Summary
A Virtuous Business Episode 4 feels like a turning point in Jeong-sook’s personal arc, and teases out some wider mysteries for future instalments to address.
A Virtuous Business is what’s known as a low-stakes drama, but I’ve never quite liked that term. Stakes are relative, and there doesn’t need to be a world-saving plot, a global pandemic, or a rampaging serial killer for things to seem important on an individual level. And while Episode 4 is just as much an ensemble piece as the previous three, it’s clear that Jeong-sook’s arc as a catalyst for more wide-ranging change is the show’s primary focus.
Of course, Da-hyun remains her staunchest ally, since you can’t have a K-Drama without a romantic lead pairing. But on a more macro level, it’s about everyone else waking up to the ideas that Jeong-sook is embodying. But that’s a whole process. As I said in my recap of Episode 3, you can’t have empowerment without first understanding why empowerment is necessary.
Hence, the graffiti subplot, which has been ongoing since the end of Episode 2. Through forensic evidence, Da-hyun is able to track down the culprit – a husband who thought that Jeong-sook was a bad influence on his wife. And what’s more, is that Jeong-sook previously had a good relationship with the couple. How things change!
It’s important to understand the pushback against Jeong-sook’s new side hustle since it’s equally important to understand why it’s compelling. Yes, it’s potentially lucrative, which is why it’s attractive to Ju-ri when her rent is increased. But it’s also liberating. Simply selling lingerie can cause otherwise decent people to act like maniacs. There’s a power in that.
The theme crystallizes, in a way, when the women decide to conduct a customer survey to outline their sales strategy, and most people don’t want to give them the time of day. Is it genuine reluctance, or that socially inherited kind? Are people that afraid of buying and selling lingerie, or talking about their sex lives, or are they afraid of what people will think about them if they do? I think we already know the answer to these questions.
Enter Da-hyun again. Even in the midst of investigating… whatever it is he’s investigating – something about a fire three decades prior – he takes time out to do the survey for Jeong-sook. It’s cute and awkward as such things tend to be, but the gesture means more than his answers.
With the rest of town whisperingly discussing ways to close down the business and sticking their nose into Jeong-sook’s breakup with Seong-su, Jeong-sook is more determined than ever to make the business a success – out of spite more than anything else. The women set up outside the salon and make a big deal of it. Jeong-sook’s refusal to back down, and willingness to confront those who criticize her, starts to do the seemingly impossible – change people’s minds.
Not that everyone is on board, obviously, but it’s a good start either way. A Virtuous Business Episode 4 isn’t the start of the series, obviously, but it has that ring of meaningful change to it, that feeling of this being a major turning point for the characters.
We leave things with even more romantic implications between Jeong-sook and Da-hyun and an epilogue that raises a few more questions about that fire the latter is investigating, with a baby being plucked in the nick of time from a raging inferno. What’s all that about? More to come in subsequent episodes.
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