OFFICIAL JiAn-Hyuk JoGak-Sculpture-Couple Thread (Shin HyeSun ❤ Lee TaeHwan)

[mglthrw8]

3 hours ago, meechuttso said:

but I was puzzled, wondering if you saw the last 5 minutes of the Ep 52

 

I think this show may have broken something in me so you'll have to explain this slowly 

 

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on the main thread.

 

3 hours ago, meechuttso said:

I wonder if you had considered renaming yourself - 'mgl' in your name forever?

 

I think I will keep mgl in name. I will bear the shame and disgrace of it. Marked for life! My dark origin story at soompi!

 

3 hours ago, meechuttso said:

I was ready to move on, but this writer actually managed to blow my mind beyond expectation - it was so revolting, so perverse, even sadistic what this writer was doing

 

3 hours ago, meechuttso said:

OMG with the #MeToo prosecutions (and suicide of an accused well known actor) raging on in SK like this lately I can't believe how the writer could completely endorse this stalking behavior and the blatant DECEIT for this so called 'relationship' he's trying to 'start from clean slate'.

 

3 hours ago, meechuttso said:

"before I was pursuing you for my own selfish needs, but this time it's different because now I am carrying out your father's wishes, and (instead of WAITING on her for what her needs are) STALKING YOU for your own good" - in fact, it was clear that he never stopped stalking her AT ALL!  He invokes the dead man and twists his words to just keep going on with that scary as s**t stalking!

 

Everything you say is true. I should feel more disgust than I actually do. I think that may be my brain protecting itself. Instead I just feel numb and baffled. 

 

The episode was so aggressively awful that I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. The writer reveals herself to have complete and utter contempt for her audience. DK was so aggressively unrepentant (a clean slate!)  that it veered into parody for me. Maybe that's why I'm not even angry. It's just...absurd.

 

I just can't reconcile the writer who wrote episode 50 with the writer who wrote episode 52. If I didn't know better I would almost think that the writer was ordered by her bosses at the network to give a happy ending and passively aggressively responded with what we saw in ep 52. If I didn't know better I would would almost think the writer was trying to provoke a controversy with the #metoo movement going on. Silently protesting her bosses by giving us that horror-parody ending.

 

But I do know better now. No higher motives. Just contempt for us.

[cp23]

 

@titania1000 @mglthrw8 @meechuttso

I am also puzzled as to why the actor playing DK with his scandal would allow the ending of the show to have him following and watching JA so many times. Some say on other threads that it is not stalking, it is part of the culture in SK. The irony is that the ending of this drama may not help further his career (the timing is bad, with all the sexual harassment charges and recent suicides by those accused).

 

 

[mglthrw8]

@titania1000 

I really hope you’ll come back when SHS’s next big project starts (let’s pray she picks a good one!)

 

I joined this forum mainly because of your and @meechuttso's posts. One of your very best insights was to see DK as a Rochester like figure and Ji An as Jane.

 

You’ve convinced me that MGL’s ending is more interesting, ambiguous and open ended than I originally thought. A less definitive ending than Jane Eyre’s in fact.

 

DK as Rochester is what led me to search for some literary clue or parallel in the show where I eventually stumbled on the Kokoschka reference.

 

Our discussions here have always been immensely enjoyable and rewarding even as the show remained frustrating.

So please please consider returning to the forum eventually.

 

On 3/12/2018 at 5:27 PM, titania1000 said:

That sums up the situation of Ji An, forced to endure her purgatory with Do Kyung, where he will indefinitely chase her, unable to hear her rejection, too weak to get over his obsession and to move on while knowing very well that she knows too clearly his tricks to ever accept again his "love".     

 

Stuck in purgatory is a good way of putting it.

 

Ji An will eventually discover the full extent of DK’s deception, stalking and manipulation and break off contact. DK will retreat for a while but of course will return. She’ll leave a little crack and the cycle will repeat. Depressing to think about.

 

I’m still flabbergasted that DK even arranged for Ji An to catch sight of him eating by his truck.

 

I think the happy upbeat music was what partially fooled me into believing the show completely endorsed all of his actions. But you’re right to argue that a close look at the particulars of the dialogue and how the shots were framed complicates things. I loved the black and white freeze frame at the end with the big gap separating the silhouettes of DK and Ji An.

 

On 3/12/2018 at 5:27 PM, titania1000 said:

This drama has for core concept the desillusion linked to the loss of one's dreams: those grand ambitions that we all have, which pushed us to be perfectionist (Myung Hee), to be too ambitious and work too hard (Ji An), to be in permanent control ( Do Kyung), to spend years looking for our first love dreaming to be reunited with an ideal version of this person (Hyuk), or to be so self absorbed that we can only see ourselves (Ji Soo). 

 

The desilllusion/hard lesson for Hyuk was the loss of his first love and his decision to accept a romance that will guarantee him to not end alone.  

 

A very fine insight!  Despite its title ‘My Golden Life’, the show seems to be surprisingly pessimistic about our capacity and ability to change as people.

 

Ji Soo ends the show basically unchanged from where she started. She’s incredibly sweet, loving, passionate and stubborn. But she’s also childish, immature and self-absorbed. For better and for worse, the events and upheavals in her life have not altered her core character. Troublingly, she remains the same person who slapped her twin sister without even giving her a chance to explain anything.

 

Regarding poor Hyuk, remember when Yong Gook criticized him for having a guardian complex with the people he cares about? Yong Gook basically told Hyuk that he should move forward with a simple uncomplicated relationship with Ji Soo. So it’s a really cruel irony that he will continue to play at being the guardian indefinitely with Ji Soo. Hyuk will have to continue to intervene from time to time to rescue their relationship because of Ji Soo’s immaturity and childish antics. But the show makes it very clear that Hyuk bears responsibility for his situation. If he didn’t call Ji Soo out on the very stupid ‘brother as fake boyfriend ploy’ he wouldn’t be with her. If he didn’t lower his dignity by participating in the ‘fake date with Bread Pitt’, he wouldn’t be with her. One of the very strange and interesting things about the show is that to the very end they show Hyuk and Ji Soo as being fairly incompatible. They’re never shown to be fully in sync with each other. In episode 52, as you’ve noted she completely dismisses his concerns about marriage and is going her own way. Hyuk is tense and cringing at her driving. It’s played for laughs but I wonder…

 

That Ji Soo and Hyuk aren’t married at the end and she doesn’t even treat his needs seriously makes me wonder…

 

Other characters in the show who never change are DK’s grandfather and mother. The show very deliberately chooses not to punish either character. Jae sung is able to change somewhat but there are limits. He leaves Haesung and becomes a professor but remains in his marriage. And he won’t ever undo the damage of lost time as shown in that sad meal with his daughter.

 

On 3/12/2018 at 5:27 PM, titania1000 said:

That's only my opinion, but i believe in those cases of leads that don't end up together because of the turn taken by the relationship, that the writer's will can be pretty clearly deduced from the fact that they didn't end up together. 

She could have redeemed Do Kyung several times since Ji An came back from Incheon and make her relationship with him acceptable and she chose to not do it.

 

No character exemplifies the show’s skepticism towards the capacity for change more than DK. I was truly shocked at how aggressively the show intended to demonstrate DK’s lack of change. It was really hard watching him twist the words of Ji An’s father for his own purposes. I don’t even think it was intentionally malicious. He just doesn’t understand and probably never will.

 

You’re so right that the show had so many opportunities to redeem DK in conventional ways after Incheon but deliberately refrained from doing so. Even in episode 52, the writer could have structured a more conventional redemption and change for DK but chose not to do so. The writer could have made the Dk and Ji An blind date be the product of genuine random chance. The message would then be that it was destiny and they were fated to end up together. But everything was revealed to be cold calculation and manipulation. The writer could have made DK take Tae Soo’s words to heart and really try to reform himself but that did not happen. The writer could have shown DK acting with openness and honesty by requesting a meeting with Ji An through Ji Soo. Instead he approaches Ji An’s best friend and enlists her in his scheme. Even at the very end, DK simply could not honor Ji An’s words. He just had to show up in Helsinki.

Ji An changes more than anyone in the show but even she has her limits. Despite everything, her feelings for DK remain. In episode 50 and 51, the show explicitly says that DK did nothing for her after he left Haesung  except whine to her (the writer is so completely contemptuous of his seaweed soup and necklace). But her feelings linger. Despite him ignoring her request to wait, she can’t help but smile at DK in Helsinki.

 

The words of her father offer her some protection but it’s also limited. She may never fully accept DK but she has not shown the ability to fully reject him.

 

I used to think it was just bad writing but the constant repetition of Ji An-DK final (false) farewells and vows to never see each other again may have been done to make the writer’s theme about the extreme difficulty of change. I guess the show really only could have ended in the final shot of them across the room from each other, their ultimate fate forever unsettled.

 

Real change, the kind that Hyuk went through when he met Ji An in high school and the kind that Ji An goes through after Incheon with Hyuk’s help is presented almost as a kind of divine intervention.

 

The flashback of Hyuk first encountering Ji An sawing wood is one of the show’s most wonderful scenes. Hyuk calls Ji An his ‘spring’. He goes from delinquent to successful business man because of her. He had to put in the hard work himself but he needed to encounter her. Likewise Ji An put in a lot of hard work towards her dream but Hyuk spotting her in Incheon, caring for her, then returning home to put her to work in the woodshop were all crucial. And that notebook he kept…

 

It just occurred to me that an alternate interpretation of Hyuk’s declining romantic interest in Ji An is that he stops being interested precisely at the time Ji An no longer needs his guardianship. Hyuk also can’t change in some ways.

 

23 hours ago, titania1000 said:

Here comes the beautiful last conversation between father and daughter under the tree about marrying someone she can breath freely around, someone she needs and someone who would feel the same around her.

It was the only frustrating moment because how to not think about the period  she shared with Hyuk in the wood workshop and in the sharehouse when they came back from incheon? It hurt too when Ji An asked if she can meet such a person...

A man who she can breath freely around is definitely not Do Kyung: after he promised to not put any pressure on her, to wait until she comes back to Korea like she asked to reconsider their relationship, he jumped on the first flight to follow her and wait for her until she finish work. He learnt nothing during the year spent waiting for her based on the last montage: he's still the same manipulative, liar, rough and selfish man that he always has been and if all her father's advices and hardship are supposed to not be enough to stop her to fall for him, why did the writer avoid to show it?  

 

That’s right. Ji An has never breathed easily around DK. And while she may never think of Hyuk that way, I’d like to think he’s modeled the kind of love and care she should expect from a partner. Maybe the open ending was the best we could have expected.

[meechuttso]

After 6 months, I am able to put enough distance from the trauma of this drama and add likes to your last 2 posts @titania1000 and @mglthrw8.

 

Hyuk picks up Jianny in the rain, Ep 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXIxp5BtUf0

 

Hyuk tells Jianny why he went into carpentry / furniture work (I guess Ep 5)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzokbCtt9Xk

 

 

These clips don't allow embedding.

 

So I found some recent IG posts:

 

 

 

These are quite a bit later in the story and so not my favorites (all near Inchon when he finds her and nurses her back to health), but still they're nice to see again.

 

SHS and MGL are on the nominees list for couple of different awards in October, and I think those will help determine the legacy of this crazy disturbing drama that consumed much of 7+ months of my life.

 

 

 

[meechuttso]

8 hours ago, titania1000 said:

At first, just after the end, the drama was nominated on various categories, now it's only SHS. 

I think MGL will stay in everyone memory as the drama who revealed SHS to a larger audience.

She was a superb lead, who never failed to deliver during the 50 episodes and brought the strongest ratings ever for a family drama.

Yes, it does look like that's how it may be remembered.

 

And on the 27th there's also the Seoul Awards, and SHS was nominated as well as MGL itself. No mention of anyone else from the work.