Dongjae the Good or the Bastard: Episodes 7-8

4 November 6, 2024November 6, 2024

Dongjae the Good or the Bastard: Episodes 7-8

by solstices

Pride comes before a fall, and our vainglorious prosecutor finds out just how true that saying is this week. It seems he simply can’t catch a break — both from those who seek to tear him down and from his very own sordid past — but as we all know, our weasel has never been one to roll over and give in.

EPISODES 7-8

We may bemoan Mr. Weasel’s questionable morals and conceited boasting, but there’s no denying that Dong-jae is a downright capable prosecutor. While Byung-gun wastes his time searching out at sea, Dong-jae swiftly apprehends the bowling alley owner HONG TAE-IK (Park Myung-hoon) at the hospital he frequents.

How did Dong-jae know to catch him there, you ask? Through some quick thinking and lots of due diligence, of course. Since drug manufacturers suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as an adverse side effect, they’re dependent on morphine to mitigate the symptoms. Medical treatment can’t be obtained under a fake identity, so Dong-jae painstakingly dug through all the records of morphine administration in order to track down our elusive fugitive.

From there, the case is wrapped up swiftly. (A little too swiftly, if you ask me, but maybe that’s just my skepticism talking.) Dong-jae surmises that Tae-ik wanted to quit the drug operation, but supplier Soo-min assumed he’d joined hands with Yuri instead and shot her in a fit of rage. Then when he tried to murder Tae-ik too, the latter turned the tables on him.

Riding on the wave of his success, an ecstatic Dong-jae anticipates his model prosecutor award. At long last, he’s finally the center of attention at a company dinner, and I love that he makes sure to acknowledge his team’s hard work in front of Chief Jeon and all the other prosecutors.

Alas, the scheming Wan-sung pulls yet another dirty trick. On the day of Dong-jae’s award ceremony, Jung-ki hosts a live broadcast, in which Wan-sung theatrically accuses Dong-jae of a coercive interrogation meant to frame Gyeo-re as the culprit. Then he exposes Dong-jae’s history of planting false evidence and receiving bribes. Well, he’s not exactly wrong, but…

With that, poor Dong-jae’s fifteen minutes of happiness are up. He gets chased out of the award hall, and his chagrined wife smacks him with a flower bouquet for good measure. The Chief Prosecutor hangs Dong-jae out to dry despite fawning all over him just a few days ago, and the drug cartel case is handed over to Byung-gun.

Dong-jae ends up in a disciplinary committee hearing, where all the past misdeeds he tried to sweep under the rug finally come back to haunt him. In the end, he’s left with only two options. Either clear the air with Wan-sung, or clear out his desk and resign.

After much deliberation, Dong-jae prints out a document — an official indictment prosecuting Gyeo-re for drug trafficking. Yes, you read that right; our weasel isn’t going down without a fight! A flashback reveals that Dong-jae made it all the way to Wan-sung’s front gate before changing his mind. He won’t grovel to scum like Wan-sung.

Dong-jae did glean useful information from the almost-visit, though. Having overheard Jung-ki making a phone call and demanding for Chan-hyuk to be put on the line, Dong-jae relays the news to Byung-gun. Then Ji-hee approaches Dong-jae about the case of the disappearing whistleblower, asking him to investigate the construction site in her stead.

Realizing he needs to clear his conscience and rid himself of his shackles, Dong-jae comes clean to his wife LEE YOO-AN (Choi Hee-seo) about the land bribe. All while kneeling penitently, ha. Then she makes him write an oath swearing to apprehend Wan-sung through no immoral means or he can kiss his assets, marriage, and custody goodbye, LOL.

In order to stay one step ahead of Wan-sung’s exposé, Dong-jae writes a tell-all on the prosecutors’ online forum, revealing Wan-sung’s land bribe threats and illegal redevelopment activities. Infuriated by Dong-jae’s refusal to kowtow, Wan-sung leverages his connections to score a meeting with Attorney Kang — and request him to stand as Gyeo-re’s attorney. Gasp.

After a hilarious interlude with Dong-jae imagining possible future careers (he would totally hit big as a streamer LOL), our reformed weasel stuns Byung-gun with an uncharacteristic apology. Then he recruits him to help dig out the witness, who’s likely buried within the shoddy construction site he attempted to report.

Their plan doesn’t go quite as expected, since Ji-hee gets caught by Wan-sung’s thugs. The boys (because they’re manchildren, really) arrive just in time to save her from being buried under dirt, though of course huffing-and-puffing Byung-gun loses the escaping goons. But Ji-hee managed to overhear an incriminating piece of information: the thugs sneered that it wasn’t their first time burying people.

Alas, our wily antagonists manage to elude capture yet again. Although Byung-gun interrogates Jung-ki and Ji-hee has the police summon Wan-sung regarding his thugs, they both get to walk free when a shaken Chan-hyuk turns himself in for distributing Purple. Our unlikely trio puts their heads together, realizing that Chief Jeon is their only option left. They’ll inform her that they’re certain a corpse is in the construction site, and if she leaks it to Wan-sung, he’ll dig it out himself.

In the meantime, Chief Jeon orders Dong-jae to hand over all his cases to Shi-woon, including Gyeo-re’s. Keeping his emotions in check, Dong-jae encourages Shi-woon and thanks his team for their time together. Then Attorney Kang walks into the office and introduces himself as Gyeo-re’s lawyer, leaving our poor Dong-jae absolutely stunned.

Surely this is all part of Attorney Kang’s larger plan, right? Right? He can’t possibly be unaware of Wan-sung’s dirty dealings, and I can’t see Attorney Kang selling out both his own morals and a junior he cares for. Wan-sung might think he’s caught Attorney Kang in a clever trap where his reputation and career are at stake, but I have faith that our trusted mentor figure has already devised a way out.

I love that the writing team brought back Attorney Kang in such a pertinent role, because it reminds me of the Tongyeong case from Season 2. Back then, Attorney Kang’s misstep in giving preferential treatment inadvertently led to Dong-jae’s suffering. It’ll be a nice reversal and redemption if — or as I’d like to believe, when — Attorney Kang chooses differently this time.

As for our weasel’s other mentor, Chief Jeon truly is only looking out for her own skin. Even when she met Wan-sung to put an end to their collusion, it wasn’t for the publicly shamed Dong-jae’s sake, but rather out of self-preservation. I do hope she repents and reforms, but as Ji-hee said, perhaps it’ll all work out better if she doesn’t. She and Wan-sung can go down hand-in-hand.

Now that we’re heading into our final week (nooooo), I’m eagerly anticipating our weasel’s ultimate victory while simultaneously feeling reluctant to part with our cast of endearingly lovable characters. Where else will I get my weekly dose of humor, like Byung-gun getting stuck with footing Ji-hee’s hospital bill or Dong-jae imagining himself in hilariously tacky outfits?

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1 gadis

November 6, 2024 at 2:22 PM

It was silly of me to think that Dong-jae's biggest problem would be something as straighforward as the risk of bodily harm. With someone as prone towards drama as Nam Wan-seong, of course his revenge would be something complicated and publicly devastating like using Dong-jae's spotty past to frame him as yet another corrupt law practitioner. Nam's latest move in involving former Chief Prosecutor Kang was a brilliantly calculative strategy to thoroughly ruin Dong-jae's reputation that there would be no hope for him to practice law ever again. Though I still have hope that Kang sunbae will be sharp enough to spot the blatant fabrication around Gyo-re's case.

As we arrived at the penultimate week, I realized what made this drama stood out among the rest of thriller genre I've watched recently. In most dramas, character development was something we would get in full during the length of the drama. But in Dong-jae's case, it was a bit different. While FoS 1 showed us the crooked background of who Dong-jae was and FoS 2 provided a glimpse of possible changes in him after the harsh consequences of previous season, the latest spin-off was a meticulous probe into what kind of a man Seo Dong-jae truly was and all the way everything changed and unchanged in him in the interim years.

It was interesting to see this series mimick the character development real life people went through in their lifetime. How it was rarely an overnight thing. How most of the time people were tempted by similar things that stumped or trapped them the first time around, again and again, just to see whether they've learned anything from their first rodeo. To see Dong-jae went through the same thing humanized him in an unexpected way. It made me respect him more when he then ended up making indictment for Gyeo-re's drug trafficking charge despite the threat on his career and reputation. Or how he kept digging (even going as far as making amend with prosecutor Jung who has bad blood with him) into the Nam CEO case to uncover the whole skeleton in his closet.

Aside from the serious plot, this drama kept its excellent taste in humor. I especially like that glimpse of the dynamic between him and his wife this week. We only saw her as the aggrieved wife back in FoS 2 given the circumstances, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that in their daily lives, she was the dominant one in their relationship. But then again, with Dong-jae being such a natural weasel, it would take that kind of no-nonsense woman to help nudged (or most probably shoved) him towards the right path as life tempted him with yet another "CEO Nam" and their land deal.

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poliwag

November 6, 2024 at 6:02 PM

Choi Heeseo was amazing in Big Forest <3 I was so happy to see her (superfan of the Secret Forest franchise; self-proclaimed) cast in a role for SF too, and she's been posting fun in-character updates for GoBD on her Instagram as well :3