Race: Episodes 9-10

by missvictrix

Things get wild and woolly in our penultimate week. If we thought our heroine was nearly the scapegoat before, her company’s latest PR fire outdoes the last — and so does their scapegoating. But don’t worry, our long-time friends are in it together… and maybe, just maybe, they’ll finally figure out what “together” means for them.

 
EPISODES 9-10

While 90% of our story this week is about the constant fires for the PR teams to put out — and all the near head-loppings that are about to happen for our favorite characters — for me, this slow burn romance between Yoon-jo and Jae-min is everything. Everything!

Our episodes open with Yoon-jo back to her cool self, teasing Jae-min pretty mercilessly. “You’ve been staring at me all day, are you into me or something?” The other team members on the culture project are quick to support Yoon-jo and say what a catch she is — this is so hilarious considering none of them know the history between these two — but Yoon-jo shrugs it off. It’s almost like she enjoyed tormenting him a bit. But in her defense, he was staring at her, thinking about how she’s agreed to “date” Dong-hoon.

One thing I love about Yoon-jo is that she’s completely open — she tells Dong-hoon quite clearly that she doesn’t think of him romantically, and even tells Jae-min (equally openly) that she knows Yi-jung is the woman in his past and sighs that, “I can never compete with her.” But for all of Yoon-jo’s openness and easiness around Jae-min, he’s the opposite. The tables are turning, folks! He doesn’t tell her that Yi-jung turned him down with no backsies, and he is also the first one to a) rush to aid and support Yoon-jo b) be her shoulder to lean on (literally) and c) get flustered by her proximity. Because when Yoon-jo rests a tired head on his shoulder in the infamous break room and he tells Yoon-jo to stay strong for him, there is palpable tension in the room. Until it’s awkwardly broken. Which is almost as good as the tension itself. (Thank you, Show).

But why does Yoon-jo need to stay strong, and why all the heavy heads and sighs this week? Well, there’s a ton going on at the drama factory known as Seyong. Seriously, this place is more corrupt and frustrating each week.

The first bump in the road is Yi-jung’s culture project, which the evil execs are just dying to see fail. Our team of good guys think their anonymous open mic conference call is a no-show, but soon the employees start trickling in, and 50 expected participants turns into 300, and the server can’t take the traffic. Still, they’ve successfully cut through the barrier between Seyong Group and its employees, and there is a lot that needs to be addressed. Of course, no one likes this idea except the good guys (Yi-jung and the PR good guys), so it’s an uphill battle.

The next fire comes by way of an unfortunate SNS post by the Seyong CEO — again — and for a woman who wants to be successful and stick it to the man, she really needs to start acting like a CEO and less like a flighty chaebol heiress. (Side note: I just love Kim Hye-hwa here, especially in her tulle skirts and tweed jackets!)

The third fire, though, is the huge one, and over the course of our episodes, it escalates into a full-fledged disaster. It’s interesting — the drama has indeed been laying the ground work for this, but with so much else going on, I didn’t really catch that this was going to be the final battle. So, Yoon-jo’s previous work with the protein bread bakery guys and Jae-min’s online portal messaging come together into what’s looking like the perfect storm for Seyong.

First, Yoon-jo finds out about the marketing plans for Seyong’s (troublesome) protein powder, which has been put in SNU grad SHIN JI-HYO’s (Baek Ji-hye) hands. Ji-hyo is desperate to please and be a success (driven by jealousy of uri Yoon-jo), so she blindly forges ahead with the terrible plan, even though Yoon-jo is highly against it, on both a personal and professional level.

The “negative marketing” initiative consists of contracting a tiny PR firm (led by Yoon-jo’s old colleague) to write countless fabricated negative posts about the protein powder of their competition — and protein powder products overall — in order to destroy the competition. But, what Jae-min has been busy uncovering for a few weeks now is that Seyong’s protein powder has serious problems that are not limited to causing weird rashes. Now, as he digs deeper with Yoon-jo, they realize that the whole scheme is pure nepotism and forged lab results.

Meanwhile, Jae-min’s reporter plot device friend has no qualms about stealing internal information from him and giving him about five minutes warning before it blows up in the news. And, similar to what happened with our initial hiring scandal, once the news is leaked to the press, Seyong scrambles to respond appropriately, denying claims, and offering up scapegoats. Hey, that woman named Park Yoon-jo’s name is on this marketing plan — let’s blame her!

Yi-jung — appropriately furious and bearing the brunt of the fire — turns up in the PR office and Yoon-jo, because she is a K-drama heroine, takes full responsibility. She doesn’t even share the weight with Team Leader Ji or Ji-hyo (who’s actually responsible). Indeed, when she later turns in her incident report, she denies anyone else was involved in the plan. Granted, she also agonized over it for a record number of hours.

This noble idiocy track doesn’t make much sense, but luckily Yoon-jo learns that the PR team actually can be a team when they need to. Team Leaders Song and Ji come to Yoon-jo’s rescue and placate Yi-jung, saying the same thing we’ve been hearing for ages now: this is how it’s always done at Seyong. However, with the full extent of the corruption reaching netizens, and Seyong taking blow after blow, this fire isn’t going away so easily.

While Yoon-jo is weathering all this, she not only gets a surprising pep talk from Team Leader Song (redemption arc possibility?), but Jae-min is busy flipping out and trying to get to the bottom of it. The drama has a really nice way of showing us what Jae-min does best — he really is a good PR person, trying to get to the bottom of every issue and resolve it truthfully — but it’s also blended with the personal side of the fight too. He’s furious that Yoon-jo is hung out to dry again, fuming that the sales team knew about the whole thing, and so did their team leaders. “Are they gonna put all the blame on her again?!” he gripes. In the end, though, it’s Yoon-jo and Jae-min who wind up at a disciplinary hearing as our episodes close.

In addition to bringing the primary plot points to a crescendo (friends-to-lovers possibility, the corruption at Seyong), this week’s episodes were also a lot about loyalty. When Yoon-jo initially takes the blame for the entire PR team, Team Leader Song marvels at her loyalty and chuckles that, “My team would have blamed me.” (And they’d be right to, heh.) But what lies beyond loyalty is truth, perhaps. And it’s Team Leader Ji who winds up dropping the best advice to Yoon-jo: “Don’t sell yourself for a company. At least not this one.”

With only one more week to go, I admit these 12 episodes are suddenly feeling too short. I want way more time to flesh out Yoon-jo and Jae-min’s complicated emotional attachment, to get rid of CEO “Rosebush” Dong-hoon, and also to dig into Yi-jung’s plot arc (because yes, I need more sparring between Moon Sori and Kim Tae-hoon).

There are also the teenage girls to deal with — both stuck in crappy situations with their mothers — and even our tertiary characters like Seung-hee and her pregnancy plot line, or Chul-joon and his bad work ethic and frisky relationship with his ex-wife.

In short, Race has a lot to work with as it ties things up, and while I doubt they’ll be able to fully dive into each subplot and give each side character the attention they deserve, I’m definitely going to need a deep dive into our leads’ future — in work and in love. And if there’s a sudden stairwell kiss thrown in there, too, I will not complain. *Releases wish to the dramagods*

 
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