Vincenzo — Episode 2 Recap
Vincenzo tries to gain everyone’s trust while hiding the secret of the gold bars. Also, he‘s really hungry.
Summary
Number of times Vincenzo fiddles with his lighter: 3
Number of meals Vincenzo can’t finish: 3
Number of English phrases used by Jun-woo: 6
Previous: Vincenzo — Episode 1 Recap
Next: Vincenzo — Episode 3 Recap
Recap
When last we left our hero Vincenzo, he was dangling the CEO of Ant Company out of a window with measuring tape. Vincenzo agrees to let him up, but only if he pinky swears to take his men and scram. He even makes him stamp it, bahaha. As soon as he’s pulled to safety though, the CEO tells his men to attack. Vincenzo tells them to come at him, but they are stopped by a gaggle of police officers who alert them to reporters outside and they finally leave.
At Jipuragi, Yu-chan questions Vincenzo’s motives. He’s annoyed at Yu-chan’s distrust and says he would have left and taken the money already if he meant to sell the building. He insists he will get the building back before walking out. A reporter comes looking for Vincenzo, and Cha-young and Yu-chan realize he is responsible for tipping them off. Outside, Vincenzo tells her anyone would be upset at the situation, but her instincts tell her that there is something more valuable in it for him than the building itself. Meanwhile, the tenants are also confused about Vincenzo’s true motives, and Yu-chan vows to figure it out.
Laundromat ahjumma is in a zumba class and, hey, she’s a prosecutor! In her office, she seems to be coercing a minister into giving a statement to cover something up, noting that she can find faults in the most innocent people.
Turns out the Truck of Doom(tm) has a failure rate because Mr. Cho is alive! Vincenzo needs to demolish the building before Babel does, and we learn that the secret room is also built into the structural supports of the building and connected to a detonation device that will level the building if anyone tries to break in. Wang Shaolin, the owner of the gold, died of cardiac arrest a year ago, and Babel started redeveloping the area 3 months ago.
Vincenzo is hovering near the door of the Buddhist temple, surely pondering the golden fortune beneath, when Cheol-wook and the monk ask what he’s doing there. He says he likes the words next to the door: “Do not expect to get rich through illegal means. Don’t be greedy for wealth or land. Do what’s right.” He clutches his chest as he reads the words aloud — is that your guilty conscience, Mr. Cassano? — then panics when he overhears plans to replace the boiler in the temple. His abrupt insistence on buying an electric pad for the temple instead startles the men.
The folks at Wusang think the wrongful death trial is over, but Jun-woo overhears that one of the researchers escaped quarantine. Over at intelligence, Agent Ahn’s guess that Vincenzo is in Korea to retrieve a fortune is surprisingly on point, but Agent Tae won’t let him investigate. Hellbent, Ahn commits to using his own money, but is deflated when he sees less than $500 left in his bank account.
Mr. Nam declares the wrongful death case over as he and Yu-chan watch their informant apologize for committing perjury on TV. He wants to dispose of the case documents, but Vincenzo walks in and asks to see them. Yu-chan refuses at first, but Vincenzo is a smooth talker. How can you turn down lines like, “The one who helps out the losing team in a war isn’t an enemy, but an ally,” and, “There are things that can only be verified through trust”?
At Babel Pharmaceutical, Jun-woo chides two men for not telling Cha-young about the missing researcher sooner and they learn that, for now, the higher-ups don’t know yet. Jun-woo wonders if the would-be whistleblower will contact her father, and Cha-young tells him not to jinx it. Vincenzo asks Mr. Nam for more specifics on the Babel Pharmaceutical trial while, elsewhere, Prosecutor Choi’s bosses want to hand off the case she just handled while she cleans up a colleague’s sexual assault charge.
Cha-young uses a missing wallet as an excuse to spy on Jipuragi. They don’t seem to have heard from the whistleblower yet, but she is unnerved at the sight of Vincenzo rifling through Babel’s case documents. Yu-chan and Vincenzo bond over their shared hatred of Babel (“assholes”) and Wusang (“a parasite that mooches off those assholes”), and Cha-young can’t hide her jealousy. She follows Vincenzo out and accuses him of provoking her father for profit.
Lol, the Italian chef pretends he’s run out of ingredients for the day, so Vincenzo heads to the snack bar. When the owner refuses to serve him, he reluctantly agrees to eat with Cha-young. She warns him that he’s fighting armored tanks with 200 stones and to go back to his country, but he is clearly unphased. The owner’s son comes home and Vincenzo looks on with a bittersweet expression as his mother scolds him for smoking. He’s hit with a plate of tteokbokki in the ensuing scuffle, but he seems down about more than just the damage to his suit.
Although she smiles politely as her colleagues drive away, covering up a sexual assault charge is the last straw for Prosecutor Choi. Lawyer Han coincidentally (or not?) appears and offers her a senior role at Wusang. She’s hesitant about cleaning up after a corporation, but he’ll do the dirty work and all she’ll have to do is make a good impression on the CEO, who has a few screws loose. “How crazy is this CEO, anyway?” she asks. Welp, he is in an ice rink somewhere apologizing to a mysterious person pelting him with hockey pucks.
Vincenzo’s wakes from a dream where he is haunted by all of his dirty deeds as a consigliere. He returns to the Italian restaurant and finds out Chef Baek learned to cook at a school called Mom’s Touch. Vincenzo tells him he’s going to have to cook for him until he feels a mom’s touch or he’ll expose him as a fraud. Chef nervously serves him a plate and is brought to tears as Vincenzo tells him his saffron risotto tastes like baby vomit with wine and broth.
Next, Vincenzo brings Yu-chan along on a field trip to Babel HQ. He gets a meeting with the head of Investment and Development by presenting a bill of indictment at the front desk — but it’s just an empty envelope. Ooh, very slick. Vincenzo threatens that he’ll get the sale contract canceled one way or another, and Yu-chan is clearly developing a man crush as he gushes over Vincenzo’s line about turning that guy into manure for a vineyard that makes buy one, get one free wine. If only he knew…
Prosecutor Choi resigns, telling her male colleagues she’s sick of being their hound and that she’d rather be a hound somewhere her “leash will be longer and they’ll feed me better.” At Wusang, Lawyer Han introduces her as the new face of the firm, much to Cha-young’s chagrin — and her colleagues’ delight.
Yu-Chan and Vincenzo brainstorm next steps with Babel and Vincenzo suggests addressing the illegal demolition first. Over drinks, Vincenzo asks if Yu-chan is also a public defender and why he named the law firm Jipuragi. Yu-chan has one client who insists on doing her time to repent for giving up her son, though he does not mention her by name, and explains that the name Jipuragi (“last straw”) is because he is the person that the kindhearted and weak can lean on when there is no one else left. Vincenzo is moved, and the two share a father/son bonding moment as Yu-chan teaches Vincenzo how to drink the traditional Korean way. Dawwwww.
The unknowing folks at Wusang still think things are all copacetic with the clinical trial case, so they move on to Geumga Plaza. The plan is to bring in heavy machinery for “cleanup,” then “accidentally” damage the building to scare the tenants into moving out. Cha-young seems concerned about this strategy, but her colleagues treat the loss of lives as collateral damage. In her office, Jun-woo wonders aloud whether this isn’t too cruel, to which she replies that it wouldn’t be if they would just leave, though she doesn’t sound convinced herself.
Yu-chan invites Vincenzo over for hangover soup the next morning, and Vincenzo double-takes at a photograph of a young Cha-young in his house. Hmmm. At Wusang, Jun-woo overhears that Geumga Plaza will be demolished at 11pm the next day, and Cha-young rushes to her father’s house to alert him. They are interrupted when Yu-chan receives a call from the escaped Babel researcher and he leaves Cha-young to Vincenzo, who calls her out for being genuinely concerned. Appalled at the state of her father’s house, she starts frantically cleaning before Vincenzo can finish his breakfast. Hey show, can’t you just let this poor man eat??
Yu-chan meets the whistleblower, Yu Min-chul, at a remote hotel while Vincenzo spends the night pondering his next move. In the morning, Mr. Nam and the tenants debate whether or not they should evacuate while Vincenzo idly scrolls through social media. At the same time, Agent Ahn scans through social media in search of Vincenzo and finds a match. Yu-chan returns to a chaotic scene at Geumga Plaza, but Vincenzo seems to already have a plan. Cha-young anxiously watches the clock tick down in her office.
Prosecutor — I mean, Senior Lawyer — Choi and Lawyer Han are discussing her upcoming meeting with the Babel CEO when they are interrupted by news of the researcher that has escaped from quarantine. In a panic, they try to call Cha-young, but she is busy racing against Ant Company’s heavy machinery to get to Geumga Plaza first. She arrives, breathless, to find… a very lively, Sicilian-style party?
In a flashback, we see that Vincenzo had come up with the idea after spending the night watching videos from Italy. His invitation on social media quickly went viral, presumably due to his handsome face, which is how Agent Ahn — now sipping a martini in a quiet corner of the party — has found him. The neighbors appear to have shaken their anxiety from earlier in the day, while Yu-chan observes his daughter from an upper floor balcony. Unaware of her father’s gaze, Cha-young watches Vincenzo from across the plaza.
Cue Korea’s Leonardo DiCaprio in his Great Gatsby moment. Fan service, much?
Comments
Well, well, well, Cha-young. Is that… a conscience? There are little hints of it everywhere, like in the way she worries about the missing clinical researcher and how she can’t help but rush to her dad at the mere suggestion his life might be in danger. I get the sense that she wants her father to win, but is frustrated that he can’t. She calls him “incompetent,” but I wonder if this is because she genuinely thinks the whistleblower would have better success going against Babel with the press and the police.
Vincenzo’s struggles as an outsider become more clear in this episode. Sure, he runs into some bad luck and sees a significant downgrade in his quality of living in the first episode, but now we get a glimpse of his daily interactions with the people around him. In Italy he’s told to go back to his country, but now that he’s in Korea he’s… told to go back to his country? No one really trusts him yet, the snack bar owner won’t serve him, and the Italian restaurant, which should be a familiar sanctuary, hardly serves as a place of comfort. On the other hand, we also get some charming moments, like Vincenzo enjoying tteokbokki for the first time, or Yu-chan teaching him how to drink the traditional Korean way.
We’re starting to learn more about the side characters, and I see a lot of potential for Vincenzo to build a found family in Korea, should he choose to stay. Intern Jun-woo’s Konglish suggests he’s probably American, and I’d love to see the two westerners bond over their shared struggles. I also thought the way he tried to warn the snack bar owner’s kid he was about to get beat up was really endearing, and I hope they form some kind of brotherly relationship. Maybe he’ll help him quit smoking?
My one hope for this show, which probably won’t happen, is that Cha-young and Vincenzo don’t end up in a romantic relationship. I’d rather they built a friendship based on mutual admiration, but unfortunately, the signs for a romantic relationship are already there. Two seemingly opposite personalities? Check. Vincenzo’s double-take at Cha-young’s photo = possible shared childhood experience? Check. Spotting each other from across a crowded space? Check and check. Sigh.
Kwak Dong-yeon as Babel’s CEO doesn’t get a whole ton of screen time in this episode, but the show is really hyping up expectations for his character. I am going to be really disappointed if it turns out he’s just a puppet for some even crazier, shadowy character.
And finally, Vincenzo’s viral post on “Outstargram” …surely this will spell trouble for him very soon? At best, that would alert other intelligence agencies of his location and, at worst, Paolo could come for him. I figured he and his brother would have to come face-to-face again eventually, but we could see this sooner rather than later.
Episode three, I’m ready for you!
