Fifties Professionals: Episodes 11-12 (Final)
by lovepark
A black-ops agent, a North Korean spy, and a gangster get trapped on an island, and after ten years, it’s finally time to land the punch line. As our three heroes take a stand against their enemies, the lines that once separated them blur as their allegiances and motivations shift. Having grown beyond the confines of their past selves, they get ready to remedy their mistakes and put this battle to rest once and for all.
EPISODES 11-12
The time we have all been waiting for has arrived, and fanboy Gong-bok gets front row seats to the action. As he admires Bum-ryong’s strength, Ho-myung’s skills, and Bulgae’s cheap shots brains, he believes that with these three, any fight is as good as won… or at least, he hopes so because as soon as they defeat their enemies, the three heroes turn into bickering ahjussis. Nevertheless, Chairman Do shakes in his designer shoes when he hears that his mercenaries were defeated and Ho-myung casually tells him to wait his turn.
Once they secure the package, Ho-myung realizes the USB is encrypted, and even their resident hacker will need some time to crack it. The real problem, though, is that the file has a tracking feature built into it, and now their enemies in the North have locked onto their location. Soon, news of the package reaches Kyung-wook’s ears, and with the election only a few days away, he cannot afford any more surprises. Holding a meeting with all his lackeys — including Major Rhee from North Korea — Kyung-wook orders them to eliminate the three, but in that very room, dissent brews.
Chairman Do realizes that Kyung-wook is icing him out and tries to use his silver tongue to sway Boss Hwang to his side. His honeyed words are not needed, though, since Boss Hwang wants to kick Kyung-wook out of the picture and take over the island for himself, too. That means they need the USB, so Boss Hwang meets Bum-ryong and demands he hand over the package. The order is simple — it is, after all, the very thing the gangsters came to do — but deep down Bum-ryong knows that doing so will endanger the island residents. Thus, when Ho-myung pushes him to consider what he truly wants, Bum-ryong leaves the others, unable to decide.
With the group splintered, their odds of winning go from slim to none, and Bulgae reminds anyone who will listen that he has no skin in this game (except he does, and everyone else knows it). The moment he learns that Major Rhee captured Nam-il, Bulgae can no longer hide his inner Jae-soon and hands over the USB in exchange for his nephew’s safety. As the major mocks the ex-spy for falling for such an obvious ploy, Bulgae asks if he really thought he would hand over the real thing and fights his way to Nam-il. Alas, he is severely outnumbered, and even the North’s greatest spy cannot win by himself. Luckily, he doesn’t have to.
As Ho-myung comes flying in, the two agents make quick work of their enemies and force Major Rhee to retreat. This was also part of the plan since they need the spies as bait, and Gong-bok tails them to their hideout. Meanwhile, Bum-ryong has a chat with Officer Park and realizes that he prefers being the friendliest convenience store owner over a threatening thug. He then rejoins the group, and Gong-bok cries tears of joy while the others pretend to not have missed the gangster (they totally missed him).
The last piece of the puzzle is Prosecutor Kang, and once Sung-won escorts her to their new hideout, Ho-myung reveals his plan: they arrest the North Korean spies, create a media frenzy, lure Kyung-wook and his lackeys out, then capture them all. The details between each step are iffy, but thankfully, our bad guys aren’t that clever, either. However, before we jump into the final fight, the show takes another romance detour as Bulgae takes Prosecutor Kang outside to tell her that their relationship will not work. She laughs at his declaration, and in response, kisses him. Welp, that was fast.
The first step of the plan requires the assistance of the dance club (and plenty of suspension of belief on the viewer’s part). While Sung-won infiltrates the spies’ room as a plumber to fix a leak, the rest of the crew act as hostages and “escape” the hotel. They then rope in the detectives who were planning to kill the prosecutor into becoming hostage negotiators. When the spies try to escape, Sung-won pulls out a (fake) grenade and manages to convince them to surrender. On top of all that, the YouTuber who exposed Black Pearl was called in to live stream the event, and Prosecutor Kang holds a press conference about the corrupt mayoral candidate.
The night before the final battle, the three ahjussis find themselves struggling to sleep and end up chatting. Ho-myung tells the others that he gives them a generous 50% chance of succeeding, but rather than focus on the upcoming task, he says that he often does better when he thinks about what he wants to do after the mission. As they each share what they will do, Bum-ryong wishes to watch that movie he missed, Bulgae plans to take Nam-il on a trip, and Ho-myung just wants a new family portrait to symbolize his fresh start. While his original goal was revenge, Ho-myung has found something bigger than himself to fight for, and that little change may be all these three need to win tomorrow.
The next part of the plan is laying the bait, and Ho-myung does that himself by appearing before Kyung-wook on his campaign trail. He couples his brazen entrance with a cheeky threat, saying that this will be his last visit because Kyung-wook will be rotting in jail soon. Though our big bad scoffs at first, he seethes when he hears about the major’s capture, and it slowly sinks in that he might, indeed, be screwed.
In order to arrest all the bad guys at once, our heroes dangle the package as a lure, and like moths to a flame, they all gather at the abandoned resort to get it. The best scenario would be the three evildoers taking themselves out because of greed, but Kyung-wook is much too crafty to fall for such a simple trick. Having known about Chairman Do and Boss Hwang’s betrayal, he agrees to renegotiate profits, and immediately, all three groups attack our ahjussis instead.
Ho-myung’s right hook signals the start of the fight, and our heroes split off to hold back their enemies until Prosecutor Kang arrives with the arrest warrants. Unfortunately, she might take a while since the chief prosecutor tries to stop her, but Prosecutor Kang accounted for his meddling and pulls out an ace: a recording the detectives had of the chief ordering her hit. Spitting the chief prosecutor’s threats back at his face, she warns the others to choose their side wisely unless they want to be cleaned out with the trash, too.
Back at the resort, Ho-myung leads his attackers throughout the halls, deftly dodging and fighting his way past them, while Bulgae weaves through the crowds, sweeping his enemies off their feet. As for Bum-ryong and Gong-bok, they take a more direct approach, leveraging their strength to plow through foes, but their method leaves them more exposed to attacks. While Bum-ryong fends off multiple gangsters, another enemy rushes at his blind side, and Gong-bok throws himself in between his boss and the knife.
Though injured, Gong-bok is alive (thank goodness because I would have rioted otherwise), and Bum-ryong gets a new burst of energy to drag the younger man out of harm’s way. As the three groups convene in the main conference room, they find themselves haggard and surrounded despite all their efforts. Growing tired of the fight, Kyung-wook orders them to finish it, but bursting through the doors is In-gu with his deus ex machina. While In-gu’s two hulking giants pummel anyone in their way, the rest of the group retreats until we are only left with the main cast.
Cornered, Kyung-wook finally pulls out his gun, and in front of a barrel, not even the nation’s top agent can do anything. As Ho-myung hands over the USB, Kyung-wook offers a payment for the delivery and shoots. The others rush to Ho-myung’s crumpled body as the enemies escape, and backup arrives a moment too late. While Bulgae and Bum-ryong desperately try to save their friend, Ho-myung groans in pain and tells them that they are sitting on his hand. Somehow the agent has survived, and the show ends on a lighthearted note as they leave the resort making jabs at each other about losing their touch.
Just like before, the USB Ho-myung gave to Kyung-wook was fake, and the bad guys all go to jail together. As for the diamonds, they were anonymously donated to the orphanage run by Candidate Kim’s wife, and the island is saved (as long as you ignore the failing infrastructure and collapsing economy). In a sweet montage, we send off all the characters with group photos — even the bad guys get one — and Ho-myung returns to his day job as a delivery person, looking content and happy with his life.
A cute ending to a silly show, I’m glad everything wrapped up neatly, but boy, did it leave on a whimper. While the last action sequences were fun and I loved how they highlighted each of their fighting styles, the actual showdown between Kyung-wook and Ho-myung fizzled into nothing. It definitely undermined a lot of the work the show put into propping up Kyung-wook as an intimidating and cunning figure, only to be bested by a clip of Masked Rider. It was funny, but in the end, even the gun made no lasting impact since Ho-myung miraculously survived. Granted, I’m glad he lived, but an explanation would have been nice. I would have even accepted a bulletproof vest to show how he was prepared for any contingencies!
The show’s main problem was that it should have been ten (maybe even eight) episodes long, which would have probably solved the pacing issue and made for a tighter plot. Also, a couple of the characters could have been consolidated because too many were underutilized. I was especially disappointed to see the dance club sidelined because their storyline had so much potential yet went nowhere. For example, the last two episodes introduced a protest subplot which should have happened simultaneously with our heroes’ attack to demonstrate the front-stage and backstage machinations involved in bringing down someone like Kyung-wook, but instead, it was a redundant plot device to arbitrarily move up the deadline. This is where I also think Officer Park could have shined as a pillar of the community because the actual interesting relationship in Bum-ryong’s life was Gong-bok, not his meandering crush. There were a lot of interesting ideas introduced in the show, but ultimately, the writer struggled to juggle all the moving pieces and failed to develop them.
Despite all its faults, the show’s saving grace was the cast, and though they were not used to their full potential, everyone still brought plenty of humor and warmth to their characters. Especially after watching the behind-the-scenes footage, a lot of my favorite moments were ad-libbed, and the jokes and details that brought the story to life were actually things the actors added to their roles. That isn’t to say the writing didn’t create a solid base for them to work with, but if it wasn’t for the cast, I don’t know if I would have stuck around until the end. All in all, Fifties Professionals was worth the watch personally for me as a fan of the actors, but it’s not a show I would necessarily recommend to others.
RELATED POSTS
