City Hunter - ep 3
Three episodes in and it's official - City Hunter is my favorite drama of the spring season. Please don't screw it up, drama gods!
First off, before I get to specifics, I want to say how happy I am to see LMH in a genuinely good drama. I loved him in both BOF and Personal Taste but those dramas were flawed to say the least. To see him use his talents in something that I can genuinely love on its own merits is a dream come true! Now to make me fully happy, do a sageuk next, LMH!
Anyway, to get to specifics:
I knew it! I knew Undaddy lied - he told Yoon Sung that his mother abandoned him (presumably so he won't go looking for her/because he'd hate Undaddy forever if he knew the truth). I wondered why YS didn't look for her and now it makes sense - Undaddy made him believe she didn't want him! That is going to do such a number on someone's psyche (see his reaction when ahjusshi finds her), but of course Undaddy doesn't care.
I seriously can't think of a pit of hell good enough for Undaddy. I am sure your best friend would be so happy to find out you kidnapped his only child from his mother's arms, brought him up without an ounce of affection in a drug camp while training him into a fighting machine, did your best to try to turn him into a murderer, and made him carry out a revenge plan that would likely lead to his death. I am sure your dead best friend is doing a jig up in heaven, don't you agree, Druglord? That last scene with Yoon Sung spying on his Mom - all that longing and pain on his face, it killed me.
There will be hell to pay when he finds out the truth and I hope Undaddy pays every last bit.
I wonder if it would make a difference if we got any indication Undaddy ever cared for him in any way other than his instrument of vengeance? Nah - he's still a horrible horrible monster. Whoever dies at the end, I hope Undaddy is among them.
This episode actually gave me hope for Yoon Sung - because his revenge plan doesn't involve killing his targets, just exposing their corruption and ruining them. This way, the worst he'd get from the law is a prison sentence, with Nana hopefully waiting for him, a la Giant. I was terrified when he confronted the Congressman with a gun - I was so sure he was going to shoot an unarmed cowering man and that would be his moral ruin, where he'd go from dark and conflicted to someone mandated to die by the morals of the story. It was only tranquilizer darts and I was so relieved but I love that CH can make me feel this uncertainty.
I am impressed that after upbringing by psycho Undaddy, Yoon Sung still refuses to kill as a method of revenge (though this has brought Undaddy to Seoul and I am terrified he'll find out about Nana and do something to her as a means to keep YS in line/punishment).
The thing is, it kills me how young Yoon Sung is. I don't mean he acts 12 or anything - he's, refreshingly, a grown-up, but he still has this residual naivetee about the world (look at his face when Congressman invokes his immunity and is voted to keep it) but also this deep, ingrained kindness - he brings the Congressman down much more because of his treatment of the kid neighbors of Nana than any abstract murder of his father 25+ yrs ago. His emotions get involved because of the former, not the latter.
That is why Nana is so necessary to him, even though he does not consciously realize it (nor his feelings, either) - she teaches him normalcy, something he's never had.
He is a teasing little boy with her, utterly happy and relaxed. She cooks him meals and scolds about his habits and talks to him and makes him interact with neighbor kids. Without knowing it, she is dragging him out of his cocoon. Prior to her, his biggest influence was Undaddy but now he has rational, warm, kind, joyous Nana. And you can see him changing without realizing it (I loved the little scene where ahjusshi made him coffee that he used to love and he found it too bitter because he got used to Nana's sweet variety. It speaks to so much). Just check out this scene the day he delivered the Congressman to the prosecutors - he and Nana and the two kids romp in the fountain, and then after carrying one of them home, he invites himself to her house, gets into her bathrobe, and nitpicks the food she gives him (I laughed about him picking out all the vegetables) and she teases him.
They have insane chemistry, yes, but that scene also came across to me as if they'd been together forever - underlying the undoubted sexual attraction is their complete comfort with each other, their basic compatibility.
When I saw them playing with the children in the fountain, I started to imagine the two of them with kids of their own. If this drama ends up badly, this is how I am going to pretend it ended instead.
Oh, two other scenes I liked - one was the fight in the kitchen, mainly because I love action. The other was his shooting bullet after bullet in the same hole, upset the Congressman got off, but still remembering to shoot above bullseye so nobody would realize his skills.
OK, this was quite a dissertation.