How do I know that I’ve been Koreanized after all these years of kdramas? I understand the oddball humor of “Pegasus Market” like I understand the non sequiturs of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (Really, how absurd was it that King Arthur had no horse but was trotting to the sound of two empty halves of coconut shells banging on each other?)

Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop.

At the center of the comedy is “Pegasus Market,” the floundering supermarket in the very successful Daema Group conglomeration. To insiders of the company, it’s the equivalent of an exile…and a grave. “If someone is transferred from DG to work at Pegasus Market, then it means that the company wants that person’s letter of resignation.”

As it happens, one of the founding members of the Daema Group, Director Jung Bokdong (the actor is the evil eunuch in the “Goblin”) is ordered transferred to Pegasus Market by the Chairman Kim Daema for having failed to anticipate the market popularity of a hair growth car wax.

Yes. You read that right. Imagine the hood of your car, as shiny as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s bald head, growing instant hair. Gross, right? The Chairman Kim Daema pitched this ludicrous product to his board members as a test to who will stand up against a wrong direction. While the other sycophantic board members have misgivings, they nevertheless agree with his plan. Only Jung Bokdong was honest and brave enough to voice his dissent.

And for this, he’s exiled because, as it turns out, there was a demand for this ludicrous product. Who knew? I guess, it’s not as weird as that beauty cream made from snail mucin (because “mucin” sounds more scientific than mucus) and the poop bread (it’s 100% organic! lol) sold in the street of Insadong.

Being an evil genius, Bokdong won’t just grin and bear his shameful demotion. If he’s going down, he’s going to take the rest of the Daema Group with him, including the Chairman himself. Bokdong hatches a scheme to run Daema Group to the ground by spending corporate funds on the money pit that is Pegasus Market. He orders the store manager Moon Seokgu to hire more workers who are as “competent” as he is.

lol. He makes this sound like a compliment when it’s actually a thinly disguised insult. Moon Seokgu is just too dumb (or mentally INcompetent) not to see through it.

Now, Moon Seokgu is an excellent foil to Jung Bokdong. He’s like peanut butter to his Bokdong’s jelly, the beef to Bokdong’s horseradish, the ramen to his egg, the samosa to his mango chutney. Do you get what I mean? He needs the spark, the additional oomph! and the genius of Bokdong to stand out from the ordinariness.

He’s an earnest, average man who by dint of studious studying and hard work achieved his goal of becoming Pegasus Market’s manager (and remember now, the rejects of Daema Group are sent to Pegasus Market). His motto is funny. “Embarrassment lasts for a second, but profits last forever.” Besides, he reasons, he isn’t going to see these people anyway. That’s why on his bus ride to work he tolerates his face being squashed against the glass door. But hmmm….oddly enough, on his payday, he goes to a competitor’s store to buy beef, in a face mask, like he’s some kpop celebrity. Why are the chances of him being recognized by fellow passengers on the overcrowded bus that he takes every day and by fellow shoppers at the store he only visits once a month?

lol. But fate is cruel because he does get recognized by his own Pegasus Market employees shopping at the rival supermarket…like a kpop celebrity, he stands out more because of his disguise.

Seokgu wants Pegasus Market to succeed but he doesn’t have brilliant ideas on how to achieve that. On the other hand, Bokdong wants Pegasus Market to fail and he has plenty of wicked ideas on how to do it. Bokdong’s first act of sabotage is to hire unemployable people. The first two candidates are desperately seeking full-time employment so they try to outdo each other with their qualifications. However, they can’t tout job-related skills as one is an aspiring band singer for 10 years, and the other one has been a driver since the 1997 IMF crash. Instead, they lament how useless they are as husbands, fathers, and human beings. Any sane interviewer will have disqualified them on the spot.

Applicant 1: I’m a dirty trash.
Applicant 2: I’m a food waste.
Applicant 1: I’m trash that can’t be recycled.
Applicant 2: I’m trash that doesn’t even rot so it just floats around in the ocean.
Applicant 1: I’m a corpse. I’m practically dead.
Applicant 2: I’m a nuclear waste.

The third hire is a gangster (the actor played the Reaper in Hotel del Luna) who falsely claims food poisoning. Bokdong sees through his thuggery and realizes that it’s another desperate act to get the supermarket management to offer him a job. He quickly declares all three applicants hired immediately…to Soekgu’s dismay.

Seokgu follows him outside to protest because none of them are “competent” like him.

SG: Why did you hire a bunch of nobodies who came without their resumes?
BD: Nobodies?

The camera shows the three “nobodies” working together to get a broken-down door up again.

SG: I’m sorry to say this but I worked my butt off to join this company. Ever since I was in college, I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do. I didn’t sleep much. All I did was breathe and prepare to get hired. I worked so hard to get high TOEIC scores and a good GPA. I worked so hard to join this company. It’s not fair to hire people like them who came without resume as employees.
BD: (smiling) Mr Moon. Are you any different from them?
SG: To be honest, I am.
BD: (nodding) Then as a Daema Group employee and as a manager, come up with a plan to use the new employees in the most effective way. I’ll entrust you with that.
SG: Pardon?
BD: I’d like you to follow my lead. No matter what anyone says, you’re the key to this project.

To me, this scene is the crux of this comedy show: they’re all in the same boat. The three new hires plus the Bbaya Tribe who’ll be the late recruits, Soekgu and Bokdong are facing a similar predicament. Although their status and circumstances may vastly differ among themselves, they are all “nobodies” in the eyes of people.

If Soekgu thinks he’s worthier than these “losers” because he worked his butt off to get that managerial position, then how would Bokdong feel? He worked even harder to create the Daema Group, and he lost opportunities to be with his family to make the company a success. To him, being “exiled” in that loser’s shithole is grossly unfair.

Or put this way: which is most painful? Hypothetically speaking?  To climb up the stairs all the way to the 10th floor from the ground floor? To reach first floor from some subterranean level, like Parking Level 5, without using the elevator? Or to fall from the 99th floor down to the 15th floor?

I’d say falling from the 99th floor. I played “Chutes and Ladders” boardgame when I was little. And there was nothing more upsetting as falling down a chute when I was already near the end or completion of the game. I used to throw a temper tantrum and the boardgame would be confiscated (hahaha).

At first, I thought it was admirable of Bokdong to encourage Soekgu to follow his lead and to reaffirm his confidence in Soekgu as a “key” player in the project.

But by the end of the episode, when he declared his nefarious plan to make Pegasus Market into a “big bomb” that he’s going to drop on Daema Group’s headquarters like a big pile of dung, in order to bankrupt the company, I was laughing.

Because his plans, as crazy as they are, may actually backfire on him. His plans can turn out to be very successful — just like the hair growth car wax.

I think Bokdong has the creativity mind to transform Pegasus Market into a model supermarket. You see, the Pegasus is a fantastical winged horse from the Greek myths that symbolizes divine inspiration. And just like Pegasus, Bokdong is imparting radical, never-heard-of ideas to his employees that can revolutionize the supermarket industry. His ideas can actually “take flight” like the winged Pegasus. lol.

For example, a fake Joseon king handling the customer service department is hilarious but the concept can work in real life.

Customer service involves emotions. At any moment, the encounter between customer and store rep can become volatile because the customer demands satisfaction and the store rep feels beleaguered. But when both parties are reminded to be courteous and respectful of each other, a transaction can be resolved much smoothly and less stressfully. Both the “king” and the “subject” are given the “royal” treatment that they deserve.

Then, the Bbaya tribe acting as personal shopping cart is outrageous, too.

I was actually trying to count how many ways that scene could offend snowflakes. Let me see now:

It’s politically incorrect to depict protected minorities (racist!) working for slave wages (a dime for an hour’s work?) in a patriarchal hierarchy (all the bosses were male!) while being dehumanized (hey, call the union!) as the energy-efficient (but what about bathroom breaks? coffee breaks?), male-dominated alternative (hey!! no transgender?) to a shopping cart (because shopping carts are oppressive symbols of capitalism).

How many acres of grassland were destroyed to create these woven straw baskets? Are those sandals made from recycled plastic or slaughtered calves? Those scary, wriggling hands are triggering my fear of earthworms. Stop! 

Moreover, why were the Bbaya men mixing kpop dance moves with their aboriginal music — cultural appropriation, anybody? Where did they get their headgear with those rhino/elephant tusks? Call PETA quick!

And what about this little kid sticking out his hand like that as if to punch the CFO in the balls? Isn’t that considered micro-aggression in the workplace?

If Korean comedy had been conceived and written here in Hollywood, that Bbaya tribe would never have seen the light of day. They would have been axed from the script. (Gulp! Shades of Christopher Columbus’ genocide against indigenous people!)

See that? The Bbaya tribe can be a rich source of politically incorrect jokes.

But as absurd as these Bbaya tribesmen may seem to be, I can see their real-world value for the mobility-impaired customers like pregnant women, disabled people, and senior citizens.

But the sunflower faces take the cake. I almost died laughing at Bokdong and Seokjun wearing those sunflowers masks. I’ve seen them worn here for Halloween, but I wouldn’t be surprised had the director/writer copied this idea from the headlines — the kpop band BTS were seen last June wearing these sunflower headpieces at the airport.

This whole scene doesn’t require slapstick because the visuals are hysterical.

How can somebody who looks so bright and sunny be plotting something so dark and sinister?

Overall, I think this show has potential. It’s entertaining and quirky. So far, romance has nothing to do with the plot. Although the story pits two characters against each, and one character is more villainous than the other, it’s easy to root for either one of them.

But what I like most about this comedy is that the humor is rooted in the struggles of an average person in a consumerist world. The sense of the absurd is relatable. I’m just happy not to deal with the first-world problems of a chaebol, the ditzy-ness of a lovestruck teenager, or the virtue-signalling of the politically correct crowd.