What a roller coaster! Now that the wild US elections are over, I can now go back to my secret life as a kdrama pundit…err… bitch. I needed a light-hearted kdrama to distract me last night as I waited for ballots to be reported and winners announced. And Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter proved to be just the winning ticket.
First, although the actress Moon Chae Won was a sight for sore eyes, the two male actors disappointed me in the looks department. Ha! Can you blame me? I’ve been spoiled these months by such eye candies like Seo Kang Joon of Third Charm, Do Kyung Soo of 100 Days My Prince, Choi Daniel (minus black specs) from The Ghost Detective and Choi Jin-Hyuk from Devilish Joy.
But MCW matched the ethereal image I have of a Fairy. And to enjoy her few scenes, I even tolerated the lackluster acting of the Old Grandmother (Couldn’t they have picked somebody more spritely? She slows down the pace of the romcom to a crawl.)
Second, the kdrama quickly dealt with the unsavory element of the original folktale. The forced relationship between the fairy and the woodcutter had always been the sticking point in the story. Since the woodcutter stole the fairy’s clothes and constrained her to stay earthbound, many readers felt that their union was coerced. But in this romcom, the fairy waited for the return of the woodcutter, on her own free will, for 699 years. To me, her independent decision to wait for him for CENTURIES rendered moot any argument that she didn’t truly love him and was only suffering from Stockholm syndrome when she married him.
…Of course, it’s always possible that she waited for him ONLY to retrieve her stolen clothes, so she could abandon him and return to her home in the heavens. The bitch-mode me would have done that just to trigger him. 😈
Third, I liked the speedy way the personalities of the main characters were established.
The male lead, Professor Jung Yi-Hyun, is a psychiatrist’s darling. He’s a caffeine-addicted, obsessive-compulsive, germophobic, insomniac biologist with a tendency to cite scientific studies to rationalize irrational phenomena. Just imagine the billable hours! 😂 On paper, he sounds like a first-class jerk and it’ll be fun seeing him run after her because he’s shown so much distaste for her.
His lab assistant is the secondary male lead, Kim Geum. He’s the intellectual lightweight here (i.e., can’t remember his eight-digit passcode and can’t distinguish between Beethoven and Mozart). He presents himself as more provincial than citified and more whimsical (i.e., he tells his plant not to get its feelings hurt. Ugh!) vis-à-vis the neurotic Professor. I can also see how it’ll be fun watching HER run after HIM as a husband when she seems to regard him as a friendly boy. Friend-zoned!
Last, I liked that the scriptwriter had no qualms establishing the rivalry from the get-go. Hey! If the writer wanted a shipping war to boost the show’s audience ratings, she might as well establish the differences starting Episode 1.
Both the Prof and his Assistant saw the Old Grandmother transformed into the young Fairy at the waterfall. Their “special sight” or unique ability to see her true self despite the Grandmother’s body would seem to indicate that they had an emotional bond with her.
But right off the bat, the romcom tried hard to push Prof YH as the reincarnated husband.
1) For the first time in his life, he slept through the night after encountering the Fairy. This suggested that he’d come home to be reunited with his “repressed” memories of a previous lifetime with her.
2) He grunted loudly as he tinkled gallons of urine like the former husband, to the Fairy’s shock.
lol. Love is recognizing the sound of your True Love’s pee for all eternity. 
3) He knew and called out the name of the cat, again to the Fairy’s surprise.
4) By Episode 2, he not only witnessed the Old Grandmother turned into a young lady, but he also saw her as a Fairy with the butterfly hairstyle and clothing. Interestingly enough, Geum the Assistant called the Old Grandmother “Ms. Fairy” but he hadn’t seen her in her fairy-form.
If the Prof turns out to be the reincarnated husband, then the trope being used here is the “tsundere” male. He’s been nothing but hostile to the Fairy’s lifestyle and overtures.
However, according to people familiar with the comic strips from which this drama was adapted, the assistant Geum is the real reincarnated husband. Personally, I find it easier to spot the similarities between his character and the woodcutter. To list them:
1) He was favored by the cat from the start.
2) He had a simple and easy-going nature like the woodcutter.
3) He knew his way around the forest as if he’d seen it before (or lived there before) although he’d never been lost in the mountains.
4) His meeting with the Fairy made a lasting impression on him and he was instantly smitten, unlike his Prof who called her out for knocking them unconscious at the waterfall and accused her of drugging them with the coffee. Her response to him: “You only believe what you see. What a shame.”
5) He had a doting mother just like the woodcutter in the folktale.
6) He received praises from the folks in his hometown for his scholarly achievement because he was hardworking just like the woodcutter in the folktale.
7) He was comfortable interacting with the natives unlike his Prof who nearly came to blow with the Fairy’s guardian.
8) He cracked open the mysterious egg.
9) He saw her perform magic (i.e., conjuring a flock of birds and reviving plant) and she candidly admitted that she was a fairy. He was unfazed by her confession.
10) He talked to plants, insects, and cats. She called him one with a pure of heart.
11) He bought her clothes (just like the woodcutter would have done to replace the clothes he stole from the Fairy).
Compared with the Prof, there aren’t any “grand discoveries” or extra variables needed in the script to show how the assistant Geum matched the woodcutter.
That being said, if the Assistant does turn out to be the real husband in the end, then it’s pretty trollish of the writer to have the Fairy go through all the hardship in the upcoming episodes to convince the Prof (that is, the WRONG man) that HE’s the husband simply based on his URINATION. Remember now: she began suspecting that the Prof was her husband only after she heard him grunt loudly then PISS nonstop. hahaha.
“Urine my thoughts all these years…”
For now, because I find this “urine test” so comical, I’m going with the Professor as the missing husband.
What’s your take?