Letter #4: My Name

Good morning, Erin.

Okay—I know what you’re thinking: “Why aren’t you talking to me about Goblin, yet, Daryl? I know I gave you a list of other options, but we agreed that Goblin would be next. Are you...ignoring my advice? WHAT HAPPENED TO US???” But I promise you, I am watching it. I just accidentally started My Name right after My Mister, thinking (for some reason) it was a movie I could bang out before bedtime. And…no. No it wasn’t. But it was relatively short, so I finished it in a couple of days, and here we are. But I swear I am in the middle of the early parts of the early episodes of Goblin. (Proof: I soooo love how tsundere he’s being with the girl. Deny her adorableness all you want, my dude, you ain’t foolin’ me!)

…which is my way of saying I finished My Name, last night, and here are my thoughts:

1. I appreciate how much effort they put into making Jiwoo’s fighting skills believable when she’s fighting her much larger (and presumably stronger), male opponents. I’m not a nitpicker about this kind of thing, but it’s always nice to see the movie or show acknowledge that the tiny lady is at a physical disadvantage and adjust things so that you don’t have to suspend disbelief to get excited over her kicking some dude all over the place. Speed, craftiness, environmental advantage, and often that her opponents aren’t as fresh on their feet as she is—combined with the fact that she’s clearly no slouch—make it more than believable that she’s a force to be reckoned with. 

1A. Oh, y’know what else I liked about the fights? They do the John Wick-y thing of letting her get beat up. She doesn’t just zip through her fights, she gets hurt. It’s nice to see your hero actually struggle, in a fight. Makes the victory that much sweeter, and the hero’s heroics seem that much more impressive. 

1B. I also just, y’know, generally liked the fights. My favorite is…it’s probably down to the warehouse fight she and her partner have against the guys who throw them into a car-crusher and her long fight to the penthouse at the end of the series. The former was probably better choreographed, but who doesn’t love a get-to-the-penthouse fight sequence? Your artsy friend Debra? Lies! I’ve seen her Instagram alt account and it’s all she talks about on there. I tell you: everyone loves these sequences!

2. The main theme song is great. And they bring it back to loop in every episode! These shows know how to do the little things that hook me in.

3. Jiwoo’s partner got a haircut between episodes, and he became totally unrecognizable to me. Seriously, I had no idea who he was, even when they mentioned him by name. (“They keep calling out to Pildo, but that’s…wait, that can’t be him, can it?”) I think the last two years of people wearing masks all the time has forced me to tell people apart by their hair. Which is why, when you wear your hats, I have to look extra hard to tell if it’s you. Same deal, here. At a certain point, I just took it on faith that I was crazy and that it really was the same actor.

4. Speaking of Pildo, though: I did not buy for even a second that he and Jiwoo should have gotten their smoochies on, in the final episode. It felt soooo last minute, and it was obviously there just so they could kill him off and reignite/fortify her resolve to kill Gang Boss. Not a fan of that storytelling decision.

4A. Which, to that point: I dunno if you’ve ever heard of a trope called “stuffed in a fridge,” which (perhaps unfairly) refers to instances in fiction when the hero’s love interest (or other close personal connection) exists just to get killed off so that the hero has motivation to act. It refers to an incident in an old(-ish) Green Lantern comic where the new Green Lantern character’s girlfriend is literally killed and her body stuffed in a refrigerator so that he can then react to it and be all heroic. Personally, I think it’s an accusation that’s overused (though not without merit), and I don’t think that’s what happened here, particularly since Pildo isn’t just a character that’s just there to die…but it’s pretty clear that it’s the only reason the two characters got, um, romantic. 

4B. And can we take a minute to talk about how ill-situated that amorous encounter was? THEY’RE DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF GIANT WINDOWS. With the lights on!!! I mean…some decorum, please!

5. Actually, while we’re on the whole last-minute romance thing, I didn’t buy that Jiwoo (as a character) was looking for personal connection, which her impassioned speech before the final fight relies on to make sense as motivation. It would explain why she would have hooked up with Pildo at the beach, if it were a prominent part of her character, a symbolic acknowledgment that she hasn’t been searching for revenge but that interpersonal connection she lost when her father was murdered. (Which, yes, sounds like I just said she wanted to f*** a guy as a way of getting back her father’s love, but it’s not what I meant.) But I just didn’t get that from her. In fact, I don’t think her character was developed very well. Not that there was a lot of character stuff overall, if we’re being fair, with everyone serving mostly as functions of the plot, rather than characters in a story setting, but I felt like Jiwoo was the character I knew the least about—despite being the character I knew literally the most about.  

6. …that said, I really liked that she basically assumes the persona of the man who killed her father by wearing that bike helmet when she’s doing her gang activity, so focused on her revenge that she didn’t even see she was becoming the very thing she was hunting. Which I’m going to say was a very subtle thing, if only because it took me almost the whole run of the show to realize this and I don’t want to think about everyone else seeing it but me.

7. Now, the Gang Boss, on the other hand, had more than a little depth to him. He was easily my favorite character, and not just because his haircut always stayed the same. In fact, he was so my favorite that I was a little hurt that he turned out to be the ultimate bad guy. I mean, I figured it out before the show told us, but still...a little hurt. 

8. I think my favorite aspect of the show was the emotional underpinning of the finale—from the Gang Boss’s perspective. I just said he had the most character depth of everyone on the show, and I think this was the best example of it: it’s not just that Gang Boss wants Jiwoo to come after him, it’s that he needs her to do it—because he wants her to kill him. Remember how I said the show was good at making Jiwoo’s fights seem believable? Well, in her fight against Gang Boss, he has a dozen chances to finish her off and he doesn’t. He keeps telling her to get up. He’s not taunting her or playing with her. He just refuses to deny her any chance at killing him, because he wants her to kill him. He’s consumed with guilt over having to kill her father, his friend, and as much as he isn’t going to just let her do it, he gives her every possible chance to make him pay for his crime and (poetically) put him out of his misery. Which is just good stuff.

9. I’m surprised her car still had a lighter in it! I didn’t think they made those, anymore! And…wait, hang on…is her car…

10. Erin Erin Erin Erin—look look look: all the cops are driving Hyundais! It’s…it’s finally happening! 

Which brings me to the end of my notes. A fun time, though not a particularly great show. The plot’s straightforward enough, but it’s also a little strange, when you come down to it. Like, I get why she becomes a cop, but that whole thing with being transferred over to Narcotics unspools pretty quickly. How none of the other cops figured out she was a bad guy is a little bit unbelievable, seeing how screwy things got immediately after she joined the squad. But, whatever. Still a good time. 

Thank you, as always, for the recommendation.

And, hey, next time we’ll be talking about Goblin. Maybe. Probably. I mean, it’s possible. 

--Daryl

P.S. – I had a million things I wanted to ask you about your Hotel Del Luna-themed pottery project, when you dropped by my office yesterday, but I was so surprised to see you that I couldn’t get any of them out. I spent much of the rest of the day kicking myself for not being steady enough to express my interest beyond “THAT LOOKS SO COOL” (…though, for the record, it was very, very cool). So, apologies there. And let me make up for it by at least asking these questions, now, if that’s all right: What class was this for? Was this the first time you’ve done something like this? Were you as impressed with yourself as I was with what you made (which, for comparison purposes, was veeeeeeery impressed)? I see you chose to use the Man-wol symbol rather than the Hotel Del Luna logo, which—as someone who prefers the Man-wol symbol—I approve of…but did you do it because you were making something similar to her liquor bottles or because it was easier to draw? And what were you wearing in your hair—gold butterflies? (I realize that’s not about the project, but it didn’t escape my notice that you’d styled your hair, a bit, and I saw the golden whatever they were in the back as you were leaving, so I thought I’d ask, since I’m asking questions.)