Episode 4 was so disorganized and lacking in logical flow that I wanted to bitch-slap the writer and director for the mess they’re making. Sure, this is a comedy but the raison d’etre of any comedy is to elicit laughter. How can I view this show as amusing when it leaves me befuddled and frustrated?

For instance, how did Wondeuk and Hongshim end up here, like this?

The writer and director (aka “Dumb and Dumber”) wasted time and money on a computer-generated image of an irrelevant mouse but they couldn’t be bothered to show us how the forest thugs managed to subdue HS and WD. Did HS and WD just faint on the spot? Did those thugs clobber them on the head? How??

Show us, show!

But what takes the cake is Dumb and Dumber’s inept handling of HongShim’s lies. They couldn’t even keep their own story straight about her lying, and we, the viewers, are left constantly confused and exasperated with HongShim. Is she telling the truth or not? 

We all assumed that she was lying to get the town official off her back. Like the town official, we were skeptical that such a man like WonDeuk existed, and we thought she was bluffing when she contemptuously dared him, “Confirm it for yourself then.”

She meant: go ahead and dig up info about her engagement with a certain WonDeuk because her father would back her story up. Truth was on her side.

But we didn’t believe her. She sounded too glib and her answer was too convenient to be true.

However, if she had made up the story of WonDeuk on the spur of the moment, then why did her Fake Father demonstrate guilt on his face when she told him not to worry because she had a man named WonDeuk?

She said, “Why are you so worried? I told them that I had a man named WonDeuk?” She was reassuring him that he had nothing to worry about.

His guilty look:

The only reasonable explanation for his facial expression is that he was the source of the Fake Story. HongShim wasn’t lying when she told the town official about having a man who’d marry her. He was.

The Fake Father was the one guilty of fabricating the existence of WonDeuk, not HongShim. And she totally believed in her Fake Father’s fake stories of a fake WonDeuk’s fake existence.

The only lie she made up was the one about spending a night with WonDeuk at the water mill. She lied as a last-ditch effort to avoid becoming the fifth concubine. Her Fake Father knew that she was lying.

But when WonDeuk still refused to marry her, he had to act fast and he slapped WonDeuk to force their shotgun marriage.

As for the lie involving the cherry blossom tree, I’d call this transference. Transference is widely understood as an unconscious redirection of feelings, usually retained from a childhood memory, toward a new person.

Here’s my explanation of her transference in action.

WD: Therefore I shall not do what you tell me to do because I cannot acknowledge that I am WonDeuk.
HS: So that’s what this is all about. You’re coming up with all sort of excuses not to work now.
WD: This is a logical and rational conclusion.

At this point, cherry blossom petals were drifting all about her and she suddenly noticed them. She had a brainstorm. She was thinking: Aha! I’ll use the cherry blossom tree to prove him wrong! 

HS: Your head may not remember but you subconsciously do. (She stood up and pointed at the cherry blossom tree.) Those flowers.

HS: These are my favorite flowers. That’s why you planted them here.

She was trying to counter HIS earlier “logical and rational” arguments that he wasn’t WonDeuk by telling him that only WonDeuk could have known about her favorite flowers.

HS: You pinky-promised me like this (She matched actions with words) that you’d make sure I lived a life of luxury. (She was making this up and piling it on to make her story convincing.) And that you’d do anything for me if I just married you.
WD: I did?! Why would I make such a promise to you?

She looked confusedly at him then she dropped their pinky-promise. She looked sad.

This was when TRANSFERENCE happened. She was remembering that precious encounter when she was a child, and projecting her memories onto WonDeuk.

HS: (She was staring at him but NOT really seeing him) Because you loved me.

She looked away and gazed up at the cherry blossom tree as she continued talking.

HS: On a night when the cherry blossom petals were falling, you said to me (and she looked back at him) that you liked me. And you asked me to marry you. That’s why I waited for you despite having to endure 100 lashes with the paddle.

To me, in this moment, she wasn’t actually seeing WonDeuk. She was confusing him for someone else. She was addressing that young boy she met at the forest. She was imagining the conversation she would have had with that boy, had he been actually standing in front of her, instead of the useless, lazy fool WonDeuk. She was remembering that romantic shower of cherry blossom of many years ago.

HS: But… (she looked down then back at him) if you act like this now, what am I supposed to do? (She bit her lips.) You have to keep your promise because you’re a man. Because the man I loved was a man of his word.

They stared at each other.

There was no way that WonDeuk/Lee Yul could have missed the sincerity in her words. He knew she was speaking from the heart.  But on her part, HongShim was truly expressing herself. Although she was speaking to that lazy, good-for-nothing WonDeuk, her voice and manner of delivery lacked that usual impatience, exasperation, and insolence.

It was as if she was talking to that young boy in her memories and imploring him to behave better and to act like man that she has long loved. This is reminiscent of that scene when she called him “fool” but tenderly patted his head because he finished reading the book. He possessed the ability to make her overlook his silliness.

So, for me, this confusing declaration of HongShim was her airing, her expressing her repressed grievances against Lee Yul for not coming back to her as he had promised.  To me, her “lie” to WonDeuk contained the most honest thoughts she had about Lee Yul. She had to hold onto her belief that THAT young boy would have kept his promise and returned to her side, had he known where to find her. She had to believe that he meant to keep his promise otherwise, waiting for him and enduring hardship all these years were for naught.

This was her way of coping with the harsh life she was in, and in a sense, it was similar to her insistence on going to Hanyang every 15th of the month for the past 16 years. She couldn’t give up on the promises she made and she exchanged with her brother — and that young Lee Yul.

Now, she wanted WonDeuk to uphold her memory of THAT young boy, too.

That’s MY explanation of that convoluted dialogue under the cherry blossom tree. This is the only way to unravel this tangled mess that the Dumb-and-Dumber writer and director had created with this story.

Then we’re next shown the scene with HongShim fixing her bed beside her Fake Father. She was complaining about WonDeuk again.

She griped, “This guy is so desperate to not work that he’s coming up with all sort of schemes. He even said that he’s not WonDeuk.”

Notice the Fake Father’s grimace here.

FF: What does he mean, he’s not WonDeuk?  (He blustered.)
HS: How did he even forget his name?!

lol.  It’s clear that HongShim believed all the tall tales her Fake Father said about WonDeuk. She only knew OF HIM as a son of his friend and she didn’t expect that her Fake Father was lying to her all along.

Meanwhile, the Fake Father didn’t know about her encounter with the Crown Prince in the forest when they were kids, because she herself didn’t know that he was a prince at that time. Moreover, he didn’t know that the injured stranger he found in the mountain was the CP because Lee Yul had exchanged clothes with his royal guard.

His lies, when combined with HongShim’s secret, created a perfect storm for Lee Yul. He had amnesia but both of them were conspiring against him to keep him from discovering his real identity.

It’s just too unfortunate that this Dumb and Dumber duo (aka the writer and director) in charge of this whole production didn’t do a better job of explaining the story.