Race: Episodes 3-4

by missvictrix

Our heroine might have just landed her dream job, but it’s anything but dreamy. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, and our heroine’s response to her new — and rather hostile — corporate environment will decide her fate.

 
EPISODES 3-4

Week 2 of our drama was a bit slow and lingered a lot in the office politics and torture chamber that is the Seyong conglomerate. But I think I now understand this drama’s particular slice-of-life style.

Its office setting is heavily (painfully) realistic, but the drama’s light touch keeps it from being a depressing slog. Likewise, the characters that populate this rather dry setting are full of enough life to counterbalance it. Because more than the realistic setting and scenarios, the drama’s emotional core is its strength. You can feel the characters’ complicated emotions of disappointment, discomfort, and humiliation through the screen. It’s not always fun, but it’s setting up to be a great journey for our heroes.

Yoon-jo is so flabbergasted by the acceptance call from Seyong’s HR rep that she doesn’t even register that Dong-hoon has just offered her a job too. And it’s a crying shame, says me, because Earth Comm is about a million times better than Seyong. Later, when Dong-hoon takes on Yoon-jo’s old boss KIM HEE-YOUNG (Baek Ji-won) as a exec and Yoon-jo goes to visit her, the contrast between these two companies hurts.

The drama is taking its time to give us much story around Earth Comm, so right now it just exists as a point of contrast with Seyong — and also acts as the home of Dong-hoon, whose heart eyes for Yoon-jo are undeniable. More on that later, I’m sure. Because — YES — the love lines are starting to form, my friends!

What looked like a pretty solid friendship without any hidden feelings last week is actually anything but. We learn all sorts of things about Yoon-jo having feelings for Jae-min — for instance, she accidentally says how cute he is to their friend Eun, and Eun knows all too well that Yoon-jo had has a thing for him. And throughout our episodes, Eun tells her again and again that she needs to get over him and move on.

But where’s the fun in that? Instead, the drama treats us to some high-intensity flirtation between the two… undercut by jokes, because such is this drama’s style. Still, this loveline has my full attention, and I’m glad the story knows how much this sparkle is needed to offset the office side of things. Also, the two actors’ chemistry is quite good, so whether they’re squabbling like old friends or stealing glances in the office, there’s a lot I’m looking forward to seeing here. (*Come on slow burn*)

We don’t get as overt a confession from Jae-min regarding his feelings for Yoon-jo, but we can observe enough to know how much she matters to him. When Yoon-jo first gets the job at Seyong, he celebrates with her (and is literally beaming when he seems the acceptance email and calls her a second after HR does). But these two finally coming together in the workplace might just mean a change in their relationship.

Yoon-jo tells Jae-min they should pretend not to know each other at the office, since she doesn’t want anyone to think her hire was preferential, but boy oh boy she doesn’t even know the half of it, and being friends with Jae-min is basically the last thing she needs to worry about right now.

As we get to know the players on the Seyong PR Strategy teams — from the team leaders to the boss to the hilarious minions — it’s just a mire of corporate BS. Slowly but surely, what started off seeming like a well-meaning hire turns into nothing but a PR stunt. No one wants Yoon-jo on their team (seeing her as a dead weight), and when she’s finally placed on Team 3, her boss is mean as hell, and her coworker is none other than the bratty SNU grad that continues to mock Yoon-jo to her face. (I really hate her.)

We get to know Yoon-jo so well as we see her begin to understand the truth around her hiring. She longs to put her experience to work (and would clearly rock taking over the proposal that is actually hers), but there is so much rancor and politicking that she spends her days sitting at her pod trying to look busy — until her true “purpose” is revealed.

Together with the other blind hires, Yoon-jo does interviews, photoshoots, and events. The video of her story plays on literally every screen in the Seyong skyscraper and though Yoon-jo doesn’t love it, she’s trying to fill her role well. But the humiliation just keeps coming — from the way her boss and coworkers treat her, to the way the company is using her as a puppet.

I love the resilience we see in Yoon-jo during all this. It’s the stuff of old school K-drama heroine tropes: suck it up, do your best no matter what, and your true worth will be revealed eventually. Now, that is definitely Yoon-jo’s arc, but she’s also refreshingly able to take care of herself, whether it’s confronting her coworker, or talking back to Jae-min’s boss who’s totally demeaning her. I also love that Yoon-jo isn’t dumb; she sees as clear as anyone what’s going on, and that takes the victim angle right out of the story.

Meanwhile, Jae-min is observing all this from the other side of the office, peeking his head over the computer every now and then and trying to help Yoon-jo without being obvious. Whether he mutters angrily under his breath about Yoon-jo’s boss (“Why does she have to yell at her…”), tries really hard to get her in charge of the Earth Comm project, takes her to the noraebang to blow off steam, or makes sure her lunch box has the eel that she likes so much, he is literally office chingu goals. Also, boyfriend goals.

But his attentiveness towards the “stranger” Yoon-jo is noticed by his team, and particularly his friend (the best comic relief character ever) MAENG CHUL-JOON (Yoon Seok-hyun). He spies, teases, and eventually gets Jae-min to admit he has a crush on her lol.

Jae-min might be awesome, but he is also a K-drama hero, so he’s got some Heavy Emotional Wounds that he needs to take care of. We see them hinted at this week as a) Yoon-jo and Eun note that he hasn’t gotten over “her” and b) we see Jae-min super forlorn after his first work encounter with Gu Yi-jung (who is now a C-suite exec at Seyong). Later, he stares at her photo on his cell phone when he’s alone in the back of a taxi. (Mother abandonment? Love affair with an older woman that destroyed his heart? Stay tuned!)

As our episodes end this week, the drama hits the fan. Just when it seemed like Yoon-jo had to shoulder enough awfulness at Seyong, the true story of her hire blows up on the internet. The netizens are not kind. They can also see straight through this blind recruitment initiative of Seyong’s and they can tell the company is just pandering to the younger generation, selling a story of an employee’s success that’s not even true.

Poor Yoon-jo knew her current role was as spokesperson, but she didn’t know that the whole thing was a complete stunt. She’s crushed to learn that she wasn’t hired for her experience at all — they don’t give a rip about it — she was chosen for her face and how her story would sound. It’s pretty sickening, especially given that it was Jae-min’s original idea, and he certainly didn’t have it in mind to rake his friend over the coals like this.

It’s pretty emotionally heavy this week, and it’s not exactly fun to watch our heroine be manipulated, mistreated, or misunderstood. But, there’s so much story ahead — and so much hope plugged into this drama’s tone — that we know she’s not going to let this get her down. Now that Yi-jung is on the scene, too, things are definitely set to change.

But while I’m looking forward to seeing Yoon-jo rise victorious at Seyong despite all these setbacks, I’m actually more invested in the relationships between the characters — whether Yoon-jo and Jae-min, or the forthcoming Yoon-jo and Yi-jung, or the mystery between Yi-jung and Jae-min.

As such, I hope the drama gives a little more time to the characters’ interactions next week, and a little less time to the corporate strife. The drama seems to understand that the story needs strong relationships in order to stay compelling, so here’s hoping they take the play time and the after-hours flirting up a notch. And while they’re at it, they should give us a good dose of friends-to-lovers heat to keep us all sane during one too many conference room arguments.

 
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