The Potato Lab: Episodes 1-2 » Dramabeans Korean drama recaps
The Potato Lab: Episodes 1-2
by DaebakGrits
Hot on the heels of the space-flop-that-shall-not-be-named is tvN’s latest K-drama offering: a rom-com set in the competitive world of — wait for it — potato farming. Maybe it’s because the bar was previously set so low that even an ant couldn’t crawl under it, but The Potato Lab is fun and charmingly self-aware of all its clichés and tropes.
EPISODES 1-2
I’ll be honest, when The Potato Lab opened with an awkwardly filmed promotional video for Sunnyeo Food — the parent company that owns the potato lab where our leading lady KIM MI-KYUNG (Lee Sun-bin) works passionately in the name of spud-based science — I was a bit worried that this drama’s sense of humor wouldn’t land with me. The trepidation grew when the video ended and Mi-kyung stood before a group of ajumma and ajusshi farmers and tried — and failed — to convince them to plant her company’s strain of potatoes. She was no match for the farmers — not when Sunnyeo Food is stingy with the purse strings and makes it impossible for her to outbid their company’s competitors.
Once Mi-kyung dropped her saleswoman persona and we got a better introduction to her character, I took an instant liking to her personality. She’s clearly got a passion for science and potatoes, but the corporate side of the business has made her jaded. (Relatable.) And her decision to quit smoking has made her so cranky that it’s become a running joke with her coworkers — they need to carry around nicotine patches like they were Snickers candy bars in order to subdue her inner gremlin, which gets particularly riled up when ranting about Sunnyeo Food’s failings.
It just so happens that Sunnyeo Food is failing in more ways than Mi-kyung knows. The company heads are planning to sell the business, but they’re so incompetent that they don’t realize that their “foreign” buyer is a scam artist. Luckily for them — although Mi-kyung would disagree when she later finds out — SO BAEK-HO (Kang Tae-oh) swoops in to discredit the buyer and offer a less sketchy deal on behalf of Wonhan Retail.
It’s clear from the start that Beak-ho will be an excellent foil — and verbal sparring partner — for our passionate and vocal leading lady. He’s contrastingly stoic and ruthless, and he’s not inclined to socialize with co-workers or accept their invitation to a celebratory dinner when he was simply “doing [his] job.” He remains calm when a disgruntled former employee with a vendetta against him shows up at Wonhan Retail to enact revenge. He subdues the former employee with combination of logic (kill me and you will have to compensate my family for more years than you have left on your life) and martial arts skills he cultivated during his time as a special forces officer. Suffice it to say, our male lead is stereotypically perfect — albeit a tad emotionally unavailable and OCD — and I ain’t mad at it. Especially since he and his three-piece suits are massive eye candy.
Word that Sunnyeo Food was bought out by Wonhan Retail travels fast, and a welcome party for the potato lab’s newest member goes from “H-E-L-L-O” to “H-E-L-L” in the time it takes Mi-kyung to force open her beer and send the bottle cap flying towards the party decorations like a bullet. (Loved this sequence, BTW.) You see, Mi-kyung used to work for Wonhan Retail, and while the circumstances of her departure from the company are unclear, it’s safe to say some bridges were burned and she’s not terribly eager to return.
As much as Mi-kyung would like to avoid Wonhan Retail headquarters, she and the rest of Team Potato Lab are summoned to Seoul to fill out their HR paperwork — because the company can’t be bothered to send an employee out to the potato lab. Experience has taught Mi-kyung that they are about to step onto the corporate battlefield, and she advises her team members to dress in their best business attire/armor. Unfortunately, for this rag-tag group, “best” is subjective and, in the case of most, their bold color choices brand them as country bumpkins before they enter the door. Their attire doesn’t do them any favors when taking the photos for their employee IDs either, and one poor soul has his curly hair-horns immortalized forever.
An unfortunate ID photo and the uncertain fate of her beloved potato lab are, however, the least of Mi-kyung’s worries. That’s because being at Wonhan Retail headquarters has statistically increased her risk of crossing paths with some familiar faces — namely her ex-boyfriend, PARK KI-SE (Lee Hak-joo). And, as Mi-kyung’s misfortune would have it, the unexpected reunion is tragic. Not only did Ki-se have the audacity to be successful, but he caught Mi-kyung at her lowest — both literally and figuratively — as she was shimmying underneath an exit turnstile.
Her day goes from bad to worse when she and her team return to the potato lab to find Baek-ho conducting a surprise inspection. He’s laser focused on superfluous cost-saving measures — like switching to a lighter weight copy paper — and will only vaguely answer questions pertaining to the potato lab’s future. His cold demeanor rubs Mi-kyung the wrong way, and she curses him to be hit in the head, forgetting that the lab’s resident magpie, Sunnyeo, has a way of doing her bidding. Was it ridiculous that Mi-kyung channeled her inner Disney princess and charmed a wild bird into attacking Baek-ho? Yes, because Baek-ho’s tumble through the potato patch quickly demonstrated that he is as out of place in the countryside as Mi-kyung’s coworkers were during their trip to Seoul.
With Baek-ho patched up at the hospital and back in Seoul — for now — Mi-kyung is able to process her earlier run-in with Ki-se. Not much is revealed about the nature of their break-up, but considering she uses her birthday wish every year to pray he dies or becomes castrated, something tells me their relationship didn’t end amicably. Luckily, Mi-kyung has an absolute BAMF as her best friend.
LEE ONG-JU (Kim Ga-eun) is a web novel writer, and as such, she is able to creatively rouse Mi-kyung from her funk with a promise to kill Ki-se — as any good bestie would — and flee the country and fall in love with a handsome CIA with amnesia a la The Bourne Identity. Clearly someone who looks for the silver lining in everything, Ong-ju rationalizes that even though Mi-kyung’s wish for Ki-se hasn’t come true, there’s always still a chance he became a eunuch. (Pfft!)
So far, I’m a huge fan of this friendship. Ong-ju’s exaggerated threats to cause bodily harm to the man who broke her friend’s heart is extremely relatable, and overall I like how her job and commentary on her writing is being used as a cheeky way to acknowledge the tropes found in The Potato Lab. Case in point, when Ong-ju asks KIM HWAN-KYUNG (Shin Hyun-seung), Mi-kyung’s brother, if it would be overly cliché for her character’s loathsome boss (and future love interest) to move in next door. Cut to: Baek-ho moving into Hwan-kyung’s vacant guesthouse because he’s now interim chief of the potato lab.
When Mi-kyung is reunited with Baek-ho, she’s in a foul mood. Her boss was laid off by Wonhan Retail, and when she tries to light up a cigarette to alleviate her stress and frustration, a spontaneous thunderstorm rains on her already ruined parade and destroys her nicotine fix. So, imagine how frustrated she is to look up and find the source of her ire standing over her with an umbrella. A perfect rom-com moment — except the female lead is still very much in the loathing phase of their enemies-to-lovers romance.
When convincing her brother to kick out the unwanted tenant doesn’t work — because, well, money — Mi-kyung decides to make Baek-ho’s time in the countryside miserable. She rallies the village elders (all friends of the recently fired chief), and they mobilize, arriving at the guesthouse via a parade of tractors. The village head demands that Baek-ho pay a fee since he will be staying in town for longer than a month, but Baek-ho refuses to buy into their HOA and hands them his lawyer’s business card with instructions to confirm the legality of their fees. He even offers to pay for the session with his lawyer.
Joke’s on Baek-ho, though, because the villagers did call the lawyer, and they got their — well, Baek-ho’s — money worth. During the session, they learned that it’s perfectly legal for them to block Baek-ho from using their privately owned roads to get to work. Mi-kyung encourages him to just pay the silly fee, but because he won’t (as a matter of principle), he has to hitch ride with her to work everyday — with the stipulation that he rides in the back of her truck and suffers while she swerves erratically and hits every pothole on the way there, of course.
I quite like the bickering antics between Baek-ho and Mi-kyung. He certainly lives up to his reputation as being someone who can skin his opponents alive with his words, and Mi-kyung holds her own, thanks to her tenacity and creative forms of petty revenge. Their antics are a very amusing foreplay for the relationship to come — which according to our resident web novel writer, should start sometime around the end of Episode 2. I wasn’t sure how reliable Ong-ju’s cheeky foreshadowing would be, considering she also has a running theory that Baek-ho is Mi-kyung’s destined man simply because he has the “ho” syllable in his name — like her childhood crushes and favorite romance novel character. But, sure enough, the romance — or at least the rom-com tropes — picks up as we head into the latter half of Episode 2.
A potato farm emergency sends Mi-kyung and her coworkers into the potato fields for the day, and since it’s an all hands on deck situation, Mi-kyung forcefully volunteers Baek-ho to be part of the team spraying the potatoes with pesticides. Because Baek-ho insists on being a stud among spuds, he stubbornly refuses to wear the proper PPE, but not even his three-piece suit can save him from looking like a fish out of water as he fails epically at his new impromptu life as an agriculturalist.
At first glance, it doesn’t look like his day on the farm humbled him or made his personality any less abrasive, but there does appear to be a slight shift in his willingness to socialize. Where Baek-ho was quick to turn down an invitation for a celebratory dinner with his Wonhan Retail coworkers, he accepted Team Potato Lab’s offer of makgeolli and snacks. Then again, maybe he just stuck around out of spite. Mi-kyung wanted him gone — partially because of their ongoing feud, but also because she was left dumbfounded after noticing the sexy curvature of his muscles through his post-shower dampened shirt.
Like many leading men before him, Baek-ho’s boastful claim to have a high alcohol tolerance is shattered over a team meal, and at the end of the night, he’s left in Mi-kyung’s care. She calls for a designated driver and rides home with an unconscious Baek-ho in the back of her truck. His head lists to the side and lands on Mi-kyung’s shoulder, startling her and obviously triggering thoughts she doesn’t want to have about her sworn enemy. Flustered, she covers his head with a raincoat and moves to the other side of the truck bed to get as far away from temptation as possible.
And yet… somehow over the course of their trip, she winds up next to him again, sleepily snuggling into his side. When she wakes up and stares at the face her coworkers have been ogling, something shifts in her. Baek-ho slowly opens his eyes and — blame it on the alcohol and her weakness for hot directors — Mi-kyung grabs him by the collar and pulls him in for a kiss.
Well, that escalated quickly! By my watch, we are way ahead of schedule as far as K-drama first kisses go, and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. The jump from Mi-kyung hating Baek-ho to her lusting after him was rather quick, especially since — up to this point — her concern for her job had acted like a sunblock protecting her from his blindingly bright visuals. Does one wet dress shirt and some makgeolli really undo all her conventions, or did she really mistake him for the fictional man in her novels? Either way, I hope the kiss doesn’t expedite the romance too much. Personally, I was kind of enjoying Mi-kyung and Baek-ho’s bickering era, and I’d hate to see it end so quickly, especially since Baek-ho hasn’t shown any outward signs of falling for Mi-kyung yet. If the drunken kiss is the thing that gets him to see her in a new light, I’m going to be disappointed.
Overall, I enjoyed the premiere of The Potato Lab even though I began watching with some trepidation. Partially because I was recently burned by a tvN drama (IYKYK), and also because workplace K-dramas — especially ones featuring niche professions — have a tendency to over-romanticize the subject matter until it becomes almost preachy (e.g., Brewing Love and Today’s Webtoon). Thankfully, even though there is a lot of potato talk, the potatoes themselves weren’t overly discussed and glorified like bad PPL. Instead, the story was more focused on rural farm life and the business takeover, and I hope the drama doesn’t deviate from this.
If I had any concerns for the future direction of this story, it would be with the second male lead, Ki-se. Although the drama hasn’t explicitly revealed the reason for his breakup with Ki-hyung, I suspect — given his recent divorce from a member of the Wonhan Retail family — he dumped Mi-kyung for a chaebol and now regrets his decision. Add that to the fact that he seems insecure and jealous of Baek-ho (understandable) — to a point that he very likely made Baek-ho the interim chief of the potato lab out of pettiness (I don’t buy the reasons he cited) — and I’m not a fan of his character. However, I am enjoying the irony of him putting his biggest competitor in the direct path of the woman he’s clearly not over. Here’s hoping his jealousy doesn’t make him overly obnoxious.
RELATED POSTS
