The Producers: Episode 2

by girlfriday

Oh man, I love this show. The deadpan humor is so on the money, and it makes me appreciate this writer in a totally different way than I did during You From Another Star. It’s the complete opposite drama in every way—wry, cynical, so realistic it makes my insides cringe—but even though the embarrassment is so real that I want to crawl into a hole sometimes, the payoff is worth it. Today’s episode one-ups the mockumentary framing device a la The Office and adds emotional pull straight of out of Misaeng, and makes me care about the future of these characters and their relationships.

It looks like adding a Friday-Saturday drama has paid off for KBS: Ratings came in at 10.1% and 10.3% for the first two episodes, giving it the edge over Na PD’s Three Meals a Day on tvN (which also came out of the gate strong in the 8% range).

 
SONG OF THE DAY

Manju One Bag – “사생활이 궁금해” (I’m Curious About Your Private Life) [ Download ]

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EPISODE 2: “News of quitting, unintentionally”

Our resident 1 Night 2 Days PD Ra Joon-mo narrates as we head back to 1989, when Ye-jin and Joon-mo were nine years old. He says that he used to walk Ye-jin home from school every day, and it wasn’t because she was nice or he liked her (for emphasis, she whacks him with her bag, just because).

He says it was because of that elevator she got to ride on the way up to her apartment, which he always thought was the coolest. She told him in her simple, dry way to ask his parents to buy him one too then, and by a stroke of luck (and IMF timing), his mother was able to buy him that very apartment that Ye-jin grew up in.

That’s how this apartment came to be his and his alone as an adult… until two months ago.

We zoom ahead to two months prior, where a drunk Ye-jin tells Joon-mo that her old apartment wants her out in February and her new apartment won’t be ready until June, and they’re asking for a ridiculous amount of money to extend her contract. She’s about to be homeless and has no idea what she’s going to do.

That’s as much as Joon-mo remembers from that night before reaching for his beer… and then the next morning he wakes up to Ye-jin moving her stuff into his apartment. She hands him the contract he wrote on a napkin that she gets to live here for free, and cheerily says she’s going to change the lock code to her birthday.

Joon-mo knows he’s been taken and hardly even seems surprised. The rainbow-colored markings on his front door just seem to taunt him now: “Ye-jin’s house.” He bangs his head against the railing as he narrates that this is how they came to live together.

Back in the present, they sit across the table from each other sharing soju, and Ye-jin complains about her day and Mr. Foreign Car, only to have Joon-mo top her with his show cancelation.

She quickly realizes that his day was worse and takes his side, and gets him to puff up a little bit when she calls his casting of Yoon Yeo-jung a “feat of human triumph.” (Yoon Yeo-jung is not only a venerated actress, but she’s also known for her direct, no-nonsense persona, and is as feared as she is respected.)

Ye-jin asks how he did it, remembering that at the time she’d been a guest on Three Meals a Day (star variety PD Na Young-seok’s program that The Producers is directly competing against in ratings).

In a flashback, Joon-mo calls Na PD’s concept a total failure: “Who would watch someone eat three meals a day?! Who can’t eat three meals a day? Young-seokie hyung got his concept all wrong this time. It’s doomed!” LOL.

He remembers now that he convinced her that she’d be shooting at least five CF (commercial film) campaigns if she did his show, and cringes at the thought. Ye-jin guesses that she took the news badly, and Joon-mo hangs his head and mutters that he hasn’t exactly told her yet…

We resume with the docu team filming our rookie PD Seung-chan at home, as he studies old KBS gag classics. He says that he may have unintentionally ended up a variety PD, but he figures that he should learn about his job.

They ask what he’s discovered, and Seung-chan shows us that he’s analyzed the differences between the two marquee idiot characters Maeng-gu and Young-gu, and then proceeds to imitate them with a totally straight face. I’m dying. He says things like, “He opens his mouth just a little, then with a short tongue he goes, ‘Ddee lee lee lee lee.'”

He goes on and on with his nerdified over-interpretations until he runs into his first love noona outside his building. He can’t even look her in the eye as he stammers that he lives here, and deflates immediately when she says that her boyfriend Ra Joon-mo lives here too and points out his car.

Poor buddy. I mean, he knew, but to hear her say it so matter-of-factly stings. Seung-chan interviews that he’s fine, totally fine, and genuinely wishes them a happy life. The camera pans over to Joon-mo’s car, with Seung-chan’s trash bags now hanging from the side-view mirror, and then back up to Seung-chan already running away.

Joon-mo tries to make a stealthy exit to go meet his girlfriend, and Ye-jin alerts him to the fact that everyone at work knows because he was stupid enough to get caught on camera at the Music Bank auditorium. He winces to hear that the girlfriend is telling people they’re getting married, and he swears that he made it clear that they’re not that serious.

Ye-jin is rightly skeptical and asks what he said, and he recounts the totally vague message he sent (via text, naturally) about keeping things strictly work at work. Ye-jin asks if he’s a dolphin, and how anyone is supposed to decipher the cryptic intent in his coded message, and yells at him to stop passing the buck when he doesn’t feel like saying unpleasant things.

But ever the non-confrontational dude, Joon-mo wonders if breaking things off is worth it when he doesn’t know if someone better will come along. Oy. Ye-jin calls him the worst kind of man and insists that there’s an etiquette to breakups too. He grouses that she nags him like a wife and agrees reluctantly to say something.

She yells that a man’s private life has to be clean in order for work to go well, and he scoffs that the biggest complication in his private life happens to be her. Just then, Ye-jin’s little brother Tak Ye-joon walks through the door. Ha, he lives there too?

Ye-joon chides his sister for not being able to appease Joon-mo when they’re squatting at his place. He wishes this were their house again, and suggests that noona marry hyung so they can keep living here.

Little Bro is a future doctor, but that doesn’t really help Ye-jin in the here and now, when she’s bleeding money and about to pay for Mr. Foreign Car’s repairs. She wonders if a hoobae would really ask her for money.

In the morning, Seung-chan’s parents insist that asking for money is the proper way to handle this, and Seung-chan agrees that Ye-jin wanted to pay for it anyway. Dad idly mentions a friend with a struggling bakery and wants Seung-chan to feature it on PD Notebook. Mom: “That’s MBC.”

Seung-chan has to explain that he’s in the variety department, and Dad is shocked to hear that it’s the department with the gag shows and the idol singers. Appalled, he wonders if this happened because his son has no connections, and wonders if he should call his friend at KBS (who mans the parking lot, heh).

And then a few yards away, Joon-mo comes down to his car and finds Seung-chan’s trash bags dangling from his mirrors and has a fit. Mom and Dad say there are all sorts of crazy people these days, and Seung-chan slinks down behind his car.

On Day 2 of newbie training, CP Kim assigns each of the rookie PDs to a show, purposely ignoring each of their dream programs. Seung-chan gets put on 1N2D, of course, and he walks into the room to see plans for the cast’s farewell party and notice of the show’s cancelation on the board.

Joon-mo doesn’t even let him finish his introduction, and the room is thick with tension as the team tries to come up with the best way to tell their cast that they no longer have jobs. Seung-chan attempts to sit down at the table quietly and even fails at that, and then Joon-mo turns to the newbie for his opinion on how to handle this.

They all egg him on to say whatever’s on his mind because rookie PDs have the luxury of tossing out crazy ideas. They wait expectantly, and Seung-chan suggests they sit them down to tell them the truth, and everyone groans. And just like that, they’ve decided he’s useless.

He gets sent to fetch more toner for the printer, sending him in an endless loop between the office supply worker who refuses to give up more than the team’s allotted toner, and his team who sends him back with incredulous looks. As with everything in this show, the longer it goes on, the funnier it becomes.

All the while, the 1N2D team is making this ridiculously elaborate plan about where to seat the cast members at this farewell party (that they don’t even know is a farewell party).

Finally a sunbae has to show Seung-chan the way to get on Toner Nazi’s good side—by plying her with presents and laying on the compliments. She finally gives them a toner cartridge, and Seung-chan clutches it dearly, interviewing that it’s like he witnessed a battle between masters. He chuckles like a geek, and then promptly smears toner on his face.

He runs into Ye-jin, who asks what his father said about the car. She manages not to betray her horror when he quotes the repair costs, and smoothly suggests that his father might need a second opinion before he gets fleeced by a mechanic.

She puts on her sweetest smile and tells Seung-chan to ask for help if he ever needs it, and wipes the toner smudge off his face. She walks off scowling because of the car, while he looks positively giddy. Has no one been nice to you ever in life?

Ye-jin is still grousing over her bills when Cindy’s manager comes by to see her, and Ye-jin is pissed that CEO Byun isn’t here herself like she requested. CEO Byun is as scary an agent as rumored, and we see why Joon-mo was so upset about Cindy’s dinner the other night when she stops in front of a group of trainees (who can’t be more than 14 years old) and scolds them for eating more than one sweet potato a day. WTF.

Cindy looks as disinterested as ever, but she does stop and tell the girls to order delivery instead of going to the convenience store where they’ll be caught on camera by the boss. It turns out that Cindy is part of a girl group, and the other members grouse that her solo activity basically puts an end to their idol group.

Cindy doesn’t mince words about the fact that they’ve been splitting money four ways when she’s the only one working, and doesn’t have any qualms about quitting the group. CEO Byun is horrifyingly blasé about Cindy looking a little thin, and tells her to go get an IV drip if she feels faint. Sigh, that this isn’t even an exaggeration just makes it all the worse.

Back with the 1N2D crew, every cast member has been assigned a deliverer of bad news except for Yoon Yeo-jung, and they all go around the room playing Not Me, with excuses about why they shouldn’t be the one to tell her she’s off the show. At that very moment, Yoon Yeo-jung walks through the door, and the only thing Joon-mo can do is to tell Seung-chan to cover up the board so she can’t see the writing on the wall, literally.

She’s there to give them money for their one-year anniversary dinner, and even when she’s standing right there, nobody has the guts to just tell her the truth. She tells Ra PD (hur, now I see why he’s named Ra PD, because it sounds like everyone’s constantly calling him Na PD) that she’s being recognized more after one year of variety than decades of doing dramas, and it’s all thanks to him.

She interviews with the docu team afterwards, and asks why anyone would think that she’s scary: “No really, I don’t understand it. Tell me. Tell me what exactly is so scary about me. Exactly what?”

PC Kim sits down with music PD KIM HONG-SOON (Kim Jong-gook) like he’s about to ask him a very important question, only to debate which free dinner event he should attend tonight.

Hong-soon asks if the rumors about 1N2D are true, and asks if there’s going to be a PD shuffle too. He refuses to suffer on a show like that himself, but suggests the Vitamin PD for the job, wanting a cushier studio show gig like Vitamin for himself. I love that he calls it a “show with a lid,” in reference to the indoor roof.

Hong-soon complains about always being looked over in the variety department, but CP Kim knows he isn’t star PD material, and will never be noticed by their director. Hong-soon makes an effort when the director passes by, but makes the ultimate faux pas when he forces the director into the elevator with the president of KBS, whom he was trying to avoid all day.

The 1N2D team is STILL debating how to deliver the news to Yoon Yeo-jung, and finally all eyes land on newbie Seung-chan. Joon-mo: “How long have you been on this team?” Seung-chan: “…Five hours.” Joon-mo: “That’s plenty of experience to qualify!”

So off Seung-chan goes to Yoon Yeo-jung’s movie set, where he hems and haws trying to find the right words. She keeps interrupting and guessing what he’s hinting at, and because he can’t actually get the words out, they keep going in circles about vague things like changing the direction of the show or trying harder.

Omg, make it stop, make it stop. I just want to curl up and die. She finally tells him that she gets what he’s trying to say, acting very cool about it like the veteran pro that she is. Except of course Seung-chan leaves thinking she understood that she’s off the show, only she thinks he came to make sure she wasn’t quitting.

He thinks about it as he interviews with the docu team, and seems unsure that he conveyed his message. Ya think? He picks up his phone, then turns to the camera: “You don’t happen to know my team members’ phone numbers, do you?” He’s reduced to calling information for KBS.

Meanwhile Joon-mo tells Hwang Shin-hye the news that she’s off the show, and she goes from crying to happy when she hears that the head PD came to see her instead of Yoon Yeo-jung, making her feel like the star. She takes it pretty well, then immediately calls her agent to put out a story that she has to quit 1N2D because of her drama schedule.

The crew waits nervously at the restaurant and no one’s heard from Seung-chan yet. The three younger cast members arrive first and all posture about their busy drama schedules leading them to quit the show, and then Yoon Yeo-jung arrives with a big smile on her face.

Joon-mo sits beside her and they present her with a cake from her favorite bakery, and it’s the most terribly awkward situation ever because they don’t know that she doesn’t know what’s going on. She reminds everyone about how Joon-mo worked SO hard to break her down and convince her to do this show, and he instinctively flinches when she raises a hand to pat him lovingly on the face.

She keeps saying things that make it seem like she knows she’s been booted off the show, like joking about them acting like they’ll never see each other again. He apologizes for making her suffer on the show, and she chirps, “I’ll just work harder from now on!”

Cue uncomfortable cringes ’round the world.

Joon-mo mutters for someone to get the maknae PD on the phone. The maknae is currently stuck in traffic with no way to contact the team, and finally thinks to call Ye-jin to ask for one of the writers’ numbers.

The phone goes silent for a few seconds, presumably for her to cover the mouthpiece and swear like a sailor, I imagine. Then she recites the number, says through gritted teeth to call whenever he needs anything, and hangs up wanting to throttle him.

Thinking that the coast is clear, CP Kim joins the dinner and happily chats away assuming they all know about the show’s casting change. Yoon Yeo-jung asks why the director didn’t come when this dinner is to encourage them to do better going forward, and the other cast members jump to the conclusion that Yoon Yeo-jung is staying on without them.

Speculation around the table goes from all-cast change, to partial cast change, to hidden camera prank, before Yoon Yeo-jung finally turns to Joon-mo for an explanation. He’s forced to tell her the truth, and the others wonder why she didn’t know.

Hwang Shin-hye even tells her that Joon-mo came all the way to her beauty salon to give her the news personally, ack. Suddenly the maknae writer bursts into tears and cries, “I just feel so sorry for Teacher!” ACK. ACK. STOP TALKING.

This is so hard to watch. It doesn’t help that Yoon Yeo-jung plays her embarrassment so damn perfectly. The entire dinner party minus Yoon Yeo-jung is standing out in the hall wondering how the hell to get through this night, when finally Seung-chan arrives. They ask what he said, and when he repeats his, “I’d like to see you in movies and dramas more” line, CP Kim wonders why she didn’t understand his meaning.

Joon-mo heads in alone to face her wrath, and she asks how he could treat her like she was just trash to be disposed of. CP Kim brings Seung-chan in and scolds both the newbie and Joon-mo, acting like he would’ve handled it better. Thankfully Yoon Yeo-jung is sharp enough to yell at him and say that he’s worse than all of them.

The dinner ends with the whole team bowing at the waist in contrition as all four actresses leave in sour moods. As soon as they’re gone, a PD grabs Seung-chan to take him to task, and Joon-mo turns to ask him what exactly he said.

Seung-chan repeats his vague phrases, and Joon-mo snaps, reciting Ye-jin’s speech to him without thinking: “Are we dolphins? Do we communicate using ultrasonic waves? How is anyone supposed to understand that?!”

But that triggers his memory of the rest of her rant, where she accused him of being the worst because he always finds a way out of saying unpleasant things himself.

CP Kim actually suggests going to the rookie PD welcome dinner after this, and Joon-mo shouts that he doesn’t feel like going to a welcome dinner when he doesn’t welcome Seung-chan’s presence on his team. He tells Seung-chan not to say sorry or speak to him or even appear in his line of sight ever again.

Poor Seung-chan trudges back to KBS on the verge of tears.

Joon-mo goes to see his girlfriend, and finally takes Ye-jin’s advice like a man. He breaks it off in no uncertain terms, leaving her stunned.

Seung-chan sits in the empty variety department, landing on his ass again when he tries to sit in a broken chair. For a second it looks like his tears might spill out, until he discovers Joon-mo’s desk and carefully sliiiiiides the busted chair over to his side.

He locks eyes mid-prank with his sunbae PD, who’s in the middle of stealing diapers from the Superman Returns team. They sort of gloss over those things and the sunbae encourages Seung-chan to go to the welcome dinner, sighing in pity at his terrible first day on their team.

Seung-chan asks with sincere glistening eyes what he’s supposed to do, and the sunbae says gravely that the most important thing for a PD is logging his hours. He tells Seung-chan that he’ll welcome anyone as long as he’s helpful, and tells him not to quit.

The phone on Joon-mo’s desk rings, and Seung-chan is startled when Yoon Yeo-jung is on the other end. She says that her manager dropped off tea for Joon-mo because she had been worried about him drinking too much coffee, and sighs that she still wants him to have it.

She asks Seung-chan to make sure Ra PD gets the tea and asks him to convey the message that she had fun. Damn, I guess they don’t call her a pro for nothing. She even asks Seung-chan’s name and nearly breaks him with the kindness in her simple sendoff: “You worked hard today, Baek Seung-chan PD.”

He walks out to the front of KBS holding the tea and an umbrella, and finds Cindy standing there waiting for her manager in the rain. Seung-chan offers up his umbrella, then goes into this painfully long explanation about how it’s not his umbrella and his paycheck will get docked if she doesn’t return it.

She already thinks he’s a weirdo, but then he asks for her phone number just in case she fails to return it, and she punches in a fake number. He actually calls right away and points out that it’s not her number, only now realizing that she might have misunderstood his intentions.

She finally complies just to get him out of her hair, and he introduces himself as PD Baek Seung-chan of 1N2D. Mention of the show sparks her memory, because all she was told about the guy who bought her dinner the other night was that it was a 1N2D PD.

Joon-mo joins the newbie welcome dinner anyway, and when people start to wonder if Seung-chan really quit, he asks around for his number to call. Seung-chan walks in just then, and Ye-jin throws an arm around him to chat him up about the car.

She’s all sweet and encouraging until he conveys his father’s message that the repair costs were already discounted because he used cash. She immediately turns on a dime and warns him that three mistakes in his training days could get him fired.

Joon-mo trudges out and Seung-chan just silently follows behind him for a while as they walk. Joon-mo feels so bad that he texts Yoon Yeo-jung to apologize sincerely for not being able to thank her for how hard she worked, and adds a bunch of hearts before hitting send.

Seung-chan leaves the tea on the bench next to him and returns Joon-mo’s questions with: “But you told me not to speak to you.” He conveys Yoon Yeo-jung’s message that she had fun, and Joon-mo feels even worse for treating her so badly. But she receives his text and smiles warmly.

The boys walk home on opposite sides of the street, and the welcome party continues with Joon-mo’s ex crying in the corner and CP Kim left all alone at his end of the table. He opens his book to Chapter 2, on conveying cancelation news: “In the end, a person has to do it.”

Ye-jin checks her dwindling bank account with a sigh, while the 1N2D PD goes home to his family with the Superman Returns diapers, and the idol trainees sneak delivery food like Cindy taught them to do.

Cindy enjoys a private moment shielded by the umbrella and eats a fish stick at a street stand.

Seung-chan is still a few paces behind Joon-mo by the time they reach their apartment complex, and Ye-jin pulls up in a cab. She gets out of the car and tells Joon-mo to kill that newbie PD on his team, and Joon-mo replies that he’s already on it.

Seung-chan stands frozen in place from the sheer terror of being on two head PDs’ shit-lists, but then his fear turns to shock as he watches them walk into the building, get off on the same floor, and enter the same apartment together.

 
EPILOGUE

Back to two months ago, the night of the apartment contract. After hearing that Ye-jin plans to stay in a gosiwon or someplace like that, Joon-mo gets drunk and then insists on having her stay at his place because he can’t let her stay somewhere crawling with men.

He draws up the napkin contract and stamps his thumbprint on it, and she finds his concern cute, but figures he’ll forget what he said in his alcohol-induced haze tomorrow.

Joon-mo asks if his stamp isn’t enough, then announces, “Okay, I’ll stamp something more certain then.” He stands up, grabs her ears with both hands, and plants a kiss right on her lips. OMO.

 
COMMENTS

He likes her! I was really hoping it wasn’t a one-sided crush on her part, because throughout the first two episodes it seemed that Ye-jin was jealous about his relationship or at least peeved in that way where she might not know why it bugs her. But if he’s the one who wanted her to stay with him (and sealed it with a kiss!), it changes everything. I had my suspicions about Little Joon-mo walking her home from school every single day (c’mon, an elevator can’t be that cool, right?), but the kiss made me squeal out loud. I really love their friendship, from the easy conversation, to their equally-matched bicker-fests, to the way they actually influence and change one another.

It was so great to have Ye-jin’s words come around to bite Joon-mo in the ass when he needed to hear it most, because he really deserved to get some sense knocked into him the hard way today. I don’t know if all of showbiz is run on this kind of passive-aggressive dance of the vague, but it felt so believable to see an entire staff pass the buck because nobody wants to be the bad guy. Joon-mo is the king of avoidance because he finds confrontation unpleasant, and I’m glad that he has Ye-jin around to point out that this makes him the bad guy anyway—he’s the worst of the bad guys, in fact, because he hurts others rather than shoulder responsibility. I like that this is as much Joon-mo’s story of growing up, because it turns out that there’s no accounting for maturity in veteran PDs.

I liked the circular trash motif in this episode, in that nobody wanted to do the dirty work and take out their trash, which only serves to prolong the inevitable. Seung-chan leaves his literal trash on Joon-mo’s car as petty revenge, only to have Joon-mo’s undesirable task punted to him at work, and when he can’t manage to get the job done properly, it lands back in Joon-mo’s lap until the wrong person—Yoon Yeo-jung—ends up feeling like trash. It’s a lesson in responsibility that they learned the hard way, but I have a feeling that nothing will come the easy way for either of these boys. Both Cha Tae-hyun and Kim Soo-hyun really ground the emotional beats in a way that makes the cringe-worthy parts worth the pain, but they also owe a lot to Yoon Yeo-jung’s cameo, because you wouldn’t feel their horror the same way if she hadn’t played her internal embarrassment/pride war so realistically.

I’m just really excited that this kind of comedy has been adopted into dramaland effectively, and I hope that the formula will only improve from here on out. The episodes are long and the humor depends a lot on repetition, but this particular type of buildup rake gag humor works really well for the setup, and I love the funny that comes from the minutiae. It’s not always sparkling, but when it is I’m dying of laughter. I mean, as a TV viewer it makes me sigh to think that PDs worry more about their dinner courses or seating charts or how to get toner, but it’s also what makes being a producer like any other job out there in the real world—unglamorous, thankless, and a lot like regular work.

 
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