First part is here: Doom at Your Service: Ep 1 First Impressions, Part 1

Don’t kill the messenger.

The doctor gave her the first doomed news, and DK didn’t kill him. The wife of her cheating boyfriend gives her the second doomed news, and she doesn’t kill her either. DK demonstrates a tremendous self-control and forbearance to bad news.

“Who should I throw water at?
(inhaling to compose herself)
You can let out your anger on me,
But I can’t let out my anger on you.
It’s that bastard’s fault, so what should I do?”

I think DK’s words here can be have a double meaning. Although she’s addressing the wife, her words are applicable to the gods as well. Sure, her boyfriend cheated on her. But the gods are not much different when they cheat her of a happy life with that unexpected news of glioblastoma. She feels wronged on both counts. It’s not her fault that she got sick and that her boyfriend was a two-timer, but she can’t let her anger out on anybody.

Because DK sees the wife as a victim just like herself, she refrains from retaliating the wife’s water slap. She shoulders the blame. “So…please live on while blaming me.” To make the wife feel better with a delusion, she casts herself as the evil bitch who seduced a loving and innocent husband. The sarcasm in her tone of voice cannot be help; there’s no way she’ll accept her cheating boyfriend. But she’s sincere in wishing the wife well in the future. Meaning, if the wife can forgive and forget his cheating way, that’s the wife’s prerogative. “Whether it be ten or fifty years, live a long happy life with that bastard. That would be nice. For your baby, too.”

One thing that I like about her conversation with the wife is her disclosure that she didn’t expect to reveal her devastating news of her illness to her cheating boyfriend’s wife. Her composure in dealing with the wife tells me that she has requisite calming and gentle disposition if ever she should become a harbinger of death and doom like MM.

That’s one happy ending I can envision for our couple, moving forward. She can join him as a butterfly in the deity’s flower garden.

“Now, I’m not in the mood for a cigarette.”

This is another reason that I suspect MM of being acquainted with DK in the past. He caused the sinkhole to happen because DK was shouting for help to stop the pervert from getting away, and nobody was helping her out. It seemed to me like he stepped in to answer her prayer.

However, he also changed his mind about lighting up a cigarette. Typically, a smoker lights up to relieve stress. He took out the cigarette because he was in a bad mood. But as soon as he saw the pervert falling into the sinkhole, he was no longer in the mood for the cigarette. It appeared to me then that he was upset, rather than pleased with himself, that he accidentally did a good deed for the “unworthy” humans DK. Not even cigarette could calm him down so he left the scene.

“Do you want to die?”

This is a comical threat to her younger brother considering that she’s going to die in three months. Of course, this is a common expression in Korean drama but it shows her lack of dread for her own condition.

Additionally, her conversation with her donsaeng or younger brother tells me how they perceived their parents’ deaths. Far from seeing the death anniversary as a time for grieving and reminiscing over sad memories, they seem to regard the ancestral memorial rite as an occasion for festivity. That’s why she skipped the traditional food served during the rite and bought cake. Her Auntie approved of it, too. She irreverently joked that if she, DK, and the brother had been together that evening, they could have partying.

“After the rain, all the gingko leaves will fall.
Fall is so short. Now we can’t eat ice cream outside anymore.”

lol. This sounds like a haiku.

I find it interesting that DK bought a cake on her parents’ death anniversary while MM passed up the chance to buy a cake to mark his birthday. He was turned off when he overheard passersby talking about the gingko leaves.

But I’m not quite sure what displeased him about the conversation. It could have been a number of reasons that triggered him, like:

a. he was reminded that for humans, time was short, but for him, time was never-ending.
b. he envied them.
c. they annoyed him for being greedy. They wanted beautiful autumn: the trees, ice cream, and time to enjoy it all, too.
d. he didn’t even have a birthday to call his own.

Perhaps then the cake was for him, too, since DK’s parents’ deaths must have involved some of his doom and destruction, too.

“At the age of ten
I knew how to swallow tears.
The tears that couldn’t fall but were swallowed…
I wondered where they all went.
I think I know now.
From that day on,
The tears that I could not weep swelled like a lump,
Eventually settling at a place in my head.”

What a way to romanticize glioblastoma! She attributes her tumors to unshed tears.

Although I find the screenwriter’s words cloying in this voiceover, I don’t doubt that many of us try to rationalize misfortune happening to us and to people we love in the same sentimental way. We often create fairy tales to make pain more bearable.

But I hope the screenwriter tries to avoid cheesiness in the future.

“I hope the world goes to hell.
I wish everything stopped existing.
Bring doom upon the world.”

They say that “in vino, veritas.” Only when DK drunk was she able to express all that pent-up anger for her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. .

I understand that she had put on a happy face probably because she didn’t want to worry others (and probably because she didn’t want to be pitied) but I found her change of mood quite abrupt. Perhaps it’s the editing or the actress’ inability to show a “brooding” face, but I thought that her drunken shouting scene was such a lazy way to convey that she really felt depressed inside. One scene, she was happily reassuring her that she wasn’t sick, and the next scene, she was yelling in the rooftops.

In contrast, the director developed MM’s moodiness over a series of dark and brooding scenes.

The difference in how the director handled the two moments is jarring to me. I wish that the director gave DK’s angsty scene more gravitas and solemnity. She was dying, for heaven’s sake! It was underwhelming compared to MM’s scene by the window.

“My birthday doesn’t always come.
My birthday crosses over the century
And leaps over destiny.”

This is a poetic way to describe birthdays if one lives for eternity. What’s the point of celebrating a birthday annually if life doesn’t have a beginning nor an end? It’s enough to celebrate it once a century… or even maybe once a millennium.

As for leaping over destiny, what may be “destiny” or major events in human history, like the creation of the Magna Carta in 1215, Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492, or the moon landing in 1969, are trivial matters to somebody like him who lives forever. That his birthday might have been intertwined with these fateful moments doesn’t stun him.

The translation at Kissasian wasn’t as poetic, though. The subs only said, “My birthday doesn’t come easily. It travels worldwide and through the fates of many people.”

“Then you can bring doom upon all!
Why are you doing this to me?
Do you think I haven’t done that before?
It didn’t work. It may be because of some program’s will.”

To me, this is another hint that they met before. Nothing happened then probably because the timing wasn’t right. But this time, stars aligned, and she made a wish on a dying star.

DK: Then, do you disappear if you don’t grant me the wish? In fantasy novels, that was the case.

Honestly, I don’t know what fantasy novel she’s talking about. I have yet to hear about a supernatural wish-giver or a genie in the bottle dying because he’s unable to fulfil the wish. It often happens the other way around. The mortal dies because he/she’s outwitted by the immortals.

MM: No way. It’s like an event. “Doom, on the day you are born, become someone else’s hope.”

This is paradoxical. By virtue of becoming somebody’s hope, Doom is no longer doom.

DK: Wow. Is this a nightmare?
MM: Your life is a nightmare.
DK: What?
MM: Sadly, it’s time for you to wake up.

I don’t know if his choice of word “sadly” is being mocking or the subber didn’t get this right. If DK’s waking up from a nightmare, then “sadly” is hardly the appropriate word. She must be feeling happy and relieved to escape a nightmare.

“Even after getting a death sentence,
Nothing has changed.
I do not fear what I don’t see.
Even death.
Even doom.
The minute I see them,
Fear becomes real.”

This explains why she was staring at her xray pics on the wall at the doctor’s office. Her glioblastoma didn’t seem real back then to her, so she didn’t exhibit any sign of emotional upheaval. But she stumbled when she and MM crossed each other in the hospital. That’s probably when fear literally and symbolically entered her consciousness.

But she fully recognizes MM as doom as she’s crossing the road. And that’s when fear and pain become real for her.

I like how the white truck of doom splashes through water in the middle of the street and creating a wall of water behind her. I thought she looked like the Little Mermaid. She sits on the ground like the Danish statue sits on a rock.

The bubbles are the seafoam. In the fairy tale, death doesn’t mean keeling over or falling in a comatose. Death is being transformed into a sea foam and vanishing into waves. Death is painless in the fairy tale, and that’s what MM is promising DK, too.

But MM is like the Sea Witch who cuts an ultimatum with the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid agrees to kill the Prince in order to survive. In this drama, we find out that MM has tricked DK into wishing doom on another human being or someone will die in her place.

MM: How was your day today?
DK: Why are you asking me that?
MM: You never know. You might want to bring doom upon everything today. That makes things easier.
DK: There’s something I’m curious about. What happens if I break this contract?
MM: If you break it?
DK: Let’s say you allow me to not have any pain until I die and my wishes come true. But I die without wishing for doom.
MM: Will you do that? Then, someone else will die instead of you. The person you love most at that moment.

Hmmmm… “The person you love most at the moment”? Do we really need to wonder who could it be now????

It’s interesting that MM won’t tolerate her fortitude, so he creates a difficult situation for her. He warns her that any attempt by her to spare anyone from destruction will backfire and result into death of the very person she loves. I think MM finds her forbearance – or her patience and courage in the face of all obstacles – intriguing. Unlike the murderer who runs away from doom and attempts to kill himself, DK carries on without blaming others and pitying herself. Her only moment of weakness was when she was drunk and shouted at the stars.

I think setting MM up with somebody like DK whose character is polar opposite of his, is a fine trick played by the deity of life on his birthday.

“Deity is on my side.” lolololol. Famous last words….

source: dramaism

Overall, I fear that this drama will lurch from one sad moment to the next to sound like it’s delivering some profound thoughts on death, fate and our human struggle to define our existence. As of Episode 2, I must admit that it’s the actor Seo InGuk’s portrayal of his role that fascinates me more than the ideas of this screenwriter. He/she is telling me nothing new. As I said elsewhere, the drama sounds like a Goblin-lite.

But I’m willing to give this drama eight episodes to build its case, like I often do with other kdramas. I’ll bail out sooner if it enters maudlin (or makjang) territory, but I’ll stay to see MM groveling hard to keep DK alive.