Payback Money and Power Season 1 Episode No 1 Recap And Review
Episode Recap
This is proven nowhere more than in 1990, as our protagonist ends up in a juvenile detention center in Korea. At least a little. Eun-yong is soon released after spending time behind bars, but doesn't have many plans for the future. Eun-yong can hold her own because she is rumored to be a skilled fighter.
A shady man named Kim Seong-tae appears with his crew and offers Eun-yong his business card. The man works in construction, and Eun-yong shows her brilliance by remembering his number almost immediately. As the men leave, Eun-yong is left alone again. He spends the night in the hospital, eats and washes what he can. Ever since she was a child, Eun-yong explains that finding enough food has always been a problem for her.
Eun-yong has several family around her, as evidenced when she sees her nephew Jang Tae-chu. The kid absolutely loves books, and Eun-yong shows up at the bookstore and promises to buy him expensive books that he can read at home. His mother (and Eun-yong's sister), Eun Ji-hee, does her best, but Eun-yong, who goes to her place that night, can tell that the place is run down and in dire need of renovation.
Eun-yong is determined to treat her as she wants to make as much money as possible, no matter what means to move her to a bigger apartment. Of course, this means relying on some dirty means to get money.
With a really neat edit, we fast forward to 1998. Tae-chun and Ji-hee live more comfortably, while Eun-yong is still part of the gang. Driving a bus, they enter the construction site directly and prepare for an attack. Only, one of the men is inside a digger and it destroys their bus.
After a massive fight, the leader of this gang, Myung In-ju, emerges and confronts one of the men. They are doing all this because he is late in paying the loan and therefore they are taking the construction project from him. Eun-yong silently watches as In-ju forces him to sign the document. The man is despised in these parts, known as the godfather of credit hounds.
Word of Eun-yong's talent with numbers spreads to this godfather, and he brings her to work on a real project away from the gangs. With the extra money, Eun-yong buys an apartment with two bathrooms, as she promised her family. Ji-hee goes on to open her own business to become a madam rather than a tea shop. As the years pass, he becomes a drunkard, while Tae-chun continues to study hard to pass the bar exam. Hoping to succeed no matter what, we see a nice montage as Tae-chun does and manages to become a prosecutor.
In 2014, Tae-chun arrives at the office, where he faces the stern gaze of Special Investigations Chief Prosecutor Hwang Gi-seok. Tae-chun is humiliated by the boy who takes care of him. Tae-chun is desperate to join his team and prove Gi-seok wrong. Right now, he's been given a whole stack of cases to work on, including an issue involving Assemblyman Baek and his son getting favorable conditions.
Outside, Tae-chun receives a package from a mysterious woman. He goes straight to Criminal Investigations and examines documents linking him to Solar Bio and the famous guy on TV who calls himself Rambo. Needing an expert to look into things, Tae-chun goes straight to the source—with Nam Sang. Tae-chun admits that they didn’t do anything to investigate the case because the person scheduled to investigate it was prone, so it was all thrown away. And the person assigned to it? Gi-seok.
The numbers for this Solar Bio gig are a bit wonky, so Tae-chun decides to take it to someone who's pretty dodgy when it comes to numbers... and also dark, nefarious schemes. The thing is, Eun-yong isn't even in Korea anymore, we saw her in the country at the beginning of this episode. Tae-chun faxes the details about Solar Bio to Eun-yong, calling a favor in Tae-chun's life that he promised earlier.
Tae-chun's bill is returned in full as Eun-yong deciphers the mysterious code used. This information is collected against Solar Bio using code 25780. These five figures represent the actual figures in Bio's original document. As he brings this up to his boss, Jong-soo, he points out insider trading and how the two companies are benefiting in a way that has something to do with In-ju.
Now Myung In-ju happens to be Chief Gi-seok's father-in-law, which is big news because Tae-chun is given the green light to apply for the warrant. He knows it's going to be a big fight, especially when Mi-seok comes up and looks daggers at Tae-chun while he's giving a big press conference.
It all started with Bio Solar's paperwork, something the shady Park Joon-kyung was in charge of. How and why remain a mystery, but it is clear that this conflict is far from over. Tae-chun knows things are heating up at the office, and he convinces Sang-il to join him in the fight ahead.
Tae-chun has done his due diligence, and he's already obtained warrants to search both Beauty Sparkle and GMI Bank. The point is that GMI's CEO is Chang-hyeon, a former District Attorney for Special Investigations.
After a rather tense dinner with Chief Park, Jong-soo instructs him to turn Sparkle in... but for now, instructs him to leave the GMI bank. When Tae-chun is assigned to spend the night, he hungers to do the right thing to make the most of the opportunity.
At a book gig for Chang-hyeon, a man stands up and sets himself on fire, pointing out the corruption facing GMI Bank. As a result, Jeong-su decides to confirm the previous warrant now that it is public knowledge. Could this have been his plan? He also told him to show up with a giant box labeled Prosecution so they could make a big show of it.
It's all about a mysterious woman with ties to the deceased named Yun Hye-rin. This woman died in a car accident, which in itself is quite suspicious. Actually, this place was called Bluenet before it became GMI Bank and was run by Hye-rin as CEO. Apparently, Yoon was one of Myung's victims.
Eun-yong realizes that Joon-gyeong is responsible for tipping off Tae-chun and believes that her nephew may be in trouble. As a result, he goes to the airport and decides to go back to Korea. The clue is actually a message to Eun-yong, "Come home, let's face this together."
Episode Review
Payoff gets off to a great start with a quick, well-written opening that introduces all of our characters, reveals our history, and shows that Eun-yong, Tae-chun, and Joon-gyeong will be working together. and bring down Chairman Myung and his cronies. Of course, it's not entirely original as we've seen this story of underdogs VS powerful businessmen played out many times before, but it's no less cute here.
The show has done a great job of capturing the tone and mood of this so far, and bringing together a military woman, a lawyer, and an ex-gangster is a nice way to add some dimension to this series. The battle between these two sides could get messy in the coming weeks!
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