Stream It Or Skip It?
The new Korean dramedy Confidence Queen defies an easy description, not only because it’s a mostly comedic heist show, but because it’s as much about elaborate cons and heists as it is about examining the relationships between the members of the team that execute these cons.
Opening Shot: The hustle and bustle of Seoul. As we see laundry spin in a washing machine, with an attractive woman watching it spin, we hear her say in voice over that the people who live in the city can be called “Homo laundrycus; the laundering human,” because laundry never ends.
The Gist: Yoon Yi-rang (Park Min-young) is the head of a three-person team of con artists, with James (Park Hee-soon), who has been in the game for a long time, and Myung Gu-ho (Joo Jong-hyuk), who has known Yi-rang since they were kids and is not always sure he wants to continue to cook up elaborate long cons and put himself in danger.
Their targets are fellow criminals and con artists who prey on the poor and vulnerable, as we see during an elaborate con that involves a fake shaman and a casino that has billions of won in cash on hand. After that haul, though, Gu-ho decides he wants out. A month later, we see him living out of a van and grilling abalone he catches himself. Yi-rang comes to visit — parasailing onto the beach where he’s playing with neighborhood kids — and tries to convince them to come back.
That’s when they get a call about James, who is in a coma. Yi-rang knows exactly who put him in the hospital: Jeon Tae-soo (Jung Woong-in), a famous CEO who is publicly known as a philanthropist, but in underground circles he is known as a notoriously violent loan shark. James set up a con on against Jeon on his own because he couldn’t get in touch with Yi-rang, but Jeon found out and had him beaten senseless.
Yi-rang and Gu-ho’s plan involves Gu-ho impersonating the scion of an airline empire and a suitcase full of money. But Jeon isn’t going to be an easy mark to get revenge on.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Confidence Queen is based on a Japanese series called Confidence Man, but it can also be compared to heist shows like Money Heist.
Our Take: The section above where we described what Confidence Queen was about was more of a high-level view than what we usually write there, because much of the first episode involved showing us the elaborate schemes that Yi-rang and her team put together, and the idea that they steal from these criminals in order to pay back their victims. The first episode also spends a lot of time establishing the relationships in the group, especially the longtime connection between Yi-rang and Gu-ho.
Even when things get serious, like when the pair see James covered from head to toe in a cast and in a coma, the show isn’t really that serious. Park Min-young drives a lot of this tone as Yi-rang, who is highly intelligent and eternally optimistic, to the point where Gu-ho breaks it to her that she can’t pull off a sexy con because she comes off as too eager.
We’re definitely interested in seeing how the scheme that will rope in Jeon Tae-soo plays out, but we’re more interested in examining how Yi-rang, Gu-ho and James came together to make this team. We imagine there will be more flashbacks as the season goes along, and we’d love to see more of Yi-rang and Gu-ho as kids.
Sex and Skin: Nothing.
Parting Shot: Yi-rang goes back to the teenager who was victimized by the fake shaman and gives her enough money for her mother to keep her business, which she put on the market to pay for the ceremony the fake shaman was offering.
Sleeper Star: Jung Woong-in plays Jeon Tae-soo as a guy who completely drips with evil, even as his public face smiles. He even has his thugs bust up a church because they won’t vacate to make way for a development he was working on.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Gu-ho calls Yi-rang a sociopath, she corrects him by saying she’s a “genius sociopath. So call me a geniopath.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. We love a good heist series, and Confidence Queen ups the ante on the genre by diving deep into the lives of the people planning the heist and their relationships with each other.
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.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
