Taxi Driver 3: Episodes 13-14
by DaebakGrits
Our vigilante heroes’ island mission spirals out of control as the villains systematically capture the team, forcing our taxi driver to bluff his way into a dangerous criminal operation. Trapped among enemies, our heroes survive by faking romances, staging betrayals, and use public discord to mask their private coordination.
Episodes 13-14
It’s been a long while since our vigilante heroes have faced a predicament dire enough to spark genuine concern for their safety, but this time, Team Rainbow Taxi has run headfirst into the den of a well-coordinated band of villains. However, a few uncharacteristic rookie mistakes early in the investigation put them at a disadvantage, and it’s hard to say how much of the danger stems from them encountering truly formidable antagonists or from their own carelessness. Either way, the problems begin as soon as Do-ki splits ways with Sung-chul so he can privately snoop around the island’s temple.
From there, the villains begin systematically picking off Do-ki’s teammates one by one — starting with Sung-chul. After lingering behind at the dock to maintain his I’m-just-here-to-fish cover story, he’s approached by the island’s rent-a-cop, KIM CHEOL-MIN (Ji Dae-han), who lures him onto his boat. Sung-chul is understandably uneasy about being isolated with the Cheol-min, but he can’t devise a believable reason for a supposed fisherman to turn down an offer to be ferried to a prime fishing spot. And so, Sung-chul is captured.
Meanwhile, back on the mainland, the fisherman, CHOI CHEOL-WOONG (Yoo Ji-wang), and the supposed photographer and wannabe script writer, WRITER GO (Kim Sung-kyu) split up. Go-eun tails Cheol-woong, who leads her to a small fish market (first seen in Episode 11) that also doubles as the villains’ base of operations, where they package and distribute kits containing everything their low-level grunts need to launch and run online scams. Unfortunately, Go-eun is far from discreet as she peers through windows and around corners, and Cheol-woong quickly captures her.
At the same time, Kyung-goo and Jin-un trail Writer Go from one substance addiction meeting to the next, unaware that he’s secretly harvesting attendees’ personal information to fuel targeted phishing scams. Jin-un’s face, however, is a little too recognizable, and Writer Go quickly spots, corners, and captures his far-too-obvious stalker. Kyung-goo, preoccupied at the moment of Jin-un’s disappearance by an ill-timed bathroom emergency, fails to notice what’s happened and continues to tail Writer Go. Like Jin-un before him, Kyung-goo — and his van — are anything but discreet, especially when they’re the only vehicle on the ferry besides Writer Go’s, bound for the criminal island. Unsurprisingly, Kyung-goo is captured and drugged into unconsciousness the moment his van rolls off the ferry.
So what happens to Do-ki while his teammates are being systematically picked off? He, too, is captured—this time by the Cheol-min and the recently returned “monk” JOO SEOK-BONG (Lee Kyung-young), but unlike the others, who are drugged and prepared for a live burial at sea, Do-ki is merely handcuffed until Writer Go returns to the island and can interrogate him.
Although it initially seems as though he’s been cornered, Do-ki has used his time in handcuffs to construct a convincing alibi. He claims to be an acquaintance of Manager (the animal abuser from last week’s episodes) who shared some details about the island with him, though not the full picture, before “disappearing.” Do-ki goes on to explain that he and Sung-chul knew just enough to get themselves to the island, but once they arrived by ferry, they couldn’t tell who was actually involved. As a result, they posed as fishermen while they quietly assessed the locals, hoping to identify someone willing to sponsor their criminal start-up.
Do-ki then walks Writer Go through his extensive criminal-adjacent résumé, all of which checks out because (cue: flashbacks to Seasons 1 and 2) he used his real name during his undercover operations. That choice left behind a sufficient paper trail for the hotel proprietress, YE-RIM (Lee Chae-won), to verify his background and references as if he were applying for a corporate job. Satisfied, at least for the moment, Writer Go releases Do-ki and the rest of Team Taxi Driver.
Once everyone regains consciousness, the team gathers to compare notes and faces the unsettling truth: their bodies were nearly transported into North Korean waters, where they would have vanished without a trace. This chilling revelation comes from a reporter who has been lurking on the island for the past six months, hoping to finish the story his sunbae died investigating. He recounts his observations of the islanders’ illegal activities, which he secretly filmed all along, and Do-ki adds that at least one of their adversaries is likely a former prosecutor, which explains how the villains have successfully avoided capture and arrest for so long.
On the other side of the island, the story’s antagonists convene to decide their next move. Writer Go favors recruiting Do-ki and his team into their criminal operation, but Seok-bong remains deeply skeptical, withholding his approval until he can question Do-ki himself. The following day, over tea, Seok-bong grills Do-ki about his background and demands to see the cash he plans to invest — up front.
Do-ki, however, feigns offense at Seok-bong’s demands. After all, if he were buying a house, he’d expect to tour it before discussing payment or revealing his finances, and Seok-bong should extend him the same courtesy. Besides, he didn’t bring the money to the island, a fact further corroborated with a quick phone call to Go-eun, his supposed girlfriend. (And this fake romance, dear shippers, appears to be the extent of the Do-ki x Go-eun fanservice this season.)
While Jin-un returns to the mainland to retrieve money for their down payment — and, more importantly, Go-eun’s laptop — Writer Go invites Do-ki to sit in on the orientation session for new and returning recruits. As they wait on the ferry for the recruits to arrive, Do-ki can’t help but wonder why Writer Go would bring them directly to the island and the heart of their operations. Isn’t he afraid they might turn on him, alert the authorities, and dismantle the entire organization?
Writer Go, however, is unconcerned. He ensures his low-level minions remain silent by offering them an incentive. If they’re arrested and keep quiet about the island, Writer Go and his team will assist them in launching a new criminal operation once they’re released from prison. Exposing the larger operation, he also reasons, would only put the lower level criminals at a disadvantage. (Personally, this still seems rather reckless to me, but it’s not like Team Taxi Driver hasn’t used their real identities and base operations for missions, like this one, before, so…)
After the recruits arrive — and one returning recruit, who knows Manager, nearly blows his cover — Do-ki watches their orientation from the sidelines. The process resembles buying and running a franchise, but instead of selling Subway sandwiches, they profit by scamming others. While the returning recruit saved enough during his time in prison to finance his own phishing operation, the cellmates he brought along with him didn’t come with a down payment. Instead, the young hotshots attempt to blackmail Writer Go into meeting their demands, and their insubordination earns them a one-way ticket to an early grave at sea, courtesy of Cheol-woong. (Honestly, even though they were only around for five minutes, I was kind of cheering for their deaths.)
Upon seeing Writer Go’s PowerPoint presentation, it becomes clear that his organization runs like a well-oiled machine, and a flashback reveals that he personally handpicked every member of his team seven years ago, back when he was a prosecutor. Supposedly, after years of playing by the book, he decided he wanted more excitement in his life — were extreme sports not an option? — and put together his own Suicide Squad from criminals who came across his interrogation table. Although I find his reason for switching to the dark side rather superficial, I do like the idea that these baddies — who have (superficially) given our heroes a run for their money — are supposed to be the cream of the villainous crop.
It’s also nice that this mission has been truly all hands on deck — er, island — this time. Season 3 has been starved for full team-up moments, and the only times we’ve seen more than three main characters in the same room have been during debriefings. That’s why one of my favorite scenes this week is when Team Rainbow Taxi — minus Jin-un, still off retrieving the money and Go-eun’s laptop — finishes watching Writer Go’s presentation and immediately starts bickering over which scam to run: phishing or a gambling website.
The staged discord is just a delay tactic, meant to buy them time to track down the servers the villains use to run their overseas operations. But the performance doesn’t stop at a public argument. In private, Do-ki asks Writer Go to kill Sung-chul, while Sung-chul quietly petitions Seok-bong to eliminate Do-ki. Go-eun, meanwhile, has a simpler request: she wants Writer Go to kill everyone — including her so-called boyfriend, Do-ki. This strange turn of events has our villains a bit perplexed, but they’re smart enough to decide that the recent chaos is a sign they should move their operation off the island — beginning now.
When Do-ki notices Writer Go’s hired foreign workers packing up and leaving the island, he and his team move forward with their plan to draw the Writer Go and his accomplices away from the temple so Go-eun can locate and dismantle the server. Kyung-goo and Jin-un keep Ye-rim occupied by gambling away the money Jin-un brought back with him to the island, while Do-ki and Sung-chul (separately) distract Writer Go and Seok-bong with long-winded and pointless conversations — and Kopiko PPL — until word comes in from Go-eun that she’s successfully hacked the server.
With the mission complete, Team Rainbow Taxi prepares to slip off the island aboard a small fishing boat, but Writer Go catches on faster than expected. He literally sounds the alarm, and he and his armed cohorts give chase. Do-ki, in his bulletproof taxi, leads a three-car convoy of gun-toting villains down a dead-end pier, an escape route that seems spectacularly ill-advised. His souped-up taxi may outmuscle the average car, but it’s no match for three vehicles working together to shove it into the ocean. Or so you’d think…
As it turns out, Jin-un had installed an EMP in Do-ki’s taxi, and in a last-ditch Hail Mary, Do-ki hits the button. The resulting electromagnetic pulse rips through the pursuing vehicles like a bomb, shattering windows and rupturing the water tanks in the back of Cheol-woong’s truck. Now, I’m no EMP expert, but if Ocean’s Eleven taught me anything, it’s that their effects aren’t usually quite this explosive. Implausible or not, the blast leaves all of the villains either unconscious or dead — all of them, that is, except Writer Go.
Writer Go staggers away from the wreckage and attempts to escape aboard a nearby fishing boat. Do-ki, somehow psychically aware that there’s a gun in Cheol-woong’s glove box, grabs it and shoots out the boat’s motor. It explodes in a spectacular fireball, neatly punctuating the end of the mission, but the theatrics of this story arc’s climax fall short of my expectations. Not only do they require some suspension of disbelief, the car chase and explosions felt rushed and lacked the personalized touch we’ve come to expect from Do-ki’s revenge plots this season.
Is it rather novel for us to see Do-ki backed into a corner where he has to essentially brick his beloved taxi in order to survive? Yes, but despite a promising start last week, our villains turned out to be rather bland and undeserving of such grandstanding. Instead of occasionally outsmarting and challenging our heroes — as one would expect from career criminals and a former prosecutor — our villains were unrealistically trusting and only got the upper hand whenever our veteran heroes made rookie mistakes.
In addition to making the villains proper foils for our heroes, I wish these episodes had made better use of the isolated island setting to underscore just how cut off our heroes were from resources and any real home-field advantage, giving them a more plausible reason to fall into the villains’ traps. When Do-ki and Sung-chul first arrive on the island, they don’t realize the entire population is part of the criminal operation, but the islanders’ suspicious behavior tips their hand almost immediately.
Instead, it would have been far more effective to lean into mystery and light horror elements — think of last week’s scene where Do-ki and Sung-chul discover Cheol-woong in their motel room — to heighten the tension and break from the familiar formula this drama has settled into. Let the islanders appear kind and unassuming at first, like a stereotypical small-town K-drama community, lulling Do-ki and Sung-chul into a false sense of security until the true villains emerge. By then, the team’s disadvantage would feel earned and unavoidable. But alas, here I am once again expecting depth from a beat-’em-up drama that, at least this season, seems content to be nothing more than that.
RELATED POSTS