As requested by Welmaris. 🙂
@Packmule, I’m asking please, pretty please for the creation of two separate threads:
1) Fairy Tales and Stories. A thread to gather the texts of MY’s books and the drama’s ep. 1 opening animation, quotes from MY’s lit class at the hospital, and references to other stories such as Red Shoes, Bluebeard, King’s Donkey Ears, etc.
This is what the writer had to say about the incorporating fairy tales. Thanks, @nrllee!
The drama includes fantasy elements and features famous fairy tales such as “The Red Shoes” and “Bluebeard,” as well as tales for adults that were made just for the show. Director Park Shin Woo said, “The female lead character is a writer of cruel fairy tales. The drama is similar to such fairy tales in that they both blur the distinction between normal and abnormal, and common sense and senselessness.”
He went on to say that he thinks that everyone in the world is a bit crazy, and that the drama will give people the opportunity to reflect on themselves. “The core message of the drama is, ‘You have to look at people as they are,’” he said.
Episode 1: The Boy Who Fed on Nightmares
The Girl in the Castle. From @Growing_Beautifully:
The first tale: we might tentatively name the animated story: Mun Yeong, the lonely girl and Gang Tae, the boy she hooked at one level, this has been shown in Ep 2, to be the story of MY and GT’s past. To stress the point, GT provides the voiceover narration of the story, and the girl’s voice is MY’s.
Narrator: “Long time ago there lived a beautiful girl in a castle located deep inside the forest. She was always alone, so she was lonely and bored.” (We see in Ep 2, that MY really did live in a house away from the town and that she had a balcony on which she stood alone.)
” So one day, she left the castle to find herself a friend to play with. She offered them all sorts of amazing gifts, but nobody ever accepted her. (She offered some children 2 dead birds, not understanding their revulsion.) Later on, she found out why.”
(A shadow comes from behind her and overshadows her in the shape of a tree. The other children run away. She looks behind and back to the front. Her hair grows and becomes a tree with spiky branches to be her shadow, with 5 eyes. The scary shadow of the tree remained behind her so that instead of a normal shadow, the grotesque shape of a waving tree followed her.)
Narrator: “A monster who brings along the shadow of death. That’s what the people called her. ‘She’s a monster. A monster.’ ”
“She was very angry at every living soul in the world. and she needed to take it out on someone.” (Seeing a hook and line, she hooked the boy from the water. The parallel is that in Ep 2 we see from the flashback that she saved GT from drowning.)
Narrator: “Ever since she had unexpectedly saved the boy from dying, the scary shadow that always followed her around suddenly disappeared.” (GT became her shadow that replaced the scary tree shadow.)
“And the boy always followed her around instead. He always went with her whether it was day or night and whether she was in the mountains or on a field.” (The scenery changes from night near a pond – across a bridge with plants growing from it which we will recognise in Ep 2 as a real bridge – amidst dark clouds – through a forest of bare trees against a pink sky – into night at the town, with petals falling.)
(The boy still has the hook and line attached to him and the end of the line is tied around MY’s wrist.)
Narrator: “On a clear and sunny day, the girl asked him this: “Hey, will you always stay by my side?”
Boy: (he held flowers to give to the Girl) “Of course. I will never run away.”
Girl: “Even after you see this?”
(She tears a butterfly into two and drops it. The Boy is aghast. The Girl’s eyes turn red and scary. The Boy looks down and sees many dead butterflies at her feet. The wind blows the dead wings and butterflies towards the boy. He runs away. The hook that had been in his shirt tears loose and drops. The Girl sees him go and looks down, seeming to be disappointed. Her shadow that had become normal gets replaced by the shadow of death once again.)
Narrator: “The girl was all alone again, and that’s when the shadow of death came back and whispered this.”
(We see that it’s no longer an animation but the adult Mun Yeong standing on the balcony)
“No one can ever stay by your side because you’re a monster. do not ever forget that. Do you understand?”MY: “Yes, Mother.” (The sky is a crazy golden, orange. The story was told against unnatural colours. Although several scenes were golden and orangey, the scenes were not bright. Instead they remained disturbing. Camera zooms out.)
The Boy Who Fed on Nightmares, from @Growing_Beautifully:
The second tale, The Boy Who Fed on Nightmares
27:47 – “The boy woke up from another awful nightmare. Bad memories from the past that he wanted to erase from his head were replayed in his dreams every night and haunted him nonstop. The boy was terrified of falling asleep. So one day, he went to the witch and begged.‘Please get rid of all my bad memories so that I won’t ever have a nightmare again. Then I will do everything you ask.’ ”
“Years went by, and the boy became an adult. He no longer had nightmares. But for some strange reason, he wasn’t happy at all.”
“One night, a blood moon filled the night sky, and the witch finally showed up again to take what he had promised in return for granting his wish. And he shouted at her with so much resentment.
‘All my bad memories are gone. But why can’t I become happy?’
Then the witch took his soul as they had promised, (we see a drawing of the witch with claw-like hands as a puppet-master with the boy as a puppet on the strings.) and told him this.”
“Hurtful, painful memories. Memories of deep regrets. memories of hurting others and being hurt. Memories of being abandoned. Only those with such memories buried in their hearts can become stronger, more passionate, and emotionally flexible. And only those can attain happiness.
“So don’t forget any of it. Remember it all and overcome it. If you don’t overcome it, you’ll always be a kid whose soul never grows.”
In the book of little Go Eun MY had also written “Never forget today.” A day that Go Eun will never forget since she was almost killed once again and the day her father did die.
MY’s view: All memories, especially unpleasant ones are to be kept and overcome as if they are enemies. If they are not overcome, they stunt our emotional growth. It’s interesting that although she herself cannot empathise or feel as others do, she is aware of what emotions are, and understands what it is to be emotionally flexible. She knows that being emotionally rigid makes for unhappiness. But she herself, in all likelihood, feels nothing, and she acts according to her own rigid way of thinking. She takes what she wants and punishes those who misbehave.
Episode 2: The Red Shoes
From @BeingWritten:
So here’s the full fairytale about the red shoes. I can see Why the anti heroine Karen characteristics points to MY. But also this fairytale shows that GT and MY relationship dynamic won’t be an idealistic fairytale but just like with original fairytales it’d be very dark indeed.
The red shoes
A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother’s death and grows up vain and spoiled. Before her adoption, Karen had a rough pair of red shoes; now she has her foster mother buy her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. Karen is so enamored of her new shoes that she wears them to church, but the old lady told her “it’s highly improper and you must only wear black shoes in church”. But next Sunday, Karen cannot resist to put the red shoes on again. As she is about to enter the church, she meets a mysterious old soldier with a red beard. “Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing,” the soldier says. “Never come off when you dance,” he tells the shoes, and he taps the shoes of each with his hand. After church, Karen cannot resist taking a few dance steps, and off she goes, as though the shoes controlled her, but she finally manages to stop them for a few minutes.After her adoptive mother becomes ill and passes away, Karen can’t even attend her foster mother’s funeral. And then an angel appears to her, bearing a sword, and condemns her to dance even after she dies, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen begs for mercy but the red shoes take her away before she hears the angel’s reply.
Karen finds an executioner and asks him to chop off her feet. He does so but the shoes continue to dance, even with Karen’s amputated feet inside them. The executioner gives her a pair of wooden feet and crutches, Thinking that she has suffered enough for the red shoes, Karen decides to go to church so people can see her. Yet her amputated feet, still in the red shoes, dance before her, barring the way. The following Sunday she tries again, thinking she is at least as good as the others in church, but again the dancing red shoes bar the way.
When Sunday comes again Karen dares not go to church. Instead she sits alone at home and prays to God for help. The angel reappears, now bearing a spray of roses, and gives Karen the mercy she asked for: her heart becomes so filled with peace, and joy that it bursts. Her soul flies on to Heaven, where no one mentions the red shoes.
An excerpt @Growing_Beautifully:
The third tale, The Red Shoes
This Hans Christian Andersen story, I find troubling and gruesome. Personally, as a child, I wouldn’t be at peace at bedtime, with a vision of amputated feet dancing in red shoes. The girl, Karen, (an un-favourite half sister of the author), chose red shoes over what was appropriate or let inconsequential wants determine her decisions, so that she was cursed to be controlled by them. A comment, I guess, on not letting vanity, or vain things take precedence over what really matters, ie relationship with God (as represented by failed attempts to enter the Church). She found no peace until she did what she should have done from the beginning, ie pray or give God his due place in her life.I fancy that in all her stories, MY identifies herself as the ‘beautiful’ witch. The one whom others run to, to get wishes granted, the one with power to judge, and to punish. She thinks that she is the puppeteer who controls everything that she chooses, such as her work or her chosen subject/puppet (GT). (She is the opposite of Karen, and does not see that part about being subject to a higher authority.)
https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/06/19/psycho-but-its-okay-eps-1-2-open-thread/#comment-31581
An excerpt from Welmaris:
@GB, great catch on another pair of red shoes: the sneakers young GT wore when he ran away from young MY. I believe there’s a third set of red shoes from an allusion we get. At the bookstore where MY is doing her event, we see a display of her mother’s last book, published posthumously (so we know MY’s mother is dead), entitled “The Murder of the Witch of the West.” This ties in with either L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” or the 1939 film based on it, “The Wizard of Oz.” However, in the book, the magic shoes Dorothy wears are silver; the Ruby Slippers are in the movie. (Their color was changed to showcase Technicolor.)
In the Wizard of Oz movie, Dorothy’s house falls on and kills the Wicked Witch of the East, who was the owner of, and was wearing, the Ruby Slippers. The Wicked Witch of the West arrives at the scene of her sister’s death.
https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/06/19/psycho-but-its-okay-eps-1-2-open-thread/#comment-31606
From Growing_Beautifully:
At the end of Ep 2, she narrates ‘The Red Shoes’ to CEO Lee, as she drives to Seongjin City to be with her obsession, GT, whom she now knows was her childhood follower because of his home town.
MY’s voiceover: “Some things can’t be torn apart no matter how hard you try to do so.”
“I finally found my red shoes.” She had been bored and alone but now she has found GT, the Boy who had promised never to leave her, and perhaps hold him to his word or be a coward.She might think that she can determine that he should/would always remain attached to her, because she is ‘entitled’, but I’d like to see that it will be because he grows to care for her that he remains. His healing may perhaps lie in his not running away (for the wrong reason) and hers in knowing that she will not be abandoned again.
From JT7:
Episode 2: The key word is given to us by MY through her interpretation of the tale The Red Shoes. It’s about OBSESSION. The episode starts off with GT admitting that he liked the girl he was following, and the flashback scenes show him following her. I think @GB pointed out he was wearing red shoes, so back in the past, the one following his obsession was GT, and his obsession then was MY. In fact, if not for the animation in Ep 1 explaining that he was hooked, I would have thought the behaviour of the child GT was really almost like that of a stalker!
We see other aspects of obsession: ST’s obsessive nature wrt various routines etc, as well as his obsession with MY, with dinos, and with butterflies that haunts his dreams. GT now seems to be almost obsessed with making his Hyung happy, while his friend JS also seems obsessed with his friendship with GT, to the point that he moves when the brothers move. Finally the episode closes with MY now wearing the red shoes (its a full circle since it was GT who was wearing red shoes at the start of the episode), telling the story of the red shoes, and linking it with following your obsession.
Episode 3: The Sleeping Witch
The story goes:
Once upon a time in a castle in the middle of a deep forest, lived a princess who had been asleep for many years. (image of water seeping, and wet footprints) A needle on a spinning wheel will kill her. That was the curse the evil witch put on the princess the day she was born. Frightened, the King burned every spinning wheel in his kingdom to avoid the curse, but the princess ended up getting pricked by a thorn on the rose given to her by the witch in disguise and fell asleep.
(Either MY wakes up from her nightmare or she continues her nightmare. A ghost in black hovers above her in bed.) “This fairy tale tells you that you can never escape your destiny. Right. The prince’s kiss. I suppose he could break the curse. But don’t get your hopes up too high. Because I will the prince.”
Then, there’s a vision of MY as the young girl. She’s at the floating dock by the lake. She stares at the water and listens to somebody saying, “Save me. Please… Save me. Please me…” Then, a head covered with wet hair rises from the water.
From @BeingWritten:
Sleeping beauty ends up being called Sleeping witch in this episode and I was right it was connected to her trauma with her mother. I guess the show may be hinting that she let her mother or someone die by drowning. And she fees haunted by their ghost. That’s probably why she said her mother’s soul was alive but she was physically dead. This episode also linked sleeping to a lot of negative things, sleep paralysis, sleeping as curse, waking up from dreams, insomnia which is lack of sleep and nightmares etc. That’s also interesting.
Episode 4: Zombie Kid
From Welmaris:
About MY being the author of “fairy tales” for children. Her books are much closer to fairy tales of old, before they were Disneyfied. Fairy tales were scary to frighten children into good behavior, to teach morality. They were gruesome because life was rough. Few children were coddled in the past as they are today.
Did anyone notice the sign for MY’s newest book, “Zombie Kid,” on the side of the bus GT rode when leaving the publishing company? The animation of the Zombie Kid had him pointing directly up at GT. That’s a direct message to us viewers.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pf68K9CowQjG0gxdtMI6ujyZEq4kufX9/view?usp=sharingThe reaction of MY’s fans, now anti-fans, is so ironic: they’re burning her books, tee shirts and other images, with her head in effigy pinned to a cross, holding her picture as a death portrait. Their behavior is far worse than hers! The TV announcer says, “Meanwhile, some even say her name should be removed from the list of candidates for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.” We are soon reminded that Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Red Shoes” is gruesome. Her style of storytelling fits right in with his!
From @Growing_Beautifully:
Zombie Kid
MY’s stories are gruesome, ugly and carthartic. I can’t personally say I’d read them with enjoyment, but I can understand her pouring herself out in those lines of text and giving her grim message unmitigated and unadorned.
” Zombie Kid read in GT’s voiceover : A baby boy was born in a small village. He had pale skin and large eyes. While raising the boy, his mother naturally came to the realization that he had no feelings whatsoever. All he had was the desire to eat, like a zombie. (MY speaking of herself… being a man eater.) So his mother locked him up in the basement so that the villagers wouldn’t see him. And every night, she stole livestock from her neighbours to feed him. That’s how she raised him in secret. One night she’d steal a chicken. The next day she’d steal a pig. A number o years passed like that.
Then one day, an epidemic broke out. It left the remaining animals dead, and it also killed many people. Those who survived the epidemic left the village. But the mother couldn’t leave her son all alone. And to appease her son crying of hunger, she cut off one leg of hers and gave it to him. After that, it was her arm. She gave him all her limbs. When she was left with nothing but her torso, she embraced her son for the last time to let him devour what was left of her.
(Flashback to young ST and his mother sharing an umbrella while GT is left to walk in the rain behind them.)
Continuation of the story, read in MY’s voiceover: With both his arms the boy tightly held his mother’s torso and spoke for the first time in his life. ‘Mom, you’re so warm.’
(GT weeps at the end of the story. MY walks barefoot along the road after suffering another attempted murder by her father, who had asked her why she was still alive.)
I felt equally repelled and sorry for the silent Zombie Kid whose hunger was never satiated, until his mother was about to die from feeding him everything else except what he had needed and wanted most. Was he unable to speak, because he’d never received his mother’s warmth. Would his hunger have been assuaged if his mother had not labeled him as having no feelings and as a zombie? Did she not make him a zombie by treating him according to the label?
The Kid is a boy and the hints of the kid being GT was given last episode, however, when MY is described by CEO Lee as wanting to eat up GT (a man-eater), and when the Zombie Kid is described as having no feelings, the Kid could refer to MY as well.
Episode 5: Rapunzel and the Cursed Castle
From @Growing_Beautifully:
Rapunzel and the Cursed Castle
Episode 5 (1:06:34)
A long time ago, deep inside the forest, there lived a little girl in a cursed castle. The little girl’s mother always told her daughter that she’s too special to live among everyone else outside the castle. The mother told her that she must live inside the castle. However the little girl felt like she was imprisoned. So she prayed to the moon every day. (We see a young GT picking flowers in the evening and making a bouquet.) ‘Please send me a handsome prince who can save me from here.’(The girl stands on the balcony looking at the moon.) ‘Will he come today? Will he come tomorrow?’ The little girl waited every day for her prince to show up.
(When she sees the boy GT at her gate, she runs down the stairs happily to meet him, but her smile fades when her mother accosts her in the hall.)”Child GT holds out the flowers and says to Child MY : “Earlier I was too …” (She takes the flowers from him, drops them and tramples them into the ground.)
MY : “Get lost.” (The boy is shocked and dejected. He looks down at the flowers and walks away sadly.)We do not hear what happens next in the story but if it follows what we see in the flashback, then the princess lost her chance to be rescued by the prince that night. This however is not the end of the story of ‘Rapunzel and the Cursed Castle.’ As a bookend to how the series began with the animation of MY and GT’s first meeting. We have now entered the live action version of the fairy tale. In fact it is the new fairy tale that MY is writing and whose conclusion we will see unfold, as we journey with MY to the end of the series: the end of the bookend.
Episode 6: Blue Beard
From our PSYCHIC (pwahahaha) @nrllee:
I still haven’t watched Ep3 and 4 and have just read comments here. Bravo everyone for dissecting the scenes. I just had a thought. PD mentioned in Press Con that Blue Beard (the fairy tale) would be used as well in the drama. We’ve seen Red Shoes. How will BB be incorporated?
https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault03.html
BB is a rather disturbing fairytale about a girl who marries BB lulled by his displays of wealth and society. Only to discover that he murdered his past wives. And she escaped death from BB saved by her sister Anne and her brothers in the end. So if MY’s mother is the girl in the fairytale and married BB (MY’s father) then MY is sister Anne (?). It would sort of fit with the narrative about her father trying to murder her (or was it her mother that he tried to murder?). I need to find some time this week to binge watch Ep 3 and 4.
Quoted from John_L and @Growing_Beautifully
ST: But why were the villagers afraid of Bluebeard?
GT: Because he was different from them. His beard was blue.
ST: Is being different something to be afraid of?
(GT turns on his back and thinks for a while.)
GT: I guess so.
ST: Do you have to live alone in a castle when you’re different?
GT: No. He will eventually find his true love …
[Shot of GT staring at MY as she stands on her balcony at the Cursed Castle] GT: … who isn’t afraid of his blue beard …
[Shot of MY staring back at GT from balcony] GT: … and tells him it’s okay to be different. Someone who understands him for who he is.
[Shot of MY eavesdropping behind the closed door. She turns around and smiles.]
From @Growing_Beautifully:
Bluebeard’s Secret – Wife Replacement
When looking for solutions are there benefits in the replacing of one thing with something else?Bluebeard kept replacing wives but always ended up alone because he kept killing them. It wasn’t his blue beard that was the real problem since women married him for his money. He had not addressed the real issue: his propensity to lure wives to himself while desiring at the same time to exert capital punishment for disobedience and curiosity, ie for being independent thinkers who would not just accept what he said.
From @Fern:
@Dlia, the tale of Bluebeard is poorly known in the U.S. but I heard of it referenced there. Blackbeard is the pirate and he was a real person. Wiki says: “Edward Teach (alternatively spelled Edward Thatch, c. 1680 – 22 November 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain’s North American colonies.”
Thanks @pkml3! (Good idea of yours @Welmaris to ask for a thread!) This makes it easier to just add on our thoughts on the stories that crop up.
@pkml3, I gather you are struggling to watch this show with any sort of comfort (ie without being triggered). when I re-watched some earlier scenes, I found myself getting angry (again) with our FL and most parents.
Since we are ‘reading’ a story that is numbered Chapter by Chapter (rather than episode by episode), I gather that @Old American Lady is right and that we are in a fairy tale. On the one hand, I feel it will be more consistent with reality for it to be a dark fairy tale with an ending as wrenching as the ones MY writes and on the other I want to see a hopeful, uplifting ending of long-term healing. At this stage (not quite yet at the half-way mark at Chptr 6) I feel the most viable conclusion will be an open-ended one, where our leads choose to separate as part of their therapy, until they can come back together in healthy mutual self-giving (not one-sided self-sacrifice or one-sided entitlement).
I trust you are locating other shows to enjoy and are safe and happy. Take care!
I’m still watching this kdrama. I’ve been writing a lot but mostly technical and unemotional briefs. It’s hard to switch and to get in touch with my fun side when I see real-life psychos. 🙂
But I found a drama to recommend. A really shallow one. I should write about it when I get home.
@pkml3 LOL! Oh dear, yes, real life and real 😵 😤 unhinged individuals.
I believe a shallow drama is exactly what we need after this. 🤪 😅 🤩 I’m ‘predicting’ that I’ll be either unhappily dissatisfied 😩 😠 (and upset), or profoundly confounded 😖 by the end of this series and that I’ll be the one needing 🤕 healing after all the emotional energy I’ve poured into it. 😆 😄
@packmule3 😂 resident psychic reporting for duty.
“I see a woman with blackness in her chest. An empty shell… until a Moon 🌓 starts to glow inside her…someone from her past. Butterflies. Death of someone close. A troubled soul desperate to escape. A castle. 🏰 Walking in the rain. 🌧 A lighthouse. Sharp objects. ✂️ A safety pin? 🧷”
I know the focus on this episode was the cheerful dog. But I’ll choose to still focus on rapunzel imagery in this episode. The massive focus on her hair being her leash. This is the same thing in Rapunzel. The witch sees her hair as her possession and her link to her beauty. To punish Rapunzel she tosses her out of the tower into the desert and wild and cuts her hair to use as a disguise to lure the prince. We are watching this scene unfold in the show when Rapunzel finds the prince who has become blind in the wild and her tears heal him and give him sight again. Not only is Gang Tae finally get to the see the truth about his life and Moon Young in this episode, Moon Young like Rapunzel who was only free from the witch once her hair was cut, is also starting on her journey to healing. But the wild is still dangerous and harsh environment, there’s still things needed to be sorted out before she can truly say she’s safe and secure. Also just like the witch disguises her self as Rapunzel, Moon Young’s father sees Moon Young as a disguise for her mother each time he looks at her. He believes she’ll end up like her mother. So the question is, that scene we just saw with Moon Young freeing her self from the leash and crying, is she really being healed or is it a disguise and just a performance?
From Episode 3, when MY teaches her first literature class at OK Psychiatric Hospital.
MY’s description: A fairy tale is a cruel fantasy that illustrates the brutality and violence of this world in a paradoxical manner.
MY’s words at the end of her lesson: A fairy tale isn’t a hallucinogen that gives us hopes and dreams. It’s a stimulant that makes us face reality. So I hope you all read a lot of fairy tales and wake up from your dreams…Don’t look up at the stars in the beautiful night sky. Look down at your feet that are stuck in a filthy sewer. The moment you realize that and accept your reality, everybody be happy. Happy. Happy.
From ep. 3, at the first literature class taught by MY, references to fairy tales.
Heungbu & Nolbu
Patient’s interpretation: If you’re a good person, you’ll win the lottery.
MY’s interpretation: Heungbu was poor because he wasn’t the eldest son. It criticizes the primogeniture customs that allowed the eldest sons to inherit everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heungbu_and_Nolbu
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks2/Kirkbride/Kirkbride-100629.htm
The Ugly Duckling
Patient’s interpretation: Don’t discriminate against ugly kids.
MY’s interpretation: Raising someone else’s child is unrewarding, so just look after your own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling
https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheUglyDuckling_e.html
The Little Mermaid
Patient’s interpretation: When you’re in love, you must love that person faithfully, even if that means you’ll dissolve into sea foam.
MY’s interpretation: The lesson we can take from The Little Mermaid is that Karma will bite you hard if you covet an engaged man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid
http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html
King Donkey Ears
MY’s interpretation: Talk behind people’s backs to relieve your stress.
http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=122701
This is an article entitled “24 Children’s Stories That Still Give Us the Creeps.” These are summaries and commentary on stories from all around the world. MY is not unique to include dismemberment in her children’s book Zombie Kid.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/scary-childrens-stories
@Welmaris Thanks for that link. I read through the summaries of the stories and look back with horror that as I child I enjoyed some of them not thinking deeply about what they meant.
The one that I’d thought was innocuous when I used to read it and enjoy it was the Teeny Tiny Woman. Never thought of it as cannibalism before!!!
LOL. Now I read fairy tales with trepidation. If ever I’m in the position to choose books for children again, I’ll be so particular about reading through all the stories first!
@Welmaris, thank you for the creepy fairytales link! It looks like Mr. Andersen contributed 2 stories to the list. As a child, I liked reading fairytales and mythology from around the world. I remember being terrified by Baba Yaga, the old witch from Russian folk tales who lived in a hut with chicken legs.
I also remember a very creepy Japanese tale about a White Maiden. Details escape me, but she made people freeze to death if she got angry.
I remember a creepy tale from my own country about a girl who is married off far away from her family and finds out that there is something wrong with her new husband and his family. I think they were victims of a curse and the heroine had to accomplish some difficult tasks to lift the curse. I loved this tale even though it creeped me out. Nothing is more satisfying than a well-deserved happy ending.
Because of this drama’s title, Psycho But It’s Okay, I can’t let pass by its nod to the famous 1960 Hitchcock film Psycho. I’ll admit I haven’t worked up the courage to see it myself in its entirety, but am familiar with it through cultural references. Even though it is an old movie that was filmed in black and white, I imagine it could still scare me to pieces.
The reference to the movie Psycho comes at the beginning of ep. 5, after GT has picked up MY in the rain. As GT and MY pull into a parking lot, we see it is for Bates Motel. That’s the name of the Gothic-style motel in Psycho. And when GT and MY are turned away for not having money, the man at the reception desk (Norman Bates?) says, “Even my mom has to pay on the spot.” I won’t spoil the movie Psycho for you if you want to watch and get the full impact of the suspense, but Norman Bates’s mother is pivotal to the plot. As well as a knife. And stabbing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_(1960_film)
If you have any doubt about the high quality of Kim Soo Hyun’s acting skills, the fact that he could complete that motel scene with a straight face is amazing. The actor who played the Bates Motel receptionist is Jung Sang Hoon, a regular cast member of Saturday Night Live Korea.
Another funny reference in the motel lobby scene is when the motel clerk holds up a condom package, but the view of it is censored by a red circle containing the number 19. I think this is a joke because 19 is not 18, but close enough to make people think of it. The Korean word for 18 is 십필. The Korean word for f*ck is 씹팔. All it takes to turn saying the number 18 into the cuss word f*uck is emphasis on the beginning “s” sound. There’s a hilarious scene in Reply 1994 that plays on this mispronunciation. Reply 1994 male lead Trash is riding on a bus. Five students get onto the bus and sit in the back: they’re the main characters of Reply 1997 (except one, who shows up in a later cameo). Trash and Si Won (the FL of Reply 1997) get into a shouting match because Si Won wants the bus driver to turn up the music (a song by the Kpop band H.O.T., of which she’s a rabid fan) and Trash wants the bus driver to lower the volume. Trash asks Si Won her age in an insulting tone, and Si Won’s shouted answer “18” sounds like she’s telling him to F*CK OFF!, which is exactly how he interprets it.
@Welmaris they did the whole number thing with MY in the car as well (Ep7). When she was suggesting they visit a motel on his day off.
GT – where do you want to go?
MY – motel (number 12 covers her mouth)
GT – what do you want to eat?
MY – you (number 15 covers her mouth)
I gather the numbers are classification standards (age restrictions) for the innuendos. Similar to the 19/18?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Media_Rating_Board
@nrllee, good catch! I went looking for the other appearance of those circled numbers, but couldn’t find it where I thought it was so gave up. I think you’re on to something with the Korea Media Rating Board numbers.
I was curious during the scenes retelling of what led to Kwan Ki Do’s hospitalization that his naked body was covered with a banner saying FBI Warning. That reminds me of the anti-piracy label seen at the beginning of commercially produced media. But why FBI in South Korea? I suspect there’s some kind of joke there, but I’m not getting it.
Beauty and the Beast: Ep. 8
– MY: Beauty and the Beast was written by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, a French author in the Middle Ages. It was only when the story was adapted into an animated film (we see GT peering through the glass of the door; we hear Jung Tae’s voice talk of his desire for A Reum when he looks at her) that the image of… The story is said to teach us to never judge anyone by their looks alone. (MY waves to GT and smiles broadly. GT turns and walks away. MY’s smile fades.) But that’s just what adults want to tell children to discipline them. (Camera on patient Park Ok Ran, who smirks a bit to see GT leave; GT goes to wash his face [to cool down?]) Beauty and the Beast is a story about Stockholm Syndrome. (GT looks at signs above sink. One reads “If you laugh, you’ll be happy~😊. Another sign is a picture of Director Oh with words in a speech bubble: It’s okay if you don’t get your way [per my Papago Translate, but I think it may be the hospital motto, It’s okay to not be okay.]) The Beast lives alone in the castle because of a curse. He holds a lady named Belle hostage in the castle and grooms this victim of his. That’s what the story is about.
– Patient Kan Pil Wong: Isn’t it about a kindhearted lady being locked in a castle instead of her father and helping the Beast remove the curse on him because she falls in love with him?
(We see GT working, doing a variety of tasks taking care of equipment.)
– MY: The Beast is usually selfish and harsh on Belle. So doing something nice once in a blue moon and gazing at her with a faint smile on his face was enough to move the naive lady, Belle. “Yes. The Beast is lonely. I should embrace him with my love. Only I can change him.”
– Patient KPW: Ah! But Belle was being delusional.
– MY: Correct.
– Patient Lee A Reum: No!…Beauty and the Beast isn’t some crude story about the Beast grooming his victim.
– MY: Then what is it?
– Patient LAR: The Beast turns into a prince (camera pauses on Patient Joo Jung Tae) because of the power of Belle’s true love. Belle’s love calmed the Beast’s violent nature. That love embraced his wounded soul. The greatest thing anyone can do as a human being. It’s pure love…(Patient JJT stands and claps.) That love embraced his wounded soul. (Camera is on MY, who looks introspective. She recalls GT comforting her after her nightmare.)
– MY: Love?
This scene shows MY changing her perspective to be less cynical, but it is also an important scene for A Reum. She had sought in the past to win MY’s approval, only to be brought to tears in disappointment, but here she boldly stands up and counters MY’s interpretation of Beauty and the Beast. Right after that we see A Reum also having the courage to resist her ex-husband’s pleading to get back together, informing him her heart is now with another. She recognized that some Beasts never change, and her angry ex demonstrates he is no prince by again resorting to physical violence even though he’s just promised to never hit her again.
Thanks for the details of the discussion on Beauty and the Beast, @Welmaris. Nice thought about Ah Reum:
I agree and I asked myself the question, ‘How come?’
We saw Ah Reum generally trying her best to get acknowledgement and approval from the ‘teacher’ she admired. A day or so earlier, her clandestine relationship had been discovered and she’d been in tears again. We are not shown if anything else had happened. I’m led to assume with insufficient evidence, that Jung Tae and Ah Reum’s being found out by GT, and their subsequent decision to get well may have had something to do with this change.
Ah Reum needed to have complete conviction that pure love was key to healing the wounded soul, so that it would be possible for Jung Tae and herself to be healed and to love without barriers. Beauty and the Beast reflected this truth, and when MY with her limited understanding of love attacked it, Ah Reum stood up to defend the loftier message (and true), upon which she had staked her future.
I like that she had been a romantic at heart from the first lesson and that she remained true to the belief that love conquered all, despite anything that MY had said.
I’d also like to call into question all the interesting but paradoxical and cynical messages that MY spewed for each of the tales that they spoke of. It was nice to get an alternative point of view, but MY again missed the broader and more accurate message which her students had correctly given. She had not seen that the tales could hold both interpretations and that navigating life with both the warm and positive together with the cynical and cold made for a more holistic way of relating with others.
To your points on Beauty and the Beast, I’d like to add:
Ah Reum protests : “The Beast turns into a prince because of the power of Belle’s true love. Belle’s love calmed the Beast’s violent nature. That love embraced his wounded soul. The greatest thing anyone can do as a human being. It’s pure love.”
[What comes to mind is that MY is the Beast with the violent nature, and GT is the Beauty LOL.
This is the premise of this show: that GT’s true love will calm and tame MY and make her whole. It’s something we realistic viewers may take issue with, but Beauty and the Beast, the mid-point fairy tale sets out the premise. We hope of course that there is a reciprocity in the loving and the healing.]
(To continue … There are mixed reactions from the patients. MY continues to stare… a faraway look in her eyes. She remembers how GT had held her when she had her sleep paralysis and night terror.)
She seems to have a revelation : “Love?” (MY, from a character brief or synopsis, is the ‘character who does not know what love is’. Instead of being taught ‘love’ by her dominating and controlling mother, she is being taught by her mouse-like ‘student’. I really like that it’s Ah Reum who wanted her approval and acknowledgement, who is the one who opens MY’s mind to interpret correctly, what GT has been towards her.) 😁
Beauty and the Beast discussion scene was great! I have been enjoying the performance of the young actress who plays Ah Reum, and she really delivered in this episode. It is MY who is the beast surprised by love.
I like how the show uses fairytales in a different way. In the Bluebeard episode, it was MY’s mother who is more like Bluebeard, not her father.
@Welmaris, your comments on Psycho made me listen to Bernard Herrmann’s magnificent score again. Such memorable effect achieved with only string instruments!
@welmaris the FBI stumped me too. Lost in translation.
B&B – MY mentions Stockholm Syndrome. Is her relationship with her mother an example? Her mother was the Beast and MY developed an unhealthy affinity with her due to her “grooming”. If her mom was the one with ASPD and MY was merely nurtured into being that way, then she potentially would be able to develop “normal emotions”. I think @Arihsi is the expert when it comes to neural plasticity.
The Dog Motif
There are a few contenders for the best dog. LOL.
Jae Su is the opposite of the Cheerful Dog. He is the dog who chases a chicken which he will never catch, and he moans and whimpers at length in the day time (poor ST had an earful), and howls at the heavens (moon/GT’s dead mother) at night. LOL. He’s leashed to his unhealthy attachment to GT.
JuRi She puts on a cheerful demeanour in public but whimpers in private whenever she loses to MY, especially over GT. This, I assume, is the root of why she’s called two-faced, which I feel is unfair. MY should take a leaf out of JR’s book in knowing how to behave in public. Ju ri is leashed to her one sided crush.
In Episode 8, CEO Lee is described by Ju Ri’s mum as hardworking and cheerful. He has also started to follow JR around like a dog, practically wagging his tail when she pays him any attention. He’s mostly leashed to the idea that he needs MY to make money.
Kang Eun Jae the Mink coat patient was cheerful while deluded, then melancholy when her delusions were lifted. She was still leashed to her guilt over her harsh words as represented by the expensive shawl, which she always carried with her/could not throw away (probably because it was so expensive and the last gift from her daughter). She was the only ‘dog’ to be properly freed from her leash when MY demanded the shawl as fitting compensation.
Mun Yeong whimpers during her sleep paralysis, while she looks like a volatile and possibly ferocious dog while awake. The more vulnerable she feels, the more fierce she makes herself out to be. She’s leashed to her mother,… but seems to be exchanging her mother for GT!
Gang Tae hides his emotions when awake, but whimpers at night in his sleep. He’s a good guard dog who takes care of Sang Tae. He’s leashed to his erroneous idea that he was not loved for himself and that he has to put ST first all his life. Half of that leash seems to have melted away since he remembers that his mother did love him. We expect that MY is going to work on chewing off the other half of that leash.
Episode 7’s Story: “The Cheerful Dog”
GT and MY are on the hospital’s staircase landing looking at the half done mural.
The story begins as a voiceover by Sang Tae: “Once upon a time, there lived a dog that was very good at hiding his emotions.
The dog was tied beneath a shady tree. He always wagged his tail and acted cute. So he got the name, ‘The Cheerful Dog,’ because he was as cheerful as springtime. The dog always had lots of fun with the children during the day. But at night he’d moan and whine when no one was around. That’s because he wanted to cut off the leash and freely run around out in the spring field. However he couldn’t. And that’s why he cried every night. Every single night.
One day a voice inside him asked the Cheerful Dog. ‘Hey, why don’t you just run cut off the leash and run away?’ And this is what the Cheerful Dog said, …”
The voiceover switches to GT speaking: “‘I’ve been tied up for way too long. So I forgot how to cut myself free. …” (We know he is speaking about himself, although he was not aware of it at that time. He is quoting MY’s own story back to her.)
MY turns to look at GT.
GT pats MY on the head. “You did great, MY.
MY : “What did I do?”
GT : “You helped her (Kang Eun Jae) cut herself free.”
(They smile at each other.)
We are to conclude that the right end for GT’s story is for him to cut his leash and run freely. Running free in the field, as long as it’s not running away from his responsibilities, is okay. As for all the other ‘dogs’ who are still leashed, they too need to let go or cut their own leashes. 😃
Thanks everyone for all the info! The bit on Psycho was interesting @welmaris, I didn’t know the significance about Bates Motel! @nrllee I thought it was relating to age restrictions too!
Wanted to add one more fairytale to the list. Its “The Butterfly” by Hans Christian Anderson: https://www.storyberries.com/fairy-tales-the-butterfly-by-hans-christian-andersen/
MY’s habit of plucking flower petals to make a decision is mentioned in the fairytale. I thought it was interesting that when she was plucking petals to decide whether or not to save GT from drowning, the last petal indicated she should not, but she still went ahead to help him.
In the end, the butterfly in the tale does not find a flower to marry, and is instead caught and stuck on a pin in a box of curiosities, just like the white butterfly pictured in the opening credits. He consoles himself that being stuck fast on a pin is like being married.
The Cheerful Dog not only highlights being emotionally and physically tied to something or someone, but also depicts the duality that is mentioned so often in this drama. MY calls GT a hypocrite. She calls JR two-faced. And there are many comments about acting. GT says he has learned to control his features and smile even when he’s feeling devastated because ST is always studying his face. I suspect that’s the genesis of his Joker/Chucky smile. Think of the symbol of theater: two masks, one smiling and one grimacing; one for comedy, and one for drama; but both masks cover the real face underneath.
MY’s habit of plucking petals reminds me that I’ve seen children here pulling petals with this counting rhyme:
‘Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Sailor,
Rich Man, Poor Man,
Beggar Man, Thief.’
@JT7, that butterfly story is horrid. Being stuck fast on a pin is like being married. Blimey. 😬 It seems like something MY would write.
@nrllee posted the words to Clementine in the Eps 7-8 thread, but here is a slightly different version. This includes two additional verses which are apropos to PBIO. It is from The Fireside Book of Folk Songs; Margaret Bradford Boni, ed.; Simon and Schuster, pub.; c. 1947.
In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a mine,
Dwelt a miner, forty-niner,
And his daughter Clementine.
Chorus:
Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.
Light she was and like a fairy,
And her shoes were number nine,
Herring boxes without topses,
Sandals were for Clementine.
Drove she ducklings to the water,
Ev’ry morning just at nine,
Hit her foot against a splinter,
Fell into the foaming brine.
Ruby lips above the water,
Blowing bubbles soft and fine,
But alas, I was no swimmer,
So I lost my Clementine.
Then the miner, forty-niner,
Soon began to peak and pine,
Thought he oughter jine his daughter,
Now he’s with his Clementine.
In my dreams she still doth haunt me,
Robed in garments soaked in brine;
Though in life I used to hug her,
Now she’s dead I draw the line.
The words “oughter jine” in the second to the last verse are “ought to join” spelled as if spoken in dialect. Peak means to become sickly, and pine means to languish. The phrase “peak and pine” comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, spoken by one of the witches:
I’ll drain him dry as hay.
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his penthouse lid.
He shall live a man forbid.
Weary sev’nnights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine.
In the last two verses there are allusions to sickness brought on by sleep disorder, depression-induced suicide, and a water ghost.
@Welmaris Ah, I recall those verses. Yes, so apt. Dear me.
Sleep disorder – check
Water ghost haunting – check
Depression induced suicide – we don’t know yet … and we hope it is not foretelling an event of the future!
Thanks for the research. I had to study Macbeth and liked to cackle and croak the witches speech around the cauldron LOL.
Test
Episode 9 and 10
This is a link to the Korean tale, ‘The King Has Donkey Ears’.
http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=122701
Summary: King Gyeongmun inexplicably developed donkey ears out of the blue and hid them under his crown. No one knew about his ears except the crown maker who measured the king’s head. The crown maker kept the king’s secret but he was bursting to tell it. When he neared his death, he realized that he couldn’t contain the secret any longer, and so went deep into a bamboo forest and shouted into the trees, “The king has donkey ears!” He went home and died in peace but the bamboo trees couldn’t contain themselves and they echoed the words of the crown maker each time the wind blew. Even after the king had the entire bamboo forest eradicated, every time the wind blew it carried the same words everywhere it went: “the king has donkey ears…”
ST was the crown maker who shouted the secret guilt of GT to the whole hospital, but it was not meant to tell the secret so much, as to relieve his own pain and anger. The patients and staff had behaved like the bamboo trees and the wind, who talked openly about the secret.
The crown maker had chosen to shout in the deep of the forest because trees and the wind were supposed to just listen, and not speak, but these trees and the wind had not only ears but also tongues, and they did not respect that a secret should not be repeated.
The king had done nothing wrong. He had been embarrassed and wanted to keep his ears hidden. GT had been wracked by guilt for years, and had not sorted that out, because ST had appeared to have forgotten. It was something that was probably eating him up inside.
ST had however not forgotten, but had been containing the resentment deep inside. He had been displeased that MY was interfering in his time with his brother, but contained that. He had been elated to have been best friends with MY, but had discovered that she had lied, which meant that she had not been sincere in wanting to be besties. GT had promised him that if MY took Mang Tae, then she would not have GT, but this had been a lie too. GT and MY had hidden that they were spending time together without SG, which contradicted all that they’d said, and therefore was a lie as well. His most loved and trusted people had turned against him.
Being lied to and abandoned caused the meltdown in which he inadvertently revealed his brother’s greatest source of guilt and shame. He might have known that it was this guilt and shame that was partially what kept GT tied to him, instead of just family love. If so, this was also a cause for his being upset. When he could not contain himself any longer, he shouted out his hurt to all who were present. But after this, would be the chance for reconciliation, rapprochement and peace.
EPISODE 10 The Girl Who Cried Wolf
MY speaks to ST through the window, after he repeatedly says she is lying.
MY : “Oppa. The one who’s really bad is the person who doesn’t believe anything others say. (Or what she wanted was for someone to come and to keep her company, rather than for someone to believe her.)
ST : “No, you’re wrong. No.”
MY : “You know the story, ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf,’ right?
(Cut to GT telling JR that he would be okay with just medication instead of an IV drip. We infer from this that GT is lying.)
MY relates the story: “The shepherd boy lied all the time. The boy repeatedly lied to the villagers that a real wolf showed up. Do you know why the boy tricked the villagers like that?”
ST : “Because he was bored, obviously.”
MY : “Wrong. Because he was lonely. He did that because he was so lonely, all by himself in the mountains.” (We infer that MY is speaking about herself and why she lied to ST.)
(Cut to the Castle, with MY alone and looking at the flowers. She put them into water and opens up the crushed drawing. She sees that ST had envisioned the 3 of them together, happily traveling in the camper van.)
(Cut to hospital where POR had hit newbie Oh Cha Yong on the head with a stone. POR had escaped.)
Oh Cha Yong : “She said today is a very important day for her. I heard her mumbling about having to meet someone today.”
(GT recalls seeing the message from MY saying ‘Today is a very important day to me.’)
(Flashback voice over of GT and Dir Oh’s conversation. GT : ‘What if the writer Do Hui Jae actually isn’t dead? What if she just disappeared?’
Dir Oh : ‘Then we know one thing for sure…’
GT to himself : “No.” (GT putting 2 and 2 together, springs into action and drives to the Castle.)
Flashback voiceover of Dir Oh saying : ‘She’ll definitely come back…’ ”
GT : “No (It must not happen).”
Dir Oh : ‘… to see her husband and daughter.’
GT : “No.”
MY continues to relate the story:
“The shepherd boy lied because he was so lonely. But when a wolf actually appeared, no one came to help him.” (We hear the knocking on the door. POR, the wolf had come.)
“Had even just one person believed him and helped him, the boy wouldn’t have died.”
(MY opens her door with a smile, to be shocked by POR pulling on a party popper.)
POR sings : “Happy birthday to you.” (Her smile is wolfish.)
Like a true ‘sociopath’, MY was remorseless about her lying to ST and about ST’s being hurt. She suggested in this story that ST, by his refusal to believe her, was the one who would be at fault. She was excusing her lies, because she had been lonely, and had lied to have the company of ST and GT. She’d lied that ST was her best friend and that she’d gone out alone. The story told by MY implied that if ST refused to believe her lonely, and to keep her company, she’d ‘die’ and it would be his fault.
Ironically, at the very time that she could have done with some company on her birthday, she was alone, partly because of her lies, and that was exactly when POR had sought her out. Fortunately, although ST refused to keep her company, GT alone (just one person), realised the danger that she might be in and went running to her just in case she needed help. Hopefully the medication he took stands him in good stead to deal with POR and MY. Fortunately too that he’d not been on the IV drip, or he’d not have had enough medication in him, to keep him going, if he pulled out the needle too soon.
@ Growing Beautifully, I would add to your good ideas about the ‘Girl Who Cried Wolf’, all of the porkies GT has told ST. So often, to placate ST, to calm him down, or to keep secrets he agrees with ST’s demands, makes promises, or lies.
Unlike MY, who is shifting blame or refusing to take all responsibility, GT accepts responsibility for EVERYTHING and asks forgiveness for everything. GT could point out that he jumped in the lake to save ST and ST ran away afterwards, but doesn’t. He doesn’t defend himself by acknowledging that he has stood by ST for years. I kept thinking that there has to be a middle ground between the two stances.
I think MY was asking ST to consider her point of view, but he is no more flexible than she is in his current state of mind.
@Fern, yes, the one who lies the most is GT. It was the easy way to placate and get out of confronting ST. I’ve always been frustrated by characters being ‘over-saintly’ and taking the blame for stuff that was not their fault or beyond their control. GT’s worst enemy is himself. I wish someone would stand up for GT since he won’t do it for himself.
Thanks for the point about inflexibility. I was thinking that of all the 2 to become friends, it was laughably these 2 most rigid and often uncompromising characters. I think it’ll be great if they could really become besties and rub off the sharp corners in each other. GT is too soft to file off those sharp edges. LOL.
This part is sort of a continuation or Part 2 of what I started writing in the Ep 9 and 10 Open Thread. As it deals with a story, I thought it’s more appropriate to post it here.
I like this thread which brings together clues from the stories that may inform the way the characters may go.
The Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz – This story and iconic movie offers perennial good advice, and a rollicking good adventure with many odd characters. Rather like our PBIO. The fact that Do Hee Jae’s book title “The Murder of the Witch of the West” keeps being shown to us these last few episodes, made me read the synopsis of The Wizard of Oz (WO) and start a comparison where none may actually exist!!! LOL.
There are companions on a journey, 4 in (WO) and 3 main companions in PBIO: GT, ST and MY.
Each has a wish to have fulfilled. GT, like Dorothy who was bored of Kansas, needs to accept his role and go home without resentment. ST (Scarecrow) needs to think from GT’s point of view and be an adult to accept more family members (as per the preview). MY (Tin Woodman) needs more of a heart for others and not just for herself. All of them (Cowardly Lion) need to be courageous to cut their leashes (ala The Cheerful Dog) and be able to part ways as well as to come back together freely.
In the WO each character, unknown to themselves, already have the means within their grasp to be what they want to be or go where they want to go. This is true for our PBIO main characters, but they need some sense knocked into them, so that their better sides will appear. We see that they all have the ability to give and be more reasonable, despite their default mode of ‘I-me-myself first’ and inflexibility.
In WO, the companions encounter helpful characters and the good witch who contribute towards their fulfilling their destinies. We see the same in PBIO with our motley crew of Jae Su, Sang In, Dir Oh, Ju Ri and her mum (the good witch?). I’m on the fence with Nurse Park. I feel she’s good and trustworthy on the whole, and yet I wonder at her attitude towards some things that go on.
In WO, the wicked witch puts obstacles in the path of the companions. She is vicious but easily demolished by a bucket of water. Do Hee Jae’s book title refers to the killing of Witch of the West. Whether this refers to a female character like Do Hee Jae, Park Ok Ran or MY, or to the manipulative, greedy aspects in most characters, that should be ‘killed’ will be interesting to see. I’m thinking it could refer to both. Most of the obstacles are placed by the characters themselves. As I mentioned for GT and it is probably the case for MY too… they are their own worst enemies. So the witch could be themselves!
(Sidenote on bucket of water: We know that DHJ’s disappearance is linked in MY’s mind to water as well.)
Ultimately, the Wizard is just an ordinary man without power, hiding behind an intimidating persona, rather like MY who power dresses and is scary to hide her vulnerability.
In WO, the winged monkeys who do the bidding of either the wicked witch or Glinda can work for either good or evil. I’m thinking of the hospital patients and staff who both hinder and help.
Whether this comparison informs us at all, we’ll have to watch to see.
I am in 2 minds about ST’s “telling” of GT’s secret. Yes GT walked away BUT he did come back to save him? He on the other hand, got out and walked away? I am not sure we can “blame” ST for walking away because of his mental state. But if he knew that it was “bad” for GT to leave him to drown, and he told the whole world about it, then what of his actions? Does he register in his mind that he too left GT to die? Could his outburst be his own secret? That he left his little brother to drown, he knew he should’ve turned around to save him but perhaps his fear (flight response) propelled him to just run away? Could he have done the same with his mother? Run away? I just find his retelling of events very odd. To put all the blame on GT? It’s not malicious at all on his part but it could be because he doesn’t know how to process feelings of guilt? Anyway, it could just be a red herring and it is as it is and ST just muddled the facts up and his outburst was the result of abandonment issues.
@nrllee Good point! It bothers me that it’s the pot calling the kettle black in this case.
He should think how the words on the slip of paper should also read:
“THE OLDER BROTHER ALMOST KILLS HIS YOUNGER BROTHER,”
and not only:
“THE LITTLE BROTHER KILLS HIS BIG BROTHER.”
In fact the statement is wrong, since ST didn’t come close to dying. His suffering was fear/panic and now, a sense of abandonment and betrayal. ST, by nature being so meticulous and rigid about the truth, should actually protest that the sentence is false. But he is silent.
If ST has the memory of his own actions and a sense of guilt, then maybe he’s transferred it to GT.
@GB btw I love your breakdown of the Wizard of Oz. Dir Oh is very much like Oz (OK hospital? 😂) with all the contraptions in his office. I would love to be able to read the book that MY’s mom wrote. How did she pen the death of the Wicked Witch?
@nrllee LOL Thanks!
Oh yes! How apt. I really like Dir Oh and his contraptions and symbols of all kinds of religions LOL. He makes a far better Wizard than the Oz one, but the way that Oz just put any old thing into the Tin Woodsman and Scarecrow to make up heart and brains, smacks of Dir Oh’s easy going way of letting the patients loose in hospital, to be observed. On the whole, he does not seem to take much ‘control’ over matters (Nurse Park keeps tearing her hair out over his attitude) but his anecdotes and advice are generally sound.
I guess most patients in OK Hospital are not sick enough to be restricted, but people like KDH who strangles individuals when provoked, should have been more closely monitored or put into a controlled area.
Park Ok Ran too actually hit the poor newbie hard enough over the head so that he passed out and bled. Seems mighty dangerous to me!! Hospital keeps being in danger of being sued!
@GB and @nrllee, I have a lot of questions about the outburst and lies, too.
I think both brothers could feel guilt about the drowning. ST may be having even greater difficulties than GT to process it. I thought it was interesting that he crossed out the words on the slip of paper and I wondered what was going through his head then. Did he remember that it wasn’t true? Did he feel that the outburst got a result and he didn’t want a reminder? Did he understand that the note was inflammatory and the writer malicious? He crossed it out in red like a correction, rather than throwing it away.
@nrllee, yes, ST may have run away at the time of his mother’s murder. I recall he said the ‘butterfly’ threatened him with the same end. His nightmare showed him running, pursued by butterflies.
@GB, you wrote “If ST has the memory of his own actions…” and I think that’s crucial. I believe it’s possible that ST does believe his words since, although he has a great memory, he’s not a liar. The reason he may believe his version is that he was suffering from cold water shock and the beginnings of hypothermia and went into flight mode once he was free from the water. His version may be the only version that made sense to him. ST may never have considered how he got free from the water and that may be a discussion that needs to happen.
I wondered what motives MY had to not interfere during ST’s rant? She was there and knew what happened. Did she think it was good for the story to come out that warped way? Certainly she may not have been believed even if she did tell the truth for several reasons:
She is known to be manipulative and is not liked by the staff.
She writes fairy tales and could be thought to be inventing on the spot.
She is known to be obsessed with GT and might lie to help him.
For some reason of her own, she doesn’t want it known that she was there (because she walked away, too?).
@GB, you are so correct about the hospital being lax and often in danger of being sued. If it’s OZ, it’s no dream or alternate space because the edges blend into the real world. There doesn’t seem to be any real security border, not to mention cliff ledges as boundaries on at least one side of the property. Health and Safety, hello. Now a dangerous patient has escaped and for a second time we worry about MY’s safety. I wonder what arrangement MY will make with Dir Oh 🧙♂️ this time? 😄😈
When ST is hiding under the duvet in ep. 10, Dir Oh wondered how long it took Crown Prince Sado to die in the rice chest. I thought it might be another fairy tale, but it is a true story from 1762. 😱 Was Dir Oh speaking about ST hiding under the duvet or GT, who is pining away in the hall outside? Both, perhaps.
@GB, thank you for the excellent analysis. The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite books when I was a child. I still associate the title with the book, not the movie, and remember the book’s illustrations most vividly. In its essence, WO is a healing journey. I agree that the actual wizard is similar to Director Oh. The wizard in the book was an ordinary man with no special powers, but he was very perceptive. He recognized that each of the characters already had what they needed the most, and helped them realize that. It seems that Director Oh is taking the same approach with his patients. He believes that they are capable of healing themselves, and he just helps them along the way.In another comment I noticed that his office did not look like the office of a medical professional, but more like a gentleman’s study of an explorer, inventor, and magician.
@Fern, I first heard about the tragic Prince Sado when I was watching Sunkyungkwan Scandal years ago. I remember looking him up online, and that was the beginning of my fascination with Korean history.
@Fern, thanks for bringing up that point about ST crossing out the words on the slip of paper. I went back to watch and saw that he was sort of trying to cover or obliterate all the words, but his shading was not dense enough to hide some of the written strokes.
So he was maybe rejecting the words as not true. He was not angry about them, so he did not crumple up or tear up the paper. He just disagreed with the words. Being a truthful person by nature, he knew that his little brother had not killed him, therefore he covered up the untruth. That’s my guess.
About ST knowing clearly or not what happened in the near drowning. In the panic of the moment, he might not have been clear about how GT had jumped into the water to push him out. He may have had sensory overload and no longer heard GT’s voice. He may really have thought GT had run off and thus was walking off to ‘follow’ GT home.
About MY keeping quiet when ST was shouting that GT had wanted him dead. I feel that she was also in shock, at that time. She sort of froze, like the others who were watching. She probably had the thoughts too that you suggested ie that people might not believe her, that her breaking in to explain might be counter-productive, etc. It was the one time that she did not ask herself ‘Should I help? / Should I not help?’
About Prince Sado. Thanks for the info. I knew about it being a very tragic, true story, from Dramabeans. JB wrote about it and I was horrified that he had been subject to such a torturous, slow death by his own father. So much better to have been killed outright, but because it was a royal father and son thing, there could not actually be a killing by the king, or something like that.
Dir Oh was smart to mention Prince Sado in the rice chest. I felt it was a wonderful way to start ST thinking about how uncomfortable he was and to make him to get out of there and go to the loo LOL. I also thought that Dir Oh’s description of GT as a trapped ghost was very apt. GT had been haunting the outside of that room, unable to leave and unable to go in.
I really applauded Dir Oh for ending GT’s suspension immediately, so that he could again be gainfully employed (and not lose more of his salary), while waiting interminably for ST to cool off. I felt that was very kind, reasonable and wise of Dir Oh, although he’d blackmailed Ah Reum’s ex-husband.
He’s the only person whom I don’t really condemn for using blackmail to get his way LOL. He also blackmailed Kwon Ki Do’s horrible Assemblyman father. He did it to protect his staff or patients, and it seemed warranted. 😎 😝
GT also blackmailed Director Oh into allowing MY’s class to resume!
@Snowflowe, @nrllee: I agree about Oz! I was thinking about how he was referred to as being a humbug in the book, and how that sort of fitted into Dir Oh’s character. He could be easily dismissed as a quack, with his office full of superstitious/spiritual paraphenalia, yet he, like Oz, could really read people and devise ways to help them help themselves.
@GB, love your take on how the show integrates Wizard of Oz into the story. I was wondering about the witches, since there were 4 witches, and the 2 evil witches seem to fit into MY’s mother’s story. In the book, Dorothy’s house lands on the witch of the east and kills her, and Dorothy then “inherits” the witch’s silver shoes. Similarly, in PBIO, MY’s mum is in a sense crushed by the house, since she was locked up as dead in the basement. Also, MY has also seemed to have inherited her mother’s sense of obsession, just like how Dorothy inherited the witch’s shoes (which the show marks as a sign of obsession). The thing that confuses me though is while it seems natural to see MY’s mother as the witch of the west (due to the book she wrote, the way she is portrayed, as well as the scenes showing her drowning), it seems like the show is also trying to portray MY to be the witch of the west too. There’s the umbrella MY drags (in the book, the witch of the west carries one, probably due to her fear of water), her appearance in the hospital at the witching hour, her talk about being a pretty witch, Ju-ri splashing MY with painting water (just like how Dorothy splashes the witch with water), and the prophecy made that A reum and JT would be saved by someone from the west. Not sure where the show is going with this though!
Regarding dogs, I thought the scene of MY sitting on the stairs waiting for GT to come home was very much like a loyal dog waiting for its owner. And when he finally came home, drunk, the first thing she did was sniff him, just like a dog lol.
Wanted to add in more stories I noticed before I forget:
Ep 1: Jae su refers to his bike as Alberto. Initially I thought he was referring to that character in CLOY lol, but I think it’s a reference to the book and film “The Motorcycle Diaries”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcycle_Diaries_(film)
Ep 2: MY is shown to turn into a giant and pick up a tiny GT, a direct reference to King Kong. In both the 1933 and 2005 versions, the show ends with the quote “It was beauty killed the beast”, which probably alludes to how the mild-mannered GT will be the one who tames the ferocious MY. Even MY mentions she feels like she is being tamed by GT.
Ep 3: The deer that MY barks at is a doe, and might be a reference to the story of “The White Doe”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Doe
The story involves 2 princesses, one (called Desiree) who is told she cannot be touched by sunlight in the first 15 years of her life. A prince, who is betrothed to the Black Princess, falls in love with Desiree. Desiree is later exposed to sunlight and turns into the white doe. In PBIO, the deer turns up twice, and both those scenes are immediately followed by scenes with Juri (first she buys deer milk at the supermarket and meets GT, in the later scene she wakes up and chats with Seung Jae about unrequited love). I think the show is depicting MY and JR as the 2 princesses in the story.
Ep 6: During MY’s literature lesson after being cornered by patient Kang Eun Ja, A-reum reads from a children’s book with a character called Emile. I did a search and I think she’s reading a Korean translation of a French book called “Émile est invisible”. The synopsis of the book (I google translated it from French): It’s decided. Today, Émile is invisible. At noon, no one will be able to see it anymore! Why at noon? Because at noon, mom will have cooked endives. Endives ! But the endives are horrible! Anyway, Émile had wanted to be invisible for a long time, so …
However, I think the point of using this book wasn’t directly wrt it’s actual plot, but with it’s use of the name Emile. Apparently, Emile is an ancient Silla term for mother, and it’s name is incorporated into the rather gristly legend of the Emile bell (from wikipedia): The bell is commonly known as the Emile Bell in both Korean and English. Emile, pronounced “em-ee-leh,” is an ancient Silla term for “mommy”.
According to legend, the first bell that was cast produced no sound when it was struck. The bell was recast many times but with no success. The king that had wanted the bell cast died after a while and his young son took over with the help of the queen. The son carried out what his father had started but still he didn’t have any success. Later, a monk dreamed that if a child was cast into the metal, the bell would ring. The monk then took a child from the village and had her cast into the metal. When the bell was complete, the bell made the most beautiful sound when struck.
During the class, we listen to A-reum reading words of the story, but as MY listens, Eun Ja’s words are repeatedly interspersed into the story:
AR: Emile couldn’t relax. Maybe it was a trap his mother set up to make him eat chicory. Emile picked his nose.
EJ: It’s me, your mum.
AR: He wanted to see who the visitor was.
EJ: It’s me, your mum.
AR: Emile was invisible to everyone.
EJ: It’s me, your mum.
The ringing of a bell can be heard faintly in the background as this scene plays out.
Goodness, the Emile story line in the show is very subtle. I never would have gotten those points. Thank you, @JT7.
In our OZ theories, if MY’s mother could be the Witch of the East, might Park Ok Ran be her sister the Witch of the West? What fun. Could the good Witches of the North and South be Nurse Park and Soon-Deok (Ju-ri’s mom)?
I’m not certain if the bellowing deer appearing twice so far in PBIO has any deeper deeper meaning than comic relief, but I did some research to try to find the significance of deer in Korean folklore. This is what I found.
http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=120797
Stopping by in this thread just to say thank you everyone for the excellent analyses. My fairy-tale-loving heart is very happy.
I just found out that the title of the next episode is The Ugly Duckling, so let the interpretations and the speculations begin!
Hmmmm. I wonder if we’re going to get a reveal about one of our characters being a step child rather than a biological child. We’ve been set up for that by MY’s interpretation of The Ugly Duckling and by Nurse Park’s discussion with ST about Dooley.
Random thought about the Wicked Witch of the West
@JT7 noted above that MY seems to be identified as the Witch for many reasons. However 2 of those reasons also apply to GT.
One reason was that the person who would help Jeong Tae would come from the West. Both GT and MY came together and helped JT. In fact, it looked like GT did more to help JT than MY did.
The other reason for identifying MY as the Witch was that she’d been splashed with water. At the end of Episode 9, ST threw water at GT. Re-watching this scene put the thought that the Witch might also be GT into my mind. Dorothy had been so angered by the Witch that she threw the pail of water she had over her (something that Dorothy would not normally do). The same can be said for ST who was beside himself with anger. Instead of melting when water hit him, GT dissolved into tears, in a pathetic mess of protestation and guilt, unable to defend himself.
My guess on what made MY or GT the Witch of the West, was the sin of greed. We know that MY was determined to have GT’s exclusive attention for more than a day. She’d wanted to go for a long trip abroad, but was foiled. GT only wanted to go for a day trip. However she engineered that he would at least have to spend the night with her and maybe also, she could have the long return trip with him alone.
We know that because although she gave the excuse that he should stay to ensure that JT and AR did not elope the next day, she had already given AR money so that JT and AR could have run away. MY had been sneaky and had greedily tried to keep GT to herself for as long as possible.
As for GT, although to us he deserved a break, and he only wanted to run away for a day, he had to lie in order to bring this about. To us who are observers and who commiserate with GT, he was not greedy, but to ST and to GT himself, he was trying to get what he was not really entitled to. The burden placed on him by his mother, made him feel that it was only right that his whole life should be spent putting ST first. When he put himself first for a change, and had to lie about it, he naturally felt guilty at being greedy for himself.
That’s why I like that Ju Ri affirmed him in Episode 10, telling him that it was OK for him to be ‘selfish’ (which I’d put down to rightful self-preservation, actually) when things got tough. “If you want to make the people around you happy, you must find your own happiness first. Being selfish isn’t always a bad thing. Try to only think about your happiness when things are too stressful. it’s okay to do that.”
However, in his own mind, GT probably felt that he was being wicked, like the Wicked Witch of the West, and deserved to be punished.
Thoughts on The Ugly Duckling
After going through Anderen’s tale, and re-interpreting it, I find this tale to be great in supporting the PBIO title of this show.
The synopsis of The Ugly Duckling taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling
When the story begins, a mother duck’s eggs hatch. One of the little birds is perceived by the other birds and animals on the farm as an ugly little creature and suffers much verbal and physical abuse from them. He wanders sadly from the barnyard and lives with wild ducks and geese until hunters slaughter the flocks. He finds a home with an old woman, but her cat and hen tease and taunt him mercilessly and once again he sets off alone.
The duckling sees a flock of migrating wild swans. He is delighted and excited, but he cannot join them, for he is too young and cannot fly. Winter arrives. A farmer finds and carries the freezing little duckling home, but the foundling is frightened by the farmer’s noisy children and flees the house. He spends a miserable winter alone in the outdoors, mostly hiding in a cave on the lake that partly freezes over. When spring arrives, a flock of swans descends on the lake.
The ugly duckling, now having fully grown and matured, is unable to endure a life of solitude and hardship any more and decides to throw himself at the flock of swans deciding that it is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness and misery. He is shocked when the swans welcome and accept him, only to realize by looking at his reflection in the water that he had been, not a duckling, but a swan all this time. The flock takes to the air, and the now beautiful swan spreads his gorgeous large wings and takes flight with the rest of his new family.
Thanks to the link given by @Welmaris, I read the full story of The Ugly Duckling and am surprised that it is far longer than I remember it. https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheUglyDuckling_e.html
On purpose, without having watched Episode 11, I’m just putting down my thoughts based on the first 10 episodes. I may change my tune entirely after this weekend’s episodes. LOL. This also goes to show that we can interpret any story, or pick bits of it, to suit the tale and its characters!!
1) At first glance, the Ugly Duckling seems to me, to point more to Sang Tae, than Mun Yeong or Gang Tae. Therefore instead of thinking who is adopted, I’m looking at the circumstances of the character.
The egg took longer to hatch and it tired the mother duck to wait for it, but she persevered. An old duck thought the chick would be a turkey and advised abandoning it. [A turkey is slang for being a dud or loser. ST is/was considered to be slow and one who had to keep going to vocational school.]
2) Despite criticisms and unflattering comments, the mother duck accepts the Ugly Duckling and stands up for him. She defends his looks saying “Moreover, he’s a drake, so it won’t matter so much. I think he will be quite strong, and I’m sure he will amount to something.” [Sang Tae while appearing to be slower than other children his age, was actually more capable than was obvious when he was younger.]
3) He was physically abused by all, and even the mother duck wished that he was miles away. [We recall that ST had been beaten up, we assume, simply because he was different. It was his brother who wished that he was dead in a fit of frustration.]
4) The Ugly Duckling did not accomplish any mean feats or do heroic deeds. His only claim to success was in being able to survive all kinds of persecution, misunderstanding and hardship. From Wikipedia (link above), “Bruno Bettelheim observes in The Uses of Enchantment that the Ugly Duckling is not confronted with the tasks, tests, or trials of the typical fairy tale hero. “No need to accomplish anything is expressed in “The Ugly Duckling”. Things are simply fated and unfold accordingly, whether or not the hero takes some action.” ”
[I thought the ‘fated’ aspect fit in nicely with kdrama’s usual fate trope.] Although the Duckling accomplished nothing much, he was however true to his nature, seeking to get out of the hovel into which he wandered, to find the great outdoors and to swim which he did very well. [We see that ST, when allowed to stay out of vocational school, does well at work and in his art. We also find that he has grown up to accept his role as an adult and the older brother who should be responsible and dependable.]
5) The Ugly Duckling admired the swans. “He did not know what birds they were or whither they were bound, yet he loved them more than anything he had ever loved before.” [Sang Tae admired Mun Yeong and was thrilled to be acknowledged by her. She was an artist who painted with words, and he became her illustrator. They both had issues with being rigid and possessive. In other words, they were not all that different, just as the Ugly Duckling was no different from the swans.]
6) Although the fuller version does not explicitly say so, the synopsis above says that the Ugly Duckling “is unable to endure a life of solitude and hardship anymore and decides to throw himself at the flock of swans deciding that it is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness and misery.” Also once he had grown, all who saw him thought him beautiful and accepted him. [ST was lonely and had always wanted a friend. In episode 9 he says: “Ms Ko and I are best friends now. That means we’re buddies and besties. It means we’re really close. Your best friend is Jae Su. My best friend is Ms Ko. I also have a best friend now. I have a best friend.”
He was fortunate that he had found the nice family of Ju Ri and her mother, and was well treated by Jae Su, Seung Jae and the people at the hospital. However he wanted one real friend who understood him and was exclusively his. He had yet to discover that people should not be controlled or managed in that way, and that all relationships are shared in some form or other.]
The Twists
– It is his best friend and his brother, who, while they accept him, also betray him and ironically cause him his greatest distress, and exacerbate his loneliness and feelings of abandonment.
– There is the paradox where the Ugly Duckling offered himself to be killed by the swans who instead admire and accept him, while the opposite takes place with ST who accuses GT of wanting to kill him, when that is not the case at all.
The Interpretations
– Interpretation 1 From @Welmaris’ notes above, the patient interpreted the story as “don’t discriminate against ugly kids.” [This is a fair thought since Korea places astronomical value on good looks, even treating is as make or break deals, when in fact, looks do not encapsulate all that a person is capable of.]
– Interpretation 2MY’s interpretation was “Raising someone else’s child is unrewarding so just look after your own.” [This is insufficient and false. If that mother duck had accepted the Ugly Duckling, she would have been the proud mother of a beautiful swan, so MY’s interpretation is thrown out.
– Interpretation 3 Any person, no matter how different/’psycho’, is a swan, with the innate potential to grow and bloom, given the opportunity (and the right help). In the end, being happy is a matter of perception. The Ugly Duckling did not change, but only the perception of him changed, and also, how he perceived himself. “He beheld his own image, and it was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, gray bird, ugly and offensive. He himself was a swan!” [ST saw himself as good and dependable and worthy of being loved, and should not be abandoned. This is actually a pretty healthy way of thinking!]
When we understand that we are all swans on some spectrum or other and when we can accept each other regardless, there will be peace and happiness. ” He felt so very happy, but he wasn’t at all proud, for a good heart never grows proud. He thought about how he had been persecuted and scorned, and now he heard them all call him the most beautiful of all beautiful birds. … He rustled his feathers and held his slender neck high, as he cried out with full heart: “I never dreamed there could be so much happiness, when I was the ugly duckling.” ”
So like the show title says: it’s Okay to Not Be Okay!
@GB, that was beautiful and analytical at the same time.
Shucks, thanks @Snow Flower. I find that your compositions get my imagination going. Maybe a vision of happy swans being a family and taking off in graceful flight together may inspire a new composition?
I just watched Episode 11 raw. It’s a happy episode, and I’m feeling great about it! Catch ya again!
Some info on Dooly The Little Dinosaur:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooly_the_Little_Dinosaur
‘Romeo and Juliet with a Twist
GT had called the relationship with MY an ill-fated one. He had been thinking of just the relationship between the two of them, but he hadn’t dreamt yet that it would encompass ST as well, or the families of Moon and Ko.
What would Romeo and Juliet be without a balcony scene. In this show, there were not one but two balcony scenes, with a twist. First there had been GT on the balcony with MY and they’d planned to run away (elope) for a day without letting their family (ST) know. That blew up in their faces with ST’s meltdown.
Then there had been ST’s and MY’s balcony scene, or rather, their argument through a window, over MY’s exchanging Mang Tae for Sang Tae. ST roundly rejected her and threw out his drawing of the three of them, like a family on a camping trip, which touched MY. So this window ‘tryst’ led not to an elopement but to the steps that MY would take to end the ‘feud’ and get herself accepted as family.
In Episode 12 GT sits despondently in the dark in the hospital common room and sees the words ‘Romeo and Juliet’ on the board. Presumably MY had had her class that day and that had been the story that was discussed. He had the board cleaner in his hand to wipe off the words, but could not bring himself to erase them. His brother was being threatened once again by the butterfly of the Ko family, who had killed his mother and destroyed his childhood. He should have been in a bitter feud with MY’s family, and erased the connection but he could not.
He recalls a voiceover flashback. MY saying : “We look like Romeo and Juliet.”
GT’s voice : “You’re right. The ill-fated mortal enemies who should never cross paths.”
MY : “No, they were meant to be. It was fate.”
GT : “It was tragic fate.” But GT remembered how he’d hoped with MY for her new story to have a happy ending, and broke down in tears.
At the end of Episode 12, GT bearing all the tragedy alone, was like Juliet who had slept un-waking. He had refused to respond to ST and had appeared dead. But unlike Romeo or Juliet, GT got up to beat ill-fated tragedy or Fate itself.
His words to ST and MY at the studio, “I’m not too late, right?” were more profound than he knew. In the Romeo and Juliet play, because the messenger was detained (was late) Romeo never got the message that Juliet was just sleeping. Because the Capulet and Montague families were too late in reigning in their unreasonable anger, several young lives were lost. And because Romeo came too early, he thought Juliet was dead. GT had arrived just in time.
In the end, fortunately it didn’t take death to unite the families (as it had done in the play), but conversely, it was in spite of the threat of death against ST by a member of MY’s family plus all the ‘bad blood’ that flowed between them, that the Moon and Ko family became one, in that portrait photo. GT had battled the feud within himself and had chosen to love the family with him rather than to be beholden to the family who had passed away. We wait to see if he will successfully beat Fate to make his own Destiny despite troublesome butterflies.
@GB, there is one more balcony scene, in Episode 5. It is when GT goes outside his apartment to distract Jae Soo because he does not want anyone to find MY in the apartment. While he talks to JS outside, MY locks the door from inside and then opens the window to talk to GT. The whole scene is one long take, brilliantly acted and timed. It is in this scene that Romeo and Juliet are first mentioned and it is this scene that GT recalls in Episode 12. MY says that the tragedy happened because only Juliet drank the sleeping potion. Had both of them drank it together, they would not have died.
I agree with your analysis.
Here’s a funny comic I recently saw online. Alice and Dorothy. “Alice in Wonderland” and “Wizard of Oz”; could also be a mashup of TKEM and PBIO.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jPHZxuhVX7sHBAxnrSFFr0-FAZywCpzS/view?usp=sharing
@GB I liked how you linked the bit about being late!
@snowflower yes, that scene was the first time Romeo and Juliet was mentioned explicitly I think!
In R&J, Romeo was separated from Juliet (he in the garden, she in the balcony), just like that scene in Ep 5. There were 2 more balcony scenes that followed in that same episode: the backstory of how the young MY would pray for a prince to save her (with her standing at the balcony seeing GT coming to the gate), and the scene when GT again goes back to the castle to get his brother, he is standing below, in the garden, while MY is standing in the balcony.
ST’s fav song that he discusses with Nurse Park “It’s all flowers” may allude to R&J too. In the latter, there is the famous quote by Juliet “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.
In “It’s all flowers”, the lyrics go like this (I google-translated the lyrics from Korean as I couldn’t find the English translation):
Flowers bloom in the mountains, flowers bloom in the fields, flowers bloom in the roadsides, they are all flowers,
they bloom everywhere, even if they bloom,
even if they bloom without a name, they are all flowers,
bloom in spring, bloom in summer
Even if it blooms secretly, it’s all flowers,
it blooms everywhere, even if it blooms,
even if it blooms without a name, it’s all flowers,
blooms in the mountains, blooms in the fields,
blooms in the fields, blooms in the roadsides,
blooms, and blooms everywhere
Even if it blooms, even if it blooms without a name,
it’s all flowers. Anywhere it blooms,
even if it blooms, even if it blooms without a name, it’s all flowers.
Like Juliet’s quote, perhaps the show is trying to show that MY’s connection as the daughter of the murderer of GT’s mother, is just restricted to her name/family link, and MY should not be faulted for GT’s mother’s death. Also, perhaps the song is also used to remind us that we are all human, and more similar than we think, whether neurotypical or otherwise.
@Snowflower I thought of you when I heard the song. It’s a children’s song: https://music.bugs.co.kr/track/31444159?wl_ref=list_tr_08_chart
Heh! @JT7 that was a cute song! Thanks for the lyrics and your interpretation. Your thoughts resonate with the idea of the writer/PD that this show is about how everyone is a psycho in their own way (my bad paraphrasing) as long as we’re human, we can be psycho and that’s ok. LOL.
@Snow Flower Thanks for the Romeo and Juliet scene ref. I sort of forgot about it and didn’t look it up and you saved me the trouble.
@Welmaris, I enjoyed that mash-up. Chilling and funny at the same time!
@JT7, this is a cute song! Snow Flower is a character from a historical drama.
@Welmaris, agree that the cartoon can be interpreted as a mashup between TKEM and PBIO.
[The tale of Finding the Real Face as told by ST, MY and GT with interruptions.]
Once upon a time in a castle in the deep forest, there lived three people who had their real faces stolen by the Shadow Witch. [PHJ had brought intense pain and unhappiness into their lives.]
The boy wore a mask with an awkward smile. [We remember how GT’s smile was the Joker’s or Chucky’s] .
Then there was the princess who was loud but all empty inside, and there was also a man who was trapped inside a box.
They couldn’t make any facial expressions because their faces were stolen from them. They had no way of understanding each other’s feelings, so they always misunderstood one another and fought. [While GT was always ‘okay’ ie he never showed his real emotions, the other two were not able to empathise or recognise emotions. But for MY and ST, it was the way they were born.]
The Box Man spoke. ‘If we want to stop fighting and find happiness, we must retrieve our stolen faces.’ So they hopped in their camping car and began their journey to find their faces. [From hindsight, the quest itself was going to be hopeless, because they never lost their real faces, but they were unable to see this. They needed to move away from themselves in order to find themselves.]
Then one day they ran into a mother fox who was bawling, curled up on the snow. ‘The Masked boy asked the mother fox. ‘ma’am, why do you keep crying?’ [Camera focuses on Kang Eun Ja and the death of her daughter. And on GT crying.]
‘Oh, I came out here to find some food but dropped my baby whom I was carrying on my back somewhere in the snow.’ The mother fox’s tears had run dry. She wailed while beating her chest.
When the Masked Boy saw that, warm tears started gushing from his eyes. Then the snow began to melt quickly, and the baby fox, who was frozen under the snow, soon appeared. [GT did melt the snow around MY’s heart, while MY shocked KEJ into coming out of her delusions.]
The three of them resumed their journey. Soon, they ran into a clown who was dancing naked in a field of thorny flowers. [We see Kwon Ki Do running about on stage in the past, and in the present, listening to the story with attention.]
The Emotionless Princess asked, ‘Why are you dancing with all your might, knowing you’ll be pricked by the thorns? ‘I feel this is the only way to make people look at me. But it hurts and no one’s looking at me’ he answered. [What comes to mind which only briefly flashed past in the show, is that many people self-harm as a cry for help.]
Then the Emotionless Princess walked into the field of thorny flowers and started dancing with the clown. ‘I’m an empty can, I won’t be hurt even if I get pricked by the thorns.’ [We recall the opening credits where a finger is pricked by thorns, and how MY cut her hand to test the knife. It was not that MY couldn’t feel the pain, but that she inured herself to it and hid it behind a cold exterior, as her power dressing hid her insecurities.]
When she began hopping and dancing, loud clanking noises echoed from her empty torso. And upon hearing those sounds, people began to flock to where they were. The crowd watched their dance and applauded them.
That moment, [the storytelling was interrupted by the fight between MY and ST]… they began a new journey to find their stolen faces and the evil Shadow Witch appeared in front of them once again. She kidnapped the Masked Boy, who shed tears on behalf of the mother fox, as well as the Emotionless Princess who danced with the clown.
‘The two of you will never be able to find your happy faces.’ After putting such a curse on them, she locked them in a deep, dark mole tunnel. [PHJ’s attempt to separate MY from GT’s influence.]
The Box Man found the mole tunnel a few days later, but the entrance was so narrow that he couldn’t go in. ‘What do I do? I need to take this box off my head in order to go into the tunnel.’ [His fears had paralysed him or made him run previously.]
That moment, the Masked Boy’s voice reached him from inside the tunnel. ‘Mister, don’t worry about us. Just run far away. The Shadow Witch will return soon.’ [GT had started ST in the habit of running away since they were boys. It would have been the most familiar reaction for ST and the most tempting to carry out.]
However the Box Man mustered up the courage to take the box off his head. then he went inside the tunnel and saved the Masked Boy and the Emotionless Princess. [What a nice complete cycle this makes: previously ST had left GT to drown, while MY had saved GT. This time ST had gone in to save both of them. ST had followed through on his promise that he would not run away and that he would protect his family.]
Upon getting out of the dark tunnel, the two of them saw the man’s face covered with dirt and grime instead of the box and burst out laughing. They laughed and giggled. While laughing uncontrollably the Masked Boy’s mask suddenly fell off. [GT let go of his conviction that he did not deserve happiness and embraced his right to be himself.]
The can surrounding the Emotionless Princess’ torso also fell off and made a clanking noise. (We see a flashback to GT smiling in his sleep.) [MY had the wrong concept of happiness, thinking that it came with getting everything she wanted, but this left her feeling empty. The emptiness that MY had tried to eradicate by her entitled behaviour, was filled by her giving as well as receiving.]
The Box Man, now out of his box, said this when he saw the two of them finding their true faces while laughing. ‘I’m happy.’ [An awareness of emotion by MY who lacked empathy and attributed to ST who could not recognise emotions – what poetic irony.]
What the Shadow Witch had stolen from them was not their true faces but their courage to find happiness. [They needed to embrace their right to be happy, to know it was okay to be not okay, as long as they were being themselves.]
Wow! Thank you for doing this, @GB, with the explanation and references to the other characters. 😍
You’re welcome @pkml3.
I wanted to keep it shorter than what it could have been, and left out a couple of things: thoughts on the need to let go.
One was that I was struck by how apt it was that the mother fox was beating her chest in agony, in mourning, even in remorse,… because that is what we human beings do as a sign of penitence and sorrow (as even in Holy Mass when we strike ourselves as a gesture and admit our guilt and ask for prayers). Kang Eun Ja had been beating herself up over her harsh words to her daughter, instead of appreciating her and her gift of the shawl. It was too late to appreciate the shawl when her daughter was dead. The shawl became a shackle to her guilt, until she dropped it and let MY appropriate it.
I mentioned in the Ep 15 / 16 open thread that the Box Man’s removal of the Box was noteworthy. ST had made a decision to recover from his fear of butterflies. His was an intentional act, made not in the spur of the moment, but over time. He made the decision over and over again to not run away, each time he practised drawing butterflies. And this from a soul who couldn’t even look at a butterfly without panic.
While MY and GT also stepped up to overcome their own traumas and wounds, they did so more in response to situations, whereas ST had to deliberately choose to remove the box from his head, before any new situation presented itself.
It was another satisfyingly poetic arc in this show, (and why I forgive it the Nurse Park conundrum), that the boy who followed his little brother around, who had tried to exchange Mang Tae for GT so that he could keep his brother to himself, had grown to become a man who could let go, to strike out on his own. The box was the leash that had tied both GT and ST down. As long as ST depended on GT, that leash would always remain. By his choice to be on his own, ST had not only become The Cheerful Dog, but he had set all three butterflies free.