This week our illegitimate heir enters his sociopath era, showing us he’s capable of the unthinkable. Meanwhile, our incarcerated hero is saved from imminent doom only to re-spiral back into the web of his own making. As usual, the drama pulls all the stops while somehow making it “impossible” to get invested in any of it.
EPISODES 9-10
So, last week Tae-oh was lured out of his cell to meet an untimely demise, but when we meet him again he’s been rescue-napped. Where is he? Who saved him? Who is harboring a fugitive? It’s Chairman Kang! He has Tae-oh safe in his hidden lair, and this is hands-down the most fun the drama has ever been. *Applause*
When Tae-oh gets his color back the two come clean — Tae-oh that his plan was to give In-ha Kangoh with his takeover scheme, and Chairman Kang that he knew all along that that was why Tae-oh brought In-ha in. What’s curious is that the chairman has no problem syncing with Tae-oh again after this betrayal. And he goes along with all of Tae-oh’s maneuvers, which is basically Tae-oh trying to one-up his own master plan.
This plot point would track better if Tae-oh hadn’t just been ferociously out-played by In-ha, but oh well. Tae-oh x Chairman Kang is definitely the best part of this drama, and I’m happy to have them working together again with that inexplicable bond of theirs…
The power shift that started last week is in full formation now, and now it’s Tae-oh, Chairman Kang, and Hye-won versus In-ha and his pawns. Oh, he tries to make Hye-won into one of those pawns by locking her up in a mental institution.
After scaring her for a few days, she promises to do his bidding and he spares her life. Again, not great execution here, since the high stakes the drama tries to imbue fall flat when in one scene Hye-won’s petrified into becoming In-ha’s dog, and in the next she’s running off to Team Tae-oh and leaving her wedding ring behind. (Speaking of which, for a loveline that’s supposedly at the core of this drama and is our hero’s Achilles heel, our drama pays it exactly zero attention this week. In other words, we don’t get any insight at all on the lovers reuniting after near-death on both their parts. Did these scenes get sacrificed on the cutting room floor? Or do they just not exist at all?)
The takeover plan, as it turns out, is actually a tear-apart plan, and In-ha is going full steam ahead with it. Tae-oh realizes that the only way the chairman can win this play is to split up Kangoh before In-ha can get to it. And he’s willing to do it. Except — on one fateful evening — Chairman Kang is doing his usual wine and jacuzzi when In-ha bursts in. The charged encounter quickly turns violent, the chairman’s fake heart disease makes a resurgence (and seems real?), and then he falls into his jacuzzi. In-ha is happy to help him drown. And thus, In-ha enters his villain era.
But wait, is there prior villainy we weren’t privy to? Tae-oh’s been able to jog his memories of Murder Night and remembers a few important things. The real murderer with shoe chains, walking around the murder scene. In-ha smiling his evil smile. The escort’s phone coincidentally recording the entire thing.
This recording is just the proof that Tae-oh needs, so he rounds up the prosecutor who got burned by his case, and eventually convinces him to find the video evidence on the escort’s phone. He does this, and I’m wondering if they even investigated this case at all?
The video recording shows explicitly (and how many times must we rewatch it?) Mo Ki-joon killing In-joo and the escort and drugging Tae-oh. But now we see another person on the scene — and yep, it’s In-ha, surveying the scene. Well, there’s no way around that evidence, and a retrial quickly leads to an innocent verdict for Tae-oh. Woo! But wait, does this mean we don’t get Tae-oh in a hoodie and sweatpants anymore?
Now that Tae-oh’s a free man, it’s game on, and he sets the final portion of his plan in motion. Apparently, he’s set up a paper company which will be the final key to the Kangoh takeover, and by this point he’s assembled enough of a team to pull it off: hacker boy, Hye-won, his prison friend, etc. The paper company — Gold H Investments — makes quite a scene and we see our Kangoh people getting rather upset. Especially In-ha, who knows that something is fishy and it smells like Tae-oh.
In-ha is pushed to the sociopathic brink yet more, and he goes to visit Chairman Kang in the hospital. No, Chairman Kang did not die. Thankfully sorely underused character Hee-joo found her father half-drowned in time and he’s currently in ICU in a coma. Maybe for real this time? We actually don’t know. But what we do know is that the second he wakes up, he’s going to kick In-ha out of Kangoh once and for all. It would have happened already, you know, if his own son hadn’t tried to murder him. But no time like the present. In-ha decides to have another go at patricide, and as he reaches down to take off the chairman’s oxygen, someone grabs his hand. It’s a very truly horrified Tae-oh.
And that’s where we’re left with two episodes to go. The ~drama~, as ever, is cranked up to the max, but the bulk of the plot is still as unemotional as ever. A personal pet peeve of mine has been the script’s penchant for 30-second reaction scenes where we visit multiple POVs and get a single line of dialogue. It makes the drama feel even more choppy and disconnected. We also get a lot of Tae-oh staring moodily out the window, and In-ha glaring from the corner of his eyes. These guys are trying, but there’s not enough meat in this drama to hold up against any of it.
The Impossible Heir has a lot of work to do next week — well, if it wants to tie up all the loose ends, that is. All along we’ve been hinted that there is more than the primary conflict of taking over Kangoh. Case in point: Tae-oh’s monk mom and his origin story. Am I hoping for too much if I want the drama to bring that full circle? Dealing with In-ha’s character will be the bulk of things, but we also have Sung-joo’s greed, Hee-joo’s crush, Hye-won’s I-don’t-know-what, and a million other half-developments that were never fleshed out. Regardless, the finish line approaches, and since the drama gave me my favorite “hero on the run in a hoodie” trope this week, I’ll give it a pass till we wrap up.