Teach You a Lesson: Episode 1 (First Impressions)
by mistyisles
Bullies reign supreme in hallway and classroom alike, until one man steps onto the scene with the strength and authority to give them a taste of their own medicine. A lesson is certainly taught, but is it actually justice — or just another turn of the same violent cycle?
Editor’s note: This is a first impressions post only. To chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout post
EPISODE 1 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
This first episode of Teach You a Lesson drops us into the bleak landscape of a school ruled by ruthless bullies and adults who can’t (or won’t) do anything to stop them. We see it all through the eyes of student KIM KYUNG-MIN (Lee Chan-yong), who has only just graduated from the position of Designated Outcast. This means he watches with mingled relief and guilt as the new Outcast, PARK DAE-SEOK (Jung Soo-hyun), is humiliated, beaten, and ultimately driven to jump from the school roof. The incident is promptly swept under the rug by school staff and the bullies’ politically powerful parents, and thus the cycle continues.
Until, that is, someone throws a human wrench into the works. He’s Inspector NA HWA-JIN (Kim Mu-yeol) of the newly created Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB), and his job is simple: crack down on school violence by any means necessary. Which… sets off more than a few alarm bells for me, but within the show it’s framed as a heroic overturning of the status quo.
Hwa-jin gleefully intervenes when a bully attacks Kyung-min in the hallway, and all the usual intimidation tactics roll right off his back. The bully is no match for his fighting prowess, Hwa-jin is not at risk of losing his job for beating up students (because, as said, that IS his job), and he’s perfectly fine with having his face plastered all over the internet. In fact, he poses for photos with the bullies while wiping the floor with them.
What follows is a brutal power struggle between Hwa-jin and one bully in particular: RYU JUN-HYUNG (Lee Seung-gyu). Jun-hyung orders the other students to disregard Hwa-jin’s commands; Hwa-jin uses physical force to make Jun-hyung obey so the other students will follow suit. Jun-hyung waltzes to the front of the lunch line like he owns the whole school and grabs food with his bare hands just to toss it in the garbage; Hwa-jin tosses him into the garbage, leads the lunchroom in mocking him, and orders him to clean it all up and then get in the back of the line.
Each victory for Hwa-jin only escalates the conflict between them until Jun-hyung’s assemblyman father gets involved (more on him in a moment). It all leads up to the other bullies turning sides and naming Jun-hyung as the new Designated Outcast, and Jun-hyung snapping. He dumps gasoline all over the classroom and locks his ex-friends inside while the other students run screaming from the building. Hwa-jin’s solution is to pull out his own lighter and set the hallway on fire, trapping Jun-hyung in a tightening circle of flames. Only after Jun-hyung begs for help and forgiveness does Hwa-jin put out the fire. Jun-hyung is unharmed, but this time he seems to listen when Hwa-jin reminds him that this has been a hell of his own making.
Meanwhile, a similar struggle plays out in the adult world, as Jun-hyung’s father, ASSEMBLYMAN RYU KWANG-PIL (Song Young-kyu), tries to pull up the ERPB by the roots. But Jun-hyung isn’t the only one with political power in his corner. The ERPB is Education Minister CHOI KANG-SEOK’s (Lee Sung-min) personal passion project, and he’s gathered plenty of blackmail material evidence of Assemblyman Ryu’s misconduct. A few press leaks later, Assemblyman Ryu is disgraced and arrested, and the whole matter of Dae-seok’s suicide is back under investigation.
By the time the episode wraps up, all the school’s main bullies and their once-untouchable fathers have also been taken into police custody. Hwa-jin moves on to his next school assignment, and hints are dropped that this case was merely one stepping stone for Hwa-jin and Minister Choi in their goal of seeking justice for the death of one woman — presumably the teacher we’ve heard rumors of throughout, who was murdered by her own student.
It’s all very neat and tidy, black and white, the good guys win and the bad guys lose. But I can’t help agreeing with Kyung-min when he said Hwa-jin wasn’t so different from the bullies themselves. Hwa-jin insists he is, but he certainly seems to enjoy hurting and humiliating his targets just as much as they enjoy doing the same to theirs. But maybe that’s the point and it’s something he’ll have to confront as the show goes on. Regardless, Hwa-jin’s approach to discipline and blanket immunity left me with more discomfort than satisfaction.
So what makes Teach You a Lesson different from, say, Study Group, which I loved? Well, the comedy, for one thing. And the fact that the majority of Study Group’s violence was students fighting back against fellow students (usually their own bullies, at that). But, for me at least, Teach You a Lesson also has a certain smugness about it that seems uninterested in imagining an authority figure that commands respect through anything except fear.
We’re told over and over what a shame it is that teachers are no longer allowed to use corporal punishment and how wrong it is for adults to be frightened of children (implying in the same breath that the correct and only alternative is for those children to be afraid of the adults in charge). Hwa-jin is presented as a pinnacle of righteous anger and tough love, yet little thought is given to how easy it would be for him, or anyone in his role, to abuse his power. Or whether he already has. Of course, this is only the first episode, and maybe the rest of the show will address those concerns in a satisfying way. But I can’t say that this introduction gave me much confidence or desire to find out.
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