Pachinko Review: Chapter Eight (Season 1 Episode 8)

Pachinko Season 1 Episode 8, “Chapter Eight,” feels very much like a finale, even though the episode doesn’t come close to making it through all the material in Min Jin Lee’s novel.

One has to assume this is to make the season feel something like a complete whole, should Apple TV+ choose not to bring the drama back for a second outing, allowing its final image to be of a young Sunja doing simply what the episode end cards say so many women of her generation were forced to do—endure. Survive. Make a way out of no way, as my grandma would have put it.

Sunja’s decision to become a kimchee vendor is like nothing she would have ever been raised to do, or claimed she wanted. but she’s willing to do whatever it takes for her children, even if it’s something strangers or her own family might judge her for. Because at the end of the day—what choice does she have?

Speaking of choices, another very welcome change from the book is the slight shift in circumstances surrounding Isak’s arrest. In the novel, he’s sort of taken up by the authorities accidentally, arrested when another member of his congregation is accused of refusing to take part in a public prayer acknowledging the divine superiority of Japan’s emperor.

Here, Isak is an active revolutionary, trying to help workers unionize and fight back against oppression, doing so purposefully and keeping his involvement from his loved ones. It’s a seemingly small change, but it’s a seismic shift in the world of the story, and draws even more interesting parallels between the lives unspooling in separate times.

The idea that despite how much we might love someone, we may never still never fully know them is a powerful and, quite frankly, terrifying concept. The twist that, rather than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Isak built an entirely separate second life, full of activists and sermons and secrets that didn’t include his family is a big change.

But it’s also one that allows Isak a real agency the book often denies him and makes his imprisonment truly mean something in a way that it doesn’t really manage on the page.

We’re really not talking enough about how delicate and layered Minha Kim’s performance as Sunja is. Or, at least, I haven’t been, because she’s doing truly stunning work here—allowing Sunja’s deep-set fear, furious rage, and love for her family to war on her face at virtually every moment. 

From her fury and heartbreak in the face of Isak’s betrayal, which seems to grow exponentially every time she talks to someone about it, her embarrassment over being forced to admit to the authorities who already look down on her that she doesn’t know how to read or write, and her determination to take on the everyday duties of survival that her husband is not around to perform, Sunja is struggling to process so much at once, and it’s a lot to ask of any actor.

Yet, Kim makes Sunja so deeply, incredibly human, in spite of her mistakes and I just love her for it so much.

Pachinko’s multi-timeline narrative hasn’t always worked as well as I personally would have liked—largely due to the fact that Solomon’s story is often so much weaker than anyone else’s in his family—but “Chapter Eight” gets the balance between past and present exactly right, drawing deft emotional parallels between almost every major subplot. 

In this episode, Solomon’s story isn’t so much about Solomon himself as it is about Hana’s death, and the way he must make peace not just with her loss, but the complete fracture of the idea that he could ever simply work hard enough to make people who hate him simply for being different change their minds. (Is this validation of Hansu’s “be so good they have to respect you” advice to Noa at the episode’s end? Maybe!)

“Chapter Eight” effortlessly intercuts several key scenes across time together into one emotional whole, and though I certainly was expecting to ugly cry over the impending death of my least favorite character on the show, something about Hana’s final moments of consciousness—from Solomon’s grand gesture on the roof to the way Sunja sees a bird freewheel across the sky at the same moment in two distinct timelines—it was all just incredibly beautiful.

And it absolutely makes me want to see more. Bring on Season 2. (I hope.)

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• The redone opening credits with a Korean version of “Let’s Live for Today”!! What a perfect example of the way this show has seamlessly incorporated multiple languages and cultures throughout its entire run. 
• When I tell you I cried during the final sequences with 2021 Korean women talking about their experience as what are essentially Koreans in exile—reader, I wept.
• After last week’s showcase episode, it makes sense that Lee Min-ho had less do to this here, but the insertion of Hansu into Noa’s life at this specific moment (another thing that doesn’t happen in the book) feels oddly perfect. And the visual of Hansu’s crisp white suit in the muddy streets of Osaka’s Koreatown is so striking. 
• The return of the watch—and the gift of it to Noa—is yet another thing that doesn’t happen in the boos, but old Sunja’s comment that though she once viewed it as a curse, it saved her family, makes me deeply curious about how it came back to her, in the end. Did Noa give it to her right away? Did she find it later when he was grown? Was she ever tasked with explaining where it came from?
• The child actor playing young Noa is possibly the cutest kid I’ve ever seen. 

What did you think of this episode of Pachinko? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Pachinko Season 1 is now streaming on AppleTV+.

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