Welcome to the weekly TV thread. There’s no prompt today.
The Original TV Score Selection of the Week is the instrumental version of K-pop boy band Alpha Drive One’s “GO! GO!” Written for the new SBS TV K-drama Agent Kim Reactivated, a show I started watching on Netflix (which releases each week the show’s two newest episodes immediately after they premiere on SBS), the vocal version of “GO! GO!” shows up during Agent Kim Reactivated’s end credits while clips from next week’s episode are unveiled.
I got into Agent Kim Reactivated because of lead actor So Ji-sub. He played “ex-gangster who comes out of hiding despite walking with a terrible limp to unleash vengeance on the crime family that murked his brother” so well on last year’s Mercy for None, the first place I saw So in and a Netflix K-drama whose only viewer from the Couch Avocados comments section other than me was Aaron Neither Me Nor The One.
Aaron trashed Mercy for None in the comments, while I like it more than he does—it was basically Get Carter for a generation that was raised on John Wick instead of the much less agile Get Carter—even though it really should have been just a two-hour action flick instead of a seven-episode miniseries. Mercy for None, which was based on the Plaza Wars: Mercy for None webtoon, suffered from Netflix bloat—a problem Agent Kim Reactivated doesn’t have so far. (Only two out of 10 episodes have aired on SBS.) That’s because the scenes where So isn’t at the center of the action aren’t as drab as most of the scenes So didn’t appear in on Mercy for None.
It’s also perhaps because Agent Kim Reactivated is a twice-a-week drama for SBS—here in America, we call that the Batman ’66 format—instead of a binge-release show that’s made for a streaming service. Too many binge-release shows suffer from Netflix bloat.
Bonus track: The vocal version of Alpha Drive One’s “GO! GO!” reminds me of Saliva’s “Click Click Boom,” a staple at sporting events or WWE matches and a track that popped up in so many damn trailers for action flicks in the ’00s.
So far, Agent Kim Reactivated is the opposite of “Click click bloat.” This time So stars as Kim Do-hyeon, a mild-mannered widower who tries to avoid conflict—whether at his job as a bank manager or on the Seoul streets in encounters with local hoodlums—and has been raising alone a teenage daughter named Min-ji (played by Seo Su-min). High school sucks, of course, for Min-ji. In addition to her anger over the fact that her mom died giving birth to her, she’s being bullied by Joo Hye-ri (played by Yoo Ji-an), the leader of a group of mean girls and the spoiled daughter of evil construction company chairman Ju Gang-chan (played by Joo Sang-wook).
The principal punishes Min-ji for defending herself in a fight against Hye-ri, so Kim has to attend a conference between the principal, Min-ji, Hye-ri, Ju, and his wife. But Kim is so used to being deferential to everybody around him that he can’t even defend his own daughter at the conference, which hurts her feelings.
Then Min-ji suddenly disappears from both the apartment Kim has been raising her in and her school. Kim, who suspects that his daughter has been kidnapped, stops being nice as he scours the streets of Seoul to find her. It turns out that the mild-mannered demeanor is a cover for his past. Before Kim settled down to honor a promise to his late wife to raise Min-ji the best he can, he defected from North Korea, led a South Korean black-ops team, and had a fondness for setting wire traps—a weapon he turns to again as he takes down thug after thug, some of whom have connections to Ju.
If this reminds you of Taken, yep, it clearly influenced both Agent Kim Reactivated and Manager Kim, the webtoon Agent Kim Reactivated writer Nam Dae-joong adapted his TV series from for SBS. (Manager Kim, which began in 2021 and was created by Toy, a webtoon writer, and illustrated by Jeong Jong-taek, is actually a spinoff of Park Tae-jun’s Lookism, the webtoon where Kim first appeared.) But I like Agent Kim Reactivated a lot more than Taken.
Sure, Liam Neeson’s monologue over the phone (“I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills… Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you”) is still riveting, but that’s the only thing I like about Taken, a xenophobic piece of shit and an incompetently directed action flick. (I chuckle almost every time I think about the scenes where the Neeson character’s teenage daughter and her best friend go wild over U2 and want to follow the band on its world tour. Those scenes scream out, “Boomers wrote this damn script.”) The fight choreography on Agent Kim Reactivated is a lot less lethargic. So far, it’s not quite as impressive as the fight choreography on Mercy for None and Bloodhounds—whose second season (a mostly solid season where K-pop idol Rain joined the cast as Gun-woo and Woo-jin’s new nemesis, a corrupt boxer) I just finished watching—but Agent Kim Reactivated pits So against the meanest and slimiest bastards in Seoul, and it’s as satisfying to see him pulverizing each and every one of them as it was to see Woo Do-hwan and Lee Sang-yi throwing hands against the rich and powerful for taking what they want on Bloodhounds.
Mercy for None had occasional moments of humor in the form of Sim Seong-won, a crime scene cleaning company CEO played by Lee Beom-soo, and was otherwise a dour action drama, whereas Agent Kim Reactivated contains more humor in the form of both Choi Dae-hoon as Seong Han-su, a taekwondo instructor for kids, and Yoon Kyung-ho as Park Jin-cheol, a Marine who currently volunteers as a crossing guard. Han-su and Jin-cheol both come from Kim’s black-ops days and, like Kim, these buddies of his left behind the intelligence world for a more mundane life.
But unlike Kim (before Min-ji’s disappearance brings back his warrior side), Jin-cheol sucks at hiding his black-ops past: He accidentally blows Kim’s cover when he uses in a restaurant his black-ops fighting skills to administer an ass-whupping to a group of thugs Kim refused to fight, and footage of the brawl goes viral. North Korean agents spot Kim’s presence in the footage and storm the streets of Seoul to capture him for turning against them so long ago, so in addition to his missing daughter, Kim has to worry about North Korea as well. I can’t wait to see Han-su and Jin-cheol backing up Kim in the show’s fight scenes. However, the only thing I don’t like about Agent Kim Reactivated’s comic relief scenes is what Alan Sepinwall would call “the Please Laugh Now score cues.” What is it with K-dramas and their horrendous “Please Laugh Now” music?
Otherwise, I recommend Agent Kim Reactivated to action genre fans who get a kick out of the Korean version of skills that make Kim a nightmare for people like Ju.