Reborn Rookie: Episode 1 (First Impressions)
by missvictrix
JTBC’s Reborn Rookie is here, featuring a rather uneven mashup of genres and tones along with some fun character archetypes. One part chaebol-themed melo and another part comedic body swap, I’m not sure exactly what we have on our hands, but the drama seems poised for some payout at the end by way of recompense and redemption.
Editor’s note: This is a first impressions post only. To chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout post
EPISODE 1
We open with our lead character CHAIRMAN KANG YONG-HO (Sohn Hyun-joo) and his early morning ritual: a few laps around his racetrack in his Maserati supercar featuring a not-fast-enough electric battery made by one of his companies. The picture is painted quickly: our chairman is cold, calculating, focused on profit, and caring mostly about his company, Choiseong Group. We know the archetype.
Continuing the swift character and situation setup, our chairman calls a sudden board meeting and announces to his room of CEOs that he’s going to step down from his role. Everyone’s shocked, and the chairman is mad no one is begging him to stay. (This seems like a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t type situation.)
Certainly not in the begging-him-to-stay camp are his twins KANG JAE-KYUNG (Jeon Hye-jin) and KANG JAE-SUNG (Jin Gu). They each oversee different companies in the conglomerate and are at each other’s throats, but as we’ll start to see, though they’re ruthless, the pairing is mostly played with a comedic villain duo edge. They’re greedy and evil, but not complete psychopaths. (I think?)
Instead, these two are played more like troublemakers who never outgrew their mischief. But now, instead of burning ants with magnifying glasses (my inference, but it seems like something they would have done as kids), they’re desperately vying for the chairmanship. That little hit-and-run accident while they were secretly in their father’s Maserati? That young man they mowed down and left for dead in the street? A quick fib and a massive coverup will fix it. NBD.
The young man mowed down in the street is, of course, our other leading man HWANG JOON-HYUN (Lee Jun-young). At this point in the drama we’ve spent about four minutes of runtime with him, so he feels as cookie cutter as that necessitates. We learn a few important things about him: he’s worked his ass off to get a big-deal contract with the League 1 soccer team Choiseong FC. Also, his only family is his little dementia-ridden granny who lives in a nursing home and lives for his career. And for some icing on this melodrama cake, he’s struggling to pay the bills for her care.
Jun-young does his best to give this character life, but he either chucks in too many cheesy smiles, or I just haven’t yet forgiven him for his muscle suit, because Joon-hyun is a rather flat character at this point. In fact, the drama doesn’t care much about this, because the bulk of the attention is really on our chairman, the battle for successorship that’s just begun, and the machinations therein.
When Joon-hyun wakes up and finds his leg is busted and his soccer career is over, we are given a quick minute to process his agony of crushed dreams, rescinded contract, penalty fees, new debt, broken heart, etc. Then we follow him straight to the chairman’s office where he turns up with video evidence and a demand for the chairman to make it right.
This is where things start to get a bit more interesting. First, we see the chairman’s true colors a bit more clearly. Or rather, what we thought might be glimmers of humanity and honor were actually not that at all. The chairman has zero sympathy for Joon-hyun, and in a pretty great exchange between the two, essentially offers the kid a blank check for his silence. Joon-hyun thinks this evil chairman is protecting himself, but we (and the chairman) know that what he’s actually protecting is Choiseong Group — because his so-called “brats” are the ones who caused this mess in his scandal-less life, and he knows it.
In another great confrontation, the chairman tells his twins that he knows what happened that night. In fact, he consistently sees through their lies, fibs, and stories very easily. But sadness, he’s not upset that his children would leave someone for dead in the street over pure carelessness and greed. No, he’s furious that they didn’t do a good enough of a job covering it up. Clearly they are not suited for the chairmanship. Also their slush funds were not well hidden enough. For shame. He storms out, they freak out, and also freaking out is Joon-hyun, a few floors down.
Suddenly, everything converges. The chairman gets off the elevator, heading for an elaborate staircase. The two twins, who’ve bolted down the stairwell in an attempt to stop their father from announcing they’re fired and out of the race, meet him at the top of the stairs. In the kerfuffle of them running and shouting and dodging people, the chairman trips, helped (or is that pushed?) by his son. At the same time, Joon-hyun is in a fury marching up those same stairs. What happens is the two bonk heads — *insert terrible comedic sound effect* — and get knocked unconscious.
This scene is the scene that really starts off the plot (i.e., the body swap), but the CGI and sound effects did it no favors. Is this a moment of high drama for our chaebol throne, or is it a wacky bit of fantasy that starts off a madcap body swap? I’m not sure the drama knows which it wants to be, and it was hard for me to balance the serious/melo parts of the drama with the very unserious moments, as both persist.
In our final scenes, the chairman wakes up in his hospital bed and the drama uses a first-person camera to show us the disorientation of him waking up in the wrong body. It’s dramatic for a beat, and then when he gets up and sees his reflection, turns comedic: Joon-hyun literally does his best impersonation of The Scream, and sure it’s goofy, but is this the drama to be goofy in? And is that something our expressionless chairman would actually do? (I’ll blame the direction for this unevenness, and hope they get their bearings as the drama continues!)
To close out the episode and set us up for the rest of the story to come, we watch the chairman (in Joon-hyun’s body) witnessing the blatant lies of his kids. Not only do they lie about the fact that he was going to eject them from their roles, but they say that the chairman was indeed responsible for the hit-and-run. In short, they throw their father under the bus, and it’s the final straw for him. He charges at them in a fury and then makes a beeline for the VIP room where his real body is in a coma. But as he approaches, the chairman in the hospital bed codes, and the chairman in Joon-hyun’s body drops to the ground in pain, and we’re left to wonder the fate of both characters as the episode closes.
Not a bad opening episode — the swift storytelling didn’t waste any time setting up our arcs and getting to the important inciting incident — but also it didn’t offer anything particularly compelling or unique. The only thing that would keep me coming back to this one is the thought of watching Jun-young cosplay Sohn Hyun-joo. We only get one short scene of it in Episode 1, but I have a feeling that’s where the fun will be at.
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