“Penthouse: War in Life (Season 2)” (펜트하우스)

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
April 9, 2021

☆☆☆☆
Na Ae-Kyo / Shim Su-Ryeon (played by Lee Ji-Ah)
Oh Yoon-Hee (played by Eugene)
Cheon Seo-Jin (played by Kim So-Yeon)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

The second season of “The Penthouse” offers more of the same makjang storyline that made the first season such a hit. The core trio of Lee Ji-Ah, Eugene and Kim So-Yeon portray three women whose lives appear to be forever intertwined. Only this time, Eugene’s character (Oh Yoon-Hee) isn’t a poor wannabe. Rather, she’s a wealthy woman married to a filthy rich man who is very familiar to her frenemies.

Um Ki-Joon returns as Joo Dan-Tae, the unctuous businessman whose moral compass is forever broken.

I was wondering how they would bring Lee back, since Shim Su-Ryeon was killed off last season. She returns as Na Ae-Kyo, a less classy doppelganger of Su-Ryeon, who is the biological mother of Dan-Tae’s twins. Ae-Kyo is the perfect match for Dan-Tae. She’s as well versed in fighting as she is in manipulating business investments to her advantage. She puts a wedge in Dan-Tae’s relationship with Cheon Seo-Jin, whose life is about to be overturned.

As for the teenagers, most of them haven’t shown much growth since the previous season. A couple of them show kindness to Yoon-Hee’s daughter, Bae Ro-Na. But that’s about it.

This second season is full of subterfuge, a revelation about who one of the students’ real father is and lots and lots of comeuppance. Oh, and there’s the murder of another teenage student, too.

Trivia: Kim Hyun-Soo, who portrays Bae Ro-Na, played the younger version of Jun Ji-Hyun’s character in “My Love From Another Star.” She was also the lead child actor in “Silenced.” I had thought she looked familiar but didn’t put it together until I was writing this review!

Airdates: Thirteen episodes aired on SBS from February 19, 2021 to April 2, 2021. You may also read my reviews of Season 1 and Season 3. 

Spoiler Alert: It appears that in a jealous fit of rage, Seo-Jin’s squirrely daughter, Eun-Byeol (Choi Ye-Bin) stabbed Ro-Na to death. But in reality, she didn’t kill her. She merely stabbed her in the shoulder, leaving Ro-Na very much alive. Dan-Tae found the bleeding girl and stabbed her some more. But, Su-Ryeon saved her and took her to the hospital, where she had (among other things) brain surgery. (One of the funniest visuals is seeing R0-Na readjust her loosely applied bandage, which wiggles around her full head of hair.)

Speaking of Su-Ryeon… In season one, Dan-Tae killed her. Or so he thought. It was really Ae-Kyo, pretending to be Su-Ryeon. Which led to the latter pretending to be Ae-Kyo, to set Dan-Tae up.

What else … oh yes … Ro-Na is the biological daughter of Yoon-Cheol (Yoon Jong-Hoon), who’s the father of Eun-Byul. Yoon-Hee found out she was pregnant after they had broken up and never told him. When he finds out, he’s tormented thinking about how one of his biological daughters (almost) killed his other child.

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