First episodes of series are probably the most difficult to write. You want to introduce all the characters, give them enough backstory to make them connect with the audience, but you don’t want to get bogged down in exposition or too much background story. So there’s a balance that’s needed that can be tough to achieve, as we see in a new romantic K-drama that takes place during South Korea’s 1997 financial crisis.
Opening Shot: A news report about Typhoon Trading, a small trading company that, according to the report, is part of the small business segment that’s critical to South Korea’s economic growth. Founder and CEO Kang Jin-young (Sung Dong-il) waits for a cue to make like he’s working for the cameras.
The Gist: The report then turns to the sons and daughters of these business leaders, “mooching” off their parents’ success. The reporter is in the Apgujeong neighborhood in Seoul, showing the “Orange Tribe” as they go into a club. Among them is Kang Tae-poong (Lee Jun-ho), Jin-young’s son. He gets into a fight with his rival, Pyo Hyeon-jun (Mu Jin-sung), and they both end up getting arrested. Jin-young and Tae-poong’s mother, Jeong Jeong-mi (Kim Ji-young) go to the station in the middle of the night, and Jin-young is so disappointed in his son, he slaps Tae-poong when he asks for money after being bailed out.
Tae-poong is studying horticulture in college, so he goes out to a greenhouse he maintains and spends the rest of the night watering, pruning and picking flowers to bring home. He’s so tired at the train station, he falls asleep on Oh Mi-seon (Kim Min-ha), who just happens to be a bookkeeper at Typhoon Trading.
Mi-seon seems to be the opposite of Tae-poong; she goes to college and works at Typhoon for 11 hours a day, making money to support her grandmother, who has been raising her, her younger sister and her younger brother since they were little. She does work a bookkeeper doesn’t normally do, like make coffee for the largely male staff.
But Jin-young also trusts her opinion, and when a massive deal comes through that would require Jin-young to lay out more capital than he’s comfortable with, he asks her for advice. She says the deal is too risky, an opinion he respects, but he ends up signing the deal anyway.
It’s 1997 and the entire country is about to go through a massive financial crisis, with companies that were thought to be too big to fail actually shutting down. When a reliable client goes under, Jin-young finds himself unable to meet payroll; the situation has made him so distraught he ends up having a stroke.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Believe it or not, Typhoon Family is considered a romantic K-drama, along the lines of Genie, Make A Wish.
Our Take: Typhoon Family‘s first episode takes 76 minutes to set up its basic premise, which is that Tae-poong has to take over Typhoon Trading after his father’s death, and has to grow up fast as he tries to steer the company through South Korea’s financial crisis. Normally, we would be fine with a premiere episode taking its time to set up its situation and characters, but it feels like this one takes more time than it needs.
There are a few asides that show just how carefree Tae-poong’s life is, like a dance routine he and his friends do in the club, and a dating show he gets roped into by one of this friends. Sure, they both show what kind of a dynamic, good-looking guys Tae-poong is, and his love of horticulture also shows that he’s not just a party animal. As his father is fading in the hospital, Tae-poong responds to a friend’s page (remember, it’s 1997) and gets in yet another confrontation with Hyeon-jun, which includes action-movie-style chases and fighting.
In other words, the first episode is all over the place. Where it does a good job is contrasting Tae-poong’s life with Mi-seon’s. They’re basically the same age, but Mi-seon pretty much does everything that Tae-poong doesn’t, all in an effort to start her career and take care of her family. It’s not a stretch to think that Tae-poong is going to look to her to help him run things at Typhoon, probably recognizing the same potential in her that his father did, but utilizing it in a different way.
Romantic K-dramas sometimes get into this pattern, where the storytelling gets mired in cute asides instead of concentrating on the story at hand, and the first episode of Typhoon Family makes us wonder if subsequent episodes are going to be similarly distracted-feeling.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After finding out that his father died, and his mother screaming at him for not being there, he stands in the hospital lobby, watching news of the collapse of South Korea’s economy.
Sleeper Star: Kim Sang-ho is a pretty convincing jerk as Pyo Bak-ho.
Most Pilot-y Line: The translation of the show for English subtitles has Tae-poong and Sang-ho calling each other “punk” a lot. That feels like a copout of a translation, especially given the fact that the show is TV-MA because of language. Just have them call each other assholes and be done with it!
Our Call: SKIP IT. Typhoon Family has a predictable premise and a first episode that takes way too long to set that premise up.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.