[Drama special review] Underwear Season

by DaebakGrits

With a title like Underwear Season, there are a lot of ways this KBS drama special could have gone horribly wrong and become the butt — hah — of all our jokes. I’m happy to report that it’s the best kind of ridiculous, and this one-hour special is worth watching if you’re someone who enjoys a drama that doesn’t take itself seriously.

 
EPISODE 1 REVIEW

Did I watch this KBS drama special solely because of its title? You betcha! And I’m happy to report that I have zero regrets. This little one-hour (slightly unpolished) gem is jam-packed with the kind of goofy, slapstick humor that I love to watch, and it avoids going too far into the realm of the absurd by having the story follow BAN DAE-SOO (Kang Seung-yoon), the only sane and sensible person among this small cast of characters.

When we are first introduced to Dae-soo, he’s been voted the fourth best young entrepreneur, which is quite a feat considering the first three were sponsored by their fathers. Despite having a giant building with his name on it, Dae-soo is genuinely humble when a reporter asks him questions about his success, which causes Dae-soo to turn to the camera, smile, and begin the tale of his “underwear season.”

We take a trip back in time to when Dae-soo was a poor college dropout, looking for gainful employment while learning firsthand the ins-and-outs of stock market investment. Although his stock in a company called Great Tiger Coin appears to be on the climb, the small increase isn’t enough to keep him afloat without a day job — but it doesn’t stop him from daydreaming about a future where he’s super rich and can brag to his (imagined) daughter about how he earned his wealth.

Without any other viable options, Dae-soo accepts a job with GH.T, a start-up underwear brand helmed by TAE GI-HO (Choi Jae-seop). Gi-ho is extremely — and I mean extremely — passionate about men’s underwear, and he believes his patented design is a game changer. And apparently, there is a bit of legitimacy to his claim, too.

The day Dae-soo interviews for the job, BAEK CHEOL-YONG (Kang Sung-hoon), a comically shady businessman, offers to buy Gi-ho’s patent for one billion won! Even more absurd is the fact that Gi-ho turns him down. Although the moment is rife with silliness — including a metal briefcase that glows when opened to reveal a sample of Gi-ho’s underwear — it does beg the question: what makes his panties so special? Well, Gi-ho is glad you asked!

We’re treated to a ridiculous underwear infomercial that gives us the breakdown of Gi-ho’s design, which lifts, separates, and ventilates the goods — if you know what I mean. But the hilarious part is that when you see the actual diagram of the inner workings of the underwear — and the contraption that does the actual “lifting and separating” — all it takes is a little bit of imagination to understand just how uncomfortable this design would be for a man to wear. But we don’t have to leave everything to the imagination because Dae-soo is bestowed his own pair of GH.T panties after his first day of work, and his animated squirming all but confirms that his genitals are being strangled — like, imagine a frontal wedgie that won’t go away.

Confident that the company is going to tank, Dae-soo is ready to quit before he really even gets started, but his stock investment has crashed and his daydreams of a bright future with his imagined daughter have taken a bleak turn. As much as Dae-soo would like to bail on the underwear business, though, he can’t collect unemployment unless he’s been with GH.T for 180 days, and so, Dae-soo resolves to be the best darn employee they’ve ever had — for the next six months.

But it’s kind of hard to work for a company that, to put it bluntly, doesn’t have its shit together. Gi-ho and his other — equally passionate about panties — employee SAN CHO-ROK (Woo Min-kyu ) are mostly living on dreams and cafeteria food, and other than a few product samples, they have absolutely no inventory and no clue as to how to they should manufacturer, market, and sell their product. And with that realization, Dae-soo suddenly becomes their most competent employee.

Turns out, though, the underwear business is cutthroat enough that I half-wonder if Victoria’s Secret is far more sinister than we could ever imagine. Cheol-yong is determined to get his hands on Gi-ho’s patent, and when the guy Gi-ho had lined up to manufacture the underwear suddenly — suspiciously — goes on the lam because he’s in debt to some loan sharks, Cheol-yong returns with the same billion won offer. This time around, Gi-ho is tempted to sell his patent.

Dae-soo and Cho-rok convince Gi-ho to keep his patent, but then Cheol-yong throws down a wild card: the allergen test results for the fabric used to make the underwear. Gi-ho’s panties didn’t pass, and the shock causes Gi-ho to collapse and inexplicably fall into a coma. Yeah, I know, it’s overly dramatic, but Gi-ho is so extra that he gets drunk off life (like, literally) and stumbles around singing his own butchered, underwear-themed lyrics to Momoland songs. It’s entirely within his wheelhouse that he’d fall unconscious after learning that his brainchild will give men everywhere a bad case of jock itch.

Once again, Dae-soo is the only one around with enough know-how to potentially save the day, but he gets a little help from their fabric supplier, who hands him a Hogwarts letter a fancy wax-sealed riddle that leads him to a neighborhood ajumma who is known for giving out private business loans. After solving subsequent riddles and facing off one-on-one with Cheol-yong’s bespectacled — and anime inspired — secretary, Dae-soo is given three days to solve the allergen problem or else he won’t receive the company-saving loan.

Yeah, Dae-soo knows diddly-squat about underwear manufacturing, but with a bit of luck — and ties to a sock-making factory that once received a loan from Dae-soo’s father, a former banker — Dae-soo discovers stumbles upon an alternate fabric and saves the day. The news is so miraculously amazing that Gi-ho wakes up from his coma, and by Christmas time, the crew has sold their first pair of GH.T underwear.

Back in the present, the reporter marvels that he earned his fortune in the underwear business, but he corrects her, revealing that GH.T only sold the one pair of underwear. Instead, Dae-soo made his money off of his investment in Great Tiger Coin stock. When it tanked and everyone began selling their shares, Dae-soo bought them at dirt cheap prices, and now those stocks are worth a thousand times more than when he bought them.

The reporter is impressed but confused as to why he would share the underwear story instead of the short and simple truth, and although we don’t see Dae-soo answer her, we can infer it was likely for two reasons. One, the underwear story is infinitely more amusing, and two, it ties back to the advice his father once gave him: corporations are run by people, so in the end, you’re investing in them.

To be honest, the whole moral-of-the-story bit is the weakest point to this drama because there wasn’t enough time to flesh it out amid all the underwear shenanigans, and it feels like an afterthought thrown in to add substance to an otherwise nonsensical story. But honestly, I prefer the nonsense, and I think this drama special is worth a watch for Kang Seung-yoon’s excellent physical comedy. Then again, this particular brand of humor isn’t going to go over well with everyone, and considering I’m also so juvenile that I snickered every time Gi-ho said the word “panty,” you may not want to trust my opinion on this one.

 
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