This is for Alekaonu at soompi who tagged me to review this.

I rushed through 6 episodes yesterday, my friend. You owe me a face mask to revive my bugged-out eyes. I want the snail essence face mask.

**********************************

I should rename the first episode’s title to “Slovenly, Crazily” because at this point, there’s nothing extraordinarily lovely and horrible about the show.

Except for the dark lighting. Whoever the lighting director is in this kdrama, he needs to be told pronto that “Fifty Shades of Grey” is NOT just a erotic book. She/he can adjust the lights in the set to have fifty (or more) gradations of darkness. Right now, I feel like I’m peering into a telescope and staring at Saturn’s butt. (Very cheeky.)

What I like about the show:

Bad Hair. Given that I’m a neat-freak, watching Song Ji Hyo’s slob character, Eul Soon, induces a migraine. She’s the visual equivalent of nails scratching on chalkboards. Her hair especially is screaming for a paper bag to cover it up with.

My all purpose Bad Hair Day paper bag —

However, I forgive Eul Soon because I found a witty scene when the male lead, Phillip Yu or Eul Chook, digs in the pile of hair in search of her face, complaining, “What’s this? Where’s her face?” It’s funny because he himself is wearing a plastic bag to mask his face. What about him? Where’s HIS face, hmm? 

Pot, meet kettle.

To me, this moment is meaningful on a few levels.

First, both faces of Eul Soon and Eul Chook (aka Phillip Yu) are concealed because they aren’t ready to reveal their true identities. He’s a famous actor with a precious image to safeguard while she’s an unknown writer with a scarred past to hide. Soon enough, anyway, they will end up gazing at each other’s exposed visages.

Second, Phillip Yu’s frantic digging motion as he tries to uncover Eul Soon’s face beneath the mountain of hair reminds me of her earthiness. She’s revoltingly au naturel. Her hair is wild and uncombed, without hair products to style and tame it. (Haha’s character berates her to wash it. And she’s embarrassed to go out to dinner with Director Lee because her hair smells.) This “earthiness” is supposed to be the saving grace for Phillip so okkaaay, I’ll concede that point to her … sure, her hair looks like mulch. But a PURPOSEFUL and meaningful (lol) mulch.

Third, this encounter is strikingly different from their childhood meeting. That time, the young girl Eul Soon, was prettily dressed while the boy, Eul Chook, looked shabby and miserable. Now, their situations have reversed. She looks unkempt while Phillip Yu is nattily dressed in pinstripe jacket and white slacks. (BTW, white pants are okay for the summer, but a no-no in the fall and winter.)

Also, that time when they were children, they interacted as peers. For instance, without awkwardness or hesitation, the young Eul Chook extended his hand to ask for her necklace. At first, she refused because it was an amulet especially made from her apple tree to protect her. But she saw his bruised knees and legs, and she gave it up.

This scene brings home to me that Eul Soon’s compassion and concern for others haven’t changed over the years. Now, as a grown 33-year-old woman, she comes to the rescue of a stranger while recklessly ignoring her own personal safety. She charges at an armed abductor in the same foolhardy way that she relinquished her necklace to Eul Chook her necklace when they were young. (A better response would be to call the police. If Eul Soon were my daughter, she’d never hear the end of this.)

But the glaring difference lies in Eul Chook’s response to crisis.

They used to play well when they were little. In that short of a time, they showed a bonding, an timeless and innocent bonding. That opening scene when they played rock-paper-scissors while the shaman danced to the spirits? I thought it was especially moving because it showed them so oblivious to the gathering darkness.

But now that they’re adults, Phillip Yu does not want to be involved in Eul Soon’s crime-fighting heroics. He lets her fight off the abductor — ALONE — because he’s assessing the risk of getting a bloodied nose and a disfigured face. She’s fending off the attacks with clumsy judo moves while he’s dithering in the safety of his van. Can you believe that stinker??

Ha! It doesn’t bode well for a kdrama when this image of a wimp for a hero — and worse, a self-centered adult — is impressed upon the viewers halfway through the FIRST episode.

You see, in comic strips, the Superhero typically wears a mask to protect his identity. But in Phillip Yu’s case, his mask serves to mock his conceit. The mask doesn’t hide his true character as a spineless fellow. It flaunts it instead. Phillip Yu may look like a superhero, but in this episode, he was not even worthy to be deemed a sidekick to the real kickas Eul Soon.

So, that’s my take on Eul Soon’s slovenly appearance. I can overlook it because I expect there to be some sort of metaphor crazily attached to it.

Half-Destiny. I find this concept of half-destiny intriguing, not because I believe the fortune-teller’s crapola, but because if I were to apply game theory here, the concept is similar to the zero-sum game.

Both theories revolve having one winner and one loser as an outcome.

The children’s game that Eul Soon and Eul Chook were playing is the perfect example of a zero-sum game. At each turn, there’s a winner and a loser, or if both players throw out the same hand, then a tie.

I’ll chart the possible outcomes: (sorry, my table won’t show up. Technical difficulties again. But let’s see if this crude chart will work…)

Rock       Paper           Scissors
Rock            0, 0          -1, +1           +1, -1
Paper         +1, -1        0, 0              -1, +1
Scissors      -1,+1       +1, -1            0, 0

Even if you’re not a mathematician (or get nauseous at the sight of numbers, lol),  it’s easy to see why it’s called a zero-sum game. No matter who wins or loses, when the total is summed up, the result is always a zero. Do you see it?

Rock vs Paper = (-1) + (+1) = 0
Rock vs Rock = 0 + 0 = 0
Rock vs Scissors = (+1) + (-1) = 0

Applying this zero-sum theory to our kdrama, the mother of Eul Chook realizes that she’s in dilemma. She’s searches for a win-win situation but if she prays to the spirits for blessings for one child, then she’s cursing the other child.

Her kindness and compassion prevent her from wishing harm to befall on a child.
and she opts out of the game. She decides to reject the notion that fate and spirits influence and control their lives. She tells the young Eul Chook that there are no wandering souls on earth, and she promises that when she dies, she herself will not appear as a ghost to him.

See that? That’s one way to deal with a zero-sum game: quit playing the game.

But even this decision has unintended consequences. One of them is that the grown-up Eul Chook or Phillip Yu can sense ghosts (like when he was at the airport) but he scoffs at the idea of supernatural. He’s scared of dark hallways and sounds of footsteps, but he denies his fears.

As it turns out, he’s very sensitive to creepy ambiances and haunted atmospheres (i.e., avoids parking in the lower levels).  He differs from Eul Soon who hikes up to visit the cemetery at night to spend time with her mother ALONE. Unlike Phillip Yu, Eul Soon can converse with her dead mother, even confiding her grievances, because to Eul Soon, death didn’t separate her from mother. (Yes, I know that she might have been conversing with her fake mom, i.e., Eul Chook’s mom at the gravesite.)

The other unintended consequence of the mother’s promise to her son Eul Chook is that, in her afterlife, she cannot appear at his side to protect him. She’ll have to use another person, a human person like Eul Soon, as a conduit if she wants contact with Eul Chook.

More on this in later episodes…

To me, it’s not only the mother who’s involved in this zero-sum game. The other characters too have been taking advantage of their “half-destinies” to win the game of life.

The prime example is the writer Ki Eun Young.

True, Phillip Yu might have been unwittingly using up the good fortune of Eul Soon because he has her talisman, but Ki Eun Young is also taking advantage of her friendship with Eul Soon.

She shamelessly steals the stories of Eul Soon and claims them as her own. She deprives Eul Soon of the proper attribution for her created works. She knows that Eul Soon is the one gifted with the fertile imagination while she’s barren. But she persists on claiming Eul Soon’s talents as her own because she’s greedy to maintain her status as a best-selling writer. That’s why she reacts furiously when the reporter suggests that there was a ghostwriter and becomes enraged when Phillip Yu calls her a loser for churning out a shoddy work.

So, yes, she’s winning in this cheating game, and Eul Soon is losing out to her.

The relationship between Eun Young and Eul Soon is also a “half-destiny.” One loses while the other wins, unfairly.

To some extent, the relationship between Phillip Yu and the fake girlfriend, Yoon Ah, also exhibits the same “half-destiny”. She, too, is feeding off his popularity to get work and maintain her image in the entertainment industry. But their relationship isn’t going anywhere because after eight long years, that’s all the attention he’s willing to give her.

She resents this because she has everything to lose if he ends their fake courtship. She sees their relationship as a zero-sum game, too, where she has to win and marry Phillip.

As for the ghost Ra Yun and the Bad Guy/abductor/murderer, yes, they’re both out for revenge because they feel that Phillip unjustly gained something that they wanted.  They have a vendetta because there’s some past history of injury or injustice and they want Phillip to pay.

His punishment is required to redress the situation. They can only continue on with their “half-destiny” kind of life once Phillip suffers. Plus 1 for them, minus 1 for Phillip.

Of all the characters then, it appears to me that only Eul Soon and the mother of Eul Choon are the ones willing to surrender and “lose” in life, and they both do this out of pity and goodness.

They’re the “nice guys” — except they’re anatomically missing penises. Haha.

However, in Eul Soon’s case, I wouldn’t mind if she learns to toughen up a bit and fight for herself. She fearlessly puts herself in bodily harm to save a stranger but she tolerates abuse heaped on her by others. Perhaps her constant bad luck taught her forbearance….and the loser’s low esteem.

My last comment, the assistant writer.

I find her a curious character. She’s the first one to understand the danger Phillip Yu is in, and she raises the alarm.

But how does she do it?

She’s familiar with Phillip Yu, but he doesn’t recognize her. He didn’t know it was her when her assailant threw her against the van. Eul Soon doesn’t recognize her, too, when she tries to save her. So, the assistant writer is some kind of ghost, too, — in the figurative sense that she was always present but invisible to others.

The only one who is definitely not a ghost is the Lady in White. If she were a ghost, she wouldn’t have needed to ring a doorbell to enter Eun Young’s residence.

Hmmm… I have to mull over the apple tree in Episodes 2 and 3.  I’m still deciding whether Eul Soon’s tree is the sickly or the healthy tree in the flashback, and WHICH TREE was the one that was cut down. What do you think?

My rating for this episode: 7/10

Moving on to Episode 2 next.