Vincenzo Episode 02 Recap: Geumga Plaza Throws a Wine Party
Vincenzo, Season 1, Episode 02 tvN / Netflix · Written by Park Jae-bum · 2021
Vincenzo starts with a rooftop threat and ends with Babel walking into a party it never meant to attend.
Vincenzo Episode 02 is the point where the joke starts showing its teeth.
Geumga Plaza still has monks, terrible risotto, zombie practice, and tenants who can turn any meeting into a neighborhood brawl. But Babel is not a cartoon landlord problem. It is a company willing to scare people out of their homes, hide a missing researcher, and treat patient deaths as paperwork. Vincenzo Cassano (Song Joong-ki) claims he only cares about the gold under the building, but the people around him keep making that lie harder to maintain.
By the time the demolition crew arrives, he has learned enough about Seoul corruption to stop playing polite.
Vincenzo forces Babel’s thugs to retreat from Geumga Plaza
Episode 02 picks up with Vincenzo dangling the Babel errand man over the edge of Geumga Plaza and making him promise to leave. It is ridiculous, violent, and very Vincenzo.
He has the facts, too. Babel does not own the building. Mr. Cho does. The sale happened under threat, which means Vincenzo sees no reason to treat the contract as sacred. When he says, “This building belongs to me,” everyone hears a foreign-language outburst. The line is simpler than that. He means it literally because the gold under Nanyak Temple has turned a shabby plaza into his fortune.
That private motive keeps the opening from turning heroic too quickly. Vincenzo is not defending Geumga because he has become a public-interest lawyer overnight. He is defending the building because Babel’s demolition plan could bury the gold, expose the secret chamber, or kill everyone above it. His panic at the temple is funny because he is trying to stop a boiler repair without explaining that the floor is basically sitting on top of a mafia vault.
The gold flashbacks also sharpen his code. Three years earlier, the hidden room was designed to collapse the building if anyone tried to break in. The tycoon dies. Mr. Cho becomes the only other person who knows the truth. Vincenzo arrives to recover the treasure in two days, then finds Babel already circling.
So the stakes are ugly before the tenants even understand them. If Babel tears down Geumga, the tenants lose their homes and businesses. If Vincenzo tears it down first, they still lose them. He needs the building empty, but every minute with the tenants makes them less disposable.
Hong Yu-chan (Yoo Jae-myung) sees through part of him immediately. He does not know about the gold, but he knows Vincenzo is too emotional for a man chasing a commission. Yu-chan still lets him in later because the enemy is worse.
That is the first real crack in the wall between them.
Choi Myung-hee leaves prosecution for Wusang
Choi Myung-hee (Kim Yeo-jin) first appears dancing, then starts ripping through powerful men with a smile. That contrast tells you a lot. She is silly by choice, never by accident.
At the prosecutors’ office, she pressures Deputy Minister Lee Nam-su by reminding him how easily she can ruin a clean reputation. She talks about digging up dirt in a perfect garden, then brings up a man driven to suicide by accusations. She does not need to shout. She knows exactly where to press.
That makes her transfer to Wusang feel dangerous instead of routine. Han Seung-hyuk (Jo Han-chul) recruits her over drinks because Wusang wants someone who can fight like the prosecutors and protect Babel like a private weapon. Myung-hee understands the offer. She knows she is tired of being used by men who plan to keep her outside the real cartel. Wusang gives her a longer leash, better food, and a bigger target.
Her resignation tells the whole story. She is sick of being their hound. When they tell her she will be a dog anywhere, she does not argue. She just says the new leash will be longer.
That is Myung-hee in one scene: unsentimental, practical, and not remotely confused about what she is selling.
Hong Cha-young (Jeon Yeo-been) feels the threat as soon as Myung-hee arrives at Wusang. Cha-young is used to being the loudest operator in the room. Myung-hee steps in and makes the firm clap for her on day one.
The timing is terrible for Yu-chan. His Babel Pharmaceuticals case has already taken a hit because a witness recants and apologizes on camera. Wusang thinks the case is finished. Cha-young thinks her father is out of moves. Then a Babel researcher disappears from quarantine, and the whole pharmaceutical cover-up starts breathing again.
Babel is not only a redevelopment villain. A test subject has died. Researchers were kept at a villa to stay quiet. A missing whistleblower could expose what happened to patients. The company’s lawyers talk about containment while real victims sit outside the room.
Myung-hee is walking toward that machine, not away from it.
Hong Yu-chan and Vincenzo share makgeolli
Vincenzo and Yu-chan become allies in the most fitting way possible: over documents, insults, and alcohol.
Vincenzo asks for everything Jipuragi has on Babel E&C. Yu-chan refuses at first because he still sees him as a liar with a hidden agenda. Vincenzo does not deny the agenda. He says, “Know your enemy before you beat them.” That is enough to get Yu-chan listening.
The Jipuragi scenes work because Yu-chan and Vincenzo share a disgust that comes from opposite lives. Yu-chan hates Babel because they hurt the vulnerable and hide behind Wusang. Vincenzo hates Babel because they are sloppy gangsters in suits who pretend they are legitimate. He recognizes the tactics. He also recognizes the cowardice.
Cha-young sees the chemistry and hates it. She suspects Vincenzo is using her father to keep a lawsuit alive for his own profit. She is not entirely wrong to distrust him, but she is wrong about the part that matters: Vincenzo is starting to care about Babel’s cruelty beyond the money.
The snack-bar conversation with Cha-young gives him the local map. In Italy, she says, the mafia gets its hands dirty. In Korea, politicians, police, prosecutors, and corporations all join in. Cha-young tells him the Korean version spreads everywhere.
Over makgeolli, Yu-chan talks about his public-defender client, a woman wrongfully convicted of murder who has accepted prison and pancreatic cancer because she believes she deserves punishment for abandoning her son. Yu-chan is not grandstanding. He is grieving a system where the innocent accept pain and the guilty laugh outside.
Vincenzo listens.
That matters because he has spent two days watching good people suffer and feeling powerless in a way he clearly hates. He is not suddenly gentle. He is still a mafia consigliere who threatens families and talks about turning people into vineyard fertilizer. But Yu-chan gives him a moral language for the anger he already has.
The father-daughter material beside it is quieter but just as important. Cha-young keeps pretending she only worries about optics, yet she races over when she hears Babel plans to demolish Geumga at 11 p.m. Yu-chan keeps pretending he is fine, yet his apartment is full of Cha-young’s childhood photos. They fight like professionals on opposite sides. They love each other like people too proud to admit fear.
That fear is earned. Yu-chan receives a call from the missing researcher and rushes out alone. Cha-young tries to warn him about the demolition. The two Babel crimes cross paths at the worst possible time.
Geumga Plaza becomes a Sicilian wine party
The final stretch is where Vincenzo finds his signature weapon: farce used as sabotage.
Babel’s plan is blunt. Send in crews at night under the excuse of a cleanup, damage the building, scare the tenants out, then shrug and call it an accident. Wusang discusses the likely casualties like a manageable number. Four deaths in one redevelopment, twelve in another. To them, human damage is just the price of clearing land.
The tenants understand the danger, but not one person has a clean option. The laundromat owner has utensils. The piano teacher has a loan. The monk has a temple. The plaza is where they live, work, pray, cook, rehearse, and fail loudly in public. Leaving means survival with nothing left.
Vincenzo looks useless for a long minute. He scrolls on his phone while everyone panics. The joke lands because the tenants think he is killing time, but he is searching for an image match from his Italian contacts and building a trap out of vanity, wine, and Korean social habits.
By 11 p.m., Babel’s crew arrives ready to wreck the place and finds a Traditional Sicilian VIP Wine Party instead.
It is a perfect Vincenzo solution because nobody can attack the plaza without creating witnesses. Influencers are filming. Guests are drinking. The tenants are suddenly hosts. Mr. Nam is greeting people. Babel’s muscle stands outside looking confused while the building they came to damage becomes the most public place in the neighborhood.
The party is absurd, but the target is precise. Vincenzo does not beat the demolition crew. He makes demolition socially impossible. Babel wanted secrecy, fear, and empty halls. He gives them lights, music, cameras, and a countdown.
The tenants join because they finally see a plan they can touch. They are not passive victims waiting for a foreign savior. They pour drinks, welcome guests, improvise status, and turn their weirdness into cover. Their loyalty is still fragile, but the night gives them a shared win.
Vincenzo ends Episode 02 looking less like a man trapped in Korea and more like a man realizing Seoul can be made to play by his rules. That is dangerous for Babel. It is also dangerous for Vincenzo, because once the tenants become part of his plan, they stop being obstacles.
They become people he is responsible for.
What works
The best material in Episode 02 comes from the way it lets comedy and danger share space without flattening either side. Vincenzo insulting the fake Italian chef’s risotto, Cha-young dragging him through tteokbokki etiquette, and the tenants practicing zombie movements are funny on their own. None of that cancels the threat from Babel.
The party ending is also a smart early statement for the series. Vincenzo’s mafia past matters, but his Seoul tactics cannot be simple copies of Italian violence. He has to adapt. The result is ridiculous and effective.
Myung-hee’s arrival gives the villain side a sharper face. Babel already has money and muscle. Wusang already has shamelessness. Myung-hee brings appetite. She likes the dirt, the leverage, and the feeling of outplaying men who underestimate her.
Yu-chan and Vincenzo’s makgeolli scene gives the story its moral weight. Yu-chan does not lecture him into decency. He lets Vincenzo sit beside a life built around losing fights for people who have no one else.
What stumbles
Some of the early intelligence-service comedy around Vincenzo’s mafia background runs broader than the rest. The joke about treating one mafia arrival like a national invasion has a place, but it sits a little loosely beside the tighter Geumga and Wusang material.
The hidden gold exposition is necessary, yet the flashback chain gets dense: the tycoon, Mr. Cho, the vault defense, the collapse mechanism, Babel’s purchase pressure, and the boiler repair all arrive quickly. The information is clear, but the rhythm briefly feels busier than the character scenes around it.
Cha-young’s concern for Yu-chan is still buried under heavy denial. It makes sense for her, but the stronger moments are when fear slips through before she can dress it up as professional embarrassment.
What this sets up for Episode 03
Episode 03 has two fuses already lit.
First, the missing Babel Pharmaceuticals researcher has contacted Yu-chan, which means the patient-death case is not dead. If Yu-chan reaches the truth, Babel and Wusang will stop treating him as an irritating old lawyer and start treating him as a threat.
Second, Vincenzo has publicly embarrassed Babel E&C. The wine party saves Geumga for one night, but it also tells Babel that the new man in the plaza is not bluffing. Na Deok-jin has already been humiliated once. Han-seo has already been hit by the hidden real power above him. Myung-hee is now inside Wusang.
Geumga Plaza bought time. Next comes the price.
Rating: 8.5/10
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Reviewed by Mira Vance · QuizFandom Editor & Lead Reviewer. Every rating is an honest per-watch assessment from the desk that also writes the quizzes — not a press release rehash.