#find me another kdrama like this - you can't find another one quite as charming as this :")

[fauxkaren]

Vincenzo - 8/10

While Vincenzo hasn't stuck with me the way that other Kdramas I've watched have, it was still a super fun watch. It was imminently binge-able and an enjoyable experience.

Why does a Korean drama have a title that is an Italian name? Well, let me explain. The main character, Vincenzo, is a Korean man who was adopted by an Italian family as a child and as an adult he has become a consigliore (legal advisor) to an Italian crime family. After the head of the family dies, Vincenzo gets on the bad side of the new leader, so he escapes to Korea where he knows that a SHIT ton of gold is hidden in a secret vault underneath a building because he'd helped to hide it for a now-dead Chinese billionaire several years ago. When he gets to Seoul, he finds that an Evil Corporation (Babel Group) wants to buy the building with the gold underneath it so that they can demolish it and build a skyscraper. If this happens he won't be able to get to the massive fortune he knows is stashed there. So, while he works out how to get into the vault and remove the gold, he teams up with the building's residents, working with the law firm on the third floor, to fight the Evil Corporation and save their homes and businesses from destruction.

Let me get the minor issues I had with the show out of the way. Firstly, sometimes the building's tenants (who are all uh... quite the characters) were a bit much. Not always, but sometimes their hijinks could have been dialed down a notch. Secondly, the main romance did nothing for me and seemed just... shoehorned in? Like if you take away the romance angle and have the relationship between Vincenzo and Cha-young remain purely platonic, it wouldn't have impacted the characters or the story in any way. The chemistry wasn't there and it added nothing to the show. It didn't ruin the show or anything, it was just disappointing the the romance was written so poorly imo.

Now that I have those quibbles out of the way, I can get into why the show is actually really good and worth watching. One of the best things about the show is the show's namesake, Vincenzo himself. He's more of an anti-hero than a true hero (you don't become a consigliore for a crime family without killing some people) and that's just the kind of character you need to take down a super powerful evil conglomerate like Babel Group, especially when the CEO is a literal psychopath. Vincenzo expertly toes the line between going too far and not going far enough in order to take down Babel. And yet, while he can be ruthless, as he spends more time in the building, his friendships with the residents and affection for them grow in a really charming way so you can't help but love him, even as he's doing things that are kind of objectively not morally sound.

The antagonists are also top notch and a big reason as to why the show works. The aforementioned psychopath CEO of Babel is of course terrifying, but there is another fantastic antagonist in Choi Myung-hee who is a lawyer for the law firm that represents Babel Group and will do whatever it takes to protect Babel and their interests. They're perfect antagonists for Vincenzo because they're honestly so horrible that as a viewer, you don't feel bad when Vicenzo comes up with um... creative ways to enact his revenge for their actions. They're legitimately evil which makes them really fun to root against and you can watch Vincenzo come up with ways to stop them and feel zero guilt.

In conclusion, not a perfect show, but absolutely a fun show. It's way funnier than a show about a consigliore taking down a corporation in order to access a secret vault of gold has any right to be and just an enjoyable ride in the way that the best action movies are.

#karen watches kdramas #vincenzo