Age of Feeling: Episode 2

by HeadsNo2

There’s more action in this episode than you can shake a stick at—though you’d have to find a spare one first, since all the weapons-grade sticks seem to have been ported into Age of Feeling. Aside from putting the blunt back in blunt force trauma, this second outing reinforces the fact that we’re in good hands production-wise. More importantly, the web entangling our troubled youths keeps expanding to reveal new mysteries while grounding itself in character-centric choices, which goes a long way toward making the action more immediate.

And that’s no easy feat, considering that there’s already enough characters for a drama two times as long as this one plans to be, compounded with the fact that we’re not even halfway down the cast list yet—there’s maybe fifty more people this show has yet to beat up introduce. Time to start making a chart, I say.

SONG OF THE DAY

Gukkasten – “Red Field (붉은 밭)” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 2 RECAP

Thanks to Jjang-ddol clearing up this whole mistaken-identities situation, the leader of the Dobi Gang, HWANG BONG-SHIK (Yang Ik-joon), instructs his men to find the guy who lied to Jung-tae about being Poong-cha so that he can be taught a “lesson.” Eek.

One of the members disagrees—why should they go out of their way to find someone parading about as them?—but Boss Hwang would rather uphold the reputation of their smuggling gang. As punishment for speaking up, he sends the Dissenting Opinion Gangster to go do the searching.

In the dead of night, Kaya waits by the riverside to receive her smuggled goods from a man who had to swim his way across. Even as she packages the American cigarettes and alcohol away coolly, the man warns her that such a business could get them both killed. (Not only is she smuggling the goods to avoid taxes and such, she’s encroaching on the Dobi Gang’s smuggling territory. A double-whammy of trouble, basically.)

She’s not too worried about that, since honest work doesn’t net her enough money to live on anyway.

Meanwhile, Jjang-ddol needs only to tell Ok-ryun that Jung-tae is in the hospital for her to take all the money from the apothecary cash register and run to him.

Meet our second gang: the Bool-gom Gang, so named after its owner, BOOL-GOM (Lee Chul-min). Turns out that the guy who Jung-tae fought over Jjang-ddol’s debt is in this gang, and is still harboring a grudge against Jung-tae. Who isn’t at this point?

Speaking of, we find Ok-ryun asleep and drooling at Jung-tae’s bedside in the hospital, though she’s unable to hide her happiness once he wakes. She tries to play it all cool and says she’s going to update his sister now that he’s feeling better, and Jung-tae seems to mirror what Kaya told him by the river: “I’m sorry… and thanks.”

Boss Hwang and Bool-gom get into a small pissing contest, but all of Bool-gom’s blustering can’t change the fact that Boss Hwang is clearly the alpha in this relationship. Mostly this scene is about Bool-gom abusing the western alcohol he helps to sell when the Dobi Gang smuggles it in. Confused? You’re not alone.

Ok-ryun stays with Jung-tae’s lil sis that night, and the talk shifts from Ok-ryun’s rudimentary ability to write to talk of Jung-tae’s dad. From the sound of it, he was a great fighter, and Jung-tae inherited his father’s talent.

But Ok-ryun still speaks of Jung-tae’s father in reverent tones, like he was truly one of the greats. I’m guessing he still has to be alive, but where is he?

Cut to: a mysterious man we haven’t met before getting released from prison. Welp, I think the show just answered my question—though not officially introduced yet, this is SHIN YOUNG-CHUL (Choi Jae-sung), Jung-tae’s father.

The man we saw talking to the gisaeng last episode, CHOI SU-RI (Sohn Byung-ho) finds a familiar elder selling fortunes on the street to tell him that Jung-tae’s father will be coming to visit him. He requests that the elder take care of him, showing that the relationship between the three of them goes way back.

Ok-ryun tries sneaking back into her home (since she spent the night out), but is caught outside by her mother. A correction to yesterday’s recap: the maid who chastised Ok-ryun is not her mother, but the gisaeng entertaining Choi Su-ri was/is. We’ll call her Mama Kim.

Mama Kim knows all about Ok-ryun stealing the apothecary’s money, and managed to smooth the situation out before it got worse. As she whips Ok-ryun’s shins, she tells her that she could always just ask for money, but Ok-ryun has already ruled this option out.

Still, she asks Mama Kim for the money needed for Jung-tae’s sister’s surgery, already knowing that her mother can’t or won’t give it.

Aww, Poong-cha is a nice gangster. He’s the one paying for Jung-tae’s treatment in the hospital, and even brings the kid a special steamed dumpling lauded for its healing powers. I love that they bonded over Jung-tae being beaten to a pulp.

A nice nun comes in to tend to Jung-tae, a woman that Poong-cha calls his mother not because she conceived him, but because she raised him. Poong-cha’s relationship with his mom is sweet. Even bad guys love their mamas, as the trope goes.

Denkai’s slicked-hair henchman, SHINICHI (Jo Dong-hyuk) arrives in Korea to do his master’s bidding and teach Kaya’s father a lesson. But first, he wants to see Kaya. Hmm.

Kaya is caught trying to sell her smuggled wares by a rival group who insist that she’s encroaching on their smuggling territory. The boss punches her into the ground then offers a trade—he’ll let her go if she gives him what she has.

But when she spits in his face instead, he and his men set to really giving her a beating, only to be stopped when a menacing Shinichi arrives. He disposes of the goons like he’s his own personal Terminator, leaving the leader holding Kaya hostage with a knife to her neck.

Shinichi moves within the blink of an eye, and hits the leader over the head so hard that his eyes turn red with blood. It takes him a while to fall, and the blood dripping from his head falls on Kaya’s face and drips down, down, down.

Her savior(?) confirms Kaya’s identity from the broken pendant around her neck, and his hardened expression instantly softens as he speaks to the frightened girl. Of course, nothing he says is comforting. “From now on, you will live under unimaginable fear. You have to overcome it so that you can live. Live so you can take revenge.”

If Kaya understands his meaning, she doesn’t share it with us. Instead she merely screams after Shinichi, demanding to know who he is. But he leaves her as though he was never there.

Meanwhile, the other Japanese man who traveled with Shinichi has murdered a whole bunch of people. Who are the people and why does it matter? Heck if this show feels like telling us right now.

Poong-cha takes Jung-tae to the Dobi Gang Headquarters, where they’ve found Dog Nose and his cohort like they promised. After Jung-tae gets a few hits in, Poong-cha tells him that he won’t get his money back from those two goons—but that he can use their newly indebted status to greater purpose.

I don’t know why I find it so funny that Boss Hwang spends his idle hours building matchstick towers—maybe it’s because I can’t think of what else you’d do with your off time in the late ‘20s.

Anyway, Poong-cha brings Jung-tae to Boss Hwang for a chat, where he explains that smuggling is just as important a life source for Korea as its two biggest rivers. He has a penchant for being long-winded, and though some of the stuff he says goes over Jung-tae’s head his main point is to ask Jung-tae to join the Dobi Gang.

But they’re called the “train” gang for a reason. What they do involves dobinori, or train hopping, and the window to do so is only ten seconds long and can mean life or death. But that’s not what he’ll have Jung-tae do first, since he’s not ready.

The Dissenting Opinion Gangster goes to Boss Hwang to voice his dissent against Jung-tae joining the gang, but as always Boss Hwang gets the final word and Jung-tae is in.

Jung-tae has a sit-down with Jjang-ddol at their lumberyard job that pays next to nothing, with poor Jjang-ddol feeling responsible for Jung-tae’s stolen money.

But Jung-tae purposefully leads him on in a conversation about the dangers (and profits) of train hopping before he tells his friend: “I’m going to join the Dobi Gang.” Jjang-ddol’s face falls until Jung-tae adds, “With you.” Aww, best friends.

At least Jjang-ddol takes a bit of revenge on their slave-driving boss by head-butting him on the way out.

Back with Bool-gom’s Gang, we find (wait for it) yet another person being beaten up and threatened. This scene seems to serve one purpose, and that’s to show that the rickshaw driver whose nose Jung-tae broke is a bad guy, and (wait for it) that he’s still determined to find Jung-tae and make him pay.

While Jung-tae’s lil sis struggles through her illness to try and learn to write a letter in scrawling, shaky handwriting, her brother drinks to her health with Jjang-ddol. That’s where Broken Nose, aka DOKKU finds them.

Jung-tae urges Jjang-ddol to flee while he buys some time, but Jjang-ddol stubbornly stays, claiming that if they’re keeping score, it’s his turn to stay and be beaten.

In the end, they both opt on running away, with Jung-tae getting momentarily delayed when he’s hit by Shinichi’s car. When they end up cornered by Broken Nose and his gang, Jung-tae ironically re-breaks the guy’s nose before entering into a full-on brawl.

Shinichi watches the fight from his car while his murderous driver spouts racist things about Koreans (Korea was still a colony of Japan at this time), and notes that Jung-tae is a natural-born fighter. But he claims that a fighter isn’t what he needs right now, and seems to be eyeing the crazed Dokku.

Meanwhile, Ok-ryun returns home to check on Jung-tae’s lil sis, only to find her unconscious. Her father seems to be torn between showing his face at home until he hears Ok-ryun’s cries for help and finds her administering CPR to his daughter in the yard.

Daddy Shin picks his daughter up and starts running to find her help, with Ok-ryun confusedly trailing behind. “Don’t give up,” he tells his little girl as they run. “You can live. Please, don’t give up!”

Though they’ve clearly lost the fight, Jung-tae throws his body over Jjang-ddol’s to shield him from the kicks coming at them from all sides. When Dokku readies to likely kill Jung-tae through blunt-force trauma, Poong-cha magically shows up to save the day.

He hardly breaks a sweat as he takes down all of Dokku’s men, and even Dokku himself with just one punch. Then he literally carries Dokku back to his boss, Bool-gom, and throws him at his feet. He claims that Dokku was infringing on Dobi Gang territory, and with Dobi Gang’s men.

Since Bool-gom runs the rickshaws on this side of town, he chastises Jung-tae as his former employer in an attempt to make him feel bad for backstabbing him. But Jung-tae fights back, “I don’t owe you anything,” in banmal.

Bool-gom loses his cool over this disrespect and vows to get even with Jung-tae, which causes Poong-cha to step in protectively. If Bool-gom touches a hair on Jung-tae’s head, he’ll have to answer to Poong-cha and the Dobi Gang.

Only after they’re gone does Bool-gom propose killing Poong-cha so that he can rid himself of the Dobi Gang and take over the city’s smuggling ring. Mwa ha ha!

Poong-cha gives the boys some spending money with the phrase: “Even though we earn money working like dogs, we spend it like kings.” But when Jung-tae asks to be given the chance to try dobinori, Poong-cha shuts him down. Not only is it risky, but there are other things Jung-tae can do within the gang. He wants Jung-tae to think about his future.

Ok-ryun is waiting when Jung-tae returns home, and for a while she doesn’t even say anything. She just beats his chest ineffectually until he asks for his sister and she has to tell him that his sister almost died while he was off getting into fights. She blames him for what happened, saying he shouldn’t have left his sister alone.

Jung-tae breaks down at his sister’s hospital bedside, and it’s adorable how she does everything in her power to comfort him, even if it means lying about her own illness.

Outside her room, Jung-tae comes face to face with his father, and it’s not a happy reunion. When Daddy Shin tries talking to him like a son, Jung-tae lashes out at him that he’s not his father. A man he’s only seen three times in his life can’t dare to call himself anyone’s father.

He tears into his absentee dad over not being there when his mom died, or when his little sister started to get ill. His words drip with pent-up rage, so much so that he barely stops himself from hitting his father. After everything, he warns Daddy Shin against showing his face in front of the two of them ever again.

Because if his little sister were to get sick again, Jung-tae claims that he wouldn’t know what he’d do. “I might kill you,” he tells his father.

Now that Jung-tae is more desperate for money than ever, he tells Jjang-ddol that he’s going to attempt dobinori, since its high risk means high reward. In order to do that, he has to pass the test of jumping off the very high Yalu River bridge.

Jjang-ddol goes running back to Dobi Gang HQ (where Kaya is oddly present—so she’s now working as a smuggler for them?) to tell the hyungs of Jung-tae’s foolhardy plan. They rush out to try and stop him, while different members of the gang list all the easy ways in which Jung-tae can die from pulling such a stunt.

But Boss Hwang seems extra concerned when he looks at his pocket watch, like there’s some super secret deadly risk related to the time of day it is.

They make it to the edge of the river bank, though they’re far away from Jung-tae as he walks alone on the massive steel bridge made only for trains. Of course, Dissenting Opinion Gangster is with them, and is the only guy who thinks they’re all going way out of their way to save this one kid.

Though Jung-tae is clearly afraid, his trembling legs take him to the edge of the bridge while his worried hyungs (and that one guy) look on helplessly. Even Kaya comes to watch, her face a mask of nervousness and fear.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Jung-tae lets go of the supporting rails next to him. It’s only his balance keeping him on the bridge now, but the second he almost loses it he instantly grips back onto the bars. He can’t do it.

Then, a slow rumbling takes over the bridge, which can only mean one thing—a train is approaching. Ah, so that’s why Boss Hwang was so nervous.

Jung-tae is left with no choice. It’s either jump, or be crushed by the oncoming train. His hyungs are helpless as the train roars toward Jung-tae, and when it reaches him…

He jumps.

 
COMMENTS

Cool. I’m not usually the type that gets sold on flashy scenes alone (otherwise I would’ve been able to sit through IRIS II), but when there’s flash and substance, it feels like winning the drama lottery. I wasn’t paying attention to how figuratively pretty and well-shot this final scene was until after it had finished, because only then did I notice just how much I was on the edge of my seat waiting to know what would become of Jung-tae. And then once the credits rolled I realized that the kind of tension this episode built up couldn’t have been possible if it hadn’t been handled so well. Even the CG was good.

Threatening the life of the hero who you just know can’t die can be a silly device if used manipulatively, but it’s a sort of intangible detail that some shows either get right or very very wrong. If the live-or-die cliffhanger is used ineffectually, we might roll our eyes, see the show’s strings, and mentally disengage from the character’s fate. But since Feeling is doing a pretty bang-up job of showing us the ups and downs of Jung-tae’s younger years, even though we know what comes next (spoiler alert: he lives), we still find ourselves willing to go along for the ride.

While I’m enjoying the fight scenes for the most part, since they’re frankly just done right, I did start to tune out with the repetitive gang-related violence that seemed to go on, and on, and on. There’s just a threshold that exists for how many random bloody faces at the mercy of the 273892 gangs in this show that I can see before it starts to all blur together into one meaningless lump. Some of the fight scenes had purpose, and those were fun to watch—especially any involving Jung-tae, because he is so good at what he does. But when Dokku had his overlong scene spent torturing some random extra you just know we won’t see again, I found myself beginning to wonder whether this show might legitimately have the mindset that if any given frame doesn’t have at least one bloody/bruised person on screen, its imagined audience of twelve-year-olds will suddenly throw their hands up in boredom and stop watching.

Repetitive violence aside, I’m really liking the guys in the Dobi Gang and the little makeshift family they’re creating with Jung-tae and Jjang-ddol. A lot of that can be attributed to Yang Ik-joon’s charismatic yet understated performance as Boss Hwang, since he’s a talented character actor doing wonders with minimal lines and screen time. While Poong-cha gets the more overt “I’m actually a good guy with fatherly instincts” lines, it’s Boss Hwang who’s really stealing the show for me out of the gangster bunch. I’d even go so far as to say that half my anxiety for Jung-tae’s fate was based upon just how truly worried Boss Hwang looked during the car ride over, like a father nervous for his son. I’m a huge fan of families created by bond and not blood, though it’ll be interesting to see how the re-introduction of Jung-tae’s seemingly remorseful father mixes things up.

However, I do find it interesting that the first two episodes have been so engaging without the show actually giving us a clear idea as to what story we’re even being told. Sure, we’re getting a feel for the world and its wide array of colorful characters, and we obviously know who the main players will be—but more than any burning question fueling my desire to watch more is the curiosity about what this is all really going to be about, since it’s got to be about something, right? It can’t just be about gangs and fights and maybe a dead father or two… actually, wait, don’t answer that. Shows have survived on much less, and I’m determined not to jinx this one. Unjinx! Unjinx!

 
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