A Bona Fide Killer... chai, this episode one alone has won me over already, so the series is based on your regular working mum, Yu Bo Na, who's returning to work at Durumi Electronics after three years' maternity leave, first day back, settling in like every other returning mum, but there's something behind it all, she's a legendarily skilled sniper known as Kingfisher, and she's coming back after three years to resume her lethal missions. The way episode one sets this up had me immediately gripped. It's this genius contrast, one minute she's a manager in Sales Team 3 worrying about her kid's pickup schedule, next minute she's calmly handling business as an assassin like it's just another line on her to-do list. Her team leader, Kim Bong Pal, tries to hand her a client meeting on her very first day back, and she just casually says she has to pick up her child because her husband's coming home late. Like nothing is happening, That mix of domestic mom energy and stone cold killer energy is what got me from the jump.
Here's the excitement part, while her husband Kwon Tae Seong is an investigative journalist and he used to write about Kingfisher's cases, so he already has history with this mysterious sniper he's chasing, not knowing that it's his own wife that's behind it, this episode one, he's supposed to be at a celebration for her return to work, but he gets stuck reporting on some explosion instead, which conveniently frees Bo Na up to slide into her first client meeting back in the field, The timing of it, the way both their worlds are quietly running parallel without either of them realizing how close it all is, that's the kind of setup that makes you lean forward.
There's also detective Lee Dong Jin, trying to track down Kingfisher but unaware that the individual he's chasing down is a normal mother running errands to school and checking the office memos. The dramatic irony was enough to get me really interested , we know the collision is coming but the question is just when....
So since It's the first episode that really caught my interest because it does not rush to tell me everything, no backstory dump and no over-explaining, it's just you learning about her through her actions, one minute she's all grown up and maternal, the next, an efficient assassin and deadly precise, trust the series to keep both her sides of her brain in the fray simultaneously without spelling it out.
Also, the tension was pretty smart and I loved it because it was domestic. It's not only forbidden to hide her secret identity from the Police, it is forbidden to hide her secret identity from her own husband, from her own child, while trying to keep a normal life of her own family alive that she's worked hard to coax into existence, It's personal and personal stakes hits as it were, because it's not merely plot for the sake of plot.
By the time episode one ends, the sense of things getting ticker for all of them, her husband is headed down the path to the truth but doesn't know it, the detective is closing in on them without a clue and her past is a definite no go. It is a clean and believable first episode, with no wasted scenes, just enough mystery to want episode 2 now.
Rating: 80/100
Originally posted through scrobble.life/tv.