The second week of our drama keeps rolling with its beautiful tone and storytelling strengths — there are so many strengths here, but the one which stands out to me is the interplay between subtlety and reveals, and between humor and pathos. I love this drama.
EPISODES 3-4
When last we left Baek-du all shocked that Yoo-kyung appears to be married. Lucky for us, we learn pretty quickly that Yoo-kyung and her “husband” MIN HYUN-WOOK (Yoon Jong-seok) are only acting married. They lock elbows when they leave the gym, and it’s pretty hilarious and unconvincing.
Sure enough, at home Hyun-wook switches from “yeobo” to “sunbae” when he addresses Yoo-kyung, signaling a more professional relationship where she’s got seniority. Between that and talks of this “investigation” they’re there for, it’s super fun and also delightfully natural when we learn that they’re both cops, there undercover to investigate the reservoir murder.
I love Yoo-kyung for a lot of reasons, but her scrappiness is definitely up there on the list, and there’s something about her that makes her convincing as a cop or a wrestling expert or anything else they might come up with. She and Baek-du are often in these hilarious interactions where she’s still rejecting her identity as Doo-shik while simultaneously acting exactly like her and not even trying to hide it. They act totally familiar with each other — but also keep interjecting requisite politeness into their conversations to keep up the ruse neither of them believe.
Yoo-kyung ropes Baek-du into practicing with adorable fellow wrestler KIM BEOM-SU (Kim Kim-seok) since he’s heading into a match with their coach suddenly MIA. It’s a two-fold plan because while Beom-su needs the training, and Baek-du needs to stay with ssireum, Yoo-kyung also needs the info that Beom-su (and the team at large) is keeping from her. She’s been slowly piecing together what might be going on with COACH YEON (Heo Dong-won) — or rather, what had been going on with him, since he just committed suicide under some strange circumstances.
Here we circle back to the opening championship match, when we were mostly too busy focusing on Baek-du’s final fight to worry about the fact that he observed his coach arguing with someone nearby. Now, that argument is coming into the foreground, and Yoo-kyung and Hyun-wook are trying to connect it to CHOI CHIL-SUNG, the match-rigger and conman whose death is still under wraps — and under investigation.
In the midst of all this, Yoo-kyung is still reeling over Baek-du’s “retirement,” and she’s got a clever ploy at hand to bring him back as the team’s new coach. In a great scene between the two (well, they’re all great tbh), Yoo-kyung confronts him over wanting to retire saying: “You might be able to fool others, but not me. Because I’m Doo-shik.” Finally! It’s a wonderfully satisfying moment, but it really doesn’t change anything between them, since they’ve been operating on muscle memory since they re-met.
But the scene also serves to highlight our hero and his totally innocent heart. When Yoo-kyung tells him that the team needs him and she needs him, he just stands there dumbfounded. Then he manages to say, “Maybe you shouldn’t say stuff like that to me now that you’re married.” Aww, he’s totally reading into her ~need~ and it’s so precious I kinda want to cry. But not Yoo-kyung. She slaps him and they’re both flustered after this.
Because Baek-du is Baek-du, he’s deeply conflicted over the coaching job offer — mostly because it was first offered to ex-friend/rival Jin-su, who already swung into town ready to go. Baek-du feels bad for Jin-su since Yoo-kyung (as team manager) is rejecting him in favor and Baek-du, and it’s here that Baek-du’s hyungs legit steal the show for a minute. OMG they’re hilarious! Oldest bro KIM GEUN-GANG (Yang Ki-won) and live-streaming middle bro KIM HAN-RA (Lee Yoo-joon) are all “look at you worried about a four-time champion” and “his car costs more than your salary” and “you’re definitely going to heaven for being so nice.” LOL!
We already knew the town took their ssireum very seriously, and now Baek-du versus Jin-su as coach has become a legit turf war. The two standoff (accidentally) in town with their respective supporting members behind them. Their bestie-moms are currently giving each other the silent treatment. The ajusshis are divided. Baek-du looks like he’s about to surrender, but when he turns around and sees Yoo-kyung behind him, he locks eyes with her, and something inside him stirs. He agrees to the proposed match between him and Jin-su to decide who gets the coach position.
We waste no time getting right to the match, and this scene is gold. It’s the perfect example of how this drama mixes so much pathos into its plot (the ache in my heart for Baek-du’s self-concept and success!) with these pockets of humor (the quips of the hyungs!). The match is off to a rollicking start, and though Baek-du loses the first round, he wins the second, and it’s clear he’s brought something to the ring the entire town hasn’t seen from him in years. His bro even comments, “Why are you showing your skills now at unofficial match?!” Yoo-kyung is off in the stands trying to keep it cool, but we know that her presence is what’s making the difference. GAH!
Just when the third round is about to begin, the police come in with a request to take Baek-du in. It’s alarming, it jars the flow of the scene perfectly, and again, just a great moment for Baek-du’s characterization: he looks down at himself in his shorts and satba and asks if he has to go like this to the station.
At the precinct, it’s a little scary. Baek-du was caught on the CCTV, and again we have a callback to a minor moment in our first episode that didn’t really stick out. But now, we go back and it’s a matter of extreme importance. What was Baek-du doing having a scuffle in the street in the middle of the night with Choi? No, claiming to lose all memories when he’s drunk won’t work as an excuse (even though the drama has established for us quite naturally that it’s true).
It’s here that Mi-ran saves the day with a witness statement. Again, it’s a really well-woven moment because we already know she’d heard him raving drunk that night shouting “Doo-shik!” and her statement is able to bring enough info to the table. Baek-du then makes his confession: he stole the $40 the man had left as change, and he was trying to give it back to him that night. Baek-du is so completely distraught, totally convinced that pocketing $40 was his crime. He insists he tried to give it back to the ajumma but she’s never at the store (haha!). The police let him go, cleared of any charges. And for a little plot arc that in another drama would/could have ended with him being wrongfully charged, or his life ruined in some way, this twist was one of the most delightful things the drama has done yet. *Kudos*
While he’s at the station, though, he sees CHU MI-SOOK (Seo Jung-yeon, always a pleasure!). She’s previously been seen squabbling with Yoo-kyung and Hyun-wook, so Yoo-kyung lied that she was her mother-in-law. At the time, Baek-du was upset that her husband didn’t protect her against her pugilistic mother-in-law (aww, he’s so pure), but when he sees her in the station, something clicks. When they were kids, Yoo-kyung/Doo-shik was obsessed with a crime show at the time, and the very same Mi-sook was her childhood hero…
After Baek-du is collected from the police station by (silent) dad, live-streaming Han-ra, and tofu-bearing Geun-gang (I just can’t with these three!), he actually goes off to confront Yoo-kyung. He drags her all the way to the jetty where they used to talk, and then asks her quite abruptly: “Are you a cop?” WHAT A MOMENT!
Intercut with this scene is Hyun-wook saying how he’s got a feeling Baek-du and Yoo-kyung knew each other in the past. He says that people like Baek-du might look simple from the outside, but they’re deeply intuitive. This was such a satisfying moment for me because we’ve just spent four episodes with Baek-du seeing that exact intuition at play. He knew she was Doo-shik. He knew she was a cop. And for his third moment of intuitive glory he says: “You’re not married after all, are you.”
This writing! Between the wonderful characters and the attention to detail in this drama (sparring moms laughing over Baek-du, the videotape hidden under the bed, the hyungs in general), I don’t think there’s a thing it will do that I won’t enjoy. First they quieted my initial worry that Yoo-kyung was a victim/perpetrator in the Choi case, and they’ve set the precedent for how they’ll deal with high-stakes melo moments when we watched Baek-du go from prime suspect to neighborhood bro in under five minutes. I’m not sure where we’re headed from here, but I will follow uri Baek-du anywhere.