Taxi Driver 2

Presentation

Preview Review Season 1

Preview

Synopsis

Kim Do Gi and the Rainbow Taxi team are back in service in this second season with more cases to work on, more revenges to satisfy, and more dangerous people to fight against.

My Opinion (No Spoiler)

With no surprise, this second season was definitely a success for me! I loved seeing the team reunited (although I missed Esom’s character) and working together again. The cases are as intense and interesting as in the first season. It really felt as if I was watching season 1, but 2 years later. I loved the fact that they added new characters (like Shin Jae Ha’s), while developing the main ones’ relationships (particularly Kim Do Gi and Ahn Go Eun).

If you haven’t watched that drama yet, I can only recommend you start right away. You won’t be disappointed! And don’t get me started on the numerous cameos (Namgoong Min from One Dollar Lawyer, Moon Chae Won as Do Gi’s acquaintance from the military, Kim So Yeon playing the previous deluxe taxi driver…)!

Analysis

• Characters
  On Ha Joon, the pathetic villain
  Kim Do Gi and Ahn Go Eun, couple-to-be?
• What are the themes tackled?
  Episodes 1-2
  Episodes 3-4
  Episodes 5-6
  Episodes 7-8
  Episodes 9-10
  Episodes 11-14
  Episodes 15-16

Characters: As I have already talked about the main characters in the review for season 1, I’d rather focus here first, on one important addition to the cast – On Ha Joon – and second, on relationships between the members of Rainbow Taxi.

On Ha Joon, the pathetic villain: On Ha Joon (Shin Jae Ha) is the most recent member of Rainbow Taxi at the beginning of the drama. He’s a bit clumsy, and often gets himself involved in unfortunate situations; but he still works hard to earn his money. He seems like a kind young man, who considers Do Gi his role model. However, it turns out that Ha Joon hides a darker side, more violent and dangerous. His encounter with the Rainbow Taxi family is everything but a coincidence. Indeed, he infiltrated them after the group had destroyed his fruitful illegal businesses, and now wishes to get rid of them. Mid-drama and later on, Ha Joon’s real face is showed to the public. He’s actually a sly and clever man, who works for a powerful organization run by a bishop (Park Ho San). Though the plot could’ve stopped there, it gets more interesting when Ha Joon’s past is revealed. He got lost as a child, ended in an orphanage, was convinced by the bishop that his parents had abandoned him, got himself in trouble by killing another kid, and was entirely brainwashed thereafter by the organization. He rose to the top until he became the right-hand man.
The complexity of the character resides in the fact that he could’ve chosen an entirely different path, had he not encountered the bishop along the way. The latter formatted him and turned him into the perfect soldier, feeding him lies and illusions. At the end, Ha Joon learns that the bishop is responsible for his father’s death, because he was getting too close to finding his son. So, he made the ignorant young man execute him without his knowing. When Ha Joon discovers that he’s the one who killed his parent, he makes the only decision left for him. He dies taking the bishop in his fall (literally, as he jumps off a roof). This moment was his penance, and a way to reconcile with his true self hidden being layers of darkness and evil deeds.

To be honest, I’m very glad the screenwriter decided to add this character. He was on the sidelines and at the center of many intrigues in the drama, and played a pivotal role in the resolution of the conflicts between the organization and the team. In the end, Ha Joon is the exact epitome of the outcomes an unfair system can have on victims, turning them into executioners after. This is exactly what the Rainbow Taxi team is fighting against. The fall of the character reinforces the need for people like Kim Do Gi to intervene to right things wrong when victims are let down by institutions.

Kim Do Gi and Ahn Go Eun, couple-to-be?: The second point I want to focus on has to do with Do Gi and Go Eun’s relationship. In season 1, there was not much to talk about, although it felt like Go Eun was kind of attracted to (or at least greatly respected) her partner in crime. However, the situation has changed in this season. Neither has confessed (though we can debate that Go Eun’s may confess at the end), but it’s clear that there’s something more between them. Do Gi would jump into fire to protect Go Eun, and so would she. On-screen chemistry is top-notch. You can feel the attraction despite silence. I really hope they won’t keep it ‘professional’ anymore in season 3 and make some sparks fly between them. After all, they are a match made in Heaven.

What are the themes tackled? Just like in season 1, various societal themes are present in the drama. They spread over the course of about 2 episodes with some of them being dealt with independently; and others being linked with the general plot. Let’s deep dive into them!

Episodes 1-2: The second season opens with a pretty big case to handle. A father is looking for his son, who has vanished into thin air. The parent spent a year searching for him, but neither people nor the police come forward to help. So he begs the taxi team to give him a hand. This first case is not only the beginning of the intrigue. It’s also the start of a new era for the Rainbow Taxi group, who gets back together after a year or so apart. It’s also the trigger to Ha Joon’s appearance in their lives, and their problems with the organization. But, what is this case about? Well, simply put young graduates are offered a job in Vietnam for a good salary and with good conditions (so it seems). Upon their arrival there, they are kidnapped and imprisoned, forced to develop illegal games that aim at extorting people’s money. If they fail, they are killed and their bodies are never to be found. The illegal organization pretends to be them and inform their parents they won’t be coming home ever again, making searches impossible afterwards. These people play on the hopes the young graduates have in finding a good job, their will to become someone, and their ambition to be hired. By promising them the ‘dream job’, the villains are certain they would capture some of them in their nets.

Resolution: Kim Do Gi disguises himself as a computer science graduate and dismantles the organization

Societal topics: Work market, getting a job in a competitive environment

Episodes 3-4: The next case focuses on an old woman, who lost all her savings in a scam but refuses to inform her son about it. Out of fear of becoming a burden to her family, she’d rather put herself in danger. As for the con artists, they trick old village people, using their naivety and good faith to make them subscribe to credit cards and phone cards they are then unable to pay.

Resolution: The team steals all the scammers money, make them believe it’s buried somewhere in the forest, and let the greedy men dig up holes there for days

Societal topics: Scam, discrepancy between village and city

Episodes 5-6: After victims of old age, the team is confronted with villains who use children to their advantage. The story starts with a little girl who runs away from an orphanage where she’s being ill-treated. She’s looking for her younger sister, but has no means to find her. So, the team jumps to her rescue. They discover that a rich consultant forces pregnant women to give their child away. After that, he makes a married couple adopt the child, just so they can get access to better housing and become home owners. Once they have their property, they discard the child and let him live in an orphanage.

Resolution: The team steals all the properties owned by the consultant, leaving him homeless and without a single penny in his pocket

Societal topic: Housing crisis in South Korea

Episodes 7-8: A young woman contacts the team, desperate to save her sick sister from the claws of a cult’s guru. The man uses his believers’ sickness as a means to prove that he can save them, even when treatments can’t. Cancer patients and ill people who are desperate to get better fall for his lies and join the cult, before dying due to the lack of proper treatment.

Resolution: Kim Do Gi disguises himself as a shaman and makes the guru believe that he’s being haunted. He’s so scared of dying that he ends up admitting his lies in front of his believers

Societal topics: Sickness and treatment, affordability of healthcare in South Korea

Episodes 9-10: It all starts with medical malpractice. A prominent doctor is accused of malpractice by the family of a patient, whose surgery was supposed to be an ‘easy procedure’. It turns out that the doctor was not even the one who operated on the dead patient, and on neither of her patients actually. Instead, she hired a salesman to operate in her stead, and runs her surgery planning as a real business. By making more surgeries, she earns more money.

Resolution: Kim Do Gi forces the salesman to confess the truth, gets the doctor arrested while all her money is donated to an NGO for seniors (her primary victims)

Societal topics: Healthcare crisis in South Korea, hospitals run like businesses, access to proper care for people without insurance/family

Episodes 11-14: Reaching the end of the drama, these episodes focus on the organization named Black Sun to which On Ha Joon belongs. Among its business, there’s a selective club where women are drugged and raped by wealthy men. On top of that, there’s drug trafficking, and the murder of a journalist who was about to reveal the truth behind that place.

Resolution: Kim Do Gi infiltrates the club and finds the pen used by the journalist to record evidence of the corruption at the club. He also manages to turn drug dealers against each other, leading to riots amongst gang members.

Societal topics: Drugs, corruption, rape, power of money

Episodes 15-16: The last episodes of the season are dedicated to On Ha Joon’s tragic past. In order to help a victim, Kim Do Gi infiltrates a prison. It turns out it was a trap set by the bishop to kill him. Still, he survives and succeeds in getting rid of Black Sun and the bishop altogether. Meanwhile, Ha Joon discovers he was kidnapped at age 9, his parents looked for him for 10 years, before being killed by the same man who supposedly rescued him.

Resolution: On Ha Joon puts an end to everything by committing suicide with the bishop.

Societal topics: Prison life (corruption, violence…), kidnapping

P.S.: I’m still so in love with the music of that drama, and can’t wait for it to return! Hope season 3 arrives quickly on screen 🙂