Letter #30: Hotel Del Luna Re-Watch

Good morning, Erin.
 
Do you remember how I said you’d be very excited for this one? And do you remember how I said I’d be doing a summer re-watch?
 
Well, get ready, cats and kittens: we’re revisiting Hotel Del Luna.
 
Yes, that’s right, after approximately seven months of intensive K-drama study, we are bringing things full circle and taking another look at the much-loved first recommendation you gave me.
 
Will I fall in love all over again? Or will the dozens of shows under my belt belie the rose-colored nostalgia glasses with which I remember my first foray?
 
There’s only one way to find out:
 
1. I went back to take a look at my first letter to you, and…it is sooooo spare. I remember being so nervous and not wanting to write too much because I didn’t know if you’d find the letter annoying or not…but, though I can’t remember how many pages of notes I took, originally, I’m sure there was a lot I left out. That said, I also don’t have any of those original notes, so…all comparisons to my original thoughts are going to come from memory, rather than a written record.
 
1A. …unless you count all the “Lee Ji-eun!!!” scribbled in the margins of my diary with little hearts around them. Which I don’t.
 
2. And, y’know, while we’re on the subject, let’s get the big thing out of the way: yes, I am still madly in love with Ms. Jang. Possibly even more now than I was the first time. She’s just magnificent. So very much my cup of tea. Like, do you know the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope? I’m not the biggest fan of that archetype (as in, personally—I’m not objecting to its existence)…but if you were going to create a version of it tailored to me, it would be Ms. Jang: cold, authoritative, mean, but also utterly vulnerable, turning charmingly bratty when she doesn’t get her way. Ugh, shoot it straight into my veins. And, if you’re going to hire a spy to extract information from me, send someone like her.
 
3. Actually, why bury the lede any further: I had such a good time, with this. I love it at least as much as I did the first time. It’s so great. Pacing, plotting, characters, visuals, tone—it’s all fantastic. I’m pretty sure Vincenzo is still my number one, but, even so, I don’t think that series is quite as tight, as Hotel Del Luna. By which I mean I absolutely give Vincenzo a pass on some things (structurally) because of how much fun I’m having, whereas I don’t think I ever needed to do that with Hotel Del Luna. It’s just great. And I’m absolutely going to watch it again, at some point. (Part of me wants to just jump right back into it, honestly. But I won’t. Probably.)
 
4. Let’s see…other things about it I still love:
·         “Fate Firefly” (which I referred to as the “oo-oo-oo” song that sounds like it’s from Skyrim), which is still a great track—and it’s absolutely on my K-Drama playlist.
·         Whenever they play with the black bars of the aspect ratio and have part of the scene bleed into it.
·         Blind Ghost Lady, who I still wish was a more permanent part of the cast (even though I know the whole point of her is to be sent off by Mr. Koo).
·         That Ms. Jang changes outfits for every scene.
·         Every time Ms. Jang is in a big, floppy hat.
·         The Grim Reaper (and I’ll talk more about him, later on).
·         The Man-wol symbol.
5. Something I noticed, this time: humans who make their way into the hotel are placed in Room 404—like the error code. Because humans aren’t supposed to be there. Very sly.
 
6. So, in Episode 1, after making the deal with Mr. Koo’s father to save him in exchange for his son, Ms. Jang drives up to Little Mr. Koo to check him out…and, rather than her very long hair, she’s sporting a bob. Which is adorable and pretty much my favorite haircut—which is why it caught my eye. And which is why I actually took careful notice of Ms. Jang’s hair, over the course of the show…and it totally changed length, depending on the scene. It doesn’t happen a lot, and it’s never quite as obvious as waist-length vs. bob, but she definitely alternated between roughly shoulder-length and roughly waist-length within episodes. It’s too frequent to be reshoots (…I assume), so I’m guessing hair extensions.
 
7. Further—and adding one final twist to her ever-changing appearance—I actually noticed that she’s got totally different fake nails for each of her outfits, as well. Which…look, I’m far from experienced, with this stuff, but that’s got to be a hassle, right? Like, it’s one thing to put on a new dress, a couple of times a day, but to also get your nails done? Even if it’s just some simplistic press-on version, that’s gotta take time, right? Taking them off, then putting new ones on? Or do you think they’d just slap some polish on?
 
8. It just hit me that Miss Intern’s name is Kim Yu-na. Like the megastar ice skater. Which…maybe isn’t that unusual, since no one blinks at this? I guess “Kim” is too common for there not to be a thousand women with that name. ‘Cus someone would react, I’m pretty sure, if your name was Derek Jeter, is all I’m saying.
 
9. Coming into the serial killer plot knowing it exists helped me narrow down what I found so strange about it, before: it’s already a little odd—though not inherently a problem—that it’s a subplot which crops up over the course of A LOT of episodes…but that Mr. Koo has personal history with him is just silly.
 
9A. …to say nothing of how ABSURD that history is, when you look at the details: he not only encouraged Sanchez to kill himself, he had a bespoke postcard created just for that purpose. Add that to the whole gun thing and it’s a bridge and tunnel too far.
 
10. Here’s something that definitely needed me watching a ton of K-dramas to get: Hotel Del Luna has the best arm-grabbing. It’s always called for, in that it’s not just some overbearing “you will listen to me!” melodrama cliché, because it’s always to prevent someone from doing something stupid or dangerous. (It’s not that I object to the cliché, just that it is sometime over-employed in a single show, making it go from dramatic to perhaps controlling.)
 
11. Subway sponsorship! Oh, so maybe it was this show that started my love affair with this!
 
12. In Episode 6, Sanchez accidentally finds himself tethered to a deceased bride for a “ghost wedding.” Ms. Jang seems unfazed by this and says to just let it happen. But the whole explanation was that this is being done to keep the woman’s literal fiancé from being dragged to the afterlife with her. So…what was the plan, exactly, that Ms. Jang seemed totally unworried about the whole thing? Was Sanchez not going to be dragged to the afterlife, at the end of the ceremony, because he was alive and the actual fiancé was sort of teetering between life and death? Or was Sanchez going to die, with Ms. Jang being totally indifferent to this?
 
13. When Mr. Koo makes her sell her cars, Ms. Jang is dressed for a funeral. Which is a neat detail.
 
14. Wait…is it weird that everyone calls Miss Intern “Yu-na,” when that’s the name of her body but not of the spirit/consciousness that is inhabiting it? Or does that make sense, give that she has to answer to that name out and about in the world?
 
15. Wisdom from Ms. Jang: “Buttholes and faces aren’t the same.”
 
16. Hey, you know who I like a lot more, this time around? Mi-ra (the friend who was the princess in a past life). She was a lot funnier than I remember her being. And, between this and True Beauty, I think I’d like to see her crop up in more things I’m watching. She’s pretty good.
 
17. So, you know I’m a fan of the Grim Reaper, in this, but I realized one of the big things I like about him is that he feels like he exists in more than just the scenes we see him in. Like, he never seems like he’s hanging around as an actor in a scene. He always seems to be in the middle of his own schedule, like he’s just come from somewhere or is heading off to somewhere else. I give a lot of credit to the actor for that. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
 
18. Is it very silly that I’ve only just overtly realized there’s a historical drama aspect to this story? All those flashbacks…it’s like you were subtly prepping me to be comfortable with one of your favorite genres! Clever girl. [raptor gif]
 
19. What’s indisputably silly is that it took me until Episode 14 of my re-watch to notice that the reason Mr. Koo is always in a blue suit is because that’s his flippin’ uniform. ‘Cus everyone at the hotel is dressed in blue. (And yet Hotel Blue Moon’s uniforms are black. Go figure.)
 
20. That bit in the first episode where Ms. Jang strides into the auditorium to fire the ghost bullet curse thing into the miscreant politician still feels very out of place, to me. And it was the teaser clip that played on Netflix for such a long time, which does not adequately capture the essence of the show (unsurprisingly). But…dammit if she doesn’t look fantastic, there.
 
20A. Admittedly, it is fun to see the rifle hanging on the wall in her office for the rest of the series.
 
21. With 20/20 hindsight, the firefly reveal is teased really well. He’s there from the very beginning, but he’s used in such a way that he often seems like just an artsy scene transition technique. It’s very clever.
 
22. Mr. Koo is actually pretty good at the physical comedy aspects of his character. I don’t think I appreciated that, the first time. 
 
23. Early on, Mr. Koo asks Ms. Jang if she’s dead or alive, and she responds: “I’m just...here.” Which is a great response, but it also hit me right in the gut, for some reason. 
 
24. I don’t think any of Mr. Firefly Man’s fights, here, stack up to the intensity of his Avengers fight scene in 18 Again.
 
25. I wasn’t rating smooches, back when I wrote my first letter, so Hotel Del Luna never fell under scrutiny like the some shows did. But I don’t think we can get around it, now. The smooching, here, is...fine for what it is. In that I mean, yes, it’s mostly just pressing faces, but the show is also fairy tale-ish enough that this innocent stage-kissing seems much more suited to the tone than anything more “real” would. So it’s fine. Or, more specifically, Lee Ji-eun is gorgeous, so who cares how it looks?
 
26. Something that always bugged me about Miss Intern was that, as much as I loved her little school uniform, I always thought her shoes were stupid as hell. And that the actress had a hard time moving in them. Which, this time around, I can confirm (unofficially), because, later on in the series, she’s switched over to a similar but clearly more functional pair of shoes. 
 
27. In the episode where the newlywed couple is allowed to stay in the hotel overnight, the reveal is that guests in Room 404 end up exiting into a totally different building and it’s all very mystical. In fact, to add to the mystery, the couple turns around to find that there is no door behind them but a solid wall! EXCEPT...if you’re quick, you can see the doorway to the room they were clearly just filming in is slightly farther down the hall from them, at that moment. The big doors with the big brass handles match the interior doors in the previous shot perfectly. 
 
28. I want to give a special nod to the scene where Man-wol and Mr. Firefly Man have a sword fight in the wedding chamber, after she’s killed the princess. The acting, here, is great. It’s, like, a 45-second scene, but it is packed full of not just emotion but genuine nuance to both performances.
 
29. In what I hope is just poor translation and not actual foolish dialogue, Cop-Mago bursts into the hotel, rides up the elevator, strides through the main room, and makes her way through the garden to the moon tree where Ms. Jang is standing...and then shouts, “So this is how you’ve come to face me!” As if Ms. Jang took the fight to her. 
 
30. We get one look at how Ms. Jang teleports...and I kinda hate it. She disappears in a puff of glittery smoke? How...generic. And really off-tone for her, don’t you think?
 
31. After Mr. Koo comes back from being lost in the tunnel to the afterlife, there’s a scene where his Hotel Del Luna lapel pin is upside-down. The absolute horror of it. 
 
32. I’m really fond of the line repetition in the dialogue between Ms. Jang and Mr. Koo. I know I noticed all her uses of “my cup of tea,” the first time I watched, but I don’t think I had noticed that he would always accuse her of “just wanting [XYZ]” (to go shopping or to eat something) whenever she suggested something seemingly selfless. This kind of deliberate, almost catch-phrase repetition can easily come off as forced or clunky, but I think the show pulls it off. 
 
33. In the first scene where Mr. Koo drives Ms. Jang, the car that’s behind them on the road is Hyundai--which they don’t do much to hide! 
 
33A. ...but there are also two instances where they very clearly slap a big ol’ sticker over the Hyundai logo on a car, so I’m sort of torn about whether to be mad at the show or not.
 
34. Oh, gosh, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to do ye olde list of folks I recognize!

• Little Mr. Koo is the annoying kid from When the Camellia Blooms. (And...son of a gun, he also played young Nam Do-san on Start-Up?! No wonder I hate this kid. [wink])

• The drowned cop ghost who Ms. Jang shoots in a bullet to haunt that politician in the first episode is the gossipy Chinese restaurant owner in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha.

• Mr. Koo’s boss at the hotel he quits is Princess My Name’s attendant in 100 Days My Prince.

• The “fake ghost” that was created by that woman who postcards to the radio station, when she was younger, is Restaurant Friend from Our Beloved Summer. (She looks totally different with dark hair!)

• The water deity that lives in the well, near where they temporarily move the hotel, is young Good Boy in Start-Up. (We've got both young leads for that show—how funny is that?)

 
35. Every time Mr. Koo’s dad was on screen, I wanted him to be Start-Up Dead Dad. But, as we’ve seen, I want him to be in everything. 
 
36. Oh—one more casting-adjacent point: when they’re going over the choices for manager that were better suited for the job than Mr. Koo (and why they turned Ms. Jang down), something about the first choice (the priest who we see performing an exorcism) made me think he was a special cameo—and he was: he is, apparently, one of the male leads in Moon Lovers and, as such, Lee Ji-eun’s former co-star. 
 
36A. ...and he’s also apparently hunting a super-scary ghost from the show The Guest. Which...yes, according to this, is in my Netflix queue. 
 
36B. Which reminds me: I need to watch Moon Lovers. I mean, Lee Ji-eun AND poofy dresses (probably)? Yes please!
 
36C. And, wait, this says the Main Cop from Camellia is the other male lead in Moon Lovers. Is...is he part of a love triangle??? (I am so bumping this up the list, now.)
 
37. Actually, wait—one more casting-related thing: I was looking up the actress who played the granddaughter of the hotel owner with the tiger ghost problem (yes, because I thought she was pretty), and it turns out she’s played by a pop star named Sulli who, sadly, seems to have committed suicide not long after the show finished airing. Which...was not anything I was hoping to see. Damn.
 
38. Lee Ji-eun still looks silly when she runs, but she somehow looks infinitely less silly running in high heels and a pencil skirt.
 
39. I genuinely love how possessive Ms. Jang is of Mr. Koo. 
 
40. I’m not sure if it’s a writing issue or more of a narrative example of fate, but Mr. Koo’s father walks through an entire garden of flowers before he thinks to grab one for his son…and decides the single, unobvious bloom on an otherwise dead tree is the only one to choose.
 
41. Okay, so, I know I make a lot of fuss about all the pretty girls on these shows, and my anime heart has taught me how to fall fully in love with a new girl every time I start another show—but I want to make clear that Ms. Jang (and, by extension, Lee Ji-eun) is indisputably the most beautiful girl across every one of these shows. 
 
41A. ...which I'm bringing up to point out that Ms. Jang looks the same right now—that is, in modern times—as she did 1300 years ago. So, if she’s gorgeous now, she must have been an absolute goddess, back in the day. Like, historically, humans are always less good looking the further back into history you go. When we see beautiful people in movies or TV shows set in the past, it’s basically understood that the characters are sort of scaled to modern times-levels of attractiveness, operating under the same kind of conceit as when something takes place in, like, Germany but everyone is speaking English, ‘cus it’s an American TV show or whatever: we just assume we’re viewing everything as though we are contemporaries of whoever the characters are, so we understand what they’re saying and find them as attractive as they would be taken in context back then. But how do you account for that when it’s literally the same person as in a distant past? I know it doesn’t matter, but I couldn’t help but wonder what genetic anomaly produced someone that good looking so far in the past.
 
41B. Relatedly, I switched my lock screen picture to Lee Ji-eun, again, and I kind of can’t figure out why I would ever have changed it to begin with. 
 
41C. That said, she also has a line about denying her caviar and champagne is like taking away hot sauce and pickles from pizza. Which...does she know what pizza is? Is this why I took her off my lock screen???
 
42. When Mr. Koo goes back in time, he first runs into Ms. Jang when she’s dressed in—as I now have the experience to understand—nobleman’s clothes. As in, she’s dressed like a young gentleman, presumably so she can go gamble. Which makes A LOT more sense than...whatever I assumed was going on the first time. (I think I may have assumed she was drunk. Like, I didn’t know she was dressed like a man, but I knew she didn’t look good in that hat.)
 
43. Wait—I sort of lied about being done with casting type stuff: the little girl who plays young Man-wol is apparently the same little girl they cast to play the young version of Lee Ji-eun’s character in My Mister, as well. Supposedly, she looks a lot like her. Which…hey, great for that girl, right? (I mean, she’s no Suzy, but…)
 
44. For the record: I did not spend the last three episodes crying into my couch cushions, this time around. 
 
45. For as much as I love her, Lee Ji-eun’s performance as Ms. Jang typically depends on her playing a single personality type, and she doesn’t usually add a lot of flavor or minute variation to that personality (which would really elevate the overall performance). I mean, I love her, so I don’t really care—but that's besides the point. What I want to point out is that, while it’s a sort of static-ish portrayal, every now and then she will throw in a bit of her own personal flair to a gesture or movement that really adds something to the fullness of the character. And it’s really fun, when she does.
 
Which...I think covers just about everything I could say about that. Like, aside from how much I frikkin’ loved watching this show, again. And how absolutely gorgeous Lee Ji-eun is. 
 
I had such a blast with this. And to think, I’d never have given it a shot, had you not suggested I try. And you would not have suggested it to me had I not—somewhat uncharacteristically—felt like ignoring my self-defeatist attitude towards instigating polite chatter and asked how your day was.
 
Crazy stuff, huh?
 
Anyway. I think this is a good place to wrap things up for what I’ve decided to refer to as Phase I of my K-drama experience. I’m going to take a little break, maybe take a whack at one of the unplayed video games I have sitting next to my TV, and then it's right back into things with Phase II.
 
I'm thinking...more supernatural stuff, this time.
 
But I guess we'll have to see, won't we.
 
--Daryl