This week, Pachinko rewinds to Solomon’s upbringing, the birth of a false hope, and the dying days of a wayward daughter. The Apple TV+ series brings out some big guns to connect the trauma of the past and present. And as usual, the cast, crew and writers are up to the task.
The developments this week are soapy and tug on your heartstrings as everyone does their best to make this material stick in your mind week to week. When you’re building a story out of little moments of heartache, it’s tough to keep them all equal. But this crew has done an amazing job with this material.
Pachinko recap: ‘Chapter Six’
The year is 1975. Solomon (played by Jin Ha) is a teenager struggling to fit in with a crush, and he’s not helped by the fact that the object of his desire is the dark-hearted and irresistibly vivacious Hana. She wants to run away to America, but the more-cautious Solomon isn’t so sure.
When Hana makes him shoplift to prove his love for her, Solomon gets caught. His father (Soji Arai) makes a deal with the police who arrest him. He swears to send his no-good son to America so he’ll get discipline and wise up. That surely won’t make him a worse person in the long run, now, will it?
1989
The year is 1989. Adult Hana (Mari Yamamoto) has been found, thanks to Solomon’s intervention, but she’s contracted the AIDS virus and the doctors in the Japanese hospital don’t want word to get out that they’re treating her. Japan is a cautious and close-minded place, terrified of letting something spoil the national consensus.
What would happen if Japan suddenly had to admit people are getting AIDS under the watch of the moral and public health authorities? Hana tries to convince Solomon once and for all that there’s no reason to toady up to the Japanese and the Americans, because he’ll always be second class in their eyes.
She then scolds Sunja when she comes to visit. Turns out it was her idea for Hana to leave home — didn’t want him corrupting Solomon and his chance at happiness. Or anyway, that’s what Hana heard. What really happened was that Sunja was putting herself down because she had lingering trauma over … another son. A son we haven’t met before. Sunja’s been keeping secrets of her own, it seems.
1931
The year is 1931. Sunja (Minha Kim) is in trouble for getting her brother-in-law out of debt. Now he looks weak, like he lets his women solve his problems for him. Sunja’s protestations that it was her idea, not her sister-in-law’s (Jung Eun-chae), falls on deaf ears.
All the commotion sends her into labor. Her husband (Steve Sang-Hyun Noh) isn’t there because he’s counseling a lost young Korean man who’s grown disillusioned living in Japan. It’s almost the same speech Hana gives Solomon.
She’s alive!
A word for composer Nico Muhly, as his themes were especially strong and important in linking the scenes between temporalities this week. He’s an incredible composer, a one-time assistant and student of Philip Glass who has taken his mentor’s ethos to heart.
Muhly could have gotten rich imitating Glass, but instead he forged a bold and original path. Glass’ influence is present, certainly, but you don’t leave Muhly’s work feeling anything less than moved by his notes.
In Pachinko, he offers something between his gorgeous ambient work (produced with pop artists like Sufjan Stevens and The National) and his previous film work. The rising and falling of the string section delivers a particular and very emotional delight.
Muhly’s theme during the birth of Sunja’s child proves especially affecting. It’s a gorgeous little string-and-vocal piece that cuts to the heart of everything Sunja (and later Isak, when he walks in to discover his adopted son) is feeling. The gut punch comes when we learn the newborn’s name. It’s not the son we know Sunja raised. They name him Noa.
Soap opera style
The high stakes of every storyline this time around makes me wish I was better versed in Korean soap operas (or K-dramas, as we call them here). I get the sneaking suspicion the Pachinko writers are paying homage to their favorites — and I feel woefully out of depth trying to guess about all of that.
Suffice to say these are the kinds of dramatic developments I remember catching when Guiding Light and Days of our Lives were left on TV during sick days or when I was left alone in doctor’s offices or hair salons. Though there’s nothing at all wrong with the way they’re delivered on daytime television, it’s quite edifying to see them done with trillions of dollars, an all-star cast, a first-rate composer and incredible writers behind the scenes.
Watch Pachinko on Apple TV+
New episodes of Pachinko arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
