Letter #41: Kiss Goblin

Good morning, Erin.
 
After watching three things in a row featuring my favorite and yours, Chae-ran, I thought it would be best to really mix things up and watch a show that starred Chae-ran. 
 
…what? She’s starring in this one. That’s totally different from the other three things where she was only a tertiary character. 
 
So, let’s talk about the 11-minute episodes of Kiss Goblin:
 
1. …and how you shouldn’t watch it because it is awful. 
 
1A. Or, really, if I’m being totally fair about it, I’d say it’s less that the show is awful than that it’s very, very amateurish and unpolished. It comes across as a student film project. A relatively successful student film project, in that it very much resembles a real TV show, but pretty much everything you could guess didn’t work about the show absolutely did not work about the show: terrible dialogue, poor performances, bad camera work. I love Chae-ran, but—though she was far and away the best actor—she did not seem to have the skill to bring anything more than what the script gave her and the director told her to do. (By which I mean that she was obviously just doing the best job anyone could by doing what was on the page. She didn’t make any of the strange emotional shifts from line to line seem more natural or bring any nuance of her own. She was good, but how good can you be when you’re given garbage?) Shorts were frequently too wide or held for too long so that you could see the actors moving in ways that are very natural but look silly on camera. And the couple of action scenes…oy vey. 
 
1B. Which is not to say that the core concepts were bad. I actually think this was a really good idea, and I think it would have worked better for, like, a YouTube channel project. (Like “Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party.” Which…I assume you didn’t see, but trust me.) 
 
1C. Also, they managed a time jump at the end that didn’t utterly infuriate me. So, that’s something. 
 
1D. Oh, and Chae-ran’s female friend was pretty good. I thought she was a good character, and her actress was decent. 
 
2. Speaking of Chae-ran’s friend, though, she has a crush on their mutual male friend, and the show does a very slick job of making that clear but not wildly obvious. Which makes their getting together at the end a very satisfying turn, but I can imagine someone who didn’t quite pick up on it being confused or underwhelmed by this. But I thought it was really well done. 
 
3. I’m 90% sure they just saw Goblin and said, “Let’s do that, but with Chae-ran.” Which, I mean, I can’t really fault them for.
 
4. For a show called Kiss Goblin, the kissing isn’t as steamy as you’d hope. But, for the most part, it looks like actual kissing. Which you know I’m a fan of. 
 
5. Speaking of kissing, one of Chae-ran’s noteworthy lines is “They say kissing someone [in a dream] makes you wake up.” And I say it’s noteworthy because a friend of mine and I were talking about it a few weeks ago—or, rather, she was telling me about how she has very, um, kissy dreams all the time, and I was telling her that I very, very rarely manage to get to the kissy part of the dream. Like, I tend to wake up when the leaning in for a kiss happens. So, I guess Chae-ran’s point sort of splits the difference. 
 
5A. Actually, what’s really interesting (to me) about this is that…well, okay, for almost two weeks, I’d been sleeping on the couch all night rather than in my bed. I was…how do I explain this…I just didn’t feel, like, safe being in my bedroom. Which, I mean, doesn’t make a lot of sense, I know, but let’s just take it to mean that I was dealing with some subtle kind of sadness that I couldn’t quite identify, and sleeping on the couch was some kind of security blanket. Well, one night, I had a dream where I was in some fashion hanging out with the folks from my favorite YouTube channel—which has long been a sign that I was not only actually upset about something but that I was now done being upset about it. (Genuinely: it’s how my brain signals that everything is now okay, in my dreams.) And, in this instance, I actually did get to the kissy part. Which was just a smooch on the cheek, but it counts. (And was from my YouTuber crush, so double-points. (Triple-points if you count that I can sleep in my bed, again.))
 
6. Speaking of sadness—my favorite Chae-ran line: “You just need to be sad ‘til it goes away.” Not just wise but apropos, no?
 
7. Chae-ran’s go-to pyjamas included a t-shirt that had the Butterfinger logo on it. The only way I could have loved this more was if it was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup t-shirt. Or a Hyundai t-shirt. Or—oh my gosh, if it had been a t-shirt of IU and Sunny in their little Hyundai I’d have audibly squealed. 
 
8. So, I said that the show was pretty much “we wanna do Goblin,” and one of the ways that’s obviously true is that the main guy (who is the goblin) and the grim reaper-esque guy who’s hunting him both have the big, dark trench coats as part of their ensembles. BUT…what this means is that when Chae-ran decides to help the Goblin accomplish his mission, she gets to wear a big trench coat, too. And she also gets a chance to ham it up, when she does. And it’s a pretty amusing sequence. 
 
9. My favorite moment, though, is probably when Chae-ran realizes she likes the goblin, because, after sort of debating with herself whether this was the case, she sees him on the street and lets out a laugh that she doesn’t feel anything for him…and then almost immediately shifts to “dammit, no, I totally do.” Because that’s how it can happen, sometimes: nothing in one moment, then totally smitten in the next. 
 
9A. There’s a lesson that the show tries to teach about this—or, more specifically, about having those back-and-forth moments with yourself about romantic feelings. And it’s…interesting, if a little hard to immediately latch on to: essentially, the more you try to convince yourself that you don’t have romantic feelings towards someone, the stronger those romantic feelings will become. Which is in line with the show’s take that you should just let yourself enjoy the good feelings you get from liking someone. (And hearkens back to the Weightlifting Fairy “Can’t I just like him?” which you know I like.) But then it also says that admitting you like someone makes the feelings grow exponentially more. So, I’m not sure if it means that knowing you like someone and wondering if you do essentially mean the same thing, so just admit it…or if, in the end, there’s no quantitative difference between crushes and falling in love? Maybe?
 
…anyway—that’s that.
 
Let’s just say I’m glad it was only 11 minutes an episode. But, I guess, not a total waste of time. Which…gosh, I guess that says something about a bunch of other shows, doesn’t it.
 
Alchemy of Souls next. Because the second season might not have the same tone as the first, and discussing them together might clash more than I originally considered. (Plus…any reason to spend more time thinking about Jung So-min. Because I have no shame.) So, look forward to that. Or not. In the end, they just might be the same feeling. Maybe. I dunno.
 
—Daryl