Master of Revenge Ep 2

For the recap of episode 1, please head over to Dramabeans. A wonderful recap had been written by Saya over there, so I didn’t bother with it here.

Master of Revenge; God of Noodles Episode 2:

“A big noodles restaurant owner and a vague memory of his face in the fire; that was all I remembered of him.”

Young Moo Myeong had searched relentlessly for him even until he became adult Moo Myeong but he’d never thought about what he’d do after finding him, which brings us back to the present, with him holding onto a knife pointed at GilDo. A terrible glint appears in his eyes, but the arrival of YeoKyung snaps him to his senses

YeoKyung asks if the food is ready since the children are getting a little fussy from hunger and GilDo tells her to teach them patience; to teach them how to respect food and the person making it. Says the person who doesn’t even respect other people’s right to life.

Some journalists come in and GilDo gives an interview as he kneads the noodle-dough. He spits some PR-perfect lines of noodles and lovable kids and Myeong watches him from behind, getting suffocated from disgust.

He heads to the washroom to freshen up and accidentally wipes his mouth with his scarred arm. The sight of the remnant of the fire that took his family and innocence sickens him and though later he sees the orphanage’s children enjoying the noodles, he can’t bring himself to eat any. YeoKyung emerges with tea, ready to serve them to GilDo and the director but Myeong volunteers to bring it to them himself.

In his office, the director follows GilDo like an intimidated servant as GilDo creepily eyes photos of the orphanage’s children. He all but orders the director to fake his volunteering at the orphanage to the reporters and asks if he’s ever heard of a child named Kim SoonSeok.

The devil himself enters the room at that, his eyes following GilDo’s every move. When GilDo is just one step away from the photo of his younger self, Myeong drops his cups on purpose and pulls him away just in time.

Myeong leaves and YeoKyung calls after him from outside the room, though he doesn’t hear her. GilDo asks the director once more about SoonSeok – a boy who would have become the same age as Myeong and probably has burn wounds. The thankfully ignorant and incompetent director says he doesn’t know of any kid like that but offers to find out. YeoKyung stands outside their door, stricken, obviously having connected the dots.

GilDo throws an envelope of money on the director’s desk and leaves.

As the orphanage’s children eat his noodles, he sits among them, playing up his affection for them for the rolling cameras. A girl asks him from whom he learnt to cook noodles and GilDo’s face goes stone cold, saying that he didn’t learn it. He stole the recipe.

Then he breaks the tension by cracking a joke and everyone laughs it off, save for Myeong, who knows of the truth.

GilDo walks deep into an isolated area where he had ordered his car parked. When asked for the inconvenient location by his chauffeur, he answers that he just wanted to avoid the attention for riding a black car. He also chose such a faraway orphanage in order to find someone.

In Gangnam, the hub of Seoul’s rich, GilDo stands atop a high-rise, declaring his intention to bring Goongrakwon over but the chauffeur replies that his father-in-law will be against it. When has other people’s objection ever stopped GilDo though?

Said old father in law is hunched over his crock-pots, wiping them tenderly has his chef/friend/employee nags at him to rest. Apparently, he doesn’t have a good relationship with his daughter’s husband, calling him a fool and scaring the employees when he quarrels with him. That’s because he recognizes that GilDo has no real interest in noodles and fears that the focus of his traditional brand will shift elsewhere.

Back at the orphanage, Myeong stands with YeoKyung, deep in thought. He tries to deny the return of GilDo, provoking YeoKyung in the process as he brings up her parents’ murderer in an effort to convince himself that he saw wrongly. No such luck, as he springs up from nightmares of GilDo’s laughing face, framed by flickering yellow flames.

The next day, Myeong heads straight for the library, where its records lay out GilDo’s entire life since he’d first stepped into Goongrakwon, from when it was a small shop till now, a kingdom with him at the top.

Meanwhile, GilDo nonchalantly deals with an agitated buckwheat farmer whose  low quality buckwheat is not accepted despite him having cleared out his earlier grape fields to grow buckwheat under GilDo’s persuasion. The farmer tells GilDo that he’ll get his punishment from the deities for mistreating people but GilDo just turns and questions that, saying, “Punishment is what one person gives to another.”

He turns to leave but gets summoned by his father-in-law who had seen everything.

Old Grandpa Go tells GilDo that he wasn’t educated so he’ll just cut to the chase and GilDo tells him to just learn, even in old age, ha. Anyway, they face off regarding the moving of the restaurant’s headquarters, with the father-in-law insisting that it stay where its roots have grown and the son-in-law insisting that it moves to where its roots can grow better in richer land.

When GilDo leaves, Grandpa Go pulls out the old “Wanted” poster of GilDo, remembering the day that he was given it, where he’d confirmed that he was the only one who knew of it apart from the informer. In present say, he pulls out his flip-phone and asks for someone to be found.

At school, class president Chae YeoKyung naps as her classmates endure heat for not being able to answer a certain question. YeoKyung gets called out by the teacher and simply but impressively, like they do in dramas, answers the question in full detail while half-asleep. She gets called for a one-on-one with the teacher, whom she addresses with the affectionate “unnie” in private. Her teacher gives her a pick-me-up to drink, some cash for the orphanage and an advice to forget the kids at the orphanage and just study during this important academic year.

After rejecting the well-meaning advice, YeoKyung walks out and is stopped by Myeong who offers an apology.

In his own class (I had some sort of whiplash here, since Chun JungMyung doesn’t exactly pass off as a high schooler very well…), Myeong messes up his friend-and-seat-partner GilYong’s set up for a bet – tell how much water there is in a cup of saline water with just a taste. I guess gamblers can be kind of creative.

The rich kid that Myeong spilled the water on bets against Myeong being able to tell which of several cups has a grain of salt in its water when Myeong claims to have perfect taste.  It’s double or nothing with the stack of money he throws casually on the table. Also, they should go on Jackpot.

Too bad that even though Myeong gets it right and wins them money, Myeong declines doing it for a living, since he’s insulted by GoYong not trusting his perfect sense of taste enough to not use 99% refined salt instead of natural salt.

TaeHa runs up to them, stopping in the middle of his run that was training for the police academy’s exam to chat. After he leaves, YeoKyung bounces up to them, linking her arms in theirs. Aw, they make such a pretty sight. Then she runs off and GoYong finds his money missing, hahahahah!

At night, while GoYong shivers in his sleep, Myeong takes his money and goes on a train ride to Goongrakwon where he’s served the exact same noodles that his father once made for him. He cries at the memory of the taste and steels himself as he recalls the moment GilDo admitted to stealing the recipe.

Dusk falls but he remains at the place, hidden between the trees.

At home, YeoKyung worries for him as she reads her newspaper with a hole. The next day, she checks the contents of the missing piece with another and guesses that Myeong is at Masan. Oh, to meet NaJung? No. He’s just groggy and rolling in its vegetation.

TaeHa takes a train all the way there and endures a nasty lady who takes over his window seat and eats a storm messily. She even steals his taxi!

He sees her climbing the fence of Goongrakwon (actually, a short wall) and calls out, which startles her and she falls over. He climbs over to help her up but she just whacks him in the head and continues on her way to steal 10-year-old-royal soy sauce. He runs after her, the cop-wannabe side of him coming up. She screams, lol, and attracts the attention of someone at Goongrakwon. She sprawls over him in the process of hiding from the guard.

Anyways, once the deed was done (TaeHa actually helped her, ha), TaeHa confronts her or stealing and she suddenly talks about her sick grandma, complete with the poor-me puppy face, hahahahaha! I bet that’s a lie and TaeHa falls for it.

They walk off together, him complaining that she speaks too rudely to him and her telling him to just speak in banmal to her. She gifts him her sunglasses and makes off, going into the main house to search for something else.

TaeHa continues on his way when he sees GilDo return and Myeong’s pale white face hovering over the bushes across. From nowhere the buckwheat farmer appears and runs towards GilDong. His chauffeur stops the man in his tracks and delivers several punches to the stomach, and a bunch of Men in Black appear to continue the job. WTS.

GilDo bends down and sneers like the creepster that he is and tells him that it useless coming at him with a knife since he’s more afraid of people taking away his money. Also, he’s going to take away the buckwheat farmer’s land.

GilDo: “If you get something stolen, think of how to get it back.”

He threatens the buckwheat farmer with a lawsuit and walks off. Myeong almost runs into the scene but TaeHa stops him. Together, they go home.

YeoKyung cooks in the kitchen and Myeong walks up to her with a harrumph, his way of announcing that he’s back. The guys tip toe around her and Myung turns around to say that they can’t leave and to endure it until three months later, since they’ve all promised to stay together at the orphanage until they’re 19.

Eesh, the bastard director calls Myeong out and punches him for staying out. Myeong turns livid and doesn’t take his shit, about to beat the crap outta him when TaeHa intervenes. Why??!?!?!? Move away TaeHa!

Crazy Myeong just punches TaeHa twice but TaeHa refuses to let go and that’s when nasty director sees the burn scar on Myeong’s wrist and remembers GilDo’s description. Nononononono… …

GilDo decides that he needs a guard dog and suggests DokGu, the guy who’s the best in the field and currently stepping out of prison gates. He doesn’t need someone loyal, just someone who reveres money, since violence can open people’s mouth and money can close open ears.

At the correction center/ prison gates, DokGu gets greeted by the gangster who faced off with Myeong and TaeHa from last episode. He’s offered a block of tofu and the information that one of his juniors had passed away from a roller-blading accident, pfft.

DokGu rejects the tofu and goes for potato stew instead, since dead-junior’s name was Potato Stew. GilDo’s men come upon him after his meal and he single-handedly brings them all down. GilDo’s chauffeur takes joy in seeing his sharp-as-ever skills and offers him a place by GilDo’s side.

DokGo rejects it though, at least until he’s taken over Yangpyeong, Suwon and Gangnam in the way, you know, gangsters do. Then he asks for the chauffeur’s name – Hwang Sung Rok – and calls him a dog’s child. He doesn’t mean the cute, cuddly kind.

Greasy director goes through his records and reads up on Myeong.

Grandpa Go meets a former police officer and asks him to search up everything in the envelope he gives him. They name no names but I’m pretty sure it’s GilDo. Too bad he gets seen by Chauffeur Hwang and get beat up by GilDo’s men.

Ooooh damn, and the envelope goes straight to GilDo, who tells Hwang to “get ready”, whatever that means. I’m betting it’s something nefarious, given his track record.

Grandpa Go waits foolishly for his call and the former policemen tells him to go somewhere. He gets into his car and is driven… to an intersection where he’s abandoned.  A truck-o-doom comes for him and… yep, that went as expected.

GilDo rejoices at his empire finally being entirely his and melts into his seat in relief. Then, the orphanage’s slimy director calls him, asking for the time-frame when GilDo’s kid went missing, though he doesn’t tell him of his suspicions regarding Myeong.

Instead, he goes to Myeong and asks if his name is Choi SoonSeok. SoonSeok gives him a blank yet cold stare, wondering almost angrily why that name is coming out of the bastard’s mouth.

Comments:

Really, I don’t really have much to say that is not obvious. Cinematography, styling, directing, acting, writing, music and so much more are stunningly well done in this drama. It’s like watching a very long movie, though it’s not that whimsical or downright gritty to place it amongst the indie films (and certainly not Kim KiDuk’s). Still, it makes for very moving and engaging television.

GilDo is a complete psychopath, that’s enough said and the 4 leads don’t really pass off as teenagers well, hur. I needed to be reminded many times that they’re not even eighteen but that’s a very minor complain compared to what this drama has going for it.

Honestly, I’m not as sucked in yet, since even though, yes, Myeong has come into contact with GilDo and hates him for destroying his family, I don’t see the overwhelming hostility or the obsession that’s a mark of many “revengers” and that makes sense, since Myeong is still getting his bearings right from meeting the monster he’s been looking for all his life and is still grounded by his rag tag team of friends/ family.

Speaking of his friends, I adore the way they’re so close. I guess hardship really breeds camaraderie, like DongGu said, heh.

 

If there’s anything you think I missed out or you want to gush about, write it below and discuss!