Summary
Strong Girl Nam-soon continues to juggle many different story strands, and remains good fun in a politically vocal and oddly charming way.
With Episode 8, we’ve officially reached the midpoint of Strong Girl Nam-soon Season 1, and it has honestly been a fun journey to this point. Sure, the show’s knockabout and silly in a way that’ll be off-putting to some, but it continues to juggle multiple plot threads well and has a surprisingly strong political backbone at its core.
Picking up where we left off in Episode 7, Geum-ju races to help Nam-soon after her exertion during Shi-o’s test caused the entire family to receive a shockwave of energy, but she’s fine enough, managing to summon the strength to throw off the industrial press and land directly on Shi-o’s platform.
In his office, Shi-o congratulates Nam-soon on joining the team, though she remains tight-lipped about the source of her powers when he asks her.
Hong Jeong-ho
A good chunk of this episode is devoted to Nam-soon conducting her own investigation into the Doogo employee who passed away, who – she learns at the police station – was named Hong Jeong-ho. He died due to overexertion, having worked himself to death under pressure of debts. She visits his younger brother and aunt and gives them money for the funeral and the brother’s tuition.
Episode 8 also sees Nam-soon start her new role. Equipped with a GPS tracker and a camera courtesy of Hee-sik, she starts work and is immediately told to memorize a list of Doogo’s domestic partners and pick an English name for herself (she settles on Hillary Khan.) All the while, Hee-sik is keeping an eye on things, being quietly jealous at how Shi-o is interacting with Nam-soon.
Later, the show’s themes of capitalism and social inequality come to the fore when a drunk Nam-soon laments the death of Jeong-ho, with Hee-sik blaming it on the seemingly insurmountable gulf of means between the haves and have-nots. Drunk Nam-soon is also a bit more forthcoming with her feelings for Hee-sik, though admittedly in Mongolian, so he doesn’t entirely catch on.
Madam Kim
Hee-sik is also pursuing another line of investigation, which is the Heritage Club’s Madam Kim. While he’s watching the building she’s in, he sees Nam-soon and Shi-o enter. Shi-o tells Madam Kim to pass all her duties onto Nam-soon in an effort to make her “his own”.
Feigning formalities, Madam Kim offers Nam-soon a drink laced with some intoxicant or another, but despite Nam-soon choking and collapsing for theatrical effect – much to the panic of Hee-sik, who’s watching along – poison doesn’t touch the sides given her powers.
After beating Madam Kim in a drinking contest and snooping around while she’s passed out, Nam-soon returns to Hee-sik and Young-tak and resolves to break into Shi-o’s office in disguise and retrieve his client list.
What group is Shi-o connected to?
Meanwhile, Geum-ju tries to dig up more information on Bread Song, who is untraceable but lucrative. His female clientele have their money stored in shell corporations under the names of vagrants.
The only way Geum-ju can dig up more information about Bread Song is through Opulentia, and even then she has to feign a romantic interest in the man to secure a photograph of him from his assistant.
Either way, Bread Song is connected to Shi-o since, in her office later, Geum-ju spots him in the background of a picture of Shi-o in Russia. Shi-o is a member of a Russian mafia group called Pavel.
As we come to the end of the episode, Nam-soon disguises herself as a classic movie/TV ghost with long dark hair, and then hoists Shi-o’s entire computer from his office and escapes through the window with it. This is easily the most unsubtle break-in in history.
A flurry of final scenes reveals Nam-in taking one of the pills that arrive at his door, Jun-hee proposing to Joong-gan, and Geum-ju receiving an unexpected call from her father, who has been missing for a decade.
Read More: Strong Girl Nam-soon Season 1 Episode 9 & 10 Recap
