From its title alone, Queenmaker is clearly going to be focused on women. That being said, what started out as a restorative drama turned into a political one, and the women in the series became so much more than I bargained for. Directed by Oh Jin-Seok and written by Moon Ji-Young, the series follows Hwang Do-Hee (Kim Hee-ae), who went from working as the general manager of a strategic planning team at Eunsung Group to fighting against them. He can spin the press around his finger, bury secrets, and ultimately make sure blood never stains his client's hands.
Do-Hee is used to covering cases troubling Eunsung, both personal and corporate, but when her guilt mounts, she switches sides and joins Oh Kyung-Sook's (Moon So-ri) campaign to become mayor. from seoul. A human rights lawyer, Kyung-Sook took on the Eunsung Group, won, and is now working to become mayor of Seoul with the goal of fighting for the weak.
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Queenmaker could have been a straightforward series about a fixer who bends his own morality for a living. But instead, the series is about clearing his conscience and what Hwang Do-Hee does when all the chickens come home to sleep. Do-Hee is cold and calculating, but in episode one, that appearance is broken. What comes out of the series opener sets up big implications for the rest of the narrative. Queenmaker uses Do-Hee's guilt to navigate sexism in the workplace, abuse by the rich against the not-rich, and more. The series lives at the intersection of classism and sexism, and Do-Hee is what it all flows from. That said, when Do-Hee switches from the side of the chaebols to the side of the working class, the series takes a turn that exceeds my initial expectations.
After Do-Hee unintentionally pushes a woman to commit suicide after she reports a sexual assault at the hands of Do-Hee's clients, the series changes. There's a mountain of regret that Do-Hee tries to crawl and escape, and the strength of the show is that he never really can. She wielded her sword for the Eunsung group without shame or guilt, but now, Do-Hee has to deal with it. And that means getting someone else she pushed into a position of power and making Eunsung lose in the process.
The way Do-Hee atones for the tone of the series is by using her powers and her unwavering will for good, working to get Oh Kyung-Sook chosen. With the mayor of Seoul at the center of the series, Queenmaker is not just about Do-Hee making a leader out of Kyung-Sook. It's about all the women in the background, in the mayoral race, working to prop up their own conglomerate through the men they control or through themselves. The fact that the series is driven by mature women with Hwang Do-Hee, Oh Kyung-Sook, Son Young-Sim (Seo Yi-Sook), Eun Chae-Ryuong (Kim Sae-Byuk), Eun Seo-Jin (Yoon Ji-Hye) and Seo Min-Jung (Jin Kyung), all dealing lethal blows throughout the series to each other's powers, the series is no ordinary political drama.
Each woman is terrifying in her own right and beyond her ability, using what she has to do to maintain or gain power in a world built for men. To do this, each bends or abides by the rules as she sees fit, using them as shackles for the others she faces, sometimes even while ripping the gender's burdens off their shoulders. Queenmaker is a series that shows the complexities of politics, but more particularly, the forms they take when women are the ones vying for success.
But Do-Hee isn't the only fantastically strong character. Oh Kyung-Sook, the rhino of justice, is a force. She is dedicated to her pursuit of justice and ultimately fighting for the working class, seeing every battle even with the extremes of the Eunsung group as a way to crush the rich and give back to the have-nots. She is charismatic in her aggressive outspokenness, and her authenticity pushes the boundaries of female power stereotypes on Korean TV and even in the US. She is both a mythical symbol of class solidarity and equality and a key in the plans of the conglomerate.
Still, it's easy to get behind the good guys, and yet Son Young-Sim and Eun Chae-Ryoung make Queenmaker substantially entertaining. They are driven by greed and work within sexist chaebol politics. Young-Sim and Chae-Ryoung will never be more than their husbands, but that doesn't mean they can't shape their futures by using the stifling restrictions their gender places on them as if they were just part of a game.
As the political battle between Kyung-Sook and Min-Jun intensifies, Do-Hee meets her partner as she loses control of the political narrative.
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