The Fiery Priest (Season 2)
Summary
The Fiery Priest, 2019’s top-rated kdrama, is back for a second season with The Fiery Priest II. In South Korea’s second-largest city of Busan, Catholic Priest Kim Hae-il and his companions take on a Laotian druglord who’s moved into the area. Filled with epic fight scenes, unhinged gags, and a plot that could never quite find its feet, The Fiery Priest II falls flat on its face.
Assessment
The Fiery Priest II is the second season to 2019’s hit kdrama The Fiery Priest. All of the favorite characters are back with plenty of new additions, including a new set of villains. The top-notch acting and tight, interesting fight choreography seem to be the only things that carried over from the first season, as the second season struggled its way through a borderline nonsensical plot that seemed to require a funny joke or movie/TV show reference at every turn. These aspects combined turned the show into a fever dreamlike home for surrealism that leaves its audience bewildered and confused.
In terms of cleanliness and theology, the show is clean from any serious inappropriate adult content with barely any romance to speak of. However, there is a decent amount of blood and violence, as the main villain is a drug kingpin and complete psychopath; an edgy PG-13 level. What theology is present is decent, but it lacks the nuance and depth of Season One’s theology.
Light-o-Meter
Overall — 3 out of 7 Little Lights
Story: 2 out of 7 Little Lights
Acting: 6 out of 7 Little Lights
Cinematography: 4 out of 7 Little Lights
Music: 4 out of 7 Little Lights
Quality: 1 out of 7 Little Lights
Theological Message: 3 out of 7 Little Lights
Age Appropriateness — Appropriate for older teens and up.
Talk
Even after several good nights of sleep and time to process this second season of my much-beloved The Fiery Priest was, to put it mildly, a disaster.
Now, I’m not sure if it was intended to be; I can’t if this it was supposed to be a satirical mockery of Season 1 or the writer or the producer went “make it zanier…no I said ZANIER!!” and we ended up with such a mess. Regardless of intent, the impact this decision had on the show was disappointing to say the least. It was great to see all of the actors back in their original roles (plus a few new ones) and they all did an amazing job with script they were given.
The plot overall was mostly nonsensical. There was an overarching concept and flow, but it was constantly being disrupted by the need to be funny. It felt like every moment an episode could get a little serious or genuinely heartfelt (moments of which Season One had plenty of) it’d shoot itself in the foot. At one point almost literally. Season Two seemed to feel the need to be unutterably hilarious at every moment, whether or not it was actually good comedic timing. It was Marvel humor and movie/TV show references gone horribly awry on top of the fact it couldn’t seem to land the plane on any of its motivating factors. There were so many set ups to make this deeply personal to Kim Hae-il or any of his companions, but the show never took them.
I will say, the villain was spectacular; the perfect psychopath-in-disguise where one minute he’s acting like a civilized member of society and romancing a pretty girl and the next he’s in a warehouse stabbing a man to death because he asked the wrong kind of question. The actor did an amazing job with balancing these two extremes of his character and I felt it was completely underutilized in the plot. Actually, all of the characters were underutilized in the plot, if we are being honest.
And, theologically, Season Two wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely 1% milk compared to steak with Season One. Where Kim Hae-il’s faith was woven into his struggle against evil in Season One, it was kind of an afterthought or merely set dressing for Season Two. There was a really good question posed of “how far gone is too far gone to be saved” and it’s companion “how do we/do we pray for those who are truly evil”, but neither the plot nor the characters went anywhere with either (and, spoiler alert: yes, we do need to pray for those who are evil BUT I think that’s a good question to explore in media since some people do struggle with that concept).
In my opinion, Season Two isn’t worth watching unless you just really miss the characters or love Marvel humor (that is, cutting serious scenes with something comedic; which can be done well). Or, honestly, if you enjoy some pretty decent fight scenes. They weren’t quite as good as the fight scenes in Season One, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch our favorite fiery priest beat the stuffing out of villains.
Where to Enjoy
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