The Nice Guy: Episodes 3-4

by starrygazer

As our hero continues to walk the line between keeping the peace and disentangling himself from his gang, he gets pulled deeper into the trouble brewing around him. Though his love life is looking bright, a love triangle looms, and it could jeopardize one of his closest friendships.

 
EPISODES 3-4

Just as Seok-chul is riding high and anticipating his departure from his gang, he sees Dad at their headquarters and he comes crashing down to earth. Dad is there to ask Chairman Kim for a loan to save their family home. Distraught and angry, Seok-chul had stormed out asking how his father could do this to him. A loan from Chairman Kim would only tie Seok-chul tighter to the gang.

Shaken by Seok-chul’s reaction, Dad has a change of heart and pretends he only came by to say hello and walks away without taking even a small parting gift the chairman tries to give him.

Dad had known for a long time that Seok-chul had been ashamed of his dad’s gangster origins. When Seok-chul reaffirms now that he plans to walk away from that life, Dad is quietly thrilled about it. Dad never felt he had the right to tell Seok-chul to leave, as he was the reason that Seok-chul had to work for Chairman Kim in the first place. (I love that Dad is on Seok-chul’s side. Maybe he never wanted to be a gangster either?)

However, a series of events makes Seok-chul’s work life darker and more complicated. Firstly, Seok-chul asks Sang-yeol for an advance of 100 million won before he finishes up this last real estate deal. Much to Sang-yeol’s surprise, Chairman Kim doesn’t hesitate to agree to it. After all, Tae-hoon had left their gang over a money dispute, and Chairman Kim isn’t willing to make the same mistake twice.

The second event to complicate Seok-chul’s life is the arrest of Chairman Kim. While he and Sang-yeol had been having an important business meeting to wrap up their real estate deal, Tae-hoon’s gang planted drugs in the chairman’s car and called the police. Interestingly, Tae-hoon’s right hand man IM BOK-CHUN (Kang Bin) seems to have been kept in the dark about the frame-up and he’s also the one closest with Seok-chul. The ensuing scandal has the real estate firm in charge of the project dropping Chairman Kim’s construction company in favor of Tae-hoon’s company.

Chairman Kim realises that the drugs were all part of a bigger plan to snipe their big deal. And this leads to the third event that complicates our hero’s life. Chairman Kim calls Seok-chul in for a meeting and asks him to quietly finish Tae-hoon. The knife he offers to Seok-chul makes the implication of that request crystal clear. I’m pretty sure Seok-chul has no intention of killing anyone, especially an old friend. He would never escape the gang life or his conscience if he did.

We learn more about Tae-hoon and how far back he goes with Seok-chul. Immediately after the chairman’s arrest, Seok-chul had gone to Tae-hoon to try and smooth things out by talking. Worried that this could escalate into a gang war, and he had urged Tae-hoon to meet with Chairman Kim and apologise. Tae-hoon had responded that before his sister died, she told him to be a nice man like Seok-chul, but Chairman Kim and Sang-yeol won’t let him be a nice man. Tae-hoon tells Seok-chul that he never wanted to drift apart or be on bad terms.

We see a memory of Tae-hoon at his sister’s funeral. She had been in urgent need of surgery but ultimately died because the family couldn’t come up with the money in time. At the time Chairman Kim had even accused him of stealing money from the gang, money he never had. Tae-hoon’s despondent, but that grief turns into rage when he sees Chairman Kim arrive — with condolence money in hand. What use is money now with his sister gone?

Tae-hoon had kicked everyone out but Seok-chul had stayed behind for him. Tae-hoon spoke with real affection and thanked him for staying. It was at the funeral that Tae-hoon had said he would leave the gang and he had even asked Seok-chul to go with him. Tae-hoon’s affection for Seok-chul still runs deep, and despite gunning for Chairman Kim and his gang, he refuses to even hear out any suggestions of targeting Seok-chul. Their relationship is familial in a way, and they bond over having sisters as well.

Seok-kyung is still in hiding, and though the show’s aiming to have her shenanigans come off as light relief, it fell a little flat for me. Seok-kyung knows she should be hunkered down at Seok-hee’s flat, but her desire to see her son has her go out “incognito” to try and catch a glimpse of her son at the park.

With her red coat, sunglasses and headscarf, she couldn’t look more conspicuous and her son HYUNG-GEUN (Choi Yi-joon) spots her and chases after her on his scooter. When his scooter gets dangerously close to the road, Seok-kyung stops him and her cover is completely blown. She tries to deny she’s his mother at first, but caves at the sight of her son’s tears. Seok-kyung swears her son to secrecy about seeing her because she’s still hiding from her dad because of the gambling debt – poor kid.

The gambling den crew are still hunting for Seok-kyung and descend on Seok-hee’s hospital in an attempt to grab her friend GO JUNG-NIM (Park Sung-yeon) to try to find Seok-kyung’s hideout. Seok-hee comes to the rescue using the family attack method of headbutting to stop them, and they are hauled out of the hospital by security. This is only a temporary setback and they’re not planning to stop until Seok-kyung repays her debts.

There’s another member of Team Seok-kyung that the gambling den crew will have to deal with: Byung-soo.

During a game of football with Byung-soo and JANG KI-HONG (Moon Tae-yoo), Seok-chul casually drops two updates. The first is that he’s seeing someone. When he shares that it’s Mi-young, they even remember Seok-chul mooning over her in high school. The second update is that the family found Seok-kyung, who just happens to be Byung-soo’s first love. Byung-soo is thrilled and straight away goes to see her. They have a chat and Byung-soo confesses that she’s both his first and current love. He offers to help resolve her issues with the gambling den if she promises to do him a favor. (Probably going on a date?)

Byung-soo gets right into detective mode and he gets a good look at who he’s looking for thanks to the hospital CCTV footage. Simultaneously, Seok-kyung leaves the house again in disguise and bumps into one of the gambling goons. She manages to shake the goon off, but he now knows she lives in this area and starts asking around, showing her picture. The goon unwittingly shows the picture to Byung-soo and ends up handcuffed inside Byung-soo’s car, acting as a human GPS to the gambling den. Byung-soo threatens to arrest them all if they even look in Seok-kyung’s direction, never mind threaten her for money. They all agree quickly, but it can’t be that easy to resolve her debts.

Seok-hee remains trouble-free, minus a few relationship woes due to doubts about her boyfriend Ki-hong’s intentions. During a hangout with Mi-young, Seok-hee is pleasantly surprised to hear that Mi-young and Seok-chul are seeing each other.

Seok-hee talks up her brother and says that while his life may not be impressive right now, he has a lot of potential and it was only the incident from high school that changed his trajectory. Mi-young hears for the first time that Seok-chul was kicked out of high school. Though he’d been a nerd, he suddenly went after a group of bullies from their neighboring school. Seok-chul beat the kids so badly that he was nearly sent to a reformatory. Instead of serving a term, the family agreed to an expulsion from school. Mi-young is shaken as memories of that time come flooding back. The bullies that Seok-chul had gone after had smashed her guitar, then filmed her as they hit her and tore her clothes off.

She realizes only then that Seok-chul had gone after her tormentors but that his life was changed as a result. Mi-young does try to ask Seok-chul about it over the phone, but he just says it’s all in the past. (There is no way Mi-young is going to let it go that easily.)

Seok-chul’s relationship with Mi-young seems to be one of the few bright spots in his life. They’re going from strength to strength, and Mi-young gives Seok-chul a sense of peace that he doesn’t get elsewhere in his turbulent life.

He’s still moving in the background to help her. When Mi-young auditions at the jazz club, she gets rejected because she has no money or connections to offer the club’s manager. When Seok-chul hears what happened, he decides to pay the club a little visit. Seok-chul just wants Mi-young to get another chance to audition and he uses a little physical force and an assist from Bok-chun to get Mi-young sorted out.

Though Seok-chul just wants another audition, when the club manager admits that Mi-young was the best singer at the audition, Bok-chun orders the manager to give her a gig for that night. Seok-chul makes it to the club in time to see her perform for the crowd. They exchange a cute little thumbs-up, and as Mi-young performs, the whole audience is silent and engaged. Which Seok-chul notices – he seems pretty proud of how Mi-young is slowly overcoming her stage fright.

However, Mi-young’s talent isn’t going unnoticed by Tae-hoon. While in his office at the club, the sound of her singing draws him out onto the floor to watch her. Something about her voice moves him and he even gets the name of her YouTube channel from the manager so he can subscribe. Just as Seok-chul had listened to her videos, Tae-hoon plays her songs in his office.

Her new fan even tells the club manager to give her a cash bonus and the main stage at prime time the following night. The night Mi-young makes her main stage debut, the VIP seat she had set aside for Seok-chul sits empty as that is the night he gets his orders to finish Tae-hoon. As Mi-young’s performance goes on, the seat is filled by someone else – Tae-hoon.

There weren’t as many laughs this week, but there were some lovely moments, particularly when Seok-chul and Mi-young had time together. Though Seok-kyung’s whole running away from her son fell flat, it made me wonder if Seok-kyung will spend the rest of the season hiding from their dad. Will she just continue to keep away from the family out of fear?

The imbalance between Seok-chul’s gang life and the calm he seeks is becoming increasingly problematic for him. The love triangle that is unfolding leaves me feeling uneasy. And it worries me how dark his gang life became this week; it could be a bad omen of things to come.

 
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