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Strong Girl Nam-soon: Episodes 7-8
by mistyisles
Our fearless heroine throws herself right into the lion’s den as she tackles one investigative task after another. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), our villain is more than happy to let her in on company secrets if it means he gets a closer look at what makes her tick.
EPISODES 7-8
Hwa-ja lunges to stab Nam-soon. But Nam-soon grabs her hand, stopping the blade inches away from her abdomen. She throws Hwa-ja back, inadvertently breaking her leg, and asks tearfully if Hwa-ja hates her that much. (Answer: Yes. The way Hwa-ja sees it, Nam-soon destroyed her chance at happiness.) Hee-shik sees to it that Hwa-ja will be taken straight to the police station once her injury is tended to.
Since none of the items Nam-soon swiped from Doogo’s warehouse test positive for drugs, her next idea is to search for clues in Doogo’s client list. And as luck would have it, Shi-on summons Nam-soon to his office. He wants to learn more about her superstrength, and she figures getting close to him will easily open an opportunity to peek at that client list, so they’re both happy to exchange numbers.
Plus, Shi-on isn’t immune to Nam-soon’s infectious charm. Like Hee-shik, he grins in amusement at her bubbly mannerisms. Unlike Hee-shik, however — and I mean this in the creepiest way possible — Shi-on looks at her like he wants to eat her alive. Also, he thinks that because her strength is natural instead of drug-induced, she must be heaven-sent just for him.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when Shi-on offers Nam-soon a promotion to Doogo lobbyist, he requires a performance test first. He has her stand inside an industrial press the size of a swimming pool and gives no explanation aside from a very un-reassuring, “Don’t worry, I won’t let you die.” Next thing she knows, a gigantic slab of metal is hurtling down to crush her. Just like with the airplane when she returned to Korea, stopping the press requires so much of her strength that Geum-joo and Joong-gan feel the energy surge from afar. But in the end, Nam-soon throws the press back upwards and flies out unharmed.
Shi-on, delighted, welcomes Nam-soon to his inner circle. He probes for information on the source of her powers, but remembering a previous warning from Geum-joo, Nam-soon gives a noncommittal answer, and Shi-on accepts it for now.
In the meantime, Shi-on also meets with Geum-joo for a game of cards. The winner gets to make an offer the loser can’t refuse, so when Shi-on folds, granting Geum-joo the victory (it’s unclear if he let her win or if she intimidated him), she starts by asking about his goals and financial backers. In a way, they both want the same thing: power. But while Shi-on simply wants to rule at the top of the food chain, Geum-joo wants to redesign the system such that those with the most power use it to help the weak and poor, not extort them. To that end — and as a cover while she investigates Shi-on’s connections to the Russian mafia — she offers to become Doogo’s sole financier and keep things above-board.
Further investigation leads her to a surprising and puzzling revelation. Because guess who’s casually hanging out in the background of Shi-on’s Russia photos? That’s right — Bread Song, who has so completely charmed Geum-joo’s wealthy friends by now that they couldn’t care less about the fact that his entire identity is a giant question mark. After all, he’s doubling their investments, and all they had to do was pay off a few homeless people so they can use their names for extra untraceable accounts.
Speaking of covering things up with money, when Shi-on hears that one of his workers has passed away on the job from exhaustion, he’s enraged… but only until he’s assured it won’t be a mark on Doogo’s record. Nam-soon, on the other hand, visits the worker’s surviving family to offer condolences and financial support for his young brother. She explains how her Mongolian parents took her in when she lost her own family, and that she wants to use this opportunity to pay it forward.
When she asks Hee-shik out for drinks afterwards, they have an interesting discussion about how one person winning the capitalism game (i.e., Geum-joo) requires others to lose (i.e., the deceased worker). I’m curious to see exactly where the show is going with this conversation, but for now it’s labeled a question of inseparable “light and shadow.”
Between family parties and the ongoing investigations, Nam-soon and Hee-shik have been doing a lot of bonding recently, from commiserating about missing their families (his brother was killed while studying abroad) to outright declaring that they always feel better in each other’s presence. Now, a very tipsy Nam-soon sort-of-accidentally suggests they date. The suggestion goes unanswered, mostly because she starts repeating “I love you” in Mongolian and giggling when he asks what it means. This leads to a happy little chase, a skinned knee (hers) and a piggyback ride (from him).
Hee-shik would much rather Nam-soon back off the Doogo case, but she’s hooked on this whole spy thing. So instead, he outfits her with a camera disguised as a watch and monitors as she visits Shi-on’s office and Heritage Club. She’s the opposite of subtle with it, but fortunately odd behavior is completely on-brand for her, and she makes sure to get multiple shots of that client list (which Shi-on conveniently tasks her with memorizing).
The current top-level employee at Heritage Club gets so jealous of Nam-soon’s promotion that she poisons Nam-soon the first chance she gets. But before Hee-shik can rush inside, Nam-soon pops back up — a little poison is nothing to her! Figuring this was another initiation test, she cheerily takes another sweep around the room with her camera and clocks out for the day.
Again, Hee-shik tries to put his foot down, but again, Nam-soon insists on another spy mission. This time, she’ll sneak into Shi-on’s office after hours and snag key intel from his computer. Contrary to the slick espionage scene Hee-shik’s partner envisions, Nam-soon’s heist consists of disguising herself as a ghost, grabbing Shi-on’s entire computer, and jumping out the window.
You know, the thing about Geum-joo is that she excels at big, grand gestures and putting bad guys in their place — and, as Joong-gan puts it, she has a “Midas touch” for building successful businesses — but when it comes to considering the feelings of people close to her, she can be rather tone-deaf. Case in point: her idea of a fun birthday surprise for her ex-husband is having her secretary accuse him of getting her pregnant in front of the whole family (and plus-ones) and making a huge, ridiculously makjang scene of it.
At the same birthday party, she also announces that Nam-soon will “consummate” this year. Nam-soon and Hee-shik are not asked about their opinions on the matter, but everyone knows he’s the assumed partner, and he’s made aware that he’s expected to produce a daughter to continue the strong woman legacy.
But that awkwardness doesn’t come close to the romance between Joong-gan and her barista beau, whose smile always makes me feel like he’s being held hostage and just playing along to survive. Still, by the end of this week, he proposes to Joong-gan… right when Geum-joo gets a call from her long-lost father. He’s finally back in Korea. This messy family is about to get even messier.
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