Summary
The case of U-Data proves a tough one to crack as Do-Ki continues to infiltrate, and a cliffhanger suggests that one member of the Rainbow team might have a more personal connection to the company than they thought.
This recap of Taxi Driver season 1, episode 6 contains spoilers.
It makes sense to suspect that Taxi Driver episode 6 is setting up Ha-Na as, potentially, the same kind of vigilante as Do-Ki and the other Rainbow members. I started to get that vibe in the previous episode, with her insistence on investigating the U-Data case despite being told otherwise (a case which, by the way, seems to be based on a real one), but it’s even more obvious in Taxi Driver episode 6. Between a flashback prologue that suggests she’d be willing to work outside of the system to achieve justice if the system failed, and how furiously she berates Do-Ki later in the episode when she thinks he’s willingly participating in the toxic corporate culture that she knows the company fosters, it really does seem that this might be the case to push her away from officialdom and into the looser world of private vigilantism. I think she’d be suited to it.
This episode also proves that the two-episode story structure of the first four installments isn’t going to cut it, since we don’t seem to be much closer to a conclusion at the end of this episode than we were at the end of the previous one, despite a major cliffhanger revealing how the company really makes its money (more on that in a bit). Much of the runtime is instead devoted to really solidifying Chairman Park Yang-Jin as a kind of demented cross between Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street and a mediocre televangelist, as well as stressing the importance of the Strategic Planning Team. Do-Ki spends most of the episode trying to secure membership.
Every employee in the Strategic Planning Team has an extensive criminal background and seems to enjoy abuse, so after a plan to get headhunted by eradicating a computer virus that he himself put there, Do-Ki instead gets Go Eun to cook him up a new, darker resume and makes a point of being seen by the Chairman publicly humiliating Jin-Eon. This is enough to get him recruited, but membership comes with a mobile app that monitors his activity and taps his calls, so whenever it’s active he needs to keep up appearances. This is what leads to his argument with Ha-Na mentioned at the top of the recap since she asks him for help in bringing the company down while the wiretap is active, so he has to loudly and enthusiastically defend the Chairman.
This act earns Do-Ki a ticket to the company’s inner circle, which includes an intense hazing where the Strategic Planning Team kidnaps him, put a bag over his head, and threaten him with violence until he admits what he was talking to Ha-Na about (they don’t know that he knows his conversations are being recorded, making the abusive initiation even more pointless.) Do-Ki holds his nerve, though, which stands him in good stead, and after a final warning from General Manager Lee showing him the video of Young-Min being beaten as a warning against turning traitor, Do-Ki is in.
I really cannot wait for him to demolish all of these people.
The revenge does begin in Taxi Driver season 1, episode 6, though, since Do-Ki goes after General Manager Lee with the taxi’s battering ram and causes a major accident. He swipes his phone and leaves him to rot, and good riddance, frankly. But the next day delivers an important twist. Once Do-Ki is given server access and instructions on how to upload videos, there’s a frantic call from Sung-Chul warning the other Rainbow members to stop Go Eun from entering that server. Why? Because the server is full of illegal exploitation videos that involve her sister. It’s too late to stop her, though, and by the time anyone reaches her, she has smashed up the surveillance truck and disappeared.
