Watch or Pass?

Providing context in the debut episode of a series can be one of the most challenging tasks for a writer. Overloading the audience with background information can bog down the episode, but offering too little can leave viewers confused about the narrative. A new Korean noir thriller opts for the latter approach.

Opening Shot: The scene opens with the title “2010, Yeouido, Seoul.” The imagery is in black and white, depicting two men in a vehicle. One speaks to the other regarding a job opportunity. The older man exits the car and enters a fight ring, decisively overpowering the gang member he’s up against.

The Gist: The story follows Lee Ju-woon (Heo Jun-ho), who leads the Juwoon Group, and Gu Bong-san (Ahn Kil-kang), the leader of the rival Bongsan Group. They convene because Bong-san needs Ju-woon’s help to get his son, Gu Jun-mo (Gong Myung), out of a self-inflicted predicament. In exchange, Bong-san promises to resolve a troublesome real estate issue for Ju-woon.

Jo-woon recruits his second-in-command, Nam Gi-seok (Lee Jun-hyuk), to take care of this problem. Jo-woon wants Gi-seok to succeed him. However, Gi-seok has had enough of the life of big-time organized crime, and wants to quit.

Jun-mo talks about Gi-seok’s older brother, Nam Gi-jun (So Ji-sub), who used to be in the Bongsan Group, who “screwed up” over a decade prior, and ended up exiting criminal life after his Achilles tendon was severed. Gi-seok doesn’t take kindly to the way the young Jun-mo talks to him and lets him know in a violent way.

Gi-seok then goes to the campground where Gi-jun now lives, the first time he’s seen his brother in six years, and tells him that, despite the promotion, he might want to just leave “the life” and work in the woods with him.

Then, Gi-seok is lured into a parking garage, where a group of teenagers attack him; he takes care of most of them, but the first person he encountered sneaks up behind him and stabs him.

We cut to Gi-seok’s funeral. Ju-woon’s son, Lee Geum-son (Choo Yeong-woo), shows up, but Ju-woon won’t see him, given Geum-son’s job in the prosecutor’s office. Gi-jun also attends, and tells the two rival chairmen that the deal they made 11 years ago, where he disappears and “live like I am dead,” no longer applies because they didn’t hold up their end of the deal, which was to keep Gi-seok safe. Gi-jun then sets about trying to find out who hired the group of teens to attack his brother.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mercy For None fits nicely in the Korean noir action thriller genre along with shows like My Name.

Our Take: The first episode of Mercy For None suffers because it drops viewers in the rivalry between the Juwoon and Bongsan groups without really giving them much in the way of context. Sure, there are graphics that say who is who, but there is a whole lot more information that you need to figure out the full context of what is going on. And by the time we get to Gi-jun and his mission to exact revenge, you’re presented with a blizzard of somber-looking men in dark suits, whose function within each organization is a mystery.

In fact, we don’t even really know the history of this rivalry between the massive, corporatized crime organizations. The chairmen seem to meet regularly in order to ask each other for favors, and the deal they made with Gi-jun over a decade prior seems to be rooted in the fact that Gi-seok went to work for Ju-woon instead of Bong-san, whom Gi-jun worked for. But that’s not laid out at all in the first episode. Sure, the lack of exposition keeps the episode moving, but no exposition at all just leaves viewers lost.

As Gi-jun looks to find out who killed his brother, some of those details will emerge and we’ll likely get a clearer picture about his history and the history between the two gangs. In the meantime, we’ll get lots of hand-to-hand combat like we saw a few times in the first episode; those scenes are reliably well-done. What we hope is that this context is given sooner rather than later so viewers can discern who matters in this story and who doesn’t.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: We see what happened after Gi-seok is stabbed. It makes us wonder if he’s actually dead, though Gi-jun did see a body that looked like his brother’s.

Sleeper Star: Choo Yeong-Woo is briefly shown as Lee Geum-Son, Ju-woon’s prosecutor son. It’ll be interesting to see if Ju-woon tries to bring his son back into the criminal fold or not.

Most Pilot-y Line: The symbolism of Gi-jun donning a suit that Gi-seok was to give him for his birthday is a little on the nose, given that is what Gi-jun wore during his gang days.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The action and revenge story in Mercy For None is enough to keep us watching, and the episodes are well-paced. But we really need to see more context about the rivalry between the gangs in order to really get invested in this story.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.