Stream It Or Skip It?

In a new South Korean action thriller, an influx of illegal weapons lands in the hands of everyday citizens, ones who are suffering with extreme stress because of everyday life. While a cop and an arms dealer try to figure out where these weapons are coming from, more shootings occur. What happens when citizens who had little to no access to guns suddenly can get them in the mail?

TRIGGER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of the bustling life in Seoul. We also hear news reports about the stress South Koreans of all ages are under.

The Gist: Patrol cop Lee Do (Kim Nam-gil), a former military sniper, is good at diffusing tense situations, as we see when he helps two people who got in a fender bender. The man who was hit is steaming mad, even though it was an accident. Because of his military expertise, he gets a call from a detective who found militar-style bullets from a rifle next to the body of a man who supposedly hung himself. Lee knows that, in a country that has tight gun control, the military keeps track of every bullet. He finds dozens more in the ceiling.

In the meantime, Yoo Jung-tae (Woo Ji-hyun), a civil service candidate, is barely containing his rage. On the subway, he tries to move someone taking up a seat reserved for pregnant women, and the guy refuses. He bumps shoulders with someone on the street. When he gets to his class, he imagines whipping an assault rifle out of his guitar bag and shooting everyone in the room with it. He goes to therapy for his anger, but it doesn’t help.

Nothing gets him angrier than the other people in the boarding house where he lives. The walls are really thin, so he hears a couple next door having wild sex. The manager won’t fix anything that’s broken or enforce the rules. Neighbors cackle and talk loudly in the common kitchen, even though there’s a “No yelling” sign. And people keep stealing Yoo’s food.

Lee is tasked with training a new officer, Jeon Won-seong (Lee Suk), who just wants to catch bad guys and not do the meticulous paperwork Lee does. But he finds that Lee knows the people he protects very well, and can circumvent situations from escalating. He also sees that Lee can kick ass, as he shows when a convicted sex offender on an ankle bracelet almost attacks a female water filter technician.

As Yoo gets bullied by a neighbor whom he asks not to smoke, because that’s the rules, he opens his guitar case to show that he actually has a gun. It’s an automatic weapon that he can use to spray bullets everywhere. He puts the muzzle against the thin wall of his room and points it at the neighbor, but doesn’t pull the trigger. But when the neighbors on the other side continue to have very loud sex, he can’t take it anymore.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Trigger, written by Kwon Oh-seung, reminds us of other Korean crime thrillers like Karma.

Our Take: Trigger is a name that has more than one meaning in the context of this series. For one, it’s indicating that a lot of guns are going to be found and used on the show. But the more important meaning behind the title is the trigger point that the people who will have those guns will experience, one that takes them from everyday aggravated people to mass murderers.

After Yoo lays waste to his boarding house, Do is going to find out that there is an illegal gun ring mailing guns to everyday citizens who want them. Remember, gun control is extremely tight in South Korea, so the presence of these guns is unusual. He’ll also form a tenuous alliance with an arms dealer named Moon Baek (Kim Young-kwang), though we haven’t met him yet and have no idea what his reasons for helping Yoo really are.

But the premise of the series raises interesting questions. What happens when a stressed populace suddenly has an access to firearms that they never had before? Will it make South Korea like the U.S., where there seems to be at least one mass shooting per week? And why are these people’s mental health in such distress that the only way they can relieve it is by plugging strangers with bullets?

The first episode really deals with the rage more than anything else, and sets Do up as the calm expert that will lead the investigation into these guns. The extended sequence where Do subdues the sex offender might have some payoff down the line, but we’re not sure what that is on first glance. Perhaps he’ll come back at Do with a gun. Or it’s just there to show what Do’s skills are. Either way, it may be an indicator that there isn’t quite enough story there to fill ten episodes, but we’ll give Kwon the benefit of the doubt.

Sex and Skin: We hear more from the neighbors having sex than we see.

Parting Shot: Yoo locks the door of his boarding house, asks “which one of you fuckers ate my myeolochi jorim?” and laughs.

Sleeper Star: No one really stands out.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Were you an administrative clerk or something?” Jeong asks Do, after seeing Do type so meticulously.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Trigger tries to address some big issues via what seems like a straightforward case about illegal weapons. But those big issues underpin what looks to be an action-filled thriller.

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.