Another time jump, and our heroes’ game is finally afoot. But with so many games, it’s easy to get lost, and hard to know who to trust. Just when our two heroes might have hit their first snag, the sky clears and an impossible heir appears on the scene.
EPISODES 3-4
This week I am reminded that the problem with deploying lots of time jumps to tell an elaborate story is that you sacrifice all the rich context a viewer craves in order to get further along in your story. That’s exactly the weakness of The Impossible Heir this week. We endure the umpteenth time jump of the story bringing us to the present day (ish), and while I appreciate the “unfurling of the chess game” effect this creates, it also exacerbates the disconnect with our characters.
So what did our three heroes do for the last five years of this time jump? Well, they mostly set the stage for the future plays they have in mind. But for Episode 3, In-ha and Hye-won exist only in the background as vaguely dating-for-marriage and participating in The Master Plan — and it’s Tae-oh who takes the lead.
After the five-year time jump, Tae-oh is now the right-hand man of all right-hand men to Chairman Kang. It required him showing all his cards to Chairman Kang (viz., his real name and his family’s murder situation, which seems a bit more convoluted than we first realized)(that is, if you can believe anything Tae-oh says at this point), and passing all of the chairman’s loyalty and mind game tests.
Chairman Kang warns Tae-oh: “If you want to work for me you have to hide your true self” — i.e., your weaknesses — and it doesn’t seem like anything will break that resolve in Tae-oh. Yet? Despite the total lack of character development, we know that somewhere deep down he loves Hye-won (right?), and there’s a mess around his parentage (right?). Either one of these might break him down later, but for now, he’s steely-eyed and determined. (I’m glad Lee Jae-wook is here, because he makes me like Tae-oh even though he’s about as expressive and interesting as a Storm Trooper right now.)
While Tae-oh’s become a trusted ally to the chairman, the rest of the Kang family hates him and sees him as a threat — well, except Hee-joo who wants to marry him, and is very likely going to make a rather big mess at some point. For now, though she’s on the sidelines, she’s still the extraordinarily entitled — yet principled — Hee-joo we knew as a high schooler.
As for Hye-won, she and her almost-love line with Tae-oh have all but drifted into the background this week, outside of a few awkward rooftop conversations with Tae-oh. And while I think I’m okay with her disappearing (she’s underused and unnecessary as a character this week), I’m not okay with In-ha disappearing. And yet we only see him in passing in these episodes… until Chairman Kang’s health begins to fail.
What I realized this week is that I actually like the scenes between Chairman Kang and Tae-oh the most right now. The two play off of each other quite well, and it’s fun to see the fake-outs and plays they come up with. Chairman Kang might be a ruthless bastard, but is he all bad? I am enjoying the nuance of his character here, especially as compared to his throne-stealing wife (Kim Ho-jung), who isn’t exactly bringing anything new to the storytelling table. This week she’s all about manipulating circumstances to pave the way for her son KANG SUNG-JOO (Lee Ji-hoon) to steal the throne from the eldest son KANG IN-JOO (Han Sang-jin). The brothers get on like cats and dogs, but it’s Lee Ji-hoon who’s stealing the show here for me, as he’s excellent at toeing the line between being suave and simpering, powerful and petulant.
I will not attempt to deny that the politicking around Kangoh bored me nearly to tears in Episode 3 — so I’ll save you the long version and give you the short: Chairman Kang has his preferred political puppet who will help pave the way for his vision project Royal Road (referencing our drama’s Korean title), while his wife and second son have their own opposing puppet. Things don’t go our chairman’s way… but don’t worry, there are many things you can do to out-play your own conniving family. First, listen to some good music to get your blood pressure under control (great, now I share a favorite composer with Evil Chairman!). Second, pretend to be deathly ill to get everyone’s guard down.
The drama starts to play with some convenient cut-backs at this point, sometimes showing us the tail end of conversations we didn’t hear all of, so in a way, we fall for the chairman’s fake illness plot too. While he’s having a heart attack, his blackmailing wife watches mercilessly as he collapses to the floor, unable to reach his meds. Then she walks out. Then Tae-oh walks in, and there’s the smallest moment of hesitation before he calls an ambulance. But this is part of how the drama is playing its game: we only learn later that the chairman is in perfect health, and this on-his-deathbed thing is a ploy. While everyone thinks he’s comatose, he’s actually eating steak and drinking wine after they leave his VIP bedside. It’s rather hilarious. It’s also hard not to somehow love his collab with Tae-oh, but that’s about to reach a whole new level.
As our episodes this week reach their zenith, finally we have In-ha officially on the scene. When he thought his father was dying, In-ha actually confronted Tae-oh, and in a very charged beach scene, Tae-oh swears to In-ha that, “The reason I exist is you. The reason I exist is to make you chairman.” (Way to come on a little too strong, Tae-oh!)
Now, Tae-oh is not only “impossible” to read but he’s “impossible” (for me) to believe at this point. Even though his Master Plan with In-ha reaches back further than his current plan with the chairman, Tae-oh’s made equally bold statements of loyalty to both of them, and I don’t know which plan is the real plan. Or better yet, I suspect a Master-Master Plan that extends beyond all of this, but we’ll have to see about that…
In the meantime, Tae-oh presents his Revenge Against Backstabbing Wife mission to Chairman Kang, and he bites. The plan, of course, is to bring Son #3 on the scene and start shaking things up. And, as our episodes end, that’s exactly what we see begin.
Thank goodness things started to pick up in Episode 4, because for all the constant plot motion, everything was starting to feel quite stagnant. While I remain a little dismayed over the lack of insight on our characters — and the lack of emotion in this drama overall — it is setting up several cool themes, which I am here for.
The first, mentioned above, was about having to hide your inner self in order to rise/rule in the Kangoh world. But the second is an even more interesting twist on that, delivered to Hye-won of all people: the fact that even when people are trying to hide their true selves, they each have a gap that can be made visible. Theoretically, we saw this happen with Tae-oh when the chairman called out his hidden backstory. And interestingly, Hye-won is positioned as the rare person without said vulnerability (which, no wonder why she seems like a lifeless robot). Then, contrast Hye-won to In-ha, whose vulnerabilities (insecurity, doubt, hotheadedness) we saw glimmers of again this week. There are certainly a lot of interesting characters to play against each other here — I just wish the drama did as good a job of making me emotionally invested in their victories and their failures.