"Switch - Change The World" Episodes 23-24 recap

Do-chan and his dad finally meet up for the first time in ages- and with that, the two conspire to become an impeccably effective con artist team. Unfortunately there's very little follow-up to this. It's never completely clear how Mister Ppeong is going to be able to assist Do-chan when Do-chan already seems to be doing well enough on his own. This ignoring that Tae-woong has finally gotten suspicious enough about the relationship between Joon-soo and Do-chan to run some tests.

I know I know. I was only just criticizing "Switch - Change The World" for making Tae-woong come off as too dumb, and now he's too smart? Well, the problem is really more that that Do-chan comes off as kind of dumb for failing to anticipate that Tae-woong would get suspicious. Sure, there's a few moves made to maintain that illusion, but at the end of the day the crisis of the climax is entirely a consequence of Do-chan and Ha-ra failing to come up with a decent backup plan.

That Mister Ppeong ends up being that backup plan proves...awkward. Director Jo Young-jin tries as best as he can to wring drama of Mister Ppeong's final scene with Do-chan, but ultimately the drama comes off as cheap because these two just haven't had much screentime together. For all the talk we get of avenging his dad Do-chan is surprisingly indifferent to his father's abrupt reappearance.

Indeed, Do-chan's relationship with his father doesn't even have much in the way of ambiguity, mostly because the present-day Do-chan is too well-adjusted and cool to have any kind of parental issues. Mister Ppeong's admonitions against the con artist life come off as especially cheap in this context. Whatever mistakes Do-chan and Mister Ppeong have made in life, the issue is less that they're con artists and more that they ran afoul of a dangerous thug like Tae-woong.

I mean really, someone was going to have to take Tae-woong down, and even a legit prosecutor would have to resort to some con artist tricks to pull that off. Of course, the lack of forward progress is as much of a problem as anything else here. Ideally the damage Do-chan has done so far would have backed Tae-woong into a corner and forced the villain into some more predictable patterns. Instead, we get a lot of talk about how Do-chan has damaged Tae-woong's pride, yet apparently not his capacity to organize further crimes.

Review by William Schwartz

"Switch - Change The World" is directed by Nam Tae-jin, written by Baek Woon-cheol and Kim Ryoo-hyun, and features Jang Geun-suk, Han Ye-ri, Jung Woong-in, and Jo Hee-bong