Again My Life: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by DaebakGrits

Opinions on Again My Life are polarized, but no matter which side you’re on, you’ve probably been eagerly anticipating the conclusion. Well, the end is here, and our time traveling lawyer finally confronts our main bad guy.

 
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP

Imagine watching a chess match, but instead of the competitors moving the chess pieces on the board, they’re verbally calling out their moves to one another. That’s what the last few weeks of Again My Life have felt like to me because — I swear — half the scenes for this drama have been of men sitting across a table from other men (and occasionally women), having conversations to purposefully provide exposition. Because they have to explain for the audience how trading stocks and taking over a company will weaken our villain, who seems impervious to everything.

One of my biggest gripes with this drama has been the pacing, which somehow manages to rush through the interesting bits while being excruciatingly sluggish when it comes to the actual systematic take down of our final boss. So with only two episodes left, I was expecting — hoping, really — that all the anticipation would finally culminate in an ending that was a thrill-ride from start to finish. Alas, that was not the case, and our final two episodes lagged in the beginning, as newly appointed chief prosecutor Seok-kyu pulls Hee-woo from Seok-hoon’s case.

Of course, Hee-woo just diverts his attention and resources to the Bando Bank investigation and quickly gathers the witnesses and evidence he needs to bring down Tae-sub’s money man. Seok-kyu, who is — unsurprisingly — still on Team Hee-woo, publicizes that PARK DAE-HO (Hyun Bong-sik) is wanted in connection to their ongoing case against an illegal loan shark business. Dae-ho goes into hiding with the intention of faking his death, but Tae-sub sends his hitman out to kill Dae-ho for realsies. Hee-woo shows up just in time to rescue (and arrest) Dae-ho.

With that case pretty much wrapped up, Hee-woo is free to tackle his next opponent: Seo-yeon, the woman Tae-sub has sent to honey trap Hee-woo. It’s another relatively uneventful case for Hee-woo because he knew she was up to no good the moment he saw her. A lobbyist with an arms dealing side-business, Seo-yeon is another familiar face from Hee-woo’s former life. She, too, died from a suspicious suicide a mere day before the prosecution was going to go public with their investigation of Tae-sub, and shortly thereafter, Seung-hyuk also died from a supposed drunk driving accident.

Hee-woo makes a deal with Seo-yeon: her life — because Tae-sub will kill her once he finds out she’s doing business with other shady individuals — in exchange for giving KIM JIN-WOO (Kim Young-hoon), Ji-hyun’s male counterpart, a staged voice recording of Hee-woo admitting he was teaming up with her to break the law. More on that later, but first…

Sang-man officially purchases JQ Construction, and Tae-sub — as Hee-woo predicted and feared — is eager to meet with Sang-man privately. Not wanting to put Sang-man in danger, Hee-woo shows up to the meeting instead of Sang-man and prematurely reveals that he’s been plotting to take down Tae-sub. Not only does this completely ruin the element of surprise that Hee-woo had going for him, but he also exposed one of his vulnerabilities: Sang-man, who at that very moment is cornered on a rooftop with the hitman and Jin-woo.

And this brings me to another gripe I have about this drama: as far as cat and mouse games go, this one — quite frankly — sucks. In order for a cat and mouse dynamic to be interesting, the two players need to take turns outwitting each other. One is in constant pursuit, while the other evades capture. Tae-sub, however, is a mouse who doesn’t know he’s being pursued. He can’t go head-to-head and match wits with a cat he doesn’t know exists, so the majority of this drama’s conflict has felt less cat and mouse and more like a mouse who has been efficiently avoiding Hee-woo’s traps.

I can’t help but wonder how much better our hero-villain dynamic would have been had Tae-sub at least known or suspected that someone was out to get him. So, when Hee-woo stupidly laid all his cards on the table and announced that he’s been plotting to bring down Tae-sub, I was curious to see if the reveal would make their dynamic more interesting.

Unfortunately, I was so preoccupied with my curiosity that I forgot to feel sad when Jin-woo and the hitman threw Sang-man off the roof of the building. Sang-man tried to record their conversation and corner them into admitting they were acting on Tae-sub’s orders, but they saw through his subterfuge. Miraculously, Sang-man survives the fall, but he’s in a coma.

Now that Tae-sub is aware of Hee-woo’s agenda, he wastes no time isolating Hee-woo from most of his friends and colleagues. Hee-ah hasn’t gone anywhere, though, and she and Hee-woo still move forward with her company’s acquisition of JQ Construction — because that’s what the comatose Sang-man would have wanted. Min-soo is also still lurking around, but even though the drama wants us to believe he’s a bad guy now, it’s unconvincing.

As a prosecutor, Hee-woo has very little power to take down Tae-sub, so he decides to resign and become Tae-sub’s political revival. His last act as a prosecutor, however, is to cut off one of Tae-sub’s metaphorical limbs: Jin-woo. Hee-woo releases the photos he took of Jin-woo meeting with Seo-yeon (to retrieve the staged voice recording) to the media, which ties him to a known arms dealer.

Hee-woo intended to use the situation to have Jin-woo flip on Tae-sub, but Jin-woo would rather jump from a rooftop than betray his boss. Tae-sub is extremely emotional following Jin-woo’s death, and his reaction is a stark contrast to his state following his son’s death in Episode 3. It’s a pity the drama didn’t explore their relationship more so that we could have anticipated the impact Jin-woo’s death would have on Tae-sub. Prior to this scene, Tae-sub has treated the majority of the people around him as though they were expendable, so how was I to know Jin-woo was any different?

Which brings me to another issue I have had with this drama’s storytelling: more time should have been dedicated to fleshing out the characters around Hee-woo and Tae-sub. Hee-woo, for his part, ran around at the beginning of the drama collecting allies like they were Pokemon, and he utilized them the same way, by calling on them whenever he needed a particular move set to combat his opponent. (Han-mi used “press release”! It was super effective!). As a result, very few of the secondary characters left a strong impression on me, and I was never concerned about their wellbeing or how they might be used against Hee-woo.

As for Tae-sub — up until Ji-woo’s death — all the people around him seemed expendable and replaceable (case in point: Seok-hoon), so it never felt like any combination of Hee-woo’s targets was going to cause Tae-sub’s empire to topple. Instead of focusing so much screen time on how Hee-woo was building a case against Tae-sub’s people, more scenes should have been dedicated to establishing how certain characters were integral to Tae-sub’s success and would lead to his downfall if removed from the playing field.

Once Hee-woo steps into the political arena, Tae-sub tries to slander Hee-woo’s reputation using intel he received from Min-soo. Of course, the information was carefully cultivated by Hee-woo, and in the midst of his declining ratings, Hee-woo announces his engagement to Hee-ah. Not only does her company’s backing give him the power to stand on equal footing with Tae-sub, but Hee-woo uses the press conference to challenge Tae-sub to a televised debate.

Tae-sub accepts the challenge, and the two men face off on live TV. The debate — if you can call it that — quickly becomes Hee-woo’s platform for publicizing all the evidence that he has against Tae-sub, who manages to keep his poker face and remain calm and collected while the cameras are on him. That facade crumbles immediately after the debate, though, when Han-mi does a live interview with Ji-hyun, who corroborates all of Hee-woo’s statements with her own voice recordings of her private conversations with Tae-sub.

Her betrayal immediately makes her a target for Tae-sub’s hitman. Yeon-suk and Hee-woo’s MMA instructor try to fight him off on their own, but they are about as useful as punching bags until Hee-woo shows up and starts kicking some butt. I literally thought Hee-woo was going to beat the hitman to death, but no such luck because Ji-hyun stops him because — surprise! — the hitman is Ji-hyun’s older brother… and he has amnesia (*facepalm*). I mean, if she’d let Hee-woo hit him a few more times, he might have reversed the memory loss which the hitman sustained while Tae-sub rescued the siblings from a fire when they were children.

The siblings have been indebted to him ever since… I guess? It’s never fully addressed, like a lot of things. Like the fact that — in all the years since the fire — Ji-hyun never bothered to reintroduce herself to him as his sister. Like the fact that alternate Ji-hyun was murdered by her own brother, and that trauma made her a grim reaper and the freaking catalyst that instigated the whole plot of this drama. But yes, let’s not unpack or explore any of that.

After the hitman’s defeat, things wrap up anticlimactically. Tae-sub is alone and vulnerable, and we get one last scene with him where he calls out for Ji-hyun and Jin-woo out of habit, but they aren’t there. I wish we could have seen more character development like this all along, but sadly it’s too little too late. After this, Tae-sub supposedly disappears, but a body matching his DNA is later discovered in the ocean. Maybe it’s him, or maybe he faked his death. We’re not given a clear indication one way or the other.

Ji-hyun willingly went to prison for her association with Tae-sub’s crimes and seems at peace with her decision. She still manages to look spectacular in a prison jumpsuit.

Everyone on Team Hee-woo is doing well, too. Sang-man wakes up from a coma, and it turns out Hee-woo and Hee-ah are actually dating. They weren’t at the time of their engagement announcement, but they are now, and have prolonged their engagement while they date officially.

To apologize to everyone for the shock their marriage announcement must have given them — because everyone found out via the news — they buy everyone in Hee-woo’s harem a trip to Bali. (Uh, where’s my trip to Bali? I should be compensated, too, because I was just as shocked as everyone else. They have zero chemistry!)

On a less happy front, there appears to be another villain — and a possible sequel? — on the rise: Chairwoman Chun Ho-ryung (cameo by Bae Jong-ok). Our drama ends with her gathering all of Tae-sub’s former accomplices, who have avoided being punished for their crimes and are roaming freely, and promising to restore them all to their previous positions.

She cackles maniacally like a comic book villain, and as we pan out from her conference room we see Hee-woo watching over the city like Batman. Only, unlike Bruce Wayne, Hee-woo managed to save his parents. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

 
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