In this first episode of Good Casting, the Korean National Intelligence Service (KNIS) gathered a team with three women in the field and two men supporting them, of course, they have A boss. Much like Charlie’s Angels. If you like a fun action drama (and a little bit of ridiculousness) like My Secret Terrius, you will enjoy this one.
Episode 1 starts with two suspicious fishing boats exchanging money and a box of fish which microchips implanted in a dark night at a sea. Then a guy in the other boat detonated a bomb in the box and killed all the KNIS agents in the other boat.
Dong Gwan-soo, who is team leader for the 3rd Industrial Security team, briefs high officials that Michael Lee was on the boat. He is an infamous spy who took American military information and was exiled to China. If he sneaks out NAND flash ram tech from a company called Il-Gwang High Tech this time, the national loss will be at least $3 billion.
They form a team of three women. First, Hwan Mi-soon, who worked for the security department for 25 years; she is their best negotiator and sells insurance policies as her double identity. Next, Im Ye-eun is a white agent (supporting agent), she is an IT specialist and has never been on the field. The big boss recommends Baek Chan-mi, who is the best black agent (field agent), but also the craziest and is in prison as an inmate now. In prison, she beats up all the inmates who bully others and gives one of them a hard time. Gwan-soo doesn’t want to lead the team, but he has bills to pay for his recent divorce.
Mi-soon and Ye-eun get a call from Gwan-soo who tells them what is happening. They refused to take the job as field agents, but they are forced to take the job anyway. Gwan-soo tells them Michael Lee is the target and they both get serious about it. At Mi-soon’s home, she takes her gun and a bloody dress out of a pot, remembers the time she lost an agent called Min-seok, and says she will kill them all. In Ye-eun’s house, she thinks about her dead husband next to her little daughter.
Meanwhile, Chan-mi is looking for a clue for a case in a private jail cell and finally finds it. She gets super excited and dances in the prison. Then she gets a memory card from a blond Russian spy. Her boss (Kook-hwan) comes to the prison and offers Chan-mi the job of catching Michael. She is excited to meet her team but disappointed to see old Mi-soon and inexperienced Ye-eun.
At home, while Ye-eun gives a bath to her daughter, she thinks about her pregnancy and their plan for the marriage with her fiance. Back to current, Chan-mi gives Judo lesson to Ye-eun. After being thrown many times on the floor, she says she doesn’t have any sense of duty like Chan-mi. Chan-mi tells her that she does the job because it is fun.
Chan-mi then goes to a memorial hall and remembers their failed mission three years ago in Busan. Min-seok (Ye-eun’s fiancé) got shot by Michael while protecting Chan-mi. At the same time, Ye-eun gave birth to her daughter. After Min-seok checked the photo of Ye-eun and the newborn baby, he texted “I love you” and died. Chan-mi followed Michael and tried to shoot him, but she only shot Michael’s shoulder because her boss, Kook-hwan came and stopped her. Michael ran away with injuring his shoulder. She cries! Ye-eun tries to call Min-seok but he is dead in the hospital bed.
In the present, the three come out of a van and walk together for their mission. Gwan-soo says “We all live or we all die. If anyone falls, we all fail and die.”
EPILOGUE
Kook-hwan gives details about all three agents to a mysterious woman and tells her that the undercover operation has started. The woman turns out to be the ex-wife of Seok-ho, who is the CEO of their target company.
COMMENTS
The first episode introduces all the main characters and their background stories. While watching it, I felt like I saw this drama before somewhere else. Like a lot of Hollywood blockbusters have a similar storyline but people keep going to the movie theater to watch them. Also, some scenes looked so familiar to me as well.
For example, Chan-Mi’s flashback. It is supposed to be a serious scene (I guess), but I couldn’t stop laughing because it was so corny and reminded me of a Hong-Kong movie called “A Better Tomorrow II” where a young policeman is shot during his mission and his wife gives birth to their daughter. He was dying but pretending everything was fine. The tvN weekend drama When My Love Blooms is also based on an old Hong-Kong movie (In the Mood for Love). Maybe tvN is into old Honk-Kong movies now??
However, this drama is still an enjoyable, fun one. Looking forward to watching the next episode.
MUSIC
The song Chan-mi was dancing in the prison: Clowns laughs at us – Kim Wan-sun (삐에로는 우릴보고 웃지)
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