I asked myself, can Bossam: Steal the Fate make us care about a man who kidnaps widows for a living? It didn’t even take the entire episode for me to arrive at an answer. (Spoiler: Yes!)
The show’s title and central premise revolves around an old practice called bossam, where a widow would be kidnapped and married off to the person who arranged for the kidnapping. It’s not as awful as it sounds on its face though; due to taboos around widows remarrying bossam was a way to maneuver around the taboo and marry in relative peace.
In fact, the first episode opened with a voluntary bossam, with the widow bride-to-be waiting for her kidnapper to take her away. The widow (cameo by Ra Mi-ran) was “kidnapped” by a reluctant bossam-er, Jung Il-woo. Jung Il-woo is rough around the edges, but blessed with smarts and great abs fighting skills. There’s clearly more to him than meets the eye, and the references at a Tragic Past make me think that Jung Il-woo wasn’t always a lowborn ruffian.
When his right-hand man (Lee Jun-hyuk) convinces him to take on one last bossam, the promised fee is too big for Jung Il-woo to turn down, he has his family to think about after all. The kidnapping doesn’t go smoothly and things go from bad to worse when it turns out that their bossam client up and died in the middle of the night–plus the widow in question is no average widow, she’s a princess, Yuri.
There was so much action in these first two episodes: a sinister government minister, scheming and a faked death, and the start of a tragic love triangle. If Bossam manages to stay as fun and delightful during the next few weeks, it just might be the drama to break my sageuk slump.
Spoilers may be rife, so Beanie beware.