LAST

I'm going to be real. I don't particularly care for Kdramas. But I am giving 라스트 (LAST) a chance. For one, Yoon Kyesang is the star, and secondly, the plot actually sounded interesting, albeit, pretty ridiculous.

Last night I watched the first two episodes.

Kyesang is Jang Taeho, a hedge fund manager who loses 35 billion won when like some sort of trade deal that he attempted to manipulate is sabotaged. A loan shark dude loses a ton of money that he invested in the scheme so he obviously wants to kill Taeho now. Taeho and his partner are caught, and the gangsters attempt to stage a car accident by getting the two drunk and, with the two inside, pushing a car into the river. Luckily, Taeho is able to escape.

Previously, things were looking good for Taeho- he had been scouted for a job on Wall Street and he had proposed to his girlfriend (she said 'no' for now but anyway...). Now, he must go into hiding. He pawns the engagement ring and uses the money for hotels. It doesn't last long. Soon he is out on the street.

He ends up at Seoul Station, and he meets a bunch of homeless dudes. Namely, Cha, Youngchil, and senile old man Jo.

Of course they're colorful characters. But they at least take Taeho to a place where he can get a free meal.

While waiting in line, a scary looking dude with a fucked up eye shows up. Taeho gets pissed when he sees them cutting, and he stands up to the dudes. They beat him up, and he misses out on food. However, his new hobo buddies explain to him that the scary dude named Snake-Eye. He is one of the Seoul Seven, a bunch of guys who control the underground economy. They force the homeless to panhandle, collect their earnings, and use them to extort local businesses (and the one guy kills them for their organs like WTF). All together it's pulling in like 10 billion won. Taeho thinks if he can get to the top, with that much money, he can start his life over.

Later on, still starving, he runs into Snake-Eye and his posse again and knocks him out. His posse then turns on him, and words gets around that Taeho fucked Snake-Eye up.

So the rest of the hobos in the district are pumped, and Taeho gets to take over Snake-Eye's district.

Pouring one out for his fallen homie.

And also he decides to fight his way up to become king of the hobos.

In episode two, we get more of an introduction to the rest of the Seoul Seven. Apart from Number One (Kwak Heungsam) and Number Two (Ryu Jonggoo), the others appear to be dumbasses that I suspect Taeho will have an easy time dispatching.

Like this, yo, 'til the break of dawn~ Can you feel it, everybody c'mon~

And it also delved into the subplot involving Taeho's ex-girlfriend (she's got to be his ex by now). Well, it turns out she's the illegitimate daughter of chaebol (of course you gotta have a chaebol in your Kdrama), but now that her father's wife has died, she's being brought back into the family. She's also now dating some other dude who works for her father. I don't know where this subplot is going; maybe it has something to do with how Taeho's deal got sabotaged? But Taeho needs to just forget about her and get with the soup kitchen girl.

Now that he is committed to fighting to the top, Taeho seeks out Number Two because he wants him to train him how to fight. Number Two, Ryu, before he became homeless, was a legitimate fighter, and he also seems like a pretty alright dude (he lives in an old bus, which is cool).

Even though he knows Taeho plans on fighting him eventually, Ryu decides to teach Taeho how to fight.

So cue the training montages...

Taeho is getting cocky, though. He's confident, but Ryu warns him that he's still not ready to take on rest of the Seoul Seven.

Unfortunately, Poison-Snake, Number 4, finds out who Taeho really is. He tries to take this info to Number One but Kwak's bodyguard is like tell me or GTFO. So he GTFOs. But dang, he has this info on Taeho, what is he going to do? It's even weirder because Kwak had lunch with the loan shark dude in this episode too...

Taeho finally has had enough of Number Six/Sergeant Bae's shit, and at the end of the episode, Taeho challenges him.

I'm going to assume that there will be a whole lot of ass kicking...

Like most Kdramas, it's ridiculous. But so far it's a good ridiculous.

Taeho, as the main character, is supposed to be a sympathetic character, but I don't know about that. People in finance are unsavory figures. Taeho's market manipulations were illegal, and I'm not too sure as to if Taeho is acting very altruistically in his dealings with the other homeless guys. He decides to split 50-50 of what the homeless dudes make from panhandling. This is obviously a great move for the hobos, but he wants word to get around about it so more hobos move onto his turf. More hobos means a bigger hobo army for Taeho, though. If he becomes the new Number One, he's going to be taking an even bigger advantage of all these vulnerable homeless dudes. SMH...

I'm also kind of feeling weird about the portrayal of the other homeless men on the show. But maybe I'll save that analysis for another post.

Nonetheless, I'm hooked on the show, and I'm eagerly awaiting for subbed episodes three and four as I write this...

The last king of homeless dudes.