S F
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I won't be able to post for a while after today, so, at the risk of overdoing it, I wanted to list some additional Random Interesting Things for your perusal. Apologies if these have been already commented on (as it's highly likely).
1) The day/night balance in the action seems to be really central (I read, probably here, that it was even a challenge for filming). Between DH and JA it seems that the day is for pretending and the night for being truthful.
2) When the cliffhanger endings hint at something romantic, then the subsequent episodes add more words or more images to the last scene of the previous episode to somewhat diminish the romantic impact on the viewer. I felt this very clearly at the start of eps 13, 14 and 15.
3) I wonder if JH is not a female version of DH. They are presented as close friends, with no mutual love interest. DH has chosen the proper masculine path of the salaryman, a Joseon gentleman, the husband and father, the provider for his natal family, for twenty years, and is now nearly dying. JH chose the proper feminine path of undying devotion (she is a Joseon romantic heroine says omma Park), fidelity, and self-denial for twenty years, and she's now in a crisis, too. JA develops a close relationship with her, and, like DH, JH asks JA to meet again in the future.
4) The monk, as many have observed, is DH's other alter ego. They were the golden boys of the neighbourhood, but the monk chose to reject the pressures of family and work, while knowing that DH would be left alone to shoulder all these collective expectations. DH is a bit jealous; they both joke that maybe DH should imitate him and shave his head. As a boy from a conservative background, Gyumduk's path to liberation is still within the confines of traditional society. DH instead needs to break with tradition, and do something his family and neighbourhood disapprove of (leave a safe job and divorce his wife).
5) One hint that DH is a man between tradition and modernity are his choices regarding women. Both YH and JA are 'intelligent', both refuse to obey him. Both speak to him without deference (DH lightly scolds JA multiple times on her non-deferential language and behaviour towards him.) And he seems to hover between wanting a woman who cares about family, yes, but who is also independent and an equal. Perhaps this is another reason why he could not commit to JA while she was so dependent on other people's help.
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I just watched ep. 5 of the hilarious American comedy Barry (Season 1). There's a scene where two characters shake hands in public, for about 5-6 seconds, the man is flirting with the woman, and the woman whispers: 'Let go now, this is embarrassing' or something like that.
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I did read some fanfiction, thank you! Somehow, I prefer analyses, perhaps because it's fun to come up with my own stories of how things would develop. And I watched some of the video analyses. And the BTS videos, too, were quite revealing. I have never been so interested in the make-up of a series before, and have never participated in a forum. I'm still wondering what is so magnetic about My Mister...
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Fantastic the_sweetroad! I'm sorry I missed your earlier post and Thomas Zhang's; you guys must be a bit frustrated by the newbies, so thank you for the patience.
Then my additions to the timeline as shown via props are the 8 February apology letters (ep. 5), the 15 March cleaning sheet (ep. 13), and the 12 May calendar (ep. 16).
Do you still think the timeline doesn't fit? Perhaps it doesn't fit the real 2018 calendar and the full moons, I agree. But the rest seems relatively tidy. The ladybug scene cannot possibly take place on 14 January (the date is on JA's spreadsheet, but it could be 1) that she is filing invoices with a future date or 2) an error)... But there are so many props throughout the series indicating time that it seems reasonable they were put there with intention.
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I'm not sure I'd be able to! I'm still trying to understand the meaning of running. Also, I don't know Korean and it may well be that 'to run' in Korean has different non-literal meanings from English. Running is a very cinematic thing, dynamic and emotional, but in this series it is cited too often in the spoken lines to be just a visual/cinematic device.
Instead one thing that I have been slightly obsessed with is the timeline, which I think may give some clues to the characters' behaviour. Everything is happening very fast in the story, while those of you lucky people who had to wait a week between one episode and the next were experiencing time at a much slower pace. I read the post on the story's timeline on the My Mister website, and noticed a couple of additional things:
1) I think JA's job must have started on 1 January, for a three-month contract, and her first dinner with DH takes place on 16 January, the day after the tower inspection. DH and his loyal Section Chief Song sign their letters of apology after the incident at the company dinner on 8 February (ep. 5). By this point DH has already met JA's Grandma. I wonder if their first candle-lit dinner at the special bar (ep.7) is not on 14 February? That would be nice!
2) JA's employee interview takes place on 14 March, because KH is ticking his cleaning sheet on 15 March (ep.13) the following day; DH's interview is on 16 March, the day after his late night dinner with his brothers (I mean, did he get any sleep? he must have been exhausted) – 16 March is also the day JA disappears and then calls him from the phone booth at night. DH's appointment as Managing Director is signed by the CEO on 20 March. On 21 March DH discovers the wiretapping. DH finds JA the following day in the evening, 22 March, and brings her to the hospital and then to JH's. One or more days later (23, 24 March?) he finally has lunch with the Chairman and already announces his resignation, which the Chairman doesn't accept; probably the same evening JA takes part in the collective at JH's bar. They visit grandma at the nursing home together shortly after (25, 26, 27 March?). The same day JA goes to the police station. It is implied that JA and YH go repeatedly to the police station in the subsequent days/weeks. In this period DH doesn't seem to visit JH's bar and JA has noticed it.
3) Grandma dies on 10 April, and DH-JA see her at the morgue either the same day or the following day. The funeral must be one to three days after the death, so 11, 12 or 13 April (since grandma died at the nursing home, it is unlikely that they would keep her there for the extended 5-7 days). DH finds a slot for the ceremony at the crematorium for 'the day after tomorrow', so 13, 14 or 15 April. After this event DH and JA do not see each other until JA asks for a meal. The calendar on the wall at their favourite bar is on 12 – I cannot see the month but it must be May, right? JA leaves two days later in the morning of 14 May.
This makes me think about a couple of implications:
1) The encounter between DH and JA is not at all a slow-burning thing. Everything is happening very fast (maybe this is the meaning of JA's 'running'!), they spend only two and a half months as colleagues at Saman, which is a strong rationale for a man like DH to act very cautiously. On the one hand, the brevity of DH's relationship with JA contrasts sharply with his 20-year relationship with YH, and even the year-long affair between CEO and YH. On the other hand, the fact that JA's arrival coincides with so many major changes in DH's decades of diligent and desperate life really brings home how much of an electric shock (or a sequence of electric shocks) she is for him.
2) Once they no longer work together, DH sees JA much less frequently or perhaps avoids her (for nearly a month after the funeral, if my timeline is correct). How can he do so, after such a sequence of incredibly emotional revelations? Is he coming to terms with the fact that he was spied on? Is he still worried about rumours of a relationship between them and trying to reconcile with his wife? Or is he happy to know JA is there and safe and does not feel the need to meet her? One thing is clear, however: JA *has to leave*, for her own sanity. And leave she does, because she is incredibly insightful, as well as very mature.
3) When DH has his breakdown, in the June-July rainy season, JA has been gone for only one or two months. The way I understood the scene, the first and the second time I watched it, is similar to what others on this forum have written. He brought his wife to the airport, went to his mother, had the conversation with KH about JA not being in touch. Then he went to shop for groceries and came back to his apartment, alone and still unhappy. The work/marriage/life happiness he has promised to JA is just not there, JA is not there, and everything is like before. He is a failure again.
And finally, a question for the experts here. I am unsure of how to interpret KH's very deliberate and long reference to Kore-Eda's film Nobody Knows (Kore-Eda went on to hire IU for his latest film, Broker, because he saw her in My Mister, btw). The message KH conveys is: children are strong and can overcome trauma. But who is the child being referred to? Is it JA ('she will have a good life even without you, don't worry bro')? Or is it Ji Seok ('just get a divorce already and move on, Ji-Seok is going to be fine')? Depending on how we interpret this reference, this may be a clue to DH's mindset after the time skip. Does anybody have any idea?
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Thank you for your reply sadiesmith! The wonderful My Mister site helped me a lot with my withdrawal pains from the series...
Has any of the essayists there or here treated the theme of 'running'? I don't think I found a post devoted to it. Is running all about Ji-an? Or is it also something Dong Hun relates to in a special way? They both run a lot in the series, often towards each other. It would be interesting to know if the expression 'on the run' in Korean works in the same way as in English. Running seems to be important, perhaps symbolic, for writer Park (so are crosses), judging from My Mister and My Liberation Notes.
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I watched My Mister for the first time about a month ago. I watched it because Son Suk-ku (he of My Liberation Notes) recommended it in an interview, and especially the screenplay. The first episode failed to drag me in, but Netflix persisted. Well.. the series was so engaging I couldn't even see it at normal speed the first time round. Now that I watched it a second time – no skipping, no distractions, and having read through much of this forum – I want to offer some opinions.
1) The acting is really extraordinary, from the whole cast, including IU, but especially LSK, who, in real life, seems to be a very different character from PDH. The way he physically turns from a dull, unattractive figure to a vibrant, sexy one is kind of miraculous (the camerawork and the plot helped, obvs). His voice is really distinctive, of course, but I didn't find it attractive at first – it becomes one of the aspects of his transformation.
2) It is obviously a love story, one that is kept exquisite by the leads' restraint. PDH is unnervingly attached to his own stoicism (and is lucky that no one ever seems to ask him with some persistence how he feels for LJA), but LJA, too, while being much more open and passionate, strives to save his marriage until the end. This self-denial is traditional in classic romance and is what makes the story so engrossing. It also allowed the writer and director, who must have been freaked out by the initial controversies, to get away from any claim that the pairing was inappropriate (even though at times I thought they made little meta-winks at IU's ajeossi fans, especially in the scenes in and outside JH's bar). Like PDH himself, the authors must have cared a great deal about public opinion – we know the script was changed and can only fantasise about what could have been. I don't know Korean but in Japanese the title is Watashi no ojisan, a literal rendering, and it very much evokes 'sugar-daddy' images if read without any other context.
3) This said, the culture of the series is very conservative. It really celebrates aspects of Korean patriarchy, which must enrage those Koreans who are keen to see progress: the attachment to the man's natal family, the crucial importance of the man's success vs. the dangers of a successful wife. As others in the forum and on newspapers have written, the series presents women as passionate, reckless, 'crazy b***es' (or just food and laundry machines, like the Park matriarch), whereas men (the heroic ones, PDH, the monk, PGH) are the ones who assert their Confucian masculinity by showing restraint and respect for the proper social order. There is the puzzling question of why the CEO deserves so much hatred to begin with (i.e. before the affair): the reasons given are that he is younger, that he was born poor but married into a chaebol family, and that he does not treat his seonbae with deference: we are supposed to hate him because he subverts some patriarchal-corporate rules, in a company where there isn't a single woman in an executive position.
4) The role of physical violence is a bit disturbing. So much of it is condoned as a necessary ingredient of masculinity and self-development. PDH feels awaken after his fight with GI, and at every stage of liberation he punches someone or something. Punching comes to him much more easily than tears, in fact. LJA, who is the least ordinary character in the series, accepts to be beaten by GI as a sort of atonement for her crime, and then asks PDH to hit her almost as a test of his feelings for her. The soccer club gets into fistfights and we find that endearing because boys will be boys. Violence is a part of reality, of course, and needs to be shown if a series wants to be realistic, but during my second watch I felt that its connection with "real" masculinity was problematic.
5) And talking about realism, of course the biggest elephant in the room is sexual desire: it's hinted at, nearly always as something a bit dirty and even slightly disgusting, whereas of course PDH and LJA must have thought about it non-stop, when looking at each other with those eyes. I know of course that Korean censorship and common moral sense are less comfortable with sex, but there are Korean series where at least the topic is broached, without too much stigma. Based on the last scene, I really expect PDH and LJA to go for it after the promised meal, paid by JA.
6) Like many on this forum, I wanted the final scenes, after the time-skip, to indicate more clearly that PDH and his wife are divorced or divorcing, but I cannot really reconcile the photos on his desk with this. Not because there would be no reasons for PDH to keep images of his ex constantly before his eyes, but because all those reasons would point to a lack of transformation on his part, and this clashes with his new radiant face and body, and his smile. He was a rather terrible husband to his wife, as far as we could see, and I very much hope that she gets her freedom back. His calling her 'Ji Seok's mother' begins in Ep 1 I think, and is also one of the main concepts he used to scold her during their dramatic coming out ('you are Ji Seok's mother! how can you cheat on me!'), whereas she wanted to be his wife first and foremost.
7) This is getting very long, but one last thought for now. It seems to me that an overarching theme, a profound one, is about truth and relationships: letting some people 'know' you fully is liberating and helps you form unique relationships, which make life worth living. The people who really know you are more important than your family, your job, your old friends. Both PDH and LJA learn this throughout the series and at each stage where a big secret is revealed, about one or the other, their relationship becomes stronger and more fascinating. By the way, PDH has a more truthful relationship with his foe the CEO than his brothers for much of the series: will they become friendly when CEO gets out of prison?
Many thanks to the authors of the posts on this topic, btw. It is hugely entertaining to read your analyses and perspectives!
[Drama 2018] My Mister, 나의 아저씨 - Best Drama at 2019 (55th) BaekSang Arts Awards
in k-dramas & movies
Posted · Edited by S F
Hello the_sweetroad! I'm back from my trip. I checked for you the time when the calendar is shown with 12 on it. On Netflix it is minute 1:01:17 of episode 16, as the camera pans on the restobar from the outside. The calendar is also very visible in the BTS video of the last meal between DH and JA.
Re: running, my questions were primarily around the meaning of 'running' as JA's only talent on her CV. This is brought up so many times in the series that it must be significant. DH hires her because he likes her 'running' talent, whereas everyone else finds it puzzling, if not suspect, that she would list this. It would be easy to guess that 'running from' (her past, the loanshark, etc.) is what she does, and so it's a bit tongue in cheek on her part to put it on her CV. But she also says that she feels most like herself (I think, I don't remember the exact words) while running. DH gives three different reasons throughout the series, if I remember well, why he hired her on the basis on that CV. One of those was that 'running' is simple and he liked it. So I was wondering: does he like it because, consciously or not, he also wants to 'run'? Away from the weight of expectations, the sadness of work and marriage? And she makes him see that the solution is indeed quite simple (running)? But I'm not wholly satisfied with this. In My Liberation Notes, for example, Mr Gu expresses himself both with the long jump and the long run in pursuit of Chang-hee. Both scenes are very long and do not just lead to a certain end (especially not the pursuit) but seem significant in their own right, as a form of self-expression: is running a language of sorts for writer Park?
I don't know if running, as a theme in the script, is co-ordinated with actual running scenes. I'm sure we all thought that, when DH runs frantically to the shack to find JA, the run was expressing so many unmentioned emotions. JA runs more often at the start of the series, DH at the end, as it was already mentioned here; it's almost as if the runs are balancing each other out.