Summary
“Moonlight in Seoul” is predictable in its broad strokes, but its underlying quality and pacing help to imbue it with a lot of energy.
Typhoon Family is the quintessential example of a show with very familiar constituent parts – a real-life period of turbulent history, a wayward son forced to grow up at pace, a burgeoning romance, and so on – that feels fresh and distinct through its basic underlying quality. This is a show with real pace and energy, fully-realised characters that have quickly bedded in, and a sense of cultural and temporal texture. None of that is unique, but in Episode 3, it proves well-oiled and engaging.
This is perhaps just as well, since “Moonlight in Seoul” is one of those standard transitional chapters revolving around Tae-poong’s tentative early efforts to keep Typhoon Trading afloat after being lumbered with the company following his father’s death. It picks up where we left things, with Tae-poong showing a good instinct for a scam, having figured out that Daebang Textiles was pulling a fast one with their shipment. Sure, Tae-poong’s methods might be a bit theatrical, but it’s good to start off a new career with a win, which is what this amounts to after Mi-seon realizes Tae-poong was right and rushes to get him out of the way.
It’s also a nice crystallisation of Tae-poong’s motivations, since going to such lengths isn’t really about the fate of the company for him, but honouring his father’s legacy and sacrifices. Not that this makes the logistical challenges any easier. The truck drivers are supposed to take their goods back to the harbour to be stored in a warehouse, but the warehouse is tricky to arrange on short notice, and the drivers need the trucks empty, so the textiles end up being dumped, and Tae-poong once again has to throw himself in harm’s way. Even his solution for keeping the stuff safe overnight smacks of heroic self-sacrifice, spending a freezing night guarding piles of textiles in lots that once held trucks before the economy took a nose dive.
You see the effects of the economic downturn everywhere in Typhoon Family Episode 3, in Nam-mo’s mother being laid off after a loyal 32-year career, Tae-Poong’s mother pawning her belongings, and Mi-seon’s sister having to pivot from an idyllic air hostess career into a needs-must job in a department store. It’s a harsh context to have to teach someone like Tae-poong how running a company works, and it makes it similarly difficult to sell off several truckloads of luxury fabric. But there is a potential solution – selling the fabric back to the Italians they bought it from. But that means a risky play threatening to tank the value of Italian fabric by selling it at a heavy discount in a floundering market. If the Italians can be compelled to buy the shipment back, the exchange rates will put Typhoon Trading back in the black, more or less.
To store the fabric in the meantime, Tae-poong negotiates a ramshackle warehouse lease with his rival Hyun-jun’s father, but the place is almost falling down, so when a thunderstorm breaks out, it’s all systems go for Tae-poong and Mi-seon to try and save the goods with sheets of plastic. There’s a reminder at this point that there is a romantic undercurrent developing here, but also a reminder that now isn’t really the time to pursue it, since there’s far too much going on professionally. Even Tae-poong’s birthday celebrations have to take a half-hearted back seat before disaster once again strikes.
Predictably, Pyo Enterprises stiffed Typhoon with a sneaky clause in the warehouse lease documents allowing them to seize the contents after three days, which denies Tae-poong of the fabric and of his ability to sell it back to the Italians at a profit. The effects are immediate and devastating. By all accounts, the company is done for, and all Tae-poong can do is scavenge the remaining assets. Naturally, he isn’t about to accept that. Instead, he plots to become a CEO and team up with Mi-seon, as a trader rather than a bookkeeper – an earlier conversation revealed this was her dream – in order to take the world by storm.
In this economy?
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