K-drama review: Taxi Driver season 2 Lee Je-hoons team tackles worst foes yet in jaunty vigil
At the beginning of this season, the taxi group welcomed a new employee, the fresh-faced cab driver On Ha-joon (Shin Jae-ha). Ha-joon wasn’t privy to Rainbow’s secret missions, but he was doing his best to find out, as he snooped around the company grounds. This is because Ha-joon was actually sent by the Bishop to eliminate Do-ki.
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With his easy smile and soft temperament we were fooled into thinking he was one of the good guys when he first appeared. Perhaps he would eventually join the team or maybe he was an undercover police officer.
The truth turned out to be much more sinister than that as he was eventually revealed to be a bloodthirsty stooge hell-bent on killing Do-ki.
Several times in the back half of this season he appeared as though he might complete his task. One episode even ends with Do-ki’s black cab being blown off the road and erupting into a ball of fire.
As we later learn, Do-ki sniffed out that attempt to snuff out his life in the nick of time, hurling himself out of the car moments before it lit up. But his life and that of his colleagues come perilously close to ending several more times near the finale, when Do-ki finishes the season just like he started it – behind bars.
Both times, Do-ki inserted himself in prison on purpose to help a client, but this time his voluntary incarceration has been engineered by the Bishop, who has the whole prison, prisoners and guards alike, in his pocket.
The Bishop is a mighty adversary, but despite being so well acquainted with the exploits of the Rainbow Taxi Company he underestimates them in one crucial way: he doesn’t anticipate the emotional aspect of their plan.
Our early faith in Ha-joon, before we discovered he was a killing machine, is rewarded when Jang Sung-chul (Kim Eui-sung), the head of Rainbow, digs up information on his parents. He thought he was abandoned and taken in by the Bishop, but that proves to be very far from the truth.
The manipulative Bishop’s most loyal servant discovers his master’s betrayal and suddenly becomes the ace up Rainbow’s sleeve, providing the season with a suitably cathartic, action-packed and emotional climax.
In between its prison bookends, this season of Taxi Driver has treated us to another colourful array of vile criminals, some of whom it turned out were connected to the Bishop’s empire.
These included a con man using abducted children to help young couples score flats in Korea’s real estate lottery system, and an alcoholic surgeon delegating dangerous and unnecessary operations to an unlicensed doctor.
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There’s also the case of the Black Sun nightclub where women are drugged and offered up to high-paying VIPs, a direct allusion of the “Burning Sun” scandal that erupted in South Korea in 2019 that encompassed prostitution, drug trafficking and police corruption and implicated several major entertainment figures.Taxi Driver has been such a hit for SBS that the Korean broadcaster nodded to some of its other heavyweight shows this season through a few eye-catching cameos.
Halfway through the season, Namgoong Min donned his checked suit and sunglasses again for a reprise of his One Dollar Lawyer, who bumps into Do-ki and gives him a few tips. He also offers to split his one-dollar retainer with him if he happens to send any clients his way.
In the season finale, the Rainbow Taxi Company gets a surprise and explosive helping hand from a former employee, who was the first person to drive the Deluxe Taxi before Do-ki. Dressed in black and played by The Penthouse villain Kim So-yeon, she riddles a warehouse and a battalion of goons with gunfire.Though humour is in generous supply throughout, often thanks to the genial comic support of Rainbow mechanics Park Jin-eon (Bae Yoo-ram) and Choi Kyung-koo (Jang Hyuk-jin), Taxi Driver 2 wasn’t quite as funny as its predecessor.
It’s not that the jokes weren’t as good, but the show took on higher dramatic stakes and needed room for a season-long villain which intensified the competition for screen real estate.
The main draw of the show continues to be the vicarious thrill afforded to the audience by this crack team of vigilantes. The schemes they cook up are enjoyable but at times a little sloppy in their execution.
There’s nothing the team can’t do, but it’s not always clear how they do it. For example, Do-ki, Jin-eon and Kyung-koo have no trouble sneaking items into prison with them, and their tech support Ahn Go-eun (Pyo Ye-jin) is somehow able to see and hear them on the inside.
Each time something goes wrong with their plan, we’ve become used to the fact that Rainbow has a secret plan to one-up the villains. It’s fun seeing how this table-turning comes together, but it softened the tension in what should have been the show’s most thrilling moments.
Taxi Driver season 2 is streaming on Viu.
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