One Comment On “A Good Day to Be a Dog: Eps 11 & 12 Open Thread”

  1. Welmaris

    After watching Episode 11, I’m ready to rant.

    I am frustrated by the unevenness of this script. The writer is inconsistent. For instance, at timestamp 6:53, Bo Gyeom tells the shaman Min Ji-A, possibly a reincarnation of his beloved Cho Young, “Past lives…are just past lives. You should live your life peacefully and smoothly.” He says that, yet exacts revenge for the actions of two people that lived and died hundreds of years prior. He visits his curse on their descendants, even after they’ve long forgotten the source of, and reason for, the curse.

    Is being changed into a dog harmful? Yes. At the very least, it causes inconvenience and physical exhaustion to transform into a dog at midnight and back into human form every morning. When the period for lifting the curse is exceeded, and the cursed person stays permanently in dog form, their lifespan is significantly shortened. How could shaving potential decades off someone’s life not be considered harmful? It’s a slowly executed death sentence.

    It makes no sense to me that Bo Gyeom can reject the reincarnation of his beloved, saying the past stays in the past, yet punish people in the present for events that happened long ago, in which they had no personal involvement, and about which they’re ignorant. When we see Mountain God speaking the curse to Mak Soon at 29:26, he says, “They shall ruminate their ancestor’s sin and ruminate again.” He continues his punishment long after the chain of memory has broken.

    Bo Gyeom abandoned his mountain and uses his powers for harm, not good. How can he act with impunity? Are there no other mountain gods to step in when one of their own goes rogue? Even Mountain God’s minion, the fox-cum-vice-principal, senses that Bo Gyeom has run amok, repeatedly urging him to end his vendetta and return to the mountain. Even when Mountain Gnod’s beloved seems to have come back to him, he refuses to let go of his grudge. Why? the only reason he gives at 20:23 is, “There’s no turning back now. Since I already started it.” Yet at 30:21 Bo Gyeom negotiates with Hae Na, “I’ll lift the curse on your family. On one condition.” It appears he is fully capable of turning back the curse, but chooses to do it only on his terms, exchanging one type of punishment for another. He is willfully cruel: that’s evil, in my book. Bo Gyeom tells Vice Principle at 20:08 that even if Min Ji-A regains all of Han Cho Young’s memories, “The Mountain God she remembers…isn’t me.” As I see it, he’s become a demon, existing only to torment.

    And speaking of torment, don’t get me started on the editing of the kiss scene. Watching all the cuts between viewpoints was worse that enduring the trope of an interrupted kiss.

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