What happens when a chaebol moonlighting as a detective meets a spunky woman with a foul mouth and telescopic vision? Good Job has set out to answer this seemingly absurd question, and the result is an action-packed mystery with a lot of laughs and the promise of a future romance. Sign me up!
EPISODES 1-2 WEECAP
Riding hot on the success of Extraordinary Attorney Woo is ENA’s newest drama Good Job, and the anticipation is high. Not only does Good Job have some whale-sized shoes to fill, but people are excited about a Bossam: Steal the Fate couple reunion. Meanwhile, my own personal bar was set pretty low: please, please, please be better than Why Her!
All jokes aside, I went into Good Job cautiously optimistic. And I gotta tell you, Beanies, I’m not sure if it was my lowered expectations or what, but I absolutely adored these first two episodes.
Our drama wastes no time setting up the story with a tragic narration of a murdered woman and a stolen diamond necklace, aptly named The Queen’s Tears. This tale — which we quickly learn is our chaebol hero’s backstory — is told in a fairytale-like manner and accompanied by a time-lapsed sand drawing. The morbid topic paired with the storybook drawings gave me some serious It’s Okay to Not Be Okay vibes, so my interest was almost immediately piqued.
When the introduction wraps up, our drama cuts to a hunched ahjussi slinking through the halls of an illegal auction house. When no one is watching, the feeble-looking man’s gait becomes upright and his footsteps more assured. This is our hero EUN SUN-WOO (Jung Il-woo) in disguise, and he’s clearly up to some sort of shenanigans.
Despite his convincing old man FX makeup, his cover is almost immediately blown by an overly suspicious security guard who doesn’t fall for Sun-woo’s lie that he’s looking for the restroom. Sun-woo quickly subdues the guard, but because he fails to disable the man’s two-way radio, the cavalry arrives en masse.
Sun-woo takes them all on at once, and not only does he make the fight look easy-peasy, but he does it with flair, throwing punches and whipping his flashy walking cane around like it’s an extension of his body. After disposing of the final boss — a large man who towers over Sun-woo — with a swift kick to the jingle-jangles, Sun-woo enters the CEO’s office.
His mother’s necklace, which disappeared twenty years ago the night she was murdered, has resurfaced at this sketchy auction house, and Sun-woo believes identifying the seller will lead him to his mother’s killer. Before he can find the answers he’s searching for, though, his snooping is interrupted by the CEO and her adorably floofy doggo, who immediately sniffs out Sun-woo’s hiding place.
The CEO pulls a gun on him, but Sun-woo was smart enough to remove the bullets while he was rifling through her desk. Sun-woo ties her up and steals her dog’s collar, which hides a micro SD card with all her clients’ information.
Through his earpiece, Sun-woo communicates with his sidekick JANG JIN-MO (Eum Moon-seok), who has prepared a sleek black motorcycle for Sun-woo’s hasty escape. Unfortunately, a delivery truck — the truck of doom’s less homicidal cousin — is blocking the motorcycle from Sun-woo’s line of sight, so he mistakenly assumes that a nearby pink scooter is his getaway vehicle.
The scooter’s real owner DON SERA (Kwon Yuri) is our leading lady, and she watches helplessly as he steals it and engages in a slow-speed chase with goons from the auction house.
This scene cracked me up. Not only is Sun-woo freaking adorable wearing his pink helmet, but the situational irony and his dialogue with Jin-mo — who thinks Sun-woo is riding the sexy black vroom-vroom motorcycle — is comedic gold and really establishes their relationship as one that is comfortable and silly. Sun-woo was only marginally put out to be riding the pink scooter and made the best of the situation, but even more telling is that he thought it was entirely within Jin-mo’s wheelhouse to prepare a pink scooter for him.
Once they reunite and clear up the Pink Panther versus Black Panther misunderstanding, Sun-woo tasks Jin-mo with identifying the necklace’s seller while he takes off his metaphorical Sherlock Holmes hat and dons his chaebol chairman suit. He arrives at his company Eunkang Group, where we’re introduced to KANG WAN-SOO (Jo Young-jin) and his son KANG TAE-JOON (Yoon Sun-woo), who very clearly hates Sun-woo.
It’s hard to say if the giant chip on Tae-joon’s shoulder is due to jealousy over Sun-woo’s wealth and power, or the fact that his father always takes Sun-woo’s side over his. Well, uhm, Sun-woo is the boss, so… *shrugs.*
After a meeting, during which Sun-woo flexes his business savviness and puts the sniveling Tae-joon in his place, Sun-woo retreats to his office and takes a call from Jin-mo. He’s identified the necklace’s seller as KANG CHOOL-GIL, who is currently holed up at a casino.
Sun-woo takes a secret elevator down to his personal batcave, where he has a costuming closet so expansive it would make a theater major cry from envy. As Sun-woo navigates the long hallway he undergoes a transformation, shedding his chaebol sleekness and becoming a bonafide gamblin’ man. (I can’t be the only one thinking he was channeling Brad Pitt in Fight Club, right?)
At the end of the tunnel, he takes another elevator up to Jin-mo’s law office, where Jin-mo frets over Sun-woo’s disguise because Sun-woo’s company owns the casino where Chool-gil is gambling. Surely an employee will recognize their company chairman!
Unbeknownst to them, they have a bigger obstacle: Sera. Because dramaland is smaller than Sera’s bank account, this slightly Candy-like leading lady has a part-time job at Sun-woo’s casino, and her one and only task is to walk the casino floors and spot cheaters.
She’s especially good at her job because she has a secret ability: super vision! She can see the tiniest detail from miles away, but this ability does come with some caveats. Namely, if she uses her ability too long, she will get a massive headache and pass out, so she usually wears a pair of glasses to dampen her vision and go about her daily life. (Sure, that checks out.)
As she walks the floor, Sera recognizes Chool-gil from a wanted poster, and she resolves to collect the bounty for his arrest. When Sun-woo sits down beside the wanted thief, Sera mistakes him for Chool-gil’s accomplice and has him apprehended by casino security guards, too. The men are locked inside a room, and Sera stands guard outside, gleefully counting her potential reward money.
On the other side of the door, though, Sun-woo promises to help Chool-gil escape if he tells him where he obtained The Queen’s Tears. Chool-gil agrees to the deal, and Sun-woo gives Jin-mo the go ahead to create a distraction.
Jin-mo then proceeds to stage a fight… with himself. The situation is completely ridiculous — and hilariously funny — but it works. Sera is lured away from the door by the one-man commotion, allowing Sun-woo and Chool-gil to escape.
Sera and a pack of security guards chase Sun-woo and Chool-gil up to the roof, but they are delayed just long enough for Sun-woo to get the information he needs: Chool-gil stole the necklace from actress OH AH-RA’s (Shin Go-eun) house. Sun-woo then takes a flying leap off the casino’s roof and lands in the back of a dumpster truck piloted by Jin-mo.
Although Sun-woo successfully escapes, he’s almost immediately reunited with Sera because Jin-mo’s law practice is located above a bakery run by Sera’s bestie SA NA-HEE (Song Sang-eun). All these small world coincidences are a bit much, but Jin-mo’s horror as he watches via his security camera as Na-hee and Sera drop his precious package down the stairs had me in stitches.
When Sera recognizes Jin-mo as Sun-woo’s getaway dump truck driver, Jin-mo makes a hasty exit, and I’m going to assume it’s the adrenaline that enables him to pick up his package — which was too heavy for two women to lift, mind you — as though it’s a feather. He hops in the van with Sun-woo and drives away.
But thanks to Sera’s super vision, she’s able to follow them all the way to Ah-ra’s house. Well, maybe not all the way, but close enough that her eagle eyes can see Sun-woo climb over a wall. She also has a clear view of Sun-woo sneaking around inside the house, and when Sun-woo shines his flashlight around Ah-ra’s bedroom, Sera also sees the pool of blood on the bed. Something really, really bad went down in the actress’s home, but neither the actress nor her body were found.
Police detectives LEE DONG-HEE (Shin Yeon-woo) and HAN GWANG-KI (Cha Rae-hyung), who is also Sera’s oppa from the orphanage where she grew up, arrive on the scene. They just happened to be in the area when Sera’s anonymous tip about a burglar came through.
They arrest Sun-woo, but back at the police station, Sun-woo and Jin-mo — who is a legitimate lawyer and not just posing as one for the sake of Sun-woo’s secret lair — point out the holes in the timeline. There’s no way Sun-woo could have broken in and hidden Ah-ra’s dead body in the short span of time between the reported break-in and when the detectives arrived on the scene.
Although he’s free to go, Sun-woo’s presence at the police station does not go unreported, and news and tabloid outlets begin speculating that the chairman had a romantic relationship with Ah-ra, his company’s exclusive model. It’s thanks to one of these articles that Sera finally identifies the wig-wearing weirdo from the casino, and she’s horrified by how she treated her company’s chairman.
Meanwhile, Sun-woo realizes Sera is the one who reported his illegal activities to the police, so he tells Jin-mo to evict Na-hee from the building — because, of course he owns it. Incensed, Sera barges into Jin-mo’s office to defend her friend.
After arguing and pleading fail, she reveals that she saw someone else near Ah-ra’s house the night Sun-woo broke in: an extremely sus man wearing all black and pulling a large rolling suitcase. Oh dear, things are not looking good for this missing actress.
The newly formed motley trio revisits the crime scene and Jin-mo hacks into the nearby CCTV to confirm Sera’s story. Both men are baffled that she spotted him from so far away, but she’s proven her usefulness. Sun-woo reluctantly agrees to have her join their investigation, and after running the license plate on the mystery man’s car, they identify the car’s owner as JANG MIN-SOO (Kim Jae-il).
Their next stop is Ah-ra’s agency, where the manager recognizes Min-soo as Ah-ra’s stalker, which means he probably didn’t give her The Queen’s Tears. Still curious to know how she came into possession of his mother’s necklace, Sun-woo next shows a picture of the necklace to her agency’s CEO. He’s very dodgy, but after a little nudging from Sun-woo and Jin-mo, the CEO admits that Ah-ra might have had a boyfriend — someone she frequently met at a club in Gangnam.
And thus, our story now sets our characters up to perform an undercover sting operation at the night club. The plan: dress Sera up in a hot pink bodycon dress, have her wear The Queen’s Tears, and see which man reacts to spotting the necklace. With the help of RA MIN-JI (Bae Eun-woo), another actress at Ah-ra’s agency, Sera is able to infiltrate the VVIP room at the club.
And guess who’s there, too! Our drama’s resident douche-canoe: Tae-joon. Drunk and away from the walls of Eunkang Group, Tae-joon flies his violent, misogynistic flag real high. He orders Min-ji to come closer and pour him a drink, but when she unsuccessfully hides her reluctance, he breaks a wine bottle, grabs her by the hair, and threatens to cut her. Uhm, this psycho’s got to go!
This is when Sera really proves she’s a heroine after our hearts. She’s not physically strong, but our girl has a potty mouth full of creative insults. She steps up to provide Tae-joon with another target — oh, and did he just notice The Queen’s Tears?
She stalls for time so Sun-woo, who’s been lurking in the hallway, can change into his expensive chairman suit. He arrives just in time and diffuses the situation with his mere presence — thus proving money is a better superpower than eagle-like vision.
Sun-woo drags Sera away and scolds her for being reckless, but in the midst of his lecture, she gazes deeply into his eyes… and notices in the reflection of his irises that the masked man behind her is filming them with a hidden camera. And this is how our team discovers that the CEO of Ah-ra and Min-ji’s agency has been secretly filming his actresses and using the content for blackmail and deep fake videos.
The team tricks the CEO into revealing where he hid the movie files, and back in Sun-woo’s batcave, our amateur detectives comb through the videos Ah-ra’s agency secretly filmed. They spot Min-soo in the background, and Sera recognizes the tree-shaped keychain on his backpack as the same one the man outside Ah-ra’s house had. Except, once again, she sees what others can’t, and Sun-woo and Jin-mo zoom in on Min-soo and strain to make out the shape of the keychain in the pixelated image.
Okay, I’m willing to buy the fact that Sera can see really, really far away, but please tell me how her eyesight helps her overcome the technological conundrum of poor screen resolution and low pixel density?
After running the image through a software designed to enhance images, Sun-woo and Jin-mo are finally able to see the keychain. Sun-woo ponders the impossibility of Sera seeing such a teeny tiny keychain from her position outside Ah-ra’s house, and he comes to an unlikely conclusion.
He decides to explore his theory, and from the roof of his company’s building he calls Sera. He offers to give her anything she wants if she can pass his test. All she has to do is go outside, look towards him, and “take off her glasses and read it.” When she complies, she sees he’s holding up a sign that reads, “I found out your secret.” She tries to play dumb, but in her denial, she accidentally confirms Sun-woo’s suspicions: she has super vision.
That was a fun premiere, and it was exactly what I needed to get over the slump of the two legal dramas that shall not be named. And speaking of lawyers, Jin-mo’s micro expressions and banter with Sun-woo are giving me so much life. I legit think he’s on his way to stealing the show the same way Woo Do-hwan’s dual characters did in The King: Eternal Monarch. I know Sun-woo is supposed to be our leading man, but I only have eyes for Jin-mo. What can I say? I have a thing for men who can make me laugh.
Sun-woo and Sera are interesting characters, too, especially when they’re riffing off of each other, and I absolutely adore that Sera is rough around the edges. It pairs well with Sun-woo’s ego — lol at those “I’m better than Sherlock” remarks — and polished aura, which undoubtedly comes from being born with a silver spoon. Can’t wait to see how their relationship unfolds.
If I have one complaint about this drama, it’s the little inconsistencies and plot holes. Like, how and when did Sun-woo retrieve The Queen’s Tears? It was clearly shown on display at the auction house, but next we see it, it’s in Sun-woo’s possession.
I actually rewatched both episodes to confirm I didn’t overlook a scene or piece of dialogue that explained how Sun-woo (presumably) stole his mother’s necklace back, but I’m still just as confused. You’d think, given the necklace’s importance, they’d show its recovery. But, honestly, as long as this drama can keep me distracted with Jin-mo’s antics, I’ll shut off my brain and enjoy the ride.