My Week in Dramas 3 December 2025
The Taxi Driver aka Lee Je-hoon has returned to the screen for a third season with greater stakes and crazier action set pieces. Fight scenes seem to be better than before. The first two episodes sees Kim Do-gi and gang head off to Japan to bring home a young woman who was scammed into leaving home and hearth by a human trafficking yakuza. Do-gi sniffs around in a taxi and becomes a person of interest for interpol and the local cops. As per usual he goes undercover in usual flamboyant fashion seeking the attention of head honcho, Matsuda Keitan (Kasamoto Sho). Episodes 3 and 4 sees the Rainbow Taxi crew tangle with a used car dealership headed by former lawyer (Yoon Shi-yoon). Aside from fraud, his rap sheet includes extortion, assault and exploiting loopholes in the law leaving unsuspecting customers up the creek without a paddle. Yoon Shi-yoon is suitably greasy and sleazy as one might expect of a used car salesman who lives up to the stereotype. As usual the villains are so unlikeable to be punchable and you can’t wait for the team to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Another drama that’s making waves is Dear X which has perhaps one of the most disturbing yet pathetic female antagonists I’ve come across. Kim You-jung plays Baek Jin-a, bright young starlet with a troubled past. The show tracks her life via flashbacks as she navigates normality with a ne’er do well father and horrific domestic violence. Kim Young-dae is her former step-brother suffering a very bad case of saviour complex where Jin-a is concerned. In present day she’s an up and coming acting talent while he’s a published author who has achieved some measure of success in his own right. Trouble seems to follow Jin-a everywhere — from her school days and now in the entertainment industry the age old affliction of jealousy never goes away. To round out the main trio is Kim Do-hoon as an old schoolmate Jae-o who went to prison for killing his father while abusing his younger brother.
With an angry fist directed above and around her, Jin-a plays the victimhood card with manipulative flair. Even before she became a professional actress, she was already an accomplished pretender — wearing the mask of affability to her “friends” and reserved her venom for the “mean girl”. On the upside, her sociopathic ire is generally directed at bullies.
Six episodes on, it’s evident that Dear X is another example of a well-written character study of a young woman who on some level elicits sympathy but then squanders any currency by crossing lines. It’s also an exploration of the men in her life but especially Jun-seo who is in love with her but also racked with guilt about her dysfunctional childhood. He tends to “feed the beast” helping her and rescuing her from situations when he shouldn’t. The show doesn’t put a glossy tint on their relationship or Jin-a’s decisions. Try as she might to escape it, her past inevitably catches up with her.
Ji Chang-wook is the latest iteration of The Count of Monte Cristo — perhaps for three or four episodes. The Manipulated is a jaw-dropping, adrenaline pumping thriller about one man’s survival against the juggernaut that lands him unjustly in jail for the rape and murder of a woman he’d never met. It is only much later that he discovers that he was chosen to be the scapegoat by a well-resourced machinery. He then loses all hope until he is befriended by the prison’s altar server. First, he has to survive prison and relentless beatings from fellow inmates. He is a punching bag for the longest time until he improves his fitness and punches back.
The villain of the show is depicted as a precocious child who has been overly indulged and never had to grow up. He even has a blind nanny at his beck and call. I’m sure there are plenty of psychological labels for such an individual but his literary counterpart Peter Pan looms large. Unfortunately for all his victims, he is not a Peter Pan that fights pirates but one that has found it more fun to be a sadistic pirate under the veneer of respectability. Everything is a game to him and his wealth gives him the ability to use his fellow humans as pawns or avatars (a word used in the show to describe scapegoats) to manoeuvre at his leisure.
What comes up as Tae-joong fights his way out of a barrel is the question of agency. Do mere mortals like us have actual agency? Are we objects of large-scale conspiracies that convince us that we have more agency than we really do? Are we a la Matrix dancing to the tune of hidden powerful forces, deluded about free will?
Ji Chang-wook is reliably fantastic especially in the prison scenes. The makeup certainly helps but he’s undoubtedly giving what could arguably be the performance of a lifetime.
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This will probably be my last post for a few weeks. I’ll probably be back after Christmas. Once again. Thank you for your support.