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[ponreviews]

Itaewon Class: The Ultimate Revenge

Categories: Drama

Overall Rating: 6.5/10

Synopsis:

Park Sae-ro-yi had every reason to want to seek revenge on the massive corporation Jangga, as he was sent to prison after they messed with someone dear to him. What better way to take down the biggest in the food industry than opening a competing restaurant in the alleys of Itaewon? With the help of the friends he meets along the way, we see just how far Sae-ro-yi is willing to go.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Review:

If you asked me at the beginning of the drama, "Is Itaewon Class a good k-drama?" I would answer "YES!" with no hesitation. However, by the end I do not feel the same way. To start, the story has a great concept. Sae-ro-yi's father worked for Jangga, and he was killed by the eldest son (Jang Guen-won) of the CEO of Jangga (Jang Dae-hee) in a hit-and-run. Considering the already soured relations between Sae-ro-yi and Guen-won, things escalated when Guen-won wasn't punished for the crime and instead Sae-ro-yi was convicted for assault and attempted murder when confronting Guen-won. Instead of wanting to kill the two men responsible for his father's death, he chose another path of revenge, free-market competition. By opening up DanBam in Itaewon, he begins his quest for taking down Jangga by becoming their biggest competitor.

Sae-ro-yi easily became a favorite MC for me. I can easily say, Park Seo-joon did an amazing job with his character. Sae-ro-yi is kind of aloof, but he's educated. Yes, he didn't finish high school, but he had time in prison. He used that time to learn business so that by the time he got out, he would be prepared to open DanBam. Of course, it isn't perfect, hence Jo Yi-seo coming in. She was also one of my favorites early on. She's very blunt and strong-willed. I wish I could say that this is true through to the end, but unfortunately, I can't honestly say that now. Frankly, the two rival women in this series both annoyed the hell out of me by the end of it. Maybe part of it has to do with the age gap between Sae-ro-yi and Yi-seo, but most of it is how little Yi-seo develops in the story. I think if the drama didn't push the romance plot so much, the two main women wouldn't have been so annoying in the end.

I really wish that I can say I like the story too. I can say that the concept is there. It's why people want to watch it in the first place, but as the story progressed, it kept getting messier. On one hand you want to have a messy story. The drama is what everyone craves hence "k-drama," but like our bedrooms, we want an organized mess. Itaewon Class deviates from the organized mess to a junkyard, especially once the time skip hit.

If I didn't hate the story before, the time skip really did it for me. While the concept was impressive at the start, the execution especially towards the end took a nosedive. I cannot look you in the eye and say Itaewon Class is even a 7 because of this. I really wish I liked it, but all the little things add up. Of course, I will explain more of why I feel this way.

As I already mentioned the female leads are not characters I would root for. I've talked about the age gap briefly between Sae-ro-yi and Yi-seo, but it's not the only thing about their relationship that makes me uncomfortable. In fact, both Yi-seo and Soo-ah remind me of someone I know in real life in their own ways. Long story short, this girl is keen on the idea that she doesn't like my friend romantically and would rather keep things platonic. However, at the same time, she actively flirts with him when they're together and sees every girl he's friends with as competition and actively tries to keep him away from other girls. Now, the last part isn't like Yi-seo, but you can't deny that she did have Geum-soo wrapped around her finger. Soo-ah on the otherhand, fits that description to the T. She could never admit herself that she fell for him until it was too late. She led him on and couldn't accept it when he moved on.

It's hard to root for characters who remind you of toxic people in your life. Whatever redeeming quality they have is down the drain when you have a comparison like that. Of course, my opinion on the two women is just my own, and the reasons are specific to my experience (or more specifically, my friend's). My other qualms aren't as specific though. One thing that the show is prided on is the representation of the characters (a black korean man and a trans woman). While it's nice to see, the characters become tokens for their demographic.

The scene where the DanBam group tries to enter a club is one scene that felt really out of place. It's great that issues like racism and transphobia are being addressed, but it feels tone deaf. To-ni's character was unjustifiably prohibited from entering the club because he was black. Yi-seo was also not helpful in the situation as she sided with bouncer instead of To-ni (one of many reasons why I couldn't get behind her character). Even when apologizing it didn't seem genuine. Sae-ro-yi retaliated by tagging graffiti on the club wall calling them racist. Other than that scene, the only other relevance is the grandma admitting she was racist and didn't approve of his father seeing his mother because she was black. To-ni has such a small subplot that it barely has any significance to the plot and makes his character just a token black guy in the show. Every plot point surrounding his character points to him being black, and it just didn't sit right with me.

Then there's Hyeon-yi. Her character is handled a little better than To-ni's but similarly, it doesn't sit right with me. I was confused at the start because I knew from the beginning that she was a girl, but everyone else was referring to her with "he/him" pronouns. When it came to them running into her at the club looking very femme, the shock of her being trans didn't hit as hard. The narrative that she's trans felt forced. When she was absent from DanBam, it was explained that she had transitioned and was in recovery. However, when she came back the only thing that changed is her fashion sense. Suddenly she was able to afford luxury clothes that made her "look convincingly feminine." The way the story handles her character is messy. Honestly though, the fault would pretty much lie with casting and costume design. Granted, the actress, Lee Joo-young, is not part of the blame. She did her best to represent the character well, and in fact, Hyeon-yi is my favorite character despite my misgivings.

Still, casting chose someone who isn't trans to play a transgender woman in Itaewon Class. While there is the argument that this would mean actors would need to be out of the closet before getting casted into trans roles (completely valid btw), it all comes down to the environment in which trans people are not being fully accepted. We can go back and forth saying that Korea is still working on their ignorance when it comes to this topic, but regardless of their intention, it needs to be addressed, if not as critique, hopefully a lesson for future Korean adaptations/productions and the representation of LGBTQ+ stories. Sure it will take time for transgender people to be able to express themselves more openly in a country that's still very traditional, despite their modern practices. Creating the space that allows them to be themselves will open opportunities to accurately portray their experiences in Korean media rather than cis people picking at only what they know and filling the spaces with assumptions.

If anything, I still applaud the story for addressing issues like racism and transphobia in Korea. Without even an attempt, we wouldn't even talk about it on any platform. There's room to grow, but Itaewon Class is on the bottom of the progression ladder. The only thing we can do now is hope that it can get better from here. Unfortunately, it doesn't change my overall opinion of Itaewon Class. The main women are irredeemable in my opinion and we're talking about the same story that has Jang Geun-won and Jang Dae-hee.