"Taxi Driver" Korean drama season two: Episode two recap

 

Air Dates: 17th until April 15, 2023. Friday and Saturday nights at 9:00 pm on SBS/ViuTV

Director: Lee Dan    Screenwriter: Oh Sang-Ho.... This episode's rating: 10.3%

This series ran for 1070 minutes or close to 67 minutes an episode.

Main Cast: The five heroes from Jang's 'Revenge Squad' are also in this second season. The only major character who didn't return was the prosecutor Kang Ha-Na so don't know if Jang's crew will be feeling any pressure from the authorities. She was mentioned in the opening minutes and also her superior won't be in this series. The top five names below are the 'Revenge Squad', think at least one more major character will be added in plus will be doing a lot of editing in the first half of the series. The bottom characters will be the guest stars for the story, for the first case will leave them there for two recaps. If you didn't read the posts or view the first season highly recommend that you do as it's my top drama from the last three years. Here are the links to the final two episodes of season one if you want to get a feel for the series:

Episode fifteen .... Episode sixteen

 Lee Je-Hoon as Kim Do-Gi.... Everyone on Jang's team is important but Do-Gi is the most essential part of the team. He used to be a member of the Special Forces of the Korean military and is truly one unbeatable fighter. Shortly after Do-Gi was discharged from the military his mother was murdered by a serial killer and that was a key story in the first season. After that killing is when Do-Gi was recruited by Jang to be a part of his 'revenge squad', after being together for over three years the team was disbanded at the end of season one. But Do-Gi kept in touch with his mentor and after two years rejoined fighting evil with Jang, soon the other three completed the team.

 Kim Eui-Sung as Jang Sing-Chul.... Leader of the 'revenge squad' and for well over a year it was a solo project. Jang also owns the Rainbow Taxi company which is a semi cover for his team, he also runs a victim's organization called Blue Bird. At the end of the first season Jang felt his squad had done all they could do so disbanded the team, think he was also worried for their safety. However Jang did secretly keep in touch with Do-Gi and in the first episode the pair did work on two revenge cases. The second case was so intense the rest of the old 'revenge squad' found out some details about it and Jang eventually brought them back into the fold. Jang below was telling the police after the squad's disbandment that he did everything by himself but the charges were soon dropped.

Pyo Ye-Jin as Ahn Go-Eun.... Her sister had been framed by a sex con artist and because of that had committed suicide. That was over five years ago and after hearing Go-Eun's story Jang recruited her to be a member of his squad. Go-Eun is the techno whiz of the team and there's seemingly nothing computer related she can't do. After Jang broke the team up Go-Eun took the civil service exam, when the series began she was working for the police in their Information Management division though soon returned to Jang's squad in the second episode.

 Jang Hyuk-Jin as Choi Kyung-Goo.... Was the head mechanic at Rainbow Taxi and really knew how to 'soup up' Do-Gi's vehicle. When the 'revenge squad' was disbanded Choi went back to being a researcher testing out new automobiles but he really missed working with his mates.

 

Bae Yoo-Ram as Park Jin-Eon.... In real life him and the above man are a comedy team who also appear in many dramas together. Below is Park on the left, Choi is on the right. Park comes off as being a bit goofy but what an intelligent man he is! What he did after the team broke up was to work for Korea's version of NASA designing spaceships but was about to be transferred to Russia(?) for five years.

 Park Jong-Hwan as Park Hyeon-Jo.... Don't know much about him yet but think he will be a major character and also a thorn in the side of Jang! Park works for the Northeast Seoul PD and is also an executive at the Geumsa Organization which appears to be a shady outfit.

 ****Guest stars for the first story which lasts for two episodes, will update/change the names for every story and most last for two episodes.

Choi One as Lee Joon-Bum.... He's on the left below and is the father of Dong-Jae. Lee's wife died about twenty years ago and he raised his son alone since then running his own fried chicken shop. Things hadn't been going so well as Lee was behind on his rent payments and had borrowed some money from loan sharks who had been pressuring him for the money. Soon after is when Dong-Jae disappeared and Lee became a broken man who closed his shop and spent all day hunting for his son with no success. Eventually Lee became the first 'revenge seeker' in this second season to contact Jang as there was something very shady with his son's disappearance. 

Zo Zee-An as Lee Dong-Jae.... That's him above on the right and he's about 25 in age. Dong-Jae had completed his military stint and was attending college but was aware of his father's money woes. Dong-Jae said he had a scholarship to attend an American college for two years but instead had taken a shady job in Vietnam to help his father with the bills. Soon after arriving in Vietnam Dong-Jae disappeared and unknown to anyone in Korea was being held captive along with at least five others who had to design illegal gambling games.

Lee Kyu-Ho as Kwon Du-Sik.... Boss of Cheongeum Industries gambling website and he's based in Vietnam, it appears he has some Korean police working for him.

Yoon Seok-Hyun as Sang.... Manager/director of Cheongeum Industries.

Park Seong-Geun as Kim Hyung-Sub.... Corrupt captain of the Northeast Seoul PD's violent team and is the unknown chairman/leader of Cheongeum Industries which is based in Vietnam.

Shim So-Young as Madam Lim.... She was also in the first season and was brought down in terrific fashion by Do-Gi. Lim has made a return and this time it was in Vietnam, she was only in this second episode and unwillingly really helped Do-Gi to solve his case!

 Short promo video for the first two episodes which is subbed in English.

 

   

 The ratings for season one were much higher than predicted, a few records were even set. For this season the ratings increased so much that there will be a third season, no start date has been announced but it will be sometime next year. The rating for this episode was solid though the lowest of all sixteen season two episodes. A viewer doesn't know going in how an episode will be and to me while a solid show it may have been the worst of the eighteen to date but still better than most other dramas. Thought there was a bit too much humor and some things that Do-Gi did made you scratch your head wondering how what took place happened? The setting was Vietnam and they should have used that location a bit more in the story as almost every character was Korean. Just a few minor beefs but overall I would give this a grade of 8.8/10, if that's the lowest for a long series you know it's a must watch!

  

 There was no formal ceremony or anything along those lines but by the end of this show the five members of Jang's 'revenge squad' are now a team again. This is part two of the story, six of the seven revenge cases are two episodes while one is four. In season one the criminal who had to be brought to justice in the ninth and tenth episodes was a Chinese woman named Madam Lim. She ran a phish scamming telephone operation and when Do-Gi brought her to justice it may have been the best conclusion of any season one case. Do-Gi had impersonated as a Chinese man named Wang who claimed to be from the same province and somehow convinced Lim he was in love with her!!!! Which was far from the truth and hate to say it but Lim is one unattractive woman! In the two years since being brought down Lim has gotten back on her feet and lives in the city of Cotaya which is a fictional one in Vietnam. She made a reappearance in this episode and unknowingly helped Do-Gi immensely with his case, will talk about her more in this recap.

 Positive you read the first recap so you know that Do-Gi had just arrived in the fictional city of Cotaya, Vietnam. He was looking for a 25 year old man named Lee Dong-Jae who had gone missing and his father hired Jang's 'revenge squad' to look for his son but at the time the team was just Jang and Do-Gi. Dong-Jae had been working for a company named Cheongeum when he disappeared, unknown to Jang many others from Korea had gone missing too when they began to work for this outfit. Jang is still in Korea monitoring Do-Gi's activities via a camera he's wearing on his glasses, there's also a small transmitter. However when Do-Gi and two other new Korean workers for Cheongeum were being held prisoner at their out of the way building Do-Gi's glasses were discarded and Jang had no way of keeping tabs on his best ever 'revenge squad' employee. Jang didn't know that Do-Gi hadn't been wearing his glasses and was frantic he messed up back at his end and to an extent he may have. But coming to save the day was the indispensable Go-Eun who is such a whiz at the computer and had arrived back at her old haunting grounds in the nick of time before Jang blew everything up! The team HQ is in the basement of Jang's house and reminds you of the Batcave!

 Blowing everything up is what Jang almost did but Go-Eun restored order to the computer system, right at the same time Do-Gi was able to retrieve his glasses and those scenes are right above. Had mentioned there was a bit more humor in this episode which was courtesy of the two ex-mechanics Choi and Park. That's them in the top three screenshots and they knew of Dong-Jae's disappearance but had been warned by Jang to stay away from his team! The pair did discover that Dong-Jae had gone to Vietnam and had never returned, that was after Choi was thrown in a police cell for impersonating an officer! Soon they also learned that their old mate Do-Gi had just traveled to Vietnam for the case, the sometimes inept duo couldn't let their mate do the searching alone and they too soon arrived in the country. They were the first to discover that Madam Lim was alive and well, because of that they lost their money and suitcases. Their long scene was near the beginning and we luckily(!) only saw them for a little bit here and there until the end. All of the new employees are actually prisoners of the Cheongeum company and are being held in cells. In an odd twist Do-Gi was sent to the cell where Dong-Jae was once held and did discover in a training manual that the young man had written for help, that's in a screenshot above and you will notice the blood of Dong-Jae on the pages!

 My semi problem with this episode was that things worked out too well and quickly for Do-Gi which was rarely the case in season one. Think a huge reason is that this first case didn't really begin until the thirty minute mark of episode one so there was much less time spent on this case. Do-Gi and the two other unnamed men from Korea were brought to Cotaya to design illegal gambling programs that was run by some thugs from Korea, that wasn't allowed in their home country so they went all the way to Vietnam? Conditions are extremely brutal at this 'prison', Do-Gi hadn't been roughed up but just about everyone else had. However it appears you can make money as Dong-Jae had sent some home to his father Lee who we only saw at the very end of this episode. To get on the good side of this gang designing excellent programs is the key and Do-Gi lucked out as Go-Eun is back at her old position. She was able to quickly design a game for him which you can see above and that impressed the main boss to no end though one of his underlings deleted it which was actually a trick done by Go-Eun. The big boss is the big man(!) above whose name is Kwon Doo-Sik, he's also wanted by Interpol on at least one murder charge. Two screenshots above him is the remote building where everything was taking place.

 Kwon took a liking to Do-Gi and ordered his cohorts to give him anything he wanted. At first all Do-Gi asked for was to work with the two other new men from Korea, he filled them in a bit on his plan. In that third to last screenshot you can see the pair pretending to be working with Do-Gi but it was just a cutout figure which fooled all. Meanwhile he escaped the building and in an odd twist was able to hijack a taxi from a pair of goons who tried to swindle Do-Gi, bad mistake on their part!!!! Soon after Do-Gi picked up a fare and who should it be but the tour guide that had duped Do-Gi and the two other men when they arrived from Korea. Do-Gi gave him a minor beating and have noticed Do-Gi's fighting skills have somehow improved! This man who I'll call Oh had the passports of every Korean man who had traveled to Vietnam and were being held hostage, don't think anyone has been killed yet. Those passports has allowed Oh and the other Cheongeum company scammers to write 'suicide letters' back to their families and also somehow to collect the insurance money for their 'deaths'! Another key bit of info learned by Do-Gi was that there were three other gambling teams that were operating outside of the building where Do-Gi was currently at. Oh didn't know any of the locations so finding them is Do-Gi's next mission and hopefully one of them is where Dong-Jae can be found. 

 Obviously this being Do-Gi's first time in Vietnam bet he had no clue of what was what and after leaving Oh tied up sure he had no specific destination. While traveling back to the city of Cotaya in his newly acquired taxi who should Do-Gi pass but his ex-mates Choi and Park! The pair had been walking in circles after escaping from Madam Lim which they informed Do-Gi about and that gave him an ingenious plan. Lim is the less than desirable woman who is in a couple of screenshots above and all of this was taking place while Do-Gi was thought to have been locked in his room at that Cheongeum 'prison'. I did have a bit of a problem with how quickly Do-Gi transformed himself into the character of Wang which is in the fourth screenshot, how could he do that so quickly and how did he do it in the first place? As I was talking about in the intro Wang was the identity he used in season one to bring down Lim's scamming operation and to say she wants revenge would be an understatement! Then again Do-Gi as Wang did cozy up to Lim which I bet no man in his right mind had ever done before so she might have also had romance in her mind.

 Wang let Lim see him just enough to get the wheels turning, after a minute he jumped back into his taxi and zoomed back to the prison. What Lim learned was that Wang(Do-Gi) had ordered two cases of alcohol to be sent to the Cheongeum building which was done and was very key to what would be taking place the next day there. That's because the guards and others at the scam company ended up consuming all of he spirits, that allowed Do-Gi to slip back into the building plus gave these creeps a huge hangover for the next morning. And what a surprise these thugs had as Lim was only concerned about revenge upon Wang and presumed he was staying at this building. So as you can see above Lim's army attacked the Cheongeum building and the men were too hungover to put up a solid battle. That led the leader Park to gather up all of the prisoners and flee the building. He also called the other three teams that were involved in this illegal gambling ring and told them to gather their hostages too and meet at the grand HQ of Cheongeum Industries. That's the building in the second to last screenshot and what an impressive place it was which it was surrounded by a hundred foot moat. In the bottom screenshot is the leader for the day to day activities who is Kwon, talked about him earlier and he was furious that all of the hostages were brought to the HQ.

 Final segment and Do-Gi's plan to amass the hostages and criminals into one location worked out perfectly. However didn't know what his plan was at the time and did Do-Gi just adlib most of what happened? Kwon is the leader of the operations in Vietnam but there is an overall Big Boss who just happened to be paying a visit to the country and was at the Cheongeum HQ when everyone arrived. He's the older man in the white hat above and back in Korea viewing all of this via Do-Gi's glasses' camera was Go-Eun. She recognized the man immediately whose name was Kim Hyung-Sub who she knew a bit from working at the Northeast Seoul police station. This corrupt Captain was in charge of the missing Dong-Jae's case and swept it under the rug, sure he did that too with all of the other missing men who were in Vietnam being held prisoner by the Cheongeum company. Kim ordered these men to be dragged away and beaten but unsure if he wanted them dead and don't think so as these men are what made him a fortune designing illegal gambling games. Do-Gi was just biding his time to gather as much evidence as he could for Go-Eun back in Korea who had been taping all of the action. Once things began to get out of hand with the beatings against the men Do-Gi jumped into action and truly took down at least two dozen beefy men!!!! Do-Gi is not a large man as you may have been able tell by the screenshots but there's no better fighter in the world than him! Somehow he's even tougher than he was in the first season and after taking out most of the thugs help did arrive.

 Who were Do-Gi's ex-mechanic mates Choi and Park who pretended to be Vietnam policemen and held the remaining thugs at bay while Do-Gi chased after the fleeing Kim who had all of the company's money in cash. What an exciting final seven minutes to this show as Do-Gi also proved he's an ace motorcycle rider and managed to corner Kim at an abandoned amusement park, the bottom three screenshots above. Actually it appeared as though Kim had Do-Gi cornered instead with a pistol and who would ever know he was the one who shot Do-Gi to death???? Don't think our hero had a plan at this moment and was relying on his fighting skills to get him out of this scrap. But the unthinkable happened which is that a police sniper gunned down Kim right at the moment he was going to fire at Do-Gi and how did the police get there so quickly? Plus how did they know what was going on, did Go-Eun or Jang from Korea contact the police? So Kim's death ended this first case and even if he wasn't killed that way sure Do-Gi would have somehow come out on top. The case was a success as Dong-Jae was safe though severely injured and was reunited with his father Lee back in Korea. After that incident the trio of Choi, Park and Go-Eun quit their jobs to begin working with Jang again though there was no party or celebration. The first five screenshots below are also from the final few minutes and while not as good as most other episodes this was a solid beginning to the second season. It does help viewing all of the screenshots and will be back in 2-3 days with the next pair of recaps.