First impressions, random theories.
1. The meaning of the title “My Perfect Stranger”
The story began in the year 2021. The male lead, Yoon HaeJun, recounted the events that happened on that fateful night in 2021. He said,
“When I look back, it was a really strange night. It’s rare for one thing after another to go wrong like that. The damn weather, crazy navigation, and a broken cellphone. That’s when it appeared in front of me. (he meant the time-traveling car) In it, I found instructions for a time machine. That’s right, the time machine in novels and movies. I worked in the press department for seven years. For someone who worked with facts, it seemed too fantastical. I did not give a damn about becoming the main character of such a fantasy. But there was a variable. That darn curiosity.”
He chose to time-travel to the year 3089. The car quickly returned covered with green slime. (Lol. Did he go underwater?) Still curious, he then traveled to year 2037.
That’s when he found out that he was already dead.
Since he was narrating the story, it’s easy to assume he was able to circumvent his death and that he was narrating the story from the present time, that is, 2023. But as it turns out, he was talking to two young kids back in 1987.
He planned to assimilate himself (or “embedded” himself like a journalist reporting from the warfront) in the year 1987. With the help of the kids, he was going to get a job as a teacher in the local high school.
Because he had foreknowledge of the news, he meticulously researched the perfect time to appear in the village. He was going to show up at a glue-sniffing incident in Woojeong Village, and he was going to stop the reporters from sensationalizing it.
He named the teenage girls: Kim Hae Kyung, Lee Eun Ha, and their ringleader, Park Yu Ri. According to a newspaper that was (conveniently!) left lying on the ground, two girls from the village would die from sniffing glue.
But Yoon HaeJun (HJ) saved all the girls that day.
He sternly warned the ringleader not to lead the girls astray. It’s good to take note of their conversation because there appears to be a backstory to the ringleader. Her mother could have been involved in some scandal which, in turn, is causing the teenager to engage in asocial business.
HJ: Is life difficult because your mom is different from others?
Bully: What? What the hell do you know?
HJ: Even if you’re different like this, your mom only lives for you. So don’t ever do this with other kids. Got it? (standing up) I’m am tired of this, too. Even without you, I have a lot of people to save in this town.
Then, as he walked away, the town newspaper’s headline magically changed to “Selected Five Consecutive Years as Crime-Free Town.”
And he was hailed by the town as the hero of Woojung-Ri.
And there we have one interpretation of the title, “My Perfect Stranger.” Although he claimed not to be interested in becoming a character in a fantasy story, Yoon HaeJun was like the town’s Clark Kent/Superman. Though he was a stranger to the locals, he was on a mission to save them. It was because of his careful and diligent preparation behind-the-scene that his arrival appeared to be a chance encounter. In reality, he planned it all. He wanted to become the “perfect stranger” to help the people so he could find his murderer.
2. Some calculations
a. Yoon HaeJoon began working in 2014.
2021 – 7 years in the Press Dept = he began working in 2014.
b. He planned to go on working for 16 more years then retire in 2037.
2021 + 16 years = 2037. He would have been 50 years old then.
c. Had he lived, he would have been working for 23 years before retirement.
7 + 16 = 23 years or
2037 – 2014 = 23 years
d. He was born in 1987.
According to him, he would die in 2022 when he turned 35. That meant he was born in 1987.
NB: Back in 1987, Principal Yoon’s son (aka HJ’s father) was studying in the US.
e. The murders happened 34 years ago.
2021 – 1987 = 34 years have passed since the serial murders.
f. In 2021, the former teenagers were already 53 years old.
19 + 34 = 53 years old.
g. The wrong guy served time in jail for 30 years.
3. The headlines
Just to keep track of the changing headlines…
Every time HJ succeeded in changing the future, the headlines in the news changed. We saw the 1987 news changed from ?? to ??
Then there was the headlines on the internet after he visited the prison. The breaking news changed from “The Culprit of the Woojung-Ri Serial Murder Case Kills Himself” to the “The Woojung-Ri Serial Murder Case Culprit to be Released Tomorrow.”
Obviously, the news article about his death hadn’t changed yet.
4. Who’s who
I find that this kdrama is disorganized when it comes to establishing the links between the characters.
a. In 1987, Yoon HaeJun (HJ) was a stranger in the Woojeong Village but he definitely had family connection to the place. His grandfather, Yoon Byeong Gu, was the High School principal who hired him.
Aside from being the principal, Yoon Byeong Gu was the town’s committee chair. He was well-respected and well-loved, it seems.
Back in 1987, Yoon Byeong Gu’s only other family member was his son whom he sent to the US to study. That’s why he didn’t recognize HJ when he first appeared. In 1987, HJ wasn’t born yet.
But since HJ time-traveled to 1987, they ended up running, ironically enough, in the “Family” Walkathon day. The names of the back of their jerseys read “Yoon Hae Jun” and “Yoon Byung Gu.”
But by 2021, HJ and his grandfather appeared to have a strained relationship. HJ had a flashback of his encounter with the old man when he time-traveled and paid him a visit in the spring of 2024 (or two years after his death).
HJ: Who are you waiting for?
Grandpa: My Grandson. He disappeared here. (gazing at the lake)
HJ: (mumbling to himself) You don’t even recognize him.
Lol. If the grandpa recognized him, he would have died of shock to see him alive.
Grandpa: My grandson disappeared here. Please find him for me.
HJ: (losing his temper) People might think you actually lost your beloved grandson. All your life, you said you couldn’t stand him. What are you doing?
Then, his grandpa turned his head to look at him and his face morphed into the Principal’s face.
This is what I meant when I said the drama had a disorganized — and delayed — exposition.
b. The female lead Baek Yoon Young (YY) had strong ties to Woojeong because her parents were from the village.
Her mother Lee Soon Ae (SA) was a senior high school student targeted by bullies. To me, though, she’s spineless. She grew up to be a sweet but timid housewife who puts up with her husband’s neglect.
Her father is Baek Hee Seop (HS) was a band-crazy teenager in 1987. He supposedly fell (literally) hard for SA at their first encounter. But 34 years later, he often neglected her. In Yoon Young’s own words:
YY: (losing her temper) Dad, do you know why I worked hard to live on my own? I hated seeing you and Mom together. That’s why. You fight whenever you’re together. When you fight, you leave the house. Then Mom waits. I was so sick and tired of seeing that every day. That’s why I ran away. Even though I knew Mom would be alone in the end.
YY blamed herself for being an unfilial daughter.
YY: But mom said she missed me. She said if she could go back in time, she said she still wanted to see me like a fool. I… I want to turn back time, Dad. If I could go back to the pas, I would go far back. So that I could make Mom not love you or me. Not being fooled by a person who makes her lonely or tricked into having a family. I want her to be happy by herself. So that she will live a long life I will make her live. But I can’t do that. There’s no way to do that.
Personally, I found this scene over-the-top given that when she met her mom in 1987, she didn’t seem to have learned her lesson to be more mindful and respectful of her mom’s feelings. Her mom showed obvious signs of discomfort. But she still forced her unwanted attention on the poor bewildered mom. Weirdo.
On a sidenote: YY and her father also had the same habit of covering up their mouths when feeling intense emotions.
Her mother SA had an older sister and parents. Her father HS appeared to have a “hyung” named Yu Sub. I’m not sure if they’re blood-related and if this Yu Sub was the man wrongly imprisoned for the serial murders.
c. To use a law enforcement term, the murder mystery writer, Go Mi Sook (GMS), is a “person of interest.”
I think that in 2021, she was hiding in the tall grass when YY retrieved a matchbox in the water then castigated her Dad for his neglect. She probably heard the whole tirade.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that she also witnessed YY’s mom Soon Ae jump into the water to commit suicide. I’m sure some viewers already suspect that she had a hand in Soon Ae’s death (e.g., she pushed her). But this waits to be seen.
To me, this scene in 2021 mirrors the scene in 1987 when she lurked in the same tall grass and watched the young Soon Ae get bullied and pushed into the water.
That’s her black hair on the left side of the screen. And her black hair was visible here. Lee Soon Ae also knew that somebody was lurking in the tall grass.
The director made sure that viewers saw her muddy shoes.
It’s worth noting that she only came out of hiding and rushed to Soon Ae’s side AFTER Soon Ae was rescued by YY from the water.
If I ignore the tedious crying scenes of YY in Episode 1, I actually like the pacing of this drama. I like that the YY quickly discovered that the employer Go Mi Sook (GMS) didn’t write her debut novel which established her reputation as a writer. It explained why GMS avoided talking about the book.
At a meet-the-writer event, she was testy when asked about her first book.
GMS: So you’re asking why all the murderers in my novels are women? Well, I’m not sure. But I guess it’s not strange that an old woman is writing novels? Just as some men commit murders in the world, some women also commit hideous murders. Of those cases, I choose to write about certain stories I know more about.
Interviewer: Then, shall we ask the next question? This is the first novel released in 1987 titled “Small Door.” Out of all your books, this is the only one where no murderers appear.
GMS touched her necklace. This was her nervous habit. Whenever she was anxious, she unconsciously touched her necklace. Most likely, she was afraid that the truth would come out. The young GMS also did this.
Back then, she was probably nervous that YY knew of her name even before they were actually introduced to each other.
Note: as of Episode 2, we don’t know how she got the young Soon Ae’s permission to pass the book as her own. Soon Ae had 34 years to publicly denounce her for plagiarism.
Also noteworthy: GMS’ ring. Is that a butterfly?
Interviewer: (continuing) You wrote this when you were merely 19 years old.
GMS: (testily) Isn’t it boring to talk about the past? (then changing topic) More than that, I would like to introduce the most important person to me right now. Over there in the back. Do you see the gorgeous woman standing there? She’s my editor-in-charge, whom I mentioned earlier and my soulmate. The main reason for my success is thanks to her hidden efforts.
Then all eyes turn to YY as GMS fake-applauded her.
Her clapping reminded me of this:
To me, she was a snake. She must have known that Baek Yoon Young was Lee Soon Ae when she hired her as editor-in-chief. It wasn’t enough that, back in 1987, she stole Soon Ae’s work to break into the publishing world. In the past years, she also exploited Soon Ae’s daughter’s “hidden efforts” to sustain her reputation as a writer. Judging from the extensive red editing marks on her draft, YY could claim to be her ghost-writer. Lol.
Anyway, GMS continued being mad after the event and took out her anger on YY.
GMS: Damn it! Who came up with all those questions? I can’t even write these days, and he dares to ask such moronic questions! Why the hell did he bring up that old novel and start blabbering? I’ve got many books that sold over a million copies, and he’s still bringing up that book!
YY: (appeasing her) Gosh. You’re talking about it like it’s someone else’s book. Out of your fans, do you know how many became followers since that first novel? Among them, I am that number one fan. If it weren’t for your lines from the novel, I’d be —
GMS: Hey! Do you think I want to listen to your story?
In this sense, YY encountered her “perfect stranger.” She had been working for GMS but didn’t think to question why her writing style as well as her murder mystery fiction books were vastly differed from her first published book. GMS succeeded in pretending to be a complete stranger to her and her family.
d. Detective Baek Dong Sik
According to HJ’s research, this detective disappeared after he couldn’t solve the serial murder cases.
HJ: Five days from now, right after two murder cases and one missing case, he suddenly quits his job after having worked diligently. He’s someone who will leave this town and go off the grid. He goes off the grid for 30 years.
If I understood the backstory, in 2021, HJ dropped in on him during his investigation of the serial murders. He found the old Det Baek living in the area. The Detective looked haggard — as he should be because he failed to perform his duty.
He quit the police force when he was most needed to protect the residents from a killer.
It’s clear to me that HJ made several trips back and forth to 1987 to embed himself as one of the regulars in the small town. He bought a house with money from his earnings as a top newscaster in 2021.
He converted the top floor of his house into a crime investigation office complete with an evidence board. He was invited to the local events like the “Family Marathon.”
He knew enough of the locals to blend in with them. He was doing all this because back in 1987, all the victims were still alive. If he found the murderer back then, he could save their lives and also, avert his own death in the future.
Back in 1987, the serial killer would have at least been a teenager, making his murderer in 2022 at least 19 years older than him.
5. May 9 is an important date.
HJ and YY met on this day in 1987 when his car bumped her on the road. The title of the episode, “Chance Meeting, 1987” could refer to their accidental encounter.
On this day in 2021, her mom committed suicide. It was her dad’s birthdate, too. Her mom first prepared dinner to celebrate the birthday then killed herself afterwards.
Noteworthy: At 1:00pm, her boss Go Mi Sook called her on the phone but she ignored the call. The date was displayed on her cell phone, May 9. I wonder why she was calling her then.
6. Other things to pay attention to:
a. Who’s Kim Seung Jin? He/she left her name tag at the store.
b. The matchbox from BongBong Teahouse, and the note that said, “Women who read are dangerous.”
This is from 1987.
But YY found a matching one in 2021.
c. Girl at the nightclub
Was that Soon Ae’s younger sister?
d. the first murder would take place on May 14. Since he arrived late on May 9 with YY, he had about five days to save the first victim.
e. HJ’s phones.
On the night he first came across the car, he had a cracked phone beside him. Then, on the night he bumped YY, he was distracted by a phone call. What’s up with that?
7. Shoes
If there’s any indication that this kdrama will end happily, I take it to be the shoes.
Mom: They fit perfectly. Right? Is it because my daughter is pretty? There’s light beaming from the shoes! They say you have to wear good shoes to go to good places.
YY: (hiding her smile) There’s no such saying. That’s stupid.
Like mom, like daughter. Although she ridiculed her mom’s belief in such superstition, she had expressed the same words to GMS earlier.
To me, her time-travel to 1987 couldn’t be all that bad when she was wearing her good shoes. I’m sure she and HJ will be able to correct the past, and come out of this experience wiser and happier with their family ties restored.
I’ll follow this kdrama for a while.
Thanks my dear @pkml3.
At first there was nothing to watch, now there are too many Shows airing at the same time that are very inviting.
This sort of time travel and with joined fates story is one premise that is catnip to me. Now to carve out the time…
😂
You’d have to time-travel to the past just to fit in all dramas you want to watch this month, @GB. I always thought Hermione Granger’s magical time-turner was a very useful gadget to own.
LOL @pkml3, yes I really want a time-turner of my own!!
I tried to reduce the lengthly of list of 15 ‘Currently Watching’ shows on the MyDramaList Watchlist, but only succeeded in moving out a few to make it 9. What makes time so tight is also that I’m rewatching stuff! LOL. I’m just burying myself in dramas.
I envision that I’ll only be really watching 2 with great enthusiasm, and 2 to while the time away while waiting for more episodes of other shows to air. As I try to check on details of what I’ve watched, I’ll automatically rewatch bits and pieces as well. Before I know it, it’ll be June!!! 🤯 🫣 😉 🤭 😌
Thanks for doing all the calculation of dates @pkml3.
Following up on something you asked above: The guy that Baek Hee Sub called Hyung is Baek Yoo Sub, so I guess they are brothers. However the guy in the jail who was supposed to hang himself and didn’t is Min Soo.
My Perfect Stranger: meaning that we most likely impute to this phrase is that we really don’t know that person at all, such as YY and Hae Joon who appear to have been randomly thrown together into 1987. YY and HJ are also perfect strangers to the 1987 people, because they are not even born yet. If HJ is supposed to be born in 1987, then he should be conceived already since it is May 1987. Presumably he was conceived in the States where his father is supposed to be.
This makes their identities perfectly strange since they should not exist yet, but at the same time, they are related to people in that place.
If that 1987 matchbox keeps turning up, it seems that the killer wants to take the credit even for the ‘suicide’. Soon Ae’s death is even more suspicious because she had bothered to prepare for the birthday celebration. She would have been more invested in waiting for her family to come after all that preparation. The note to YY did not really sound like a suicide note. I’m tending to think that she was killed and her shoes and the note were placed near the river to make it look like suicide.
If YY can change events, Soon Ae should/could have been the novelist to have received the recognition in 2021. If YY could stop her parents from getting together, she herself would no longer exist (the conundrum of time travel and messing with one’s past before one existed).
The note in the matchboxes saying that women who read are dangerous, sounds more like a misogynistic judgment from a man. On the one hand, Go Mi Sook’s murderers are all women and she claims to write what she knows about. Is that a hint that she knows the serial killer is a woman? This is possible if she’s the watcher behind the tall grass.
In 2021, we have not yet met Kim Hae Kyung who was the gang leader bully in 1987, who’s prepared to let someone drown. I wonder if she’s even alive as her name is not listed under the Asianwiki 2021 cast. She would have been the obvious candidate to be suspected of murder. But the matchbox notes sound like they are written by a man.
(Conjecture that’s left here to aid memory: The other girl who went clubbing, Park Yu Ri is not listed in 2021 too… perhaps she’s one of the victims of the serial killings?)
@GB,
I just finished watching Ep 1 again and caught the epilogue (by accident, lol). Go Mi Sook returned home and the hems of her white pants were muddied. She was lurking in the tall grass/reeds! She said something about settling scores.
Watch it.
I tried to rewind but it jumped to the next episode. Going to bed now.
@GB, isn’t Kim Dong Wook one of those actors you enjoy watching?
Hi @FF, I particularly like actors like Gong Yoo, Lee Junho and actresses like Gianna Jun and Lee Bo Young.
Kim Dong Wook may come in the next tier for me LOL. I liked him in ‘The Guest’ more than in ‘You are My Spring’. However he’s a good actor to have on a show.
Speaking of Junho, one of his shows “King The Land” will be airing next month. Unfortunately the FL is not one I care for, but I’ll be interested to see what the story is about.
@pkml3, oh dear, I usually stick around to catch the ends of shows but I must have jumped to the next episode when I saw that we were getting a preview.
I’ve watched the Epilogue twice. My subs say that GMS tells her husband that she went to Woojung-ri because: “Well… I had something I needed to finish” which is very vague compared to your subs which say that she had old scores to settle. In any case, it is highly likely that she was there watching YY who was at the edge of the river.
It’s extremely coincidental that GMS should choose to go walking in her nice white pants in the muddy parts of Woojung-ri on the same evening that YY’s mother should die there. She might be in cahoots with the killer… (I think I’ll refer to killer as her/she since GMS makes her fictitious killers female) In a very sick twist, killer could be someone who’s giving GMS a plot and content for her next murder novel!!! Without the murders, she has nothing to write.
Either that or GMS knows the killer’s movements and follows her killings for the thrill.
Or she’s the killer herself. If she considers that she wants to off the real author of the first book “Small Door” simply because that one book is more popular than anything she herself has written, then it could be related to ‘settling old scores’.
Some other thoughts
When Yoon Hae Jun speaks in voiceover, upon discovering the time machine car, my subs had him say that he didn’t count on a ‘factor’ which was his curiosity. Your subs must have used the term ‘variable’. Later when he speaks with YY, he says that he has made many time travel trips without issue except for this last one, which means that YY is the variable. However he has not yet got enough info and has not considered that perhaps he was meant to bring YY along
This may not be significant, but the camera did stay on the hour glass/minute glass? that was dangling over the car’s dashboard. In the spinning of the car to avoid YY, the minute glass turned upside down and sand flowed through it. That also was a new variable in that car’s trip. After that the time machine shut down.
YY has inherited her mother’s gift of writing so that only when she edits/re-writes GMS work does it get well received.
Soon Ae says in her letter to YY that if she could travel back in time, she wanted to go back to that day when YY was singing the frog song, and she would hold YY’s beautiful, tiny hands one last time. In 2021, YY was able to force her way across the road when in the path of many lanes of cars, without getting hit, in order to reach her mother and yell at her for not bothering about herself. But that evening she’s swept away by a single car to enter 1987 to meet her 19-year old mother and to change her life.
I’ve been looking at those shoes …it’s Soon Ae who says those shoes were glowing. I guess they only glowed for Soon Ae because they looked like ordinary shoes to me. YY asks in voiceover “The shoes that my mum bought me, where did they take me that day?” If good shoes could take YY to good places, then that pair of shoes were also time travel shoes that brought her to Woojung-ri, the place which the villagers erroneously claimed was crime-free and good.
The irony of course is that not only did they have worrisome crimes like glue-sniffing among the young, but something as horrific as a serial killer in their midst.
@pkml3, I’m missing something… I look at your calculations but how did you figure out that our ML is 34 years old in 2021? Did your subs give you other figures for his birth year/year when he started work/current age?
My subs only say that he had worked for 7 years at the current job and wanted to retire early.
Oh wait, I found it… he says he’ll be 35 the next year, and he’d be dead.
Repeated motifs
The Car, the Mobile Phone and Music
We’re still waiting to know what happened to HJ’s mobile phone that its screen was shattered, on that night, the first time he encountered the time travel car. The latter had its lights on bright and stood open and ready for him, with a manual on how to use the time travel function to boot. That car seems to be a character in itself, deliberately in HJ’s path, piquing his curiosity.
On another night (2 months later) when he was about to ‘bump’ into Yoon Young, his phone rings and he tried to take the call. But I thought it was impossible for him to receive calls once he set the car to return to 1987. He put the phone in speaker mode but could not hear or get a response. Did that phone ring in order to create the accident? Maybe items like the phone (and guitar/music) are the guest stars characters?
As a result of his inattention to the road, HJ hit the brakes suddenly to avoid YY. From the little we were shown, it seemed as if his car did not really hit YY but both it and YY vanished to reappear some distance from each other in 1987.
It’s a puzzle how the car looked so broken up if it merely hit a person. The hood had opened up and the front fender and license plate dropped off. The lights went out all together. Did the car want to remain a longer time in 1987 to keep our duo there? LOL.
These are excerpts of HJ and YY’s conversation about the cause of the accident:
YY : “I’m not the one who caused this, am I?”
HJ : “Why didn’t I think of that before? Why did I think it was only my problem? Why did you get hit? … How and why did you end up being hit by my car?”
YY : “Is there a way to get hit? I got hit because you hit me as the driver.”
HJ shakes his head: “No, you don’t know how this works. This car can’t bump into things. It becomes transparent (I think he means it de-materialises). I’ve been travelling between countless points in time at least twice a day for the past two months, but this never happened. You didn’t just get hit but also followed me here. Which of us is likely to be a variable here?”
YY considers the word, ‘variable’ : “A variable…” She looks down at her shoes – the new shoes given by her mother that day before she died; the good shoes that were to take her to good places.
(I mentioned above that her shoes could have been another ‘device’ for time travel because both she and her mother said good shoes took people to good places and the question of where the shoes had brought her was the first thought that hit her when she got up from the accident. Did the shoes enable her to follow HJ and the car?)
HJ notices her looking at her shoes : “Does anything come to mind?”
YY thinks of an alternative : “The music. Isn’t it the music? … Right. It was a Sanullim song. It was so loud that outside the car my ears were hurting.”
HJ : “What does that have to do with anything?
YY : “Did you make a call or something?”
HJ: “Make a call?” He thinks back and there was a call. He put on the phone speaker and said ‘Hello’ but could not hear the response.
This means that sounds from inside the car when it traveled in that tunnel, could be heard by YY who was a distance away. The time traveling car included her in its space-time warp, so that she heard everything that had taken place inside the car, although she was outside the tunnel.
Twice music catches attention – music in the car warned YY that something was behind her. Music in the ticket booth where Soon Ae sat stopped band-crazy Hee Sub in his tracks. He turned to look at the source of the music and was transfixed when he saw Soon Ae.
To make it clear that music and phones have some ‘role’ in the Show, the Opening Title animation has the Time Traveling red car running across the frets or along the guitar strings of a broken guitar that becomes whole again.
So will we see a guitar in the future episodes and what role will it play?
The Title of Episode 2: “The Reason We Can’t Return” and Shoes
Even after the car is fixed, it’s not that YY can’t return, rather, she won’t return because she has discovered that her father has just met her mother. She wants to prevent her mother from loving her father. That’s quite an insurmountable task given that Soon Ae and Hee Sub were attracted to each other from the start.
YY has also discovered that her mother’s novel had been published under GMS’s name and that her mother was being so dangerously bullied that she was miserable and wanted to die. It is ironic that she’s speaking to her young mother who wants to die in 1987, after she left her dead mother who was thought to have committed suicide in 2021.
HJ may continue to travel between 2021 and 1987 because he needs to retain his job as Anchor and catch the real serial killer at the same time. However the more immediate reason is (maybe) because he wants to ensure that YY will not make a mess of the future when she stays to change events.
An added incentive for him to stay on with HJ is that he needs to know why she has the matchbox that is the signature of the serial killer.
Shoes
Further to our discussion on shoes, there’s a repeated motif of one shoe being lost. At the departmental store, Soon Ae couldn’t get near enough to the discounted shoes, to grab the other half of the pair before she fell down. She seems to have fallen more than once, each time with just 1 shoe in her hand, and almost losing her scarf in the scuffle.
In the accident, YY fell to the ground and lost one shoe. She was able to retrieve her shoe before she proceeded to walk to the town. Later when she walked behind the car that was being towed, I wondered why she looked like she was limping. HJ asked her why she was walking funny.
In the ‘death’ of HJ, one shoe was left behind, and no body was even found. In the supposed ‘suicide’ of Soon Ae, her shoes were placed neatly on the rocks.
Missing a shoe, our protagonists could not make progress, or they disappeared.
GMS had just bought a pair of light coloured shoes. Her current pair was also white or light in colour to match her white pants suit. I can’t imagine how she could want to walk in the mud in those shoes and clothes.
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy had to put on the magic slippers, clicks the heels together 3 times and repeat that ‘There’s no place like home’ before she could return.
If a pair of good shoes could help one get to good places, what happens with shoes that are not good?
Motifs
Book and Car
Soon Ae and YY are the talented writers who wanted to become novelists but did not manage it. It was their work that made books supposedly written by GMS popular. It’s not evident yet whether the first book was stolen or whether Soon Ae was bullied into giving it to GMS. Soon Ae as an avid reader should have been aware that ‘Small Door’ was published under GMS’s name.
Instead of continuing to write, Soon Ae became a homemaker, and seemed to have given up her dream of becoming a novelist. Perhaps she hid her talent because she knew that any work she produced would have been stolen? YY took more action than her mother, to enter the book world. At least she became an editor as a step towards being able to write her own books.
In the opening credits animation, a book is shown chained. (If the car is the main character, then the book is one of the secondary characters and the victim).
In the animation, the red car takes off into the air, and breaks the chains. It goes through several groups of motifs (guitars, old handphones, butterflies, match boxes… all of which form a spinning wreath through which the car passes) and continues flying freely. The last of the animation has the car diagonally opposite YY who stands or floats in the air facing it. So we know that the car is going to enable YY to set things right. HJ is the car who bulldozed into the complacent Woojung-ri community to prevent the murders from taking place.
WRT the chains: there is likely more than one violation of rights (bullying, plagiarism?) and at least 1 crime going on (theft?, murder, inciting death?) and they might be linked. Without the Time Travel car, the village community of Woojung-ri would have been fettered by the chains of the death of at least 2 of the 19-year old girls, followed by serial killings, fettered then by fear and the inability to solve the murders.
Now that YY has become aware that Soon Ae is the real author of ‘Small Door’, she will try to break the chains of silence that keeps Soon Ae from admitting it and from continuing to write. YY aims to also prevent her mother from loving her and Hee Sub, which kept her from living her life freely. However YY should see from Soon Ae’s letter, her point of view, that love was not a chain at all. By befriending her mother, YY was inadvertently ensuring that her mother would love her even more.
Motifs
The Bloody Head Wounds and being Hit
This may have no significance, however it’s something that is repeated.
We see that both HJ and YY after the accident are bleeding from the top of their foreheads and even on the same side, the left side.
In what presumably is HJ’s dream while he is unconscious after the accident, we see HJ fall into water. He opens his eyes and finds himself in an ice covered body of water. He cannot break the ice. He sees above him that there is another HJ walking on the ice and a person in black following him. HJ above the ice is hit and falls down bleeding from the head.
This morphs into a news report voiceover about Anchor Yoon Hae Jun who went missing and who was suspected to have been murdered by the river in Gangwon Province. The DNA testing of the blood at the scene showed it belonged to Anchor Yoon.
Once again it’s a death or a missing person where the same river is the last scene or clue of the person’s whereabouts. HJ’s grandfather was waiting for him at a spot on the river, never to recognise him, although they had, had an altercation before. Grandfather was likely wracked with guilt that he had pushed his grandson away.
The news report says: “People are wondering if this will be a murder case without a body.” At the bloody scene what was left behind were a small rectangular object (most likely the match box), one of Yoon’s shoes, and something else, thick and rectangular… a brick that was used to hit him, covered in blood. (Screenshot link below.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CJClK9neqHypZCW6z7cmMGQpTDq19gUZ/view?usp=sharing
Newspaper headlines say he has been missing for a week. “Is it a murder case without a body?” This newspaper is in the car with HJ who is unconscious after ‘hitting/bumping into’ YY. He regains consciousness, sees the newspaper and stuffs it into the glove compartment. This was the shocking news report about his own death that he had come across in 2037.
As YY and HJ enter the town they both get accidentally hit by Baek Hee Sub along the street. They only bump shoulders, but he sees blood on each of them and is amazed that his shoulder is able to break foreheads (this shows the level of his intelligence, but it’s also funny). When he meets YY again, he takes some time but finally recognises her as the ‘first forehead’. That makes HJ the ‘second forehead’ LOL.
Hi @pkml3
Please open an Open Thread or if you prefer an Episode 3 and 4 Thread for My Perfect Stranger. I’m not sure if anyone else is watching this though. Episode 3 has aired and is subbed.
Ok, @GB. Let me just look for my laptop.
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