First Thoughts: Agency

Where: Netflix; Viki

Episodes: 16

Synopsis: “A self-made executive navigates the cutthroat world of advertising, stopping at nothing – no matter how calculating – to become the head of her agency.

What’s Happening:

The show opens with the camera racing through the wilderness to stop right outside a tunnel that leads to somewhere. The viewer sees a hooded young woman picking berries, and for a moment, you wonder, “Am I watching the right show?” ” is there some type of Netflix glitch I am unaware of?” but you keep watching. Soon a dashing young man on a white horse trots next to the woman and stops. She tells him she’s been waiting for him. He smiles. Then the young woman’s countenance changes, and she draws a magic sword from her berry basket and slays the horse. With blood splattered across her face, she chases the young princely man down, lips crested into a smile…

I would like to insert here that I still think that I am watching a different show, but at this point, I am hooked, so I stick with it.

It’s not until a voiceover comes on that you realize you are watching an ad for a video game. Then the image switches to the typical video game avatar with the same voiceover telling the viewer to download the game. Then you hear applause and realize you watched the ad the same way the audience in the show watched the ad. This is where we see the first image of our steely main character, Go Ah-in portrayed by Lee Bo-young. She casts her gaze over the audience, and you can tell she knows she has landed this account.

The rest of the episode has us learn more about our main character’s personality and her life. At work, she is cool, calm, collected, passionate, unflappable, workaholic, and as a former employee yells at her as she is quitting, Go Ah-in is a hypocrite who acts like a humanist but is really a sociopathic monster.

In her personal life, she is a mess. I love a messy woman lead. She lives alone, doesn’t eat, suffers from insomnia, and drinks too much soju. She arrives to work early not only because she is passionate about being on top but because she is already awake, so why not go to work.

So what’s the show about. It’s about power and control, of course. During the first episode, we learn several creative directors, including Ah-in, are in line for the Chief Marketing Officer position. All the other creative directors, all men, believe they deserve the position, not because they are good at their jobs but because they just don’t want Ah-in, a woman, to get that position. The head of this group and Ah-in’s number one op is Kwon Woo-chul. He conspires with the manager of the creative directors, Choi Chang-soo, to win the CMO position so he can fire Go Ah-in and finally be rid of her (since she continually puts his incompetence on display). Woo-chul thinks he has successfully manipulated and stolen his way to the Chief Marketing Officer position until ***SPOILER ALERT****

he and all the rest discover that the position goes to Go Ah-in. Now the fun begins. We learn that while Go Ah-in deserves this opportunity, she might be a pawn in a much larger game, where despite her talents, she is seen as disposable.

Conclusions

Worth the Watch: Absolutely

I was sold on the show when I saw the preview of the employee cussing Go Ah-in out, and she just smirks and tells her to have that chutzpah at her new job. Additionally, there are some actors I look forward to seeing:

Lee Bo-young: My first time seeing her acting was in Mine, and I enjoyed her character portrayal. She is a bit more cutthroat in this show, and I want to see where she goes.

Lee Ki-woo: I saw him in My Liberation Notes, and he played a devoted father and brother. This show he is playing a hippie-esque CEO of a video game company. There might even be a romantic subplot between his character and Go Ah-in. This should be interesting.

Finally, Jang Hyun-sung: I‘ve seen him in Live and Dear My Friends. If I remember correctly, he played humanistic characters in these two shows. He seems to have a similar role in Agency, and I’m excited to see where his character goes.

Lastly, I am excited to watch this show because of the topic and the age range. Many of the most popular K-dramas are romantic comedies which the main leads in the age range of 24-28. This is fun to watch sometimes, but as a woman in her mid-thirties, it is nice to see a show where the main female lead dominates the work world, not just the mother’s tutoring chat group. I do love these dramas too, but it seems that to get a messy, ambitious female lead, the drama has to be based around her child’s education (there are, of course, exceptions, Misty comes top of mind). Yet, it is still nice to follow an ambitious, flawed woman in her early forties.

I will keep up with the show and be back to rate, rave, and review Agency when I finish watching the show.