Letter #25: My Liberation Notes

Good morning, Erin.
 
I’m less concerned than I should be that I’ve just subscribed to The Swoon on YouTube.
 
You did this to me.
 
…is the kind of blame-shifting nonsense that’s a perfect introduction to all of today’s aging-millennials-staring-out-windows excitement, as we take a look (spoiler free, of course) at My Liberation Notes, a show that tries very hard to be as brilliantly raw and understated as My Mister, but without the rawness or brilliance.
 
Also, Lee Ji-eun isn’t in it.
 
All of which certainly sounds like an uphill battle—so, is it any good? Let’s find out!
 
1. Actually, yeah, it mostly is a good time. Not all the time. And not in each of its pursuits. But, overall, I’d say it’s certainly has much more good in it than bad. Or it’s the quality of the good more than the quantity. It doesn’t go completely off the rails, characters are likeable (very likeable, in a couple of cases), performances are pretty good, it often keeps things light enough that it doesn’t become morose. It’s pretentious, yeah, but mostly in a deliberate, if not exactly a self-aware, way. All in all, it’s pretty solid.
 
2. …which is not to say that the show isn’t also bafflingly aimless, at times. I think, where My Mister would—oh, these shows are by the same writer, which is why I’m making the comparisons, in case I haven’t said that elsewhere (not that you should be expected to remember, if I did)—but where My Mister was a lot of people walking silently through the streets by themselves or having seemingly banal conversations, none of it felt…fake. By which I mean the long silences and dramatic speeches felt organic to the show, rather than how My Liberation Notes frequently uses these things almost obligatorily, as though it thinks it can’t be taken seriously without those kinds of things. But for every gravitas-laden scene of someone staring at the wall, there’s a scene of someone staring at a cup of tea in a café for what seems to be no emotionally resonant reason—but definitely for a “well, staring is poignant, right?” reason. And it feels as hollow as it does a waste of time.
 
2A. Though, as I recall, the non-protagonist stuff in My Mister was often very filler-y, in that it never really contributed much to the emotional thrust of the story, so maybe it’s just that My Liberation Notes was missing the A) excellent protagonist stuff and B) actual-plot-stuff storyline that made the former so compelling.
 
2B. Another thing to consider, here, is that My Liberation Notes often veers into theatrical territory, with characters frequently breaking out into lengthy monologues that feel veeeeery unrealistic. Which is fine, as a tone choice, even when the speeches get very drama class-y, because a fair amount of the show is deliberately a little stylized (in how the characters interact, not…like, A Business Proposal kind of stylized). But the balance between this and the “we’re being very serious and existential” elements is off and makes whichever one you are switching over to from one scene to the next feel out of place.
 
2C. Oh, in the final episode, there’s a sign for the grand opening of “Café Monologue.” That was a cheeky little bit of self-awareness that got a chuckle out of me.
 
2D. This show seems to be very, very popular. Or maybe the people who like it are just loud about it, I dunno. Like, I saw an article calling it a contender for best K-drama of the year, and that made me raise an eyebrow. A Business Proposal was waaaaaay better than this. Heck, Twenty-Five, Twenty-One was probably way better than this. (Not Thirty-Nine, though. That show was a dumpster fire, in the end.)
 
2E. Then again, these same people also claim that this has better character writing than My Mister, so they aren’t to be taken seriously.
 
2F. I feel like A Business Proposal isn’t getting the love it should. I mean, maybe it is, and I’m not tuned into the right circles, but…you and I can’t be the only ones who really liked it, right? I still think about it all the time. Like, I keep wondering if it shouldn’t find its way into the top five on my favorites list.
 
3. This might seem like a minor point, but there’s literally one song on the soundtrack that I have desperately wanted since hearing it in Ep 1—and it plays repeatedly throughout the show, sometimes just as a piano melody—and they didn’t flippin’ release the darn thing until the day after the show ended. (Part of me wonders if I kept watching the show because I needed to remind myself to be on the lookout for this song.) Anyway—it’s called “My Liberation Notes” by Choi Jung-in, and it’s this great little Imogen Heap-y/Lisa Gerrard-y choral number, if you wanna give it a listen.
 
4. There are A LOT of dropped…I can’t say that they’re all story elements, but there are a lot of details or characters or events in the show that just get left behind as the story progresses. I think it’s (mostly) meant in the way real life doesn’t consider every single thing to be part of a narrative arc, but I found it annoying that things that seemed to be significant or could come back and be a nice character throughline just sort of disappear. Sometimes it’s bad writing, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it feels like missed opportunity.
 
5. …which is not to say there aren’t blatant missed opportunities that the production staff should feel stupid for addressing in some way. Like…say you are friends with my sister. One day, I go missing, and after months of me being missing, you have lunch with my sister and my mom and some mutual friends you and I have. You are wearing my famous custom-made jacket with Daryl-in-anime-form on the back which I always wear and was seen wearing when I disappeared. And nothing happens, no one says anything, the scene just goes on as though you were wearing a generic beige winter coat. There’s more than one instance of something like that, in the show.
 
6. There’s one really nice kiss—as in, there’s a kiss that’s done at just the right moment in an episode. I can’t remember if it looks “good” or not, but the show gets high marks for nailing the moment, overall.
 
7. Gets failing marks for putting stickers over all the Hyundai symbols, though.
 
8. Lady in Red from Goblin is one of the main characters (the eldest of the three siblings), in this series, and she is both my favorite character and #BestGirl. She’s genuinely great. She’s so…weird and nervous and open to love. From her very first line in the very first episode, I knew I’d love her—and I did. She also, perhaps not coincidentally, has the storyline I found the most interesting. (Her storyline also (again, perhaps no coincidentally) contains my second and third (and fourth?) favorite characters, who are also genuinely great. One of them is even in 18 Again, which I will discuss next time.)
 
9. There’s a whole section of an episode or two that have to do with Nirvana’s Nevermind being a great album (and, even more specifically, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” being a great song and an anthem for the lost), which got me very excited—except I spent a half-hour arguing with the show and the internet that it’s Nivana’s third album, not it’s second, because Incesticide (a compilation of all their pre-success releases) should absolutely count as their second album. It’s how we thought of it back when my friends I were into Nirvana when we were 12, and I refuse to accept any guff about “studio albums” or whatever.
 
10. There’s also a whole section of an episode about whether or not “I miss you” is secret code for “I love you.” Which I had a much harder time arguing.
11. There’s also also this fun debate about whether to call the subway “the subway” or “the train,” which excited me because it was another cultural touchstone moment for me despite being on the other side of the planet from these characters: my parents grew up in the city, so they called the subway “the train” and the train (like the LIRR or Amtrak) “the railroad.” I don’t know if anyone else reacted to conversation as intensely as I did—or for the reasons I did (I think the show is trying to talk about sounding old)—but I had a good time with it.
 
12. The brother is my second-favorite of the main sibling trio, both in terms of his character and his storyline—though I feel like his subplots (particularly one regarding a character in his orbit) were the ones done the most injustice. I’m only mentioning him, though, because it seems the actor was the pretty-boy lead in a few shows, and…only knowing him from this, I still find that to be kind of hilarious.
 
13. Best line of the series (spoken by a minor character in the first episode): “Can’t they just leave introverted people alone?!”
 
14. I totally called every romance subplot in the series—in Episode 1. Because I’m the world’s greatest detective.
 
15. The younger sister in the main sibling trio is the show’s protagonist, and I found her to be the absolute least interesting of…well, possibly all the characters on the show, but certainly of the three siblings. She has the most staring off into nothingness for no discernable narrative-emotional reason. Her subplots are fairly uneventful and repetitive, and her character just doesn’t have much personality. In fairness, I think she’s meant to be that way, in that she’s supposed to be subdued…but she’s written or performed as so within herself that, unlike some of the other quiet/subdued characters who have plenty of personality, she often comes off as disinterested in being in the story, rather than disinterested in her everyday life. At least, that’s how I saw it. And it’s hard to care when even the character seems not to. Which is not to say I totally disliked her, but she’s on screen an awful lot more than my like-her-to-don’t-like-her ratio would want.
 
15A. That said, this is another instance where the characters in the show actively insist that someone is unattractive when that clearly is not the case. I mean, in fairness to the show, the gaggle of derisive ladies only calls her “plain,” which she kind of is (in that she’s not, like, obviously gorgeous, like when My Mister tried to tell us that Lee Ji-eun was “not pretty”), but certainly not to the degree the show would insist, since she’s clearly better looking than those writing her off. But, if you go by more than just physical looks, her clothes are a little bland (and, apparently, old), so…I guess that counts? I dunno. I just laugh whenever it feel like the show needs you to believe something like this rather than it feeling like it’s just the characters who said the thing who believe it. 
 
16. Something I definitely liked about the younger sister, though, is this scene where she’s talking to her very extraverted friend and saying how jealous she is of her whole deal and how she wants to be like her in her next life. Because the friend then says that she’s jealous of the younger sister’s whole deal and wants to be like her in her next life. The friend then says that they have undoubtedly been swapping personalities between them for dozens of lifetimes, always wishing to be like the other, becoming the other, and then wishing again to be like the other. And maybe that’s a spoiler, even if it’s pretty much a throwaway line of dialogue very early in the show, but I wanted to mention it. So…no backsies.
 
17. When this show is working at its best, it’s so careful with details that it is genuinely jarring when, as an example, a character is wearing a different pair of shoes to work. No attention to drawn to it—not by any character or even by the show—but you can’t help but notice it.
 
18. Not to brag, but I totally recognized the hymn they were about to sing at church (in one scene) just by the couple of opening notes. I mean, I cannot for the life of me remember which hymn it was, nor do they play more than the first couple of notes before cutting to totally different scene, which means I technically don’t know that I was right, but…come on: world’s greatest detective, here.
 
19. There’s a time jump (because of course there’s a flippin’ time jump), and I’m not sure why they thought that would be a good idea. I mean, you know I rarely see them as good ideas anyway, but SO MUCH happens in the jumped-over time that I can’t believe they didn’t want to show us. Like, there are major plot payoffs they were building to that they skip over—and, in some cases, those plot payoff not only pay off, off-screen, but also fully playout and resolve their own subplots, leaving us with the characters in situations that are two-layers removed from what we were watching things build towards. It’s just a baffling decision to keep probably an hour or so of walking down a road in silence but skip over, y’know, the climax of half the subplots in the show.
 
20. There is one callback to very early in the show, in the final episode, which I thought was great. They kind of smother it, a bit, by having someone loudly monologue about it (when, really, the quick reference to it that starts that moment was more than enough for us to get the reference), but it’s still great.
 
21. Did I mention how much I loved the elder sister in the main sibling trio? Because I loved the elder sister in the main sibling trio. I wish it had been a show about her, honestly. Because of all the reasons I mentioned above, of course, but also because I want to stress how much I also liked the characters in her main subplot. A couple of them were fantastic, and that we didn’t get to spend more time with them is a bummer.
 
21A. …I promise the show was better than I’m making it sound. Or, rather, that the good stuff was really, really good. Quality-wise, if not definitely quantity-wise.
 
And that’s that.
 
Technically, I don’t know that I’d recommend this show to you, if you haven’t seen it, but I wouldn’t deter you, if you expressed interest.
 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a window to stare out and contemplate my mounting existential dread.
 
--Daryl