Summary
My Name continues to develop Jiwoo as a formidable protagonist as she takes on an undercover role, finding new allies and enemies both.
This recap of My Name season 1, episode 2 contains spoilers.
So, it turns out that Jiwoo has rather taken to gangster training. In a fight against Do Gangjae, she wins handily and brutally, which prompts the embarrassed man to roofie her water and attempt to take revenge for the humiliation. He and Cheol-Ho accost her in her room, but in the ensuing scuffle, Donghoon’s urn is broken, his ashes scattered everywhere. Clutching a piece of the porcelain, Jiwoo defends herself against her attackers, and later Mujin, to punish Gangjae’s insolence, opens a nasty wound across his face. He’s having a bad day, to say the least.
My Name season 1, episode 2 recap
Not that Jiwoo is having a particularly good one. After her ordeal, Mujin takes her out drinking, which is another learning experience. Jiwoo is given a new identity, that of Oh Hyejin, and the police-issue revolver that was used to kill her father. She’s to adopt this new identity and use it to figure out who killed her father — and kill him in return. As the years pass and her training continues, she becomes a fully-fledged member of the Organization, going undercover within the police force.
This is where My Name begins in earnest, really. A useful action sequence during which Jiwoo busts up an undercover sting allows us to see the progress of her training, and also introduces us to narcotics cop Pil-do, and Hyejin’s boss, Captain Cha, whom Hyejin suspects in the murder of her father. So, we’re beginning to see the layout of a conspiracy here, with potential suspects and allies within the police force, and a long-term objective. We also begin to see some flashbacks contextualizing Mujin’s relationship with and loyalty to Donghoon, so that we better understand why he has raised Jiwoo as his own, more or less, and why he’s risking his own operations and the reputation of the Organization by facilitating Jiwoo’s revenge mission.
Of course, there’s a utilitarian aspect to Jiwoo’s mission which Mujin is well aware of, and the reality is, simply, that if her own activities begin to represent a conflict of interest, she’ll have to be killed.
With so many competing allegiances and interests, My Name is beginning to develop a lot more texture in this second episode. The highlight is a hallway fistfight during which Jiwoo takes down a number of goons while on the hunt for a man named Mango, who is related to the operation Jiwoo broke up in earlier in the episode. It gives her a good chance to prove her resourcefulness and martial prowess to both Pil-Do and the audience, helping to round out an episode that has done well to portray her developing personality after the time skip.
You can stream My Name season 1, episode 2 exclusively on Netflix.
