The Empire: Episode 1 (First Impressions)

by missvictrix

JTBC’s legal melodrama The Empire premiered over the weekend and it’s full of political scheming, ruin to come, and sumptuous chaebol breakfasts. I can’t say I enjoyed the episode much, but that’s less because it was poorly done, and more because it feels like a plot I’ve seen a hundred times already.

Editor’s note: If there is sufficient interest, drama coverage will continue with weekly hangouts.

 
EPISODE 1 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Before we meet our heroine, we meet her husband NA GEUN-WOO (Ahn Jae-wook). He’s clearly a man of power who commands respect — SNU grad, passed the bar exam in his 20s, was a judge, a lawyer, and now is a law professor who seems to enjoy being treated as a godlike figure. We first meet him at his book concert, where he is surrounded by adoring fans and the press, but the same motif continues into the classroom — and everywhere he goes, really. I don’t like him one bit.

But he seems like the perfect “national husband”? Our heroine HAN HYE-RYUL (Kim Sun-ah) comes home to their gorgeous house saying how tired she is and carrying on about the beautiful dinner he cooked for her. They’re quite cute and playful together and it’s all very nice… until the camera pans to widen the scene and we see that there’s a film crew shooting them. Yep, their very own chaebol reality program. Barf!

The show has done wonders for Geun-woo’s popularity and despite not being a politician he’s #1 in popularity for the next presidential race. Yeah, no. We’re shown in more detail than necessary that he’s having an affair with another woman — and that woman turns out to be a student in his class who has him wrapped around her finger. I’m totally getting A Couple’s World vibes here, and that doesn’t make any of this bode well.

Luckily our heroine is more likeable. Hye-ryul — or as she’s more commonly called, Prosecutor Han — is a real force to be reckoned with. She’s just as powerful and respected as her husband, but in contrast she seems to have some integrity behind her. When the drama opens, she’s deep in an investigation of a chaebol group that her family is in-lawed to. The reaction is either fury (her sister who married into the family in question) or respect (most everyone else, impressed that she doesn’t let “family” get in the way of justice).

My favorite scene of the first episode was Hye-ryul out for drinks with a whole ton of prosecutors. After dealing with the taunts of a colleague (who claims she’s only fearless in her job because her family’s power can protect her), she subsequently outdrinks him. And by that I mean mixing somaek in a giant bowl worthy of bibimbap and downing the whole thing in one shot. Her colleague is dragged out barely conscious, and Hye-ryul stays behind for more drinks, and an oath about truth and justice that she has the newbies repeat after her. It’s clear she means every word she says, and it’s clear they respect her for it.

But we can’t have such a powerful, collected, and upright heroine without throwing her some problems — this is a drama after all – so there’s a terrible scene where she nearly finds her husband and his college student floozy HONG NAN-HEE (Joo Se-bin) having sex in a restroom during the intermission of a super fancy orchestra performance. Uh, thanks, JTBC?

This is probably my least favorite thing about the story — not just the cheap affair, but the way the college student is so clearly manipulating Geun-woo, and so obviously going to burn his life down around him. He calls her his muse; she says she can be his shield, or his demon. Guess which one it’ll be by the end of this drama? And to further squickify things, Nan-hee seems to be friendly with and/or in the same class as Geun-woo and Hye-ryul’s son and his girlfriend.

Speaking of Hye-ryul’s family — it’s huge and confusing and they all live in the same palace-like dwelling. But for all the ridiculous wealth that they live in, they seem to be kinda normal? At least Hye-ryul and her mother (Lee Mi-sook) so far. In another nice scene, we see the two working away together late at night on Hye-ryul’s case. In another drama, they would be squirreled away at the kitchen table; in The Empire, they’re sitting at a gigantic banquet table that would have made King Arthur proud.

Without much action — but tons of character introductions and political/power setups which are too boring to drill into here — the first episode feels both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. There’s hope, though, by way of our other supporting characters. REPORTER YOON EUN-MI (Im Se-mi) seems to have an in with the police and some secret information that she drops to close the first episode. Geun-woo might be #1 in the popularity race for candidacy, but there’s another person who’s speeding up behind him at an alarming speed: Hye-ryul.

It’s meant to be a mic drop moment, and I guess maybe it can be, if we get more insight on Hye-ryul and how much she really knows, plans, and intends to do. But right now there’s not enough of the plot in motion to really say whether it’ll be satisfying to see Hye-ryul go after her husband and his scandal — or whatever other chaos waits around the bend.

If I’m going to watch a story of power struggles and vindication, well, there has to be some real emotion there in order for us to get behind it. Right now I’m not sure if Hye-ryul even really cares about her “perfect” husband, so will his scandal really break her? What does she want besides to do her job well? I think I need a little more emotional connection to these characters — any of them — if I’m going to follow them around for the entire drama, worry about the collapse of the eponymous “empire,” and root for the good guys’ success. Or in the case of Geun-woo, for his swift defenestration.

 
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