By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
March 24, 2020
☆☆☆☆
Saeroyi (played by Park Seo-Joon)
Soo-Ah (played by Kwon Nara)
Yi-Seo (played by Kim Dam-Mi)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.
OK, so I had surgery recently and am at about 30% of my usual self. This, combined with social distancing to combat coronavirus, has made life a bit weird overall. I am trying to stay mentally alert and doing the little physical activity I am allowed to do, so that I can heal and get back to normal ASAP.
One of the things I’ve been doing to while away my time is indulge in K-Dramas. My rule of thumb has always been that I can’t start another one until I write up a little something on what I just watched. But, as you can imagine, those rules have fallen by the wayside recently.
However, I am slowly trying to return to my norm.
With all that said, here are a few of my observations about “Itaewon Class”:
♦ The ending of Episode 1 is a mothereffing cliffhanger that is shocking and a revelation. Watch Episode 2 immediately afterwards.
♦ Loyalty only gets you so far in life, even for the best of friends. If your friend is treating you as less than because he has acquired power — at your expense — you are no longer friends, but employer and employee.
♦ While I liked the two female leads as characters, I didn’t like either of them as love interests for the series protagonist, Saeroyi. Many people disliked Soo-Ah, because she went to work for Saeroyi’s enemy. But I understood why. It was self preservation. At the time, Saeroyi had no future to provide for himself, much less her. As an orphan with no family ties, she would have limited options for good careers in South Korea. When she saw an opportunity — even knowing that she was being used to emotionally get back at Saeroyi — she still had to go for it.
♦ As for Yi-Seo, she was one of those characters I never warmed up to. In a cast of unbelievable characters, I found her storyline the most difficult to accept. She had some great moments, but my distaste began when she tutored two male colleagues to pick up women at clubs by using pickup techniques that bordered on harassment. When she refused to accept that a bi-racial Korean man (played by Chris Lyon) could indeed be Korean, I wanted nothing more to do with her. (Her character was young and was meant to reflect the ugly side of Korean society that needs to work on racist views. But I still disliked her.)
♦ As much as I love Park Seo-Joon, my favorites in this series were two of his co-stars. Lee Joo-Young was brilliant portraying a transgender woman. And Ryu Kyung-Soo was a scene stealer in his depiction of a former convict, whose use of brute force sometimes was a necessity.
♦ If this series does anything, it hammers home the point that having goals and determination is one thing. But having a vendetta only eats away at your soul, no matter how successful you become as a businessman.
WTF Moment: There is a flash forward that jumps forward four years. It’s supposed to show how well Saeroyi and his crew have flourished. But I kept wondering, “Why is everyone’s wig so stupid looking?”
Airdates: Premiering on JTBC on January 31, 2020, the 16-episode series — each running about 70-minutes long — had its finale on March 21, 2020.
Spoiler Alert: As for Saeroyi, his life became hell after he beat up the school bully, for picking on other students. The bully’s father is the powerful head of a food conglomerate — and a former friend of Saeroyi’s dad, who now works for him. Much of Saeroyi’s life could’ve been on a different trajectory if he had made more mature choices. (I know, not easy to do when you’re 18.) Rules are different for the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. As much as it would’ve killed him to bow down to the immoral chaebol and apologize for beating his good-for-nothing son, he could’ve still had his revenge without being sent to jail and being pegged as a convict for the rest of his life. And that act would’ve kept his father alive. Yes, his father was proud of him for standing up to the man. But for people without power, that act of defiance can literally take away much of their future.
After spurning Saeroyi for about 15 years, Soo-Ah finally is ready to forge a romance with him. But it’s too late. He chooses Yi-Seo. Don’t feel too bad for Soo-Ah, though. She ends up opening her own restaurant and the chef she hires is played by … Park Bo-Gum. Sometimes, it’s better to let go of the past and start anew without all the baggage that comes from first loves and childhood traumas.
© 2020 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved
Great review!
Involves spoilers:
Yi-seo’s character personally felt out of place in the drama, and I felt like her character wasn’t fleshed out too much. Her motivation to stick by Sae-ro-yi’s side was because of her one-sided affection and love towards him, sure that could be motivation, but I feel like that’s such a cop-out excuse for a character that is the kingpin of the entire operation. She’s made out to be a character that’s a sociopath, and that would do anything to get her way, but she’s easily wrapped around Sae-ro-yi’s finger? That’s too unrealistic in my book. Additionally, I felt her role as a device to portray the ugly side of Korean society when it comes to racial views is weak. It didn’t make sense as she’s a person of the younger/ newer generation where they are used to seeing change and ideas like same-sex marriage. It would’ve have been better in my opinion if the dissenter was someone that was a bit older. Then again, I’m not Korean and have no idea what’s really happening in South Korean society.
Soo-ah is in a similar bucket as Yi-seo. It felt like the writer just needed a character to highly motivate Yi-seo to fight for Sae-ro-yi’s affection, to which they created Soo-ah. Soo-ah just seems to drift about places and doesn’t seem to add much substance to the plot of the story aside from completing the love triangle. In the final episode, we find out that she had been gathering information about all the misdeeds that Jangga Co had committed but, unless I missed it completely, we see barely anything of that before it gets revealed. They made her be a shell for us to push all our frustrations on because she’s not helping Sae-ro-yi and even using information she gained from them against them. It seemed like the writer just gave her this single moment of redemption so we wouldn’t hate her so much because in the end she “pulled through”.
I felt that Geun-soo was more of a “sociopath” than Yi-seo was. The guy straight up was willing to destroy Hyun-yi’s life to the nation so he could have a chance with Yi-seo, even if it meant she would hate him.
Overall, I did enjoy the drama, but I had some gripes with it, and it left me with a small sense of dissatisfaction. I had a problem with the pacing of the drama, it felt like the ending was rushed because they only had a few episodes left to finish establishing the backstory and deal the finishing blow in like three episodes.
I didn’t like either lead female characters as love interests for Sae Ro-yi….but I will never ever get tired of watching Park Seo Joon’s kisses. He has such gentle, yet passionate kisses. Like his lips basically embrace the recipients in such a warm, gentle way that communicates, “I care about you…you mean everything to me.” 🥰🥰😍😍.
I didn’t like either lead female characters as love interests for Sae Ro-yi….but I will never ever get tired of watching Park Seo Joon’s kisses. He has such gentle, yet passionate kisses. Like his lips basically embrace the recipients in such a warm, gentle way that communicates, “I care about you…you mean everything to me.” 🥰🥰😍😍.
“And that act would’ve kept his father alive”, I completely disagree with this. Even if he had bow and apologize it would have still been the same because his dad died in a car accident. It wasn’t like hang geun-won went out of his way to run his dad over because he was mad.
He lost his job because Saeroyi wouldn’t apologize. He had to sell his car to fund the restaurant he wanted to open. If Saeroyi had apologized, his dad would’ve still had a job at Jjanga. Let’s say fate would’ve had him get involved in another car accident anyhow. There is a much greater chance of survival getting into a car accident when the victim was also driving a car (seat belts, air bags, more structural protection) than a motorcycle, bike or scooter. With the same impact, he wouldn’t have died.
Bruh, I started to like this drama and then I was disappointed by the weak ass female characters. I hate that these women wasted years of their lives because they liked some emotionally stunted man. Like the fuck. Seriously though, waiting around for a man to like you, if it’s gonna take that long then is it even worth it? How unrealistic of the times, I hope these writers can one day write good female characters that have ambition of their own and are not helping a male character reach his goals.