Summary
Typhoon Family benefits from a bit more romance in Episode 8, and another change of scenery helps to keep things feeling fresh.
I feel like I have been a little hard on Typhoon Family. It’s only because I care! But highlighting some of the contradictions baked into the premise and execution seems reasonable to me, and I was pleased to see the previous outing start to form the ghost of a point. Episode 8, “The Bright Days of Youth”, picks up from there and benefits from its starting point. As we’ve now passed the halfway point, I do believe we’re getting somewhere.
Helmets. That’s the next bright idea that Tae-poong has come up with after the safety shoes, and with the help of a returned Ma-jin, who has sales contacts all over the place, the manufacturers are willing to front a small order on credit as a goodwill gesture. I’m not sure what Tae-poong’s fascination with safety products is, though – perhaps it’s just a consequence of living such a freewheeling life that at any point he might end up being hit on the head with a hammer.
Ma-jin might be a good salesman, but he’s not a great dude, at least not as far as women are concerned. Mi-seon, having been promoted by Tae-poong having taken over the company, is obviously the target of this outdated attitude, and his accusations do resonate a bit when she’s left to clean up the cups after everyone leaves. Typhoon Family has spent more time focusing on the era’s financial realities and implications than the ingrained sexism of the era, especially in the workplace, but hey, the point is made.
Speaking of the IMF crisis, Asia’s general instability does make exporting things a bit more difficult than it would ordinarily be. Those helmets have to go somewhere, and eventually, after a bit of logical deduction from Tae-poong, it’s decided they’ll go to Thailand. This means a trip over there on business visas secured by Mi-seon. As with the deviation to Busan, the setting change helps Typhoon Family in Episode 8. Thailand is lively, but more importantly, it allows the characters to open up a bit more.
Central to this, of course, is Tae-poong’s burgeoning relationship with Mi-seon, which dovetails quite nicely with Ma-jin’s unabashed sexism, since she suspects that he’s treated her that way because Tae-poong is giving her “special treatment”. It’s quite charmingly naive that she isn’t just writing Ma-jin off as a garden-variety bigot, even though that’s the way he’s acting, but she’s at least right that Tae-poong is giving her unusual amounts of attention. That’s just his love language, I guess. I wish he’d take Mi-seon’s discomfort a bit more into account, but you can tell he means well.
You can really see this dynamic manifesting when the team gets all dressed up to attend a nightclub, and of course Mi-seon looks great in her borrowed dress, and Tae-poong can’t keep his eyes off her, and of course when he gets on stage and starts singing to impress Nicha, the daughter of the head of Nikaham Group, Mi-seon gets a little uncomfortable about his crooning. And, of course, he serenades Mi-seon directly when they snatch a moment alone. It’s all very by the book, but it does work because there’s a ton of nice chemistry here that overwhelms the predictability. Sure, we know where it’s going, but that’s where we want it to go.
Naturally, “The Bright Days of Youth” can’t help but end with a bit of drama, so the gang finds themselves all arrested and taken to the police station on account of Ma-jin’s earlier misguided attempts to try and bribe a civil servant. The guy’s an idiot and a part of me would be totally happy if they just left him there, but that obviously isn’t going to work out from a sales perspective, so it’s time for some more improvisation to get him out. I wonder what Tae-poong will come up with?
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