Good morning, Erin. And welcome to
Phase II.
Every once in a while, I like to
take a break from indulging my mainstay story interests (…which, yes, are
romance-driven, sue me, I love a love story). This can be for a simple change
of pace, a story that’s caught my eye or sounds interesting, or maybe it’s just
that Iron Man is in it. But, sometimes, I do it because some part of me wants
to deliberately take a chance on things I might have shied away from for no
particularly good reason. (Or, if it’s anime, because it had big stupid robots
in it.)
So, anything particularly
supernatural—even with your stamp of approval—I sort of accidentally on-purpose
let slide to the back of ye olde mental queue, when I was picking where to head
next. But, with a decent break from anything K-drama (and the sudden
realization that Hotel Del Luna is
actually pretty flippin’ supernatural, Daryl, you big dope), I thought it was
time to, as I said I might, jump into episodes of the eerie to see what’s what.
And, as per usual, so much the fool
am I for dismissing without cause.
…at least, in this case. This case
being Sweet Home, which—spoiler
alert—I kind of loved…and which is apparently getting two more seasons. And
hooray for that. (Maybe. I guess we’ll see.)
So, with that being said:
1. Yes, it was definitely your recommendation
and not Netflix showing me a clip of
the show with my sweetheart Ju-ri from It’s
Okay to Not be Okay in cutoff shorts that led me to start Phase II with Sweet Home. Definitely not that. At all.
2. Speaking of people I know:
·
Ju-ri
from It’s Okay…, of course, as the
rocker girl.
·
Mr.
Firefly Man from Hotel Del Luna is
the glasses dude who is the ballerina’s brother.
·
The
cop boss guy from My Name is the
wheelchair-bound tinkerer.
·
Landlady
Divorcee from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is
the mom whose baby died.
·
Butterfly
Boy from Nevertheless is the good guy
semi-monster thing person.
·
Other-Ung
from Our Beloved Summer as the psycho
semi-monster thing person.
3. I really enjoyed how the show immediately teams up the people in the
main cast—even before the monster apocalypse. Pretty much everyone is paired up
with someone like them, in one sense or another: Rocker Girl and Bible Man;
Gangster Guy and Ballerina; Glasses Guy and Firefighter; Butterfly Boy and
Wheelchair Guy. (This changes, of course, over the 10 episodes…but I’ll talk
about that more, later on.)
4. Oh—before we go on: Rocker Girl
is #BestGirl. For a little while, I thought Firefighter was going to give her a
run for her money, but she doesn’t wind up being as cool as she initially seems
she might be. Rocker Girl, however, maintains awesomeness throughout the show
and has more character-driven stuff to do, which I think makes her more
compelling.
4A. “…and you think she’s cute,” I
hear you say. To which I say: “…shh.”
4B. Also, perhaps not
coincidentally, Rocker Girl might be the last fully-good protagonist left. Which
is interesting, in a broader sense.
5. Firefighter’s a total badass,
though, don’t get me wrong.
5A. And did you see her in her
athletic undergarments? Whoa! Not…not in that
way (I mean, yes in that way, of course, but that’s not why I’m mentioning
it), just…she was frikkin’ solid.
Which, good, she’s a firefighter, that’s what we want. But I initially thought
they were using how she was dressed to sort of camouflage her “actress fit”
physique so that she seemed bulkier than she actually was. But…not really. I
mean, they definitely were, because she’s pretty slender, but that sequence
where she’s crawling through the air vents…she is, like, American Ninja Warrior-levels of solid muscle. Good for her. (I
wonder if she put in work for that sequence specifically of if she just happens
to really like working out.)
6. Actually, since we’re on the
subject—and I’m going somewhere with this, I promise—I was surprised to find
that the actress who played Ballerina was, in fact, the one whose body we spent
so much of her introduction scene focusing on (where she spends two full
minutes stretching). I thought they must have brought in a body double to get
those flashes of thigh and dancers legs (because her face isn’t in those
shots). But, having seen her run around in her skirt and then short-shorts for
a stretch of the show, I’m now thinking that’s not the case. And, hey, good for
her.
6A. That stretching sequence is
actually really clever. I mean, it’s top-quality teasing-sexy, sure, but it
does this really great job of making it your
fault that it’s teasing-sexy. That is, it does juuuust enough to make each
shot a bit of ogling—but it’s also juuuust enough focused on something else
that it could claim that you’re the
one staring like a letch, not the camera. It’s a total copout (especially since
we’re, I think, supposed to be seeing it as though it’s from Butterfly Boy’s
POV, and he’s definitely checking her
out), but I appreciate the effort.
7. The reason I mention the way the
ladies look, though, is that this show manages to take some fairly handsome
people (ex: Butterfly Boy, Glasses Guy, Rocker Girl, Ballerina) and make them
look…normal-handsome rather than celebrity-handsome, in one manner or another.
Keep their hair a certain way, make them wear specific kinds of clothes—you
could meet these people, y’know? It’s just fun to notice that no one looks
quite as good as you know they can…which makes sense for the dour setting, of
course, but they manage to make them look sort of regular-pretty even before
everything goes to hell. And that’s neat. At least, I think it is.
8. …okay, one more thing about the
ladies: if you remember, I said Landlady Divorcee was deliberately made up to
look less attractive than she really was (on Cha-Cha-Cha) and that she was actually kind of a babe when they
undid all that downplaying-style for the flashbacks to when she was
younger…and, seeing her here, I just want to reiterate that she’s kind of a
babe. Good for you, Landlady Divorcee. Who I had absolutely no illusions about
sticking around for very long. (Though she did appear slightly longer than I’d
assumed she would.)
9. Semi-relatedly: one of the
necessary components of a good apocalypse story is a likeable (or pleasantly
tolerable) cast of characters—and Sweet
Home absolutely has one.
10. That said, everyone pretty
definitively sticks to the narrative convention, here: “Okay, it’s an
apocalypse scenario, folks, so if you could please break out into one of the
following three groups: survivors, psychopaths, and stereotypes that produce
cheap drama. Quickly now, we’re almost 15 minutes into this.”
11. I wish someone had warned me
about the CGI being so hit-or-miss.
11A. And about that Imagine Dragons
song.
11B. Cough.
11C. Seriously, though, the CGI was
pretty good, sometimes. But when it wasn’t…hoo-boy. (Not that the bad moments
ruined the show or anything. It was just interesting that it could be really
good in one moment but not the next.)
12. The practical costumes and
effects were pretty great, most of the time. I particularly liked the goblin-like
guy who wanders around with the top of his head sliced off. That looked rad.
13. That lady with the dog
is…interesting. She just knows who
everyone in the building is. No explanation. Which…certainly smells like an
important story thread. But is it?
14. I didn’t hate Butterfly Boy, in
this. Like, for being Butterfly Boy.
I didn’t particularly like his character, in this, but I was on the positive
side of neutral. Because he was completely inoffensive, as a character. I mean,
he was also boring and strangely undeveloped, given his significance in the
overall story, but that’s not the actor’s fault.
15. Early on, I noticed a Hyundai
advertisement on the door of the convenience store, which was obviously a good
omen. (For my experience with the show. Not for the characters. The characters
have a very rough go of it. (Um…spoilers.))
16. This show moves at a really
nice clip, but that’s sometimes to its detriment: significant action happens
off-screen, seemingly important details get handwaved, and it’s often hard to
figure out if the character who walks in to tell everyone that [XYZ] happened is doing so to entice us
with the possibility this is a lie or if the show just wanted to save some
budget/time. Like, it’s one thing to not let us know how many days have passed
between episodes, but it’s another to rescue Butterfly Boy without showing it
to us—and it’s an entirely other thing to have the Battered Wife wander in from
nowhere to declare that she’s showing symptoms, now, and we’re just going to
have to accept it without seeing that
this is true.
16A. I guess, very early on, you can
pay really close attention to how Ballerina is dressed to determine if things
are happening on the same or different days. But…who would do that?
16B. And I had to ask the frikkin’
internet what the heck was up with the bit in Ep 10 when Home-Care Girl passes
out while talking to Dying Old Man (who is digging up the entrance to the escape
tunnel). She falls over, and Gangster Guy is the one who carries her away? What
was Dying Old Man doing? When did Gangster Guy come across her? You can’t just imply these kinds of things, show.
17. In a similar vein…I cannot be the only one who thought Mr.
Firefly Man was sus as hell, right? Like, he doesn’t just fall into the de
facto “leader” role, he IMMEDIATELY goes full-on Machiavelli, when things go
sideways. And they never tell us why.
18. Perhaps relatedly, the way Mr.
Firefly Man and Firefighter would deal with each other felt like there was some
kind of pre-existing tension between them, like maybe they had dated, in the
past. That appears not to have been the case, and it was all down to a conflict
in principles or approach to the situation. But there was also this sense that
they knew more about each other than their time on screen would justify. Which
maybe was just me. Or maybe it was the show skipping details again and asking
the audience to just go along with whatever was in front of them so the next
scene could happen.
19. And, while we’re still
discussing Mr. Firefly Man, let me just say how disappointed I am to discover
that, while my anime-senses immediately caught that he and Ballerina were not
blood-related siblings, it did not, in fact, seem that he was in love with his
sister. I guess their discomfort around each other was just her pushing him
away because she felt she didn’t deserve his brotherly affection. #LAME
20. Almost as lame? That Mr.
Firefly Man (likely) dies. WTF?!
21. …okay, this is a little earlier
than I thought I going to get to this, but: I am surprised by who’s still
standing at the end of the season. In that we lost A LOT of the main cast, but
almost none of the cowardly/“cowardly” minor characters. That is a weird group
that’s being carted off by the military.
22. …um, so, I totally left this
line marked with nothing but an ellipses, which is my way of noting to myself
that I’m supposed to come back to this—but I have no idea what I was going to talk about. [shrug]
23. Jumping back to Mr. Firefly
Man’s death: it did not escape my notice that, at the end, when Ballerina
realized her brother had lied to her about how he would be right back after he
grabbed Butterfly Boy to escape with them, she’s desperately screaming “oppa”
over and over again rather than his name (which is, of course, how the
subtitles translate it). Sadly, we don’t have a good enough equivalent for
this, in English, because the nuance to the moment in Korean is that she’s not
just upset that he’s likely going to die but also acknowledging him as her
brother, which she had not been doing the whole rest of the show.
23A. To wit: I bought a beginner’s
Korean phrasebook. Just be more familiar with some of the vocabulary and
grammar and stuff, in case of moments like the one above.
24. Speaking of
subtitles: they capitalize He when
referring to Jesus, in this. Which is either very respectful or a sign of
strict dedication to grammar. (Unless it was during Bible Guy’s dialogue, in
which case it’s an exceptional adherence to detail, because he would absolutely refer to Jesus with a capital
He, if you were to take the sentence
in his head and write it on the page. However, I did not make note of whose
dialogue this was, so…it remains a mystery.)
25. Continuing to
speak of subtitles: they refer to Butterfly Boy as a hikikomori—a Japanese term I recognize from my years of watching
anime. I was not aware that this term had reached such popular usage that it
(rather than, say, shut-in) would be
the best descriptor to use for English-speaking audiences. Unless that’s not
really true, in which case that’s a weird choice, even if it is more
technically accurate.
26. It takes the show
a while to let us know exactly what the deal is with everyone turning into
monsters, but they’re pretty upfront about trying to let us know that we’re
dealing with something distinct from typical “zombie apocalypse” rules by
having several main characters get bitten or scratched or squirted with blood
in all their facial orifices and be fine, afterward. Which was neat.
27. Bible Man’s crush
on Rocker Girl is adorable.
Particularly in light of their first meeting, during which he slightly panics
that he’s just met this girl, immediately become smitten with her, and is
holding a Bible in his hands, which he is afraid will seem off-putting to her:
“Um, I’m just on my way to Church, y’know. I don’t just carry a Bible with me
or anything. I’m…normal.”
27A. …which is a
hilarious moment to think back on, really, since much of his time on the show
reveals he’s obviously more than just-carries-his-Bible-for-Church levels of
religious. Which is made even funnier when you consider he sure doesn’t hide
this from her, either.
27B. To wit: in one
of the most relatable cute moments between them, Bible Man, in response to
Rocker Girl’s veiled (but obvious) admission that she likes him (something
like, “don’t be in a hurry to be in God’s presence”), he says, “Oh, God is
omnipresent!” And…man, tell me you haven’t made that unwitting mistake, where your passion for whatever subject
someone else’s metaphor has taken leads you to focus on the technical accuracy
of the metaphor rather than the message it is meant to relay. That one hit me
hard.
27C. Who am I
kidding—you’re probably too smooth to bungle something like that. So…okay,
you’ve probably had someone do it to your
metaphor, then. Maybe it’s relatable in that
way.
28. Butterfly Boy’s
whole monster deal feels just a wee bit anime, doesn’t it. Just a smidge of an
edge-fest.
29. There’s a scene
of the military investigating one of their crashed vehicles, and the tunnel
they’re in looks just like the one
that’s used for that shootout scene in Vincenzo.
So, I went back to check, and…it’s, um, it’s not. Apparently, I’m just tunnel-racist
and think they all look the same.
30. Speaking of car
crashes: it is hilarious that the
ultra-van they put together to send out on a supply run before Rocker Girl’s
emergency appendectomy is flipped and destroyed IMMEDIATELY upon exiting the
garage. You knew something was going to go wrong, on that trip, but holy
smokes!
31. …but I’d like to
point out that the fire truck that saves the day by plowing into the gigantic
monster that was going to kill all the good guys in the ultra-van was, in fact,
a Hyundai. BOOM.
32. One of the great
and consistent details in the show is Ballerina’s attraction (romantic or
otherwise) to dangerous-seeming men.
33. One of the
less-great (though somewhat consistent) details in the show is Ballerina’s
particular brand of post-apocalypse crazy. It’s not bad, exactly, but it is weird. She’s just…moody and
contrarian—about everything. That said, she’s a high schooler, so I suppose
rebellion against literally anything
that finds itself in front of her could probably pass as her version of the
quiet resolve one might need to overcome the doom. I dunno. Still felt a little
weird, to me. (Weirder than anything dog lady did? Hmmm…)
34. Another
less-great/borderline not good detail in the show (because of its seeming lack
of consistency) is the use of cell phones as a kind of monster detector: A)
characters venturing into the upper floors of the building mostly always use them,
but they seem only to work when the story wants to add some dramatic tension to
the situation; B) the number of times the monster detector has worked in a way
that gives the characters ample warning is about equal to (or maybe less than)
the number of times it goes off just as the monster attacks, so…I mean, I get
that any help is better than no help, but it’s not a good narrative mechanic
(unless they deliberately talk about how their initial tactics aren’t working,
anymore…which they don’t); and C) one of the central good guys who is always on these little trips is already
a monster, so…like, I suppose it only detects currently activated monsters,
rather than just the infected, and, as such, maybe Butterfly Boy has to be in
actual monster mode for it to ping, but…seems like a strategic downside, no?
35. If you look back
at my first few notes for any of the shows I’m going to write to you about, the
nicknames I assign characters before I really know who anyone is are rarely in
their final form. So, as I sit here scanning through what I haven’t yet covered
in this letter, I noticed that my early nickname for Firefighter was “Hot as
Fire”fighter. Which…in a way, I kind of regret not sticking with.
35A. Fun fact: my early nickname
for the main girl in Vincenzo was
“Daughter-at-Law,” playing off the terms daughter-in-law
and attorney at law. But I quickly
realized it was a very, very niche joke (that probably only I would find
funny), so I swapped over to just using her name.
35B. …this behind-the-scenes look
is brought to you by: Subway—eat fresh! But in way fewer locations!
36. This is kind of a sidebar, but
this is one of those pet peeve-y points I like to make: in the scene where the
group is debating whether or not to toss Butterfly Boy out of the building
(because he’s technically a monster), one of the characters talks about how
they should take a vote on the matter because they live in a democracy. And I
thought to myself, “…isn’t South Korea a republic?” And it is. As is America.
And I’m always confused about why people don’t understand that—and then it hit
me, as I was watching this scene: some people just don’t understand what a
democracy is, like, in practice, in terms of governance; they just think that
it means everyone has the right to cast a vote. Which is not at all the case.
In a democracy, everyone has the right to vote on every single decision that is made for the country/state/town,
rather than voting for representatives who cast votes for those decisions on
your behalf (which how a republic works). Having said that, the vote to oust or
keep Butterfly Boy is actually very much the group being a democracy, so…um…thank
you for coming to my TED Talk.
37. I audibly booed when Rocker
Girl switched over to wearing long pants instead of cutoff shorts. And I’m not
ashamed to admit that.
38. Daryl, circa Episode 8: “Wait a
minute…they’re realigning the character pairs. They’re realigning the
charact—oh, God, that means characters are going to need new pairings. Noooooooo!!!”
39. Daryl, circa Episode 8, but 15
minutes later: “WHY WHY WHY IS ROCKER GIRL TALKING TO ANYONE WHO ISN’T BIBLE
MAN DO NOT DO THIS TO ME SHOW.”
40. …so, they killed Bible Man. And
I am still upset about this.
40A. I mean, I get it: they
narratively needed a major character death, it had to have emotional impact, and
it made perfect sense for it to be him, given the circumstances. But I still
wish it hadn’t been him.
40B. At least he went out like an
absolute badass.
40C. A-A-And then Rocker Girl [sniffle] u-uses his broken sword [sniffle] as her [sniffle] new [sniffle]
primary [sniffle] weapon…
41. Actually, speaking of weapons
and character pair realignment: Rocker Girl and Ballerina’s season-long arcing
towards each other as (essentially) rivals or opposites who ultimately push and
temper one another is really good—and, after Bible Man’s death, is symbolically
portrayed by Ballerina assuming Rocker Girl’s bat as her own, now that she’s
moved on to Bible Man’s broken sword. There’s no talk about it, there isn’t
some bequeathing scene…she just has it.
And it’s a great, quiet detail, if you notice it.
42. After the whole incident with
the ultra-van being flipped and riding in to save everyone at the last minute
by smashing into the gigantic monster with a firetruck, Firefighter takes a
well-earned shower. Which we watch, for some reason. Now, I don’t know if that
scene was originally produced this way or if this was a Netflix decision …but
we got some classic anime-censorship levels
of inexplicable steam and rays of light covering up literally just her, um,
sensitive areas. Made me chuckle.
43. The season finale was kind of a
mess. Specifically, I was not a fan of psycho Other-Ung’s “you’re just like me”
nonsense—or, rather, how they rushed to get to the part where Butterfly boy
just bought into it hook, line, and sinker. ESPECIALLY since psycho Other-Ung
was all but exactly the kid who regularly beat the snot out of him in high
school and traumatized him into being a total shut-in.
43A. Honestly, it would have been
more believable that Butterfly Boy would fall under the spell of the Child
Murderer (the one Gangster Guy is in the building to “interrogate”) than psycho
Other-Ung—and that guy was standing
over him, when he woke up, saying, “You look so nice when you sleep. But, now
that you’re awake, would you like to put my sausage in your mouth?”
43B. …because he came to the lobby
with tons of snacks for everyone, including sausage, so…he was offering him a
bit of breakfast.
43C. But, like, as a total creeper.
Whether he was actively trying to instigate creepy things or not.
43D. I don’t know why I’m
explaining this. I know you’ve seen it. Dude was a creep! With sausage!
44. Oh, while we’re on it: psycho
Other-Ung literally says, “Man was
the real monster,” which is about as
cringe as dialogue could have gotten, on a show like this. I think I swore at
my TV, when he said that.
45. I’m a little worried with where
things might go from here, with half the strongly-written characters dead and
everyone else being carted off to a totally new situation. (To say nothing of
how some of the remaining protagonists are off on their own.) I’m not saying
they could have stayed in the apartment complex forever, but that they kept
having things to do and deal with that were consistently interesting while
being in just that one location made me kind of excited to see what else they
could do there. And being picked up by the military…I dunno. I’m hoping past
success will indicate future success, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a
bit trepidatious. (Which Microsoft is trying to tell me is not a real word.
Well, we’ll see about…oh, it’s…it’s actually not a real word. Like, it’s used,
but informally. Dammit. What a downer way to end this. I mean, obviously I
could just change it, and you’d never know, but…hey, would I be me if I didn’t
take an opportunity to undercut myself?)
And those are my thoughts on Sweet Home.
What a good time. And surely a
harbinger of only good things to come for Phase II.
Surely. Definitely.
…f***, Butterfly Boy is in, like, all of these shows I pic—y’know what,
it’ll be fine. Positive thoughts. Just gotta stay…stay positive.
[unconvincing smile]
--Daryl
P.S – Hey, did I
ever tell you about how my third college roommate was known as “The Korean Vin
Diesel”?
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