Agency: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by quirkycase

Our leading ladies reach the final stretch of their journey to the (hopefully) top. They pool their resources and know-how, working together to secure their positions and unseat the men who have been making their lives less than fun. Despite the challenges, or maybe because of them, both women have grown and found more balance in their lives. The finale wraps things up nicely, both thematically and for our characters, bringing this office fight for power to a close.

 
EPISODES 15-16

We ended last week with Ah-in turning down that perfect offer, and for once, she’s not strategizing. Ah-in just couldn’t ethically lend her considerable skills to a potentially predatory loan company having experienced what it’s like to have money collectors harass her family in childhood. After hearing her reasoning, her team can’t do anything but respect her decision and help her pack up her things.

Ah-in may be ruthless in business, but she’s unusually principled, at least compared to her peers. Unlike Chang-soo, she takes care of her people and never drags innocent or unrelated people into the higher-ups’ fights. So while she’s earned her fair share of enemies, she also has some powerful allies.

Getting wind of the whole ad fiasco, CEO Cho enlists Geun-cheol’s help to get all the ads resumed. And with that, Ah-in has now achieved her revenue increase goal and no longer needs to quit. All CEO Cho asks of her is to keep doing what she’s doing and to help Hanna where she can.

Chang-soo throws a little fit at this latest development, but CEO Cho counters that Ah-in has achieved an impressive business feat. Now it’s Chang-soo’s turn to prove himself: he has a month to increase revenue by 30 billion won if he wants to earn his keep. Since we’ve seen him accomplish pretty much nothing except roadblocking Ah-in, that seems like a fair ask. (Chang-soo disagrees.)

Because Chang-soo can’t do honest work to save his life, he tries to achieve the revenue goal by swiping an opportunity from a smaller agency who, despite a better ad campaign proposal, can’t compete with VC Group promising to make the milk company their official beverage provider in their cafeterias. It’s after this move that we finally see Jung-seok’s play. He goes on national TV and reveals this shady deal, even name checking himself and Chang-soo as the responsible parties. His revenge served, Jung-seok resigns and goes back to his restaurant.

Meanwhile, Ah-in takes her promise to CEO Cho seriously and starts to mentor Hanna. Her first order of business is to coach Hanna on how to get Young-woo back. Hanna attempts to follow her advice and rationally convince him that she needs him, but of course her calm lasts all of 30 seconds. Thankfully, Ah-in predicts this and calls Young-woo to do the rational part of the convincing herself. Their combined effort works, and Young-woo returns both to the company and Hanna. To make things official, Hanna snaps a photo of them holding hands and announces on her social media that they’re dating.

He and Hanna await Ah-in’s brilliant strategy – I love how she’s the de facto leader – but she surprises them by saying she doesn’t have one. Sometimes, your best move is waiting for your opponent to make a mistake. And oh, does he ever.

Han-soo makes a series of bad decisions, starting with being a jackass to his fiancée because she resumed Woowon’s ads without his permission, even though it’s her family’s company and therefore her decision. He basically calls her stupid and vapid, and then blames her for “making” him say mean things to her. Gross.

Instead of apologizing and being a decent human, Han-soo freaking cheats on her with a model who he then hires as a model for one of his subsidiaries. The problem is that said model recently got a DUI and is having a bad public moment. That means Han-soo has not only jeopardized his profitable marriage prospect but also caused VC to be disparaged by the public and lost them revenue.

This provides the perfect opportunity for Ah-in, Hanna, and Young-woo to pounce. They’re quick to publicize Han-soo’s bad hiring move and stoke negative public sentiment. But naturally, Han-soo doesn’t take the blame. Since Chang-soo is already a liability after Jung-seok’s public interview, they throw him under the bus for this too, although he had nothing to do with it.

He’s cruelly turned on by his so-called backers and forced to resign. See, that’s the problem with being awful – no one has your back. Chang-soo makes the office walk of shame with his box as everyone watches.

In a fit of rage, he yells that Ah-in is the one on psychiatric meds who doesn’t deserve her position. (The awful prosecutor dug up her medical records and shared them with Chang-soo.) It leads to this great show of solidarity where half of the room is like, “Yeah, so am I. So what?” It’s a powerful moment, seeing so many of the employees’ hands raised as they admit they are on anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications.

Even Chang-soo realizes what a low blow that was and apologizes to Ah-in. They share their first real moment of understanding when she acknowledges that their environment sets them up to behave awfully toward each other. They shake hands, and he encourages her to win. As for him, he’s over the whole advertising game.

I didn’t expect the drama to go all in on addressing the mental health toll of these high-stress, competitive work environments, but I’m here for it. As the drama highlights, the primary problem isn’t one “bad apple,” but the system that encourages treating people like tools for profit. No one can survive that kind of environment unscathed.

There’s even a plotline about how conglomerates push out small business and smother competition. Remember that small agency that unfairly lost that milk company deal? It’s owned by a former VC director who’s been struggling to make enough to pay her employees. When she loses the deal, and her last ditch effort to save her agency, she goes to jump off the roof of her building. Thankfully, Ah-in arrives in time to stop her and passes along her psychiatrist’s business card. Yay for mental healthcare advocacy!

With Ah-in’s final battle over, it’s Hanna’s turn. They learn that Chairman Kang is planning to make Han-soo vice chairman and have only one day to stop it. Ah-in preps and sends Hanna to crash present at the shareholder meeting where it’ll be put to a vote. Chairman Kang tries to keep her out, but Geun-cheol has the final word, so Hanna is allowed to present.

Her professional demeanor much improved thanks to Ah-in’s coaching, Hanna gives this whole slideshow on the financial and reputational damage caused by Han-soo (complete with photos of Han-soo and the model at a hotel) and votes no to his installment as vice chairman. Geun-cheol also refuses to support him, so everyone else follows suit, including Chairman Kim who is officially calling off the marriage between his daughter and Han-soo.

With Han-soo out, Geun-cheol announces the new vice chairman: CEO Cho. This leaves a CEO vacancy, which is filled by Ah-in. So not only did she get to keep her job, but she even got a promotion! With her newfound power, Ah-in’s first move is to bring back her former assistant Soo-jung. Then, just like when Hanna arrived, Ah-in gets the red carpet welcome on her first official day as CEO. The whole staff is thrilled, and Hanna jokingly throws Ah-in’s rude “welcoming” advice about asking for help back at her.

We jump forward a year for the epilogue. After achieving her initial dream, Ah-in has quit as CEO at VC and started her own agency, bringing her loyal team with her as employees and shareholders. Ah-in finally looks happy doing the work she loves in a healthy environment. The drama ends as Ah-in tells Byung-soo she doesn’t regret leaving her high-power position, no matter what others think. “Why should someone else define my limits?”

And that’s all, folks. We didn’t see where Hanna is after a year, but I’m assuming she’s running the agency, happily dating Young-woo, and continuing to fight for succession. I have to say, I ended up finding Hanna more compelling than I anticipated. I didn’t expect her to be so well-developed and given almost as much screen time as Ah-in. She was treated more like the traditional male lead character, while Chang-soo and Young-woo took the second lead spots.

I wasn’t sure how they were going to wrap up Ah-in’s story since it’d be a shame for her not to reach her goal, but it also would’ve encouraged her unhealthy tendencies. But I liked where she ended up. She achieved her dream and proved to everyone, including herself, that she could make it to the top. She also learned to prioritize her mental and physical health, freeing her to create her own healthy work environment and be happy even without the prestige.

Despite centering on the ruthlessness of the corporate world and what it takes to win, the drama was pretty optimistic. In the end, Ah-in and Hanna won mostly because they weren’t horrible. They had people to rely on who were loyal to them and willing to help them reach their goals. Chang-soo and Han-soo, on the other hand, relied on fear and an illusion of everlasting power to bend things to their will. Without support, they ended up out in the cold.

The one plotline that fell flat for me was Eun-jung’s family drama. It all felt too removed from the rest of the story and wasn’t given enough depth to be truly compelling. I liked the setup when it was poised to examine the challenges of being a working mom with competing priorities, but it stayed pretty surface level and then petered out. The conflict felt more dropped than resolved.

Going into Agency, I expected a slick, office drama about fighting your way to the top, and that’s mostly what I got. However, it added a nice focus on the mental strain of climbing the brutal corporate ladder and the importance of a support network. Because even a badass Lee Bo-young can’t do it alone.

 
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