Vincenzo

Finished my Game of Thrones watch/rewatch. I had only seen the first four seasons, so the second half was only vaguely familiar to me because of all the gossip and chat about it when it first aired. I was not as offended by the final season as some, probably because I was just not that invested in the characters to begin with. 

Now I'm watching Vincenzo, a kdrama on that was apparently a big hit on Netflix. It was originally broadcast on Korean cable. This means it can be a little edgier than regular broadcast TV dramas in its use of violence. It is an odd mix of regular kdrama tropes, like the "truck of doom" as murder weapon, and a more international framework that brings guns into the story. It uses the usual kdrama set-up of eeevil chaebol/prosecutor corruption/psycho killer vs. plucky found family surrounding the OTP, but the male lead, played by Song Joong-Ki, is supposed to be a Mafia consigliere who was adopted as a child in Italy. He has blood on his hands, and is shown as more effective in punishing the bad guys through dirty means than the institutions of law and justice which are all crooked. It is interesting to see how the drama uses over-the-top humor to leaven the idea that the protagonist is just as bad as his enemies since they are all murderers. We have lots of shows in the U.S. with amoral protagonists, but it's really unusual for a Korean drama to bring the cynical revenge stories so common in Korean movies to  a TV series since those usually include a moralizing punishment or death. After all, you still can't show characters openly smoking on Korean TV, so the show goes through all kinds of contortions to show characters about to smoke. The moment where Vincenzo is shown holding a smoking cigarette is the first time I've seen the main lead actually light up even though he still isn't shown inhaling. Yet the same series can show all kinds of sadistic violence. 

The Italian word 'consigliere' is misheard as the Korean pronunciation of Corn Salad: