Tensions are building, emotions are running high, and our bad guys have gone on the offensive to ensure that the boxing match follows their original plan. Although there is a lot of trouble brewing in the background, our story remains optimistic and wholesome because our boxer has found her focus and has a tribe that continues to support her.
EPISODES 10-11
I’m calling it now, My Lovely Boxer is going to go down as the most underrated drama of 2024. Whether you’re following it for the sportsmanship, the subtle romance, or the rich character development, I think we can all agree that this drama is pretty dang amazing, and I’m practically scratching my head bald trying to figure out why the ratings are so low. And this week, My Lovely Boxer accomplished something that even I was doubting it could do: it made me stick one foot on board the Kwon-sook and Tae-young ship.
And you might ask, “How did it do that, Daebakgrits, when you’re so stubbornly hung up on the maturity gap?” Well, the romance plot won me over (ironically) by having Tae-young’s actions align with my personal disapproval as he maintained boundaries with Kwon-sook despite his affection for her. He has romantic feelings for her hidden away, but he also has the sense not to act on them at this stage in their lives. Tae-young earned my respect, and the drama writers had me bowing in thanks that they did not turn their meetup at the botanical garden into a classic rom-com love confession moment, which would have been completely out of tune with the rest of our story.
Instead, when Tae-young shows up late to the baobab tree, his actions are noticeably restrained in comparison to Kwon-sook’s exuberance. Maybe part of his soberness is because he’s still a little shaken up after his phone call with Kim Oh-bok, his main contact in the match-rigging business who has finally come out of hiding. However, when he backed away from Kwon-sook’s adorably eager hug, the movement was a physical and metaphorical divide that he was consciously establishing between them.
Kwon-sook’s birthday is, thankfully, not without some liveliness and humor (I had a nice chuckle at the parrot calling Tae-young an idiot), but it does end on a somber note. Kwon-sook gently tests the waters to see how long Tae-young intends to stick around after her match, and she’s met with a vagueness that does not instill confidence in the longevity of their relationship. Of course, as we all know, this is largely due to the fact that Tae-young is playing a very dangerous game of Catch the Bad Guy, and the best case scenario is that he gets arrested (and possibly pardoned) for his involvement with the match-fixing along with the bad guys.
After Kwon-sook’s birthday, Tae-young goes off the grid again, tailing Oh-bok and his associates to find their hideout so he can gather evidence and put together a sting operation that will — hopefully — dismantle their underground organization and put them behind bars. Unfortunately, while he’s watching their movements, he realizes Oh-bok has now become a regular patron of Chul-yong’s restaurant, which cannot be good.
Tae-young, in rare display of aggression, attacks Oh-bok with a lead pipe and warns him away from Kwon-sook. Oh-bok puts up a nice act, pretending to be a weak underling just doing as he was told, but when Tae-young turns his evidence over to the police and they raid the new hideout for the match-rigging syndicate, further investigation reveals that Oh-bok is the mastermind behind the whole thing — and he and some of his thugs are still at large. Dun-dun-dun.
As you can imagine, Oh-bok is none too pleased with Tae-young’s betrayal. Unfortunately, Tae-young has made his weaknesses far too obvious, and one of them — Kwon-sook — is intricately connected to Oh-bok’s ability to make some fast cash and get back on his feet. Oh-bok needs Kwon-sook to lose her fight against Ah-reum, and given how he continues to lurk around Chul-yong’s restaurant, bad things must lay ahead for our boxer who has no intention of losing her next fight. This fact becomes all too clear to Oh-bok after he finagles his way into observing her training sessions and sees first-hand how impassioned and determined she’s become.
You see, while Tae-young has been out playing vigilante detective with his reporter sidekick, Kwon-sook has been closing doors to her past and finding peace and acceptance with boxing. The most pivotal moment was Kwon-sook’s reunion with her former boxing partner YEON KYUNG (Jeon Hee-jung) whose injury caused Kwon-sook so much emotional trauma and was a large factor in her quitting the sport. It turns out Yeon Kyung, a graduate student who attributes her excellent listening skills as a counselor to her physical hearing loss, has also been harboring her share of guilt. She blamed herself for Kwon-sook’s early retirement, and she’s happy to see Kwon-sook return to the boxing ring.
The conversation leaves Kwon-sook lighter and more impassioned. Any lingering desires she had to lose the fight are gone. Kwon-sook is now in it to win it. If she’s going to retire, she’d rather go out on top and tell the world the truth: she doesn’t enjoy boxing. (Now please leave her the eff alone, kthxbye.)
This newly invigorated Kwon-sook also has the courage to confess her feelings to Tae-young and put on an extremely brave face when she’s sympathetically rejected. Although Tae-young’s assertion that she will regret her feelings for him smells a little too much like noble idiocy, I’m glad Tae-young maintains an emotional distance. Die-hard romantics may not like it, but I appreciate not only the realism but the fact that his restraint prevents him from falling into the predator category. Plus, you know, he might go to jail soon, and why encourage a young woman to waste her youth waiting for him to get out of prison?
Tae-young may have put up boundaries that he’s sticking to, but he hasn’t completely abandoned Kwon-sook. In his absence, he’s assigned Jae-min — infinitely more tolerable now that he’s getting less screen time — to be her running partner, and Chul-yong has been tasked with preparing Kwon-sook’s meals according to Tae-young’s dietary instructions. Chul-yong, otherwise, maintains his hands-off approach to Kwon-sook’s boxing training, which is doing wonders for their relationship.
Chul-yong may have been hands-off with Kwon-sook’s training, but the same can’t be said for her love life. Chul-yong has a little heart-to-heart with Tae-young, and this is probably my favorite scene this week. Tae-young and Chul-yong are magic when they’re on screen together, and the round-about way they discussed Kwon-sook’s feelings for Tae-young and how he does not intend to reciprocate them (at the moment) felt so natural. This scene also largely contributed to my new support for this particular romantic ship. It’s not so much that I never want them to get together — just not right now.
Although the romance between Kwon-sook and Tae-young has stalled, Kwon-sook’s boxing training continues to progress to the point where she requests a sparring partner to help her level up. This regrettably creates the opening Oh-bok needs to place his own dirty fighting operative in the ring with Kwon-sook, and Oh-bok’s boxer-turned-kick-boxer intentionally injures Kwon-sook to lower her chances of defeating Ah-reum. But Kwon-sook has found her fighting spirit, and although she showed up to her weigh-in with her ankle wrapped, she otherwise shakes off the injury and proves she’s just as determined as Ah-reum to fight and win.
The day of the match arrives. Kwon-sook bids her mother’s funeral portrait goodbye, and then faces her father. He offers to join her, but she tells him she wants him to be her dad not her coach, and she takes the initiative to hug him. Another door to Kwon-sook’s boxing past has closed, and although I’ve had mixed emotions about Chul-yong’s redemption arc, I’m mostly satisfied with it because it wasn’t rushed and because there was no sense that Kwon-sook had to forgive him out of familial duty. I felt like she had the autonomy to make the decision on her own, and (for the most part) Chul-yong showed his repentance by respecting her boundaries.
In the locker room, Kwon-sook displays her ritualistic anxiety that is only amplified by Tae-young’s absence. Unbeknownst to her, though, when he entered the building he spotted Oh-bok and chased after him. After losing him in the crowd, Tae-young’s concern for Kwon-sook sends him running to her locker room, and he’s so relieved to see her safe and sound that he gives in to his true desires and hugs her. After calming down and lying about the real fear that prompted his skinship, Tae-young comforts Kwon-sook and gives her a pep talk. Win or lose, she can proudly quit boxing if she wants, but he’s confident she will win.
He’s noticeably vague, though, about where he will be watching her fight from, and that’s because he’s scheduled to meet with the police and give a statement about his involvement with the match-rigging. But next week wouldn’t be the climax of our story without our villain showing up to thwart our heroes’ happiness, so when Tae-young exits Kwon-sook’s locker room, he comes face-to-face with three of Oh-bok’s very well-fed thugs. At the same time, Chul-young has three equally beefy opponents enter his restaurant.
We end this week’s episodes on an immensely suspenseful note, and I’ve got to say, I think the unintended disruption to the airing schedule worked in My Lovely Boxer’s favor. As I said last week, Episode 9 made for a solid stand-alone episode before we entered this week’s rising action, and I feel even more confident in that opinion after watching this week’s episodes. Not only do Episodes 10 and 11 fit better thematically, but I know I’m personally feeling more hyped for next week’s finale than I would have been had we ended with Kwon-sook’s love confession last week. Hopefully there will be a nice little bump in ratings next week due to this cliffhanger, but, sadly, they will still be lower than this drama deserves.