Let me clarify here: this show was - without a doubt - written by two people who either snorted something or developed episode ideas by chucking absurd one-shot pitches into a hat and drawing them out at random. Strongest Delivery Man is a steaming, reanimated Frankensteinian corpse of a drama. And

I LOVED IT.

Many dramas delve into the harrowing, alienating world of the corporate drone, the working class shmuck, and the rich heir. All the ones I've seen that have contradictorily shown their characters squirm under the acute and malicious thumb of wealth inequality and given them a way out by like, doing capitalism "the right way" by starting a company and just being super nice and friendly or marrying out of poverty and never thinking about how sucky that shit was anymore. That is, they identify a social problem, and rather than grapple with the contradictions of the ideology they live under, they buy back into it. Dramas don't have to find solutions to the prevailing issues of the day of course, but if your characters are driven because of their socioeconomic status and the drama pretends the issue isn't latent in the society the character lives in, it's trying to have its cake and eat it too. You don't get to write a social drama without the social criticism.

This drama, with its plot constructed through word association games using fruits at a supermarket, actually looked at one of the core contradictions in Korean society and showed an honest to god alternative way. Dan-ah wants to leave the country. She hates toiling away and dealing with the country's competitive and thankless atmosphere. Kang-soo, literally Jesus, has assembled an actual army of delivery men by saving their lives in near-fatal traffic accidents around Seoul to earn their loyalty. They pair up and start a Door Dash/SkipTheDishes type company that's organized HORIZONTALLY. Everyone gets the same wages and has a stake in the company! They don't charge ridiculous commissions from the restaurants they deliver from and BY THE WAY the delivery guys are working with independent mom-and-pop shops to fight off a predatory chain restaurant that's trying to drive away its competition (a real thing that Starbucks did to kill the independent coffee house culture of the USA). It shows the community coming together, leaving competition behind and thriving for it.

That said, though, this show is complete, utter, catnip. I lost my shit while watching it. I've never had so much fun with pure shenanigans, of which this show is UTTERLY, 100%, UNDISTILLED SHENANIGANS. You could feed this to me and it would have the same effect as steroids. It's not GOOD by any stretch of the imagination. It is bloody entertaining.

The first episode is basically a remake of the Fast and the Furious movies. It's billed as a rom-com, right? Well in the first, like, 10 minutes of the first episode you see a delivery guy on a scooter get fucking nailed by a driver while he's parked next to the main character. Blood on the ground and everything, Kang-soo LEAVES THE MAN BLEEDING IN THE STREET TO CHASE AFTER THE CULPRIT WHO HIT HIM. He calls he poor guy an ambulance and CHASES AFTER - DUDE YOU ARE NOT A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL.

Throughout the rest of the first episode there are MULTIPLE accidents or near-accidents, there's a street race somewhere in there - and bear in mind, this is before the audience has any idea that this show is going to be Uber Eats in Itaewon. Kang-soo POPS A FRONT WHEELIE to avoid colliding into his soon-to-be love interest, and then you're supposed to accept that this man is going to be doing his own stunts for the rest of the show. This insistence on sporadically and randomly inserting wild action scenes culminates in an offensively hilarious one where Dan-ah and her boss lady track down boss-lady's boss-husband to a mafia hide out and Kang-soo, with a band of delivery men, storm the hide out and FIST FIGHT ARMED MAFIA MEMBERS TO RESCUE THEIR FRIENDS 3 TO 1. THEY'RE OUTNUMBERED AND THEY WIN THE FIGHT. WHAT A WORLD.

REMEMBER, THIS IS A DRAMA IMAGINING WHAT DOOR DASH WOULD BE LIKE IF IT WAS OWNED BY A WORKER CO-OP.

Kang-soo is able to muster every delivery man in Seoul on a whim. PHSYICALLY. When he wants to tell them something, he texts 327 delivery men in a group chat to meet him by a floodway and every single one of them will ride to him on their identical scooters like it's a battle scene from Lord of the Rings and SIT on the vehicles until he's done his speech. This show has a weird tendency to center technologically-mediated communication AND treat it like a superfluous detail in its world at the same time. Kang-soo calls his warrior delivery boys to him to ask them to delivery flyers that encourage pedestrians to VISIT A WEBSITE. JUST ADVERTISE ON INSTAGRAM, KANG-SOO. WHY can't he tell them what he wants to say THROUGH THE GROUP CHAT? WHY is he mustering them so they can sit, peeking out of their helmets, like their scooters are horses and they're the king's knights, WHEN HE CAN JUST --- TEXT THEM --- THROUGH. THE. GROUP. CHAT?

The delivery men are extremely loyal to Kang-soo because, again, he's saved each of their lives and lacks the ability to type on a keyboard with more than one finger at a time. Kang-soo ends up in prison after he's wrongfully accused of his friend's actions, which were attempting murder on an heir who street raced and blocked a road that could have been crucial to sparing their friend WHO GOT HIT BY A CAR from falling into a coma. When Kang-soo gets out of prison, that friend is there to greet him AND THEN GOES BACK TO THE HOSPITAL FOR MANDATORY BED REST. He's also KANG-SOO'S HALF-BROTHER ON KANG-SOO'S LONG LOST MOTHER'S SIDE. The feud between Jin-gyu (the heir) and Kang-soo threatens to lead to an all-out war between the delivery men and the chain restaurant until a grandma steps in and says, "hey guys, let's stop now because there's no other way for the writers to feasibly restore the levity we're hoping for." And that's how the revenge cycle stops. OH, and Jin-gyu and Kang-soo are part of a love square.

I want you to be skeptical of the people who reviewed this show and said they could relate to it, because I haven't even spoiled half of this show's high octane ludicrousness for you. Every possible trope a K-drama could have is introduced and used up in the span of SECONDS in this show. Itaewon Class could NEVER.

Dizzying, that's what this show was. It was dizzying. It's the fact that it took itself too seriously and completely facetiously at the same time. The fact that it pulled the mafia and the corporate world together around socialist SkipTheDishes. Maybe it's the way Kang-soo slaps down his ancient manuscript business bible like he's got the answers to humankind's deepest questions when it's a handwritten notebook that just says "DoorDash, but more equitable." There's hallucinations, death, flirty jokes and climactic kiss scenes, off-the-wall stunts, delivery boy cavalry, HORRIBLE MUSIC - the whole package. Everything you could never know coexists in this blursed drama. And let's be real, people, there's no other word for this shit. it's BLURSED.