again!” “I love you.” “I love you too!” she says, joyfully2.
Dae-hee makes another phone call, this time to an old woman – possibly his wife. She’s not thrilled to hear from him, but he makes a promise: I won’t “mess with him”. Whoever “him” is, though, she isn’t impressed. He’s only making that promise because he’s so powerless that he can’t. He plays the “I don’t have long to live” card, and says that he doesn’t want to ruin the company. But she asks him about his goals: You built the company to feed your family. But your family won’t die of starvation at this point no matter what. So why do you care if Park Saeroyi runs the company?
Have I finally learned Boss’s name?
Dae-hee pulls up in front of Boss’s restaurant, Danbam, in a limousine, and Boss and Yi-seo come out to greet him personally. Dae-hee sits at a table in the restaurant, and a waitress asks Yi-seo why Mr. Park came personally just to serve this one guy food. And we see Boss in the kitchen, cooking. So that settles it: Boss’s name is Park Saeroyi. The dish: soft tofu stew. Dae-hee turns up his nose at it, but Saeroyi asks him to try it anyway. Mikey likes it and slurps it ridiculously loudly.
Saeroyi tells Dae-hee he’s pursuing the takeover of Jangga Co., though I don’t know how he has the resources to do so. When he takes over, he’ll change the company’s name and assign Director Park (his mother, maybe?) to run it.
Dae-hee, rather than respond directly, asks about the recipe. “I learned it from my father,” says Saeroyi. Dae-hee says he thought it tasted familiar3.
Dae-hee apologizes for not bringing money to pay for the meal. But he offers to pay for it in the currency of abject subjugation, painfully going to his knees in the same way Saeroyi did in the opening scene. He apologizes for the terrible things he did to Saeroyi and his father, then bows fully on the ground.
Saeroyi gets up and stands before him. In a mirror of the opening conversation, Saeroyi admits that he always wanted this – but in contrast to Dae-hee bragging about how great it felt to have his enemy kneel before him, he doesn’t feel the same way. “I’m a businessman,” he says. Your apology is worth nothing, monetarily, but we can do business. He walks away, leaving Dae-hee sobbing on the ground.
Lee Ho-jin, addressing the Jangga Co. shareholders meeting, announces that IC Co. is taking over Jangga Co. and introduces Saeroyi to speak. “Jangga Co. is still a good restaurant,” Saeroyi says, “despite the actions of one man. People, trust are more important than business. I will value people and trust over gains.”4 Everyone applauds.
After the meeting, Saeroyi takes Dae-hee’s son aside and asks: why did you vote in favor of me as CEO? Dae-hee’s son, Geun-soo admits that he told reporters “about Hyun-yi”; that he had committed corporate espionage against IC Co.; and that he was in love with Yi-seo but knew she would never agree to be with him. Saeroyi assures him that he’s still just a kid and everything’s okay.
“Oh Soo-ah”5, the whistleblower, calls Saeroyi. She tells him that she blew the whistle on Jangga Co. as payment for the college tuition money she borrowed from Saeroyi’s father. They wish each other good luck in life.
Three people enter Danbam, and are surprised both by each other’s presence and by the fact that Geun-Soo asked to meet them there. When he arrives, he asks for their forgiveness. The woman punches Geun-soo in the stomach, as payback for how he stabbed them in the back. I’m completely lost until they reveal the man is Seung-kwon6. The woman is the aforementioned Hyun-yi, but I know nothing about her.
On his way out, Geun-soo runs into Yi-seo. He asks for permission to shake her hand before he leaves for the United States, despite not deserving it. Instead, she gives him a full-on hug, thanks him for his faithfulness to her, and apologizes for taking advantage of it. Was he the guy that she abandoned to the thugs in the opening scene?
Much later, Hyun-yi and Yi-seo show up at a new, popular restaurant to do some corporate espionage. The owner, Soo-ah, invites them in: “Go ahead and spy,” she says. “We’re popular because the owner is pretty.” They turn down her offer, and Soo-ah shrugs and goes back inside. A man has arrived, Soo-ah’s assistant reports, to apply for the chef’s position. And you should hire him because he’s gorgeous! Sensibly, Soo-ah says she has to like the actual food he makes. There is a cheap fakeout, where she puts down the silverware in a clear “I’m disappointed” motion that leads to an obvious offer to start tomorrow.
Yi-seo and Saeroyi go for a walk in the titular Itaewon. They’re acting as though they haven’t admitted their love for one another multiple times by now; at the end of an hours-long date, she finally asks him to hold her hand. He says it’s too awkward, and so does she – but she does so anyway. “When I learned about your painful past,” she says, “I wanted to embrace you so that you would no longer suffer and be lonely.” She repeats what she said in the flashback scene, about her empty life filling up with him, and they kiss.
Saeroyi gives a voiceover over flashbacks of events from the series.
He then tells her he loves her too, then draws her in for a second kiss.
Finally, Saeroyi and his friends enjoy drinks on Danbam’s roof as Toni plays guitar. He and Yi-seo hold hands and grin at each other.
Unresolved questions
What will be the new name of Jangga Co.?
What is Geun-soo planning on doing in the US?
Ratings
These ratings evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. The analysis accompanying each rating is written from that point of view as well.
The ratings do not necessarily apply to the episode if it is watched in the proper context. And it should go without saying that none of them apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
Story: 4/10. A good story, but not really enough plot to justify the hour-and-a-half runtime.
Writing: 7/10. I very much liked the parallels between the two kneeling scenes. And while there were a few problems with the love story, it was overall fairly well written. But the false denouement that came only a third of the way through the episode adversely impacted the flow.
Production: 8/10. Good soundtrack. Mostly good editing, with a few flaws. Excellent acting, especially from Yi-seo and Dae-hee.
Characterization: 9/10. The leads all have depth and three-dimensional personalities. Yi-seo isn’t a saint, abandoning her sworn protector to his death; Saeroyi devotes his life to revenge but recovers from it; and Dae-hee struggles with how his dog-eat-dog approach to the world affects him when he’s the one being eaten. I definitely want to learn more about all three of them. And there are hints of depth in the other characters too, such as Geun-soo doing (apparently) awful things throughout the series not because he is an awful person but because he is young and still finding his way in the world. It’s very well done.
Accessibility: 3/10. Oh god, where do I start. Why do these two restaurant companies hate each other? Just how big is Saeroyi’s family and trade? What are the stakes here? How violent is Dae-hee and the people he hires? Who are all these characters I’ve never met? What is going on here?
Just about the only thing I got is the character names, and even those took a ridiculous amount of time.
Closure: 10/10. There is very little left unresolved at the end - so far as I could tell. Saeroyi has won both the company and the girl; Dae-hee will die soon; Geun-soo is leaving for good; Soo-ah is starting her own successful restaurant business. But there are a lot of side characters, and I don’t know how many of them might have dangling plotlines.
Do I want to watch the series now?
I do! It is well-produced, well-acted, and a glimpse into a culture with which I am unfamiliar. I’ve never watched a Korean series before7, and while the young-adult-romance aspect isn’t my cup of tea, there could hardly be a better entry point.
I am not doing a good job keeping track of how many are in each location
This is confusing. Earlier it seemed that he was open about his love for her and she seemed hesitant. But this scene plays as the reverse: She seems glad that he finally admitted his love for her. Which is it?
Then why did he ask?
A sensible businessman would say that customer trust leads to gains.
Name given on caller ID
I hadn’t recognized him due to the darkness of the fight scenes earlier.
I saw the first two episodes of Squid Game, but knew in advance that it wasn’t for me.