Letter #48: May I Help You?

Good morning, Erin.
 
I may have spent some of my early Christmas vacation visiting the dentist, but the rest of that early Christmas vacation was spent in the way I seem most content to spend my time off, lately: sleeping on the couch because I am too lazy to put away the laundry I’ve stacked on my bed (which I do to force myself to stop being lazy about putting away my laundry because, of course, I need to put it away or I’m not going to be able to sleep in my bed (which…um, might need some tweaking, as a strategy)).
 
But the second way I seem content to spend my time off, of course, is throwing myself into one of your K-drama recommendations. And, now that we’re at the inter-semester break, I’ve got your newest list to work from—and work from it I certainly have!
 
…um, that is to say, I watched May I Help You?, because you said that was one of the two you thought you might start with, on your end. And when you say jump, I say, “...into the new show you’re recommending? Oh, definitely. As soon as I get back to my desk!”
 
So, assuming you followed through on checking out this show (and I have no reason to believe anything to the contrary), let’s have a chat about it, shall we? Yes, I think we will:
 
1. Daryl, circa five-minute mark of Episode 1: “Oh, this is a supernatural-y series! Aww, Erin knew to recommend something in keeping with my Phase II theme! She’s so thoughtful.”
 
1A. Daryl, circa fifteen-minute mark of Episode 1: “...what the f*** is happening, exactly? Like, I can see what’s happening, but I have soooo many questions. Did I miss something?”
 
1B. Daryl, circa twenty-five-minute mark of Episode 1: “No, seriously, what the f*** is happening?”
 
1C. …which is my way of saying that, whatever else I thought of the show, I felt the first episode was really haphazard. Like, sure, there were questions they wanted to leave us curious about (in a good way), but they also never gave us a solid footing for anything we were seeing, often telling the story out of sequence—which, in and of itself, is fine, except these out-of-sequence segments were not as clearly signposted as you would normally find—which, even in and of itself, isn’t too big of a deal (because we’re clever enough to put together things in order, even if strictly speaking we shouldn’t necessarily have to), except they would also do flashbacks within flashbacks, making the more intriguing mystery of exactly what was going on that much harder to be intrigued by because it was obscured by questions of simple timing. 
 
1D. Or maybe that was just me. But, regardless, I left Episode 1 not having any idea what was going on. Except that obviously the dude and the girl were destined to keep running into each other. Which I’m generally a fan of, as far as romcom cliches go. 
 
2. To that point, though: as the show unfolded, did I like the way our leads kept running into each other? Absolutely. In fact, I thought, in a show that is built so thoroughly on the idea of people being tied together by a giant web of fate, I thought the two of them constantly running into each other was the most believable execution of that premise. There is, of course, the reality that two people living and working in the same area will, once they notice each other, find themselves running into each other (or noticing that they do) much more frequently than before. But there’s also the reality that, sometimes, the universe just wants two people to be together (romantically or otherwise). 
 
3. That said, I thought there were far too many coincidences, overall. But I’ll get to that later. 
 
4. I was a much bigger fan of the Main Guy than the Main Girl. As in, I found him and his whole deal much more interesting than Main Girl and hers. 
 
4A. To that point, I just want to take a moment to note that Main Girl’s ability to talk to the dead is so much less the focus of the show than you’d think something as outrageous as that would be. Like, the whole series doesn’t have to be about her running errands for the dead (whether it’s discovering a murderer or just delivering a message), but…there were A LOT of sections that tossed this whole aspect of her character to the side, as though it were some detail as mundane as her being good at juggling. And it made me question whether this aspect of the story was even necessary (like, beyond it being pivotal to certain specific plot elements, of course), at the end of the day, or if it was more of a gimmick. Or, I guess, whether it had originally been intended to be more the focus but, as things got underway, the story just wasn’t there in the writer’s mind enough to be as big as I’d have expected. 
 
4B. …and, as such, I thought a majority of the pull-at-your-heartstrings subplots with the dead folks were kinda dull. Because they (for lack of a more expeditious way of saying it) didn’t really matter. But we’ll get into that a little more, later on. So…look forward to that. 
 
5. Speaking of the leads, though, let’s do the list of folks I recognized:

• the main girl from Gumiho as the Main Girl

• the less-important clubmate from My Liberation Notes as Main Girl’s dad

• Excessive English Girl(!!!) from A Business Proposal as Main Girl’s best friend

• Good Boy’s old lady friend in Cha-Cha-Cha as Excessive English Girl’s grandmother

• the jerkface news station boss from 18 Again as the dead cabbie (who isn’t Main Guy’s dad)

• the divorced couple’s son in Cha-Cha-Cha as the cabbie’s son (in flashback)

• the area by the police station vending machines in Glitch as the area by the police station vending machines (and, yes, I have photos to prove it!)

 
6. There were a lot of sad moments in the show, obviously, but I think the one that utterly shattered my heart was seeing that the high school boy left the girl who died a love letter in her locker before Main Girl ever left the dead girl’s letter for him to read. I mean, it was bad enough knowing that her letter made him smile WHEN HE DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS DEAD, but to know that he essentially got a letter accepting his confession…oof, why do that to me show?
 
7. Is it normal to have a funeral home, like, on hospital grounds? I mean, it’s sort of convenient, I guess, if you die at a hospital. I’m just curious about the funerary customs, I guess, in terms of how quickly you have to get to the “wake” and stuff. (I absolutely could look this up. I won’t. But I could.)
 
8. After he delivers the (sort of hilarious) breakup message, Main Guy gets kicked in the shins by Main Girl—and he’s kicked hard enough that it breaks the skin on his leg. And she was basically wearing Keds when she did it. Which is terrifying. If she’d been wearing dress shoes, she probably would have taken his leg clean off. 
 
9. If it wasn’t obvious, Excessive English Girl is, once again, #BestGirl. I absolutely loved her subplot of trying to hit on Main Girl’s boss. And, even if that wasn’t her subplot, I’d take any excuse to have her on screen. She’s so great, and I’m thrilled to see she’s basically in everything I watch, these days. 
 
9A. And on the topic of seeing so much of her, lately: I don’t think I will ever tire of watching Excessive English Girl staring off after a guy she’s fallen for. 
 
10. Oh! Speaking of Main Girl’s friends: did you notice the more serious one (who…coaches ping-pong? I guess?) has the default “put your picture here!” icon as her text message profile picture? Considering how little of her we get over the course of the show, I thought that was a really clever detail that tells us a lot about her very quickly. I mean, it didn’t matter, but I still appreciated it. 
 
11. I felt a little silly about how long it took me to put together the thematic and/or symbolic connections between our lead duo, but I did finally cotton on to it all—particularly if you first start with the fact that Main Guy so frequently wears shirts that have “balance” written on them:

• He’s a doctor, and she’s a funeral director, so his occupation sort of balances against hers (keeping you from death vs. sending you off)—which I admit would be a little cleaner if she was, like, a hitman, but…I think it still counts.

• At the start of the show, she’s planning on staying only temporarily with the funeral home, while he’s (more or less) planning on staying forever with his uncle’s company. 

• Both are taking on errands (though in very different senses). 

 
11A. As a bonus, because she’s a funeral director, she’s symbolically cleaning up after the things he can’t fix on his own as a doctor. Which, of course, is what she ultimately is able to do for him regarding his grief over his brother. 
 
12. I still can’t quite believe how long it took Main Guy to realize that he liked Main Girl. I mean, the Cop Guy basically had to spell it out for him (in the lamest “Do you see her face?” moment ever)—even though he was CONSTANTLY ASKING HER TO DINNER. Like, I know sometimes these things sneak up on you, especially if you start off being more friends-y than flirty, but…come on, dude. 
 
13. What’s funnier about this, though, is how his asking her to dinner seems to always essentially summon Dr. Ex-Girlfriend from the ether to get in their way. 
 
13A. Though, in a fun turn, Dr. Ex-Girlfriend eventually asks Main Guy to dinner, and Main Girl just sort of appears to throw a wrench in that. Which made me laugh. (I see you, show. Well done.)
 
14. And can we talk about how Dr. Ex-Girlfriend basically isn’t a character, despite the show using her like she is one? I mean, yes, she’s obviously a character, but she’s also so flimsy that the story’s insistence that she has some kind of emotional significance to the plot feels strictly functional and frequently tacked on. Which sucks, since her having saved the guy who (supposedly) killed the Main Guy’s little brother is such a wonderfully awful twist to the whole event—especially since it adds to her torment over their breakup, since she’s “guilty” of contributing to his pain. 
 
15. …wait, does anyone ever tell her that the guy she saved that night wasn’t the one who killed the little brother? I mean, maybe she can put it together from seeing the news, but…aww, poor Dr. Ex-Girlfriend. No one cares about her pain. 
 
16. In what is either deliberate symbolism or a total coincidence, Main Girl wears a shirt with a big heart on it, in Episode 1, then one with a broken heart on it after she’s dumped in Episode 2, and then another one with a regular heart on it after she gets together with Main Guy (in or around Episode 9).
 
17. Speaking of shirts, though, I can’t tell if it’s funnier that one of Main Guy’s t-shirts references the song “Wonderwall” or that the line appears to be misspelled (“your my wonderwall”).
 
18. All the Hyundai symbols were covered up, again. Which bothered me, as it always does—but it also bothered me less because watching this series coincided with the several days it took me to get the weird noise my Hyundai was making diagnosed and fixed, which bothered me a lot more. 
 
18A. Did I ever mention to you that I named my car Pepper? I mean…I must have, by now, right?
 
19. The (presumably) fansubs for this show were not great, with the translations frequently being too literal…but this also meant that we got “graduation date” as a wonderful euphemism for “date of death,” which almost made the rest of the awkward phrasing worth it. 
 
20. Though, speaking of translations, I saw that the (or maybe a) Korean title for the show is 100-Won Butler. Which is a waaaaaay catchier title—though it’s also a lot less specific to the overall story than May I Help You? ultimately (and I mean literally in the end) turns out to be. 
 
20A. Additionally, 100-Won Butler really only references the Main Guy’s portion of the story, which, in a surprise twist, is the portion that pretty much dominates the focus of the show (given that we start with Main Girl and her interactions with the dead), but which is also not so entirely the focus that Main Girl’s story could comfortably fall under its umbrella. So…I guess they chose the right one. Even if it isn’t a very catchy title. 
 
21. This show has the absolute least convincing “D-Did we sleep with each other?!” cliffhanger ever. I mean, they’re both fully dressed. In the clothes we last saw them wearing. We didn’t even need to rely on our “storytelling cliche” instincts for this one, so…why do it?
 
22. Y’know, I should have mentioned this back with Twenty-Five, Twenty-One or My Mister, but I love the look of Korean phone booths. At least, the ones I’ve seen in these shows. I like the aesthetic. Reminds me of my tea kettle, which is of a similar color and style. 
 
23. Speaking of My Mister, though, there’s basically the exact same van used in that as used by the Dime-a-Job boys, and it also flips over onto its side. Which is exactly what I was thinking just before it flipped over, in this. Which made me laugh. (Also: in My Mister, the folks using that van would usually just flip the van back to its right side on their own. Just…in point of fact.)
 
24. I am at a loss over the prejudice against funeral workers. I mean, I sort of understand the discomfort, but I don’t know why people were treating them like untouchables. It just seems like an archaic holdover, no? (Though, like with the adoption stuff we’ve talked about before, I mentioned it to my mother, and she said, “Oh, that’s absolutely how lots of people react.” So…maybe it’s just me, again.)
 
25. Did you know there were epilogues to a few of the episodes? I think I didn’t realize that until maybe Episode 14, and I had to go back and check every episode up to that point. 
 
26. I’m not sure the timeline for this show makes sense. If the dude who (supposedly) killed the little brother was in a coma for two years, that would mean that it took the Main Girl two years to reach her mission-from-God quota. Which is approximately 1 funeral a month. Which can’t possibly be right, can it? I mean, I know she ran off for a bit, but she wasn’t haunted by the dead little brother for, like, a year, was she? (She tells her uncle she’ll stay “until the Fall,” so…I assumed she meant a not-too-distant upcoming Fall.) To say nothing of how long she had to fool her father! I mean, maybe I didn’t catch the way the timeline worked out (I told you the first episode left me a little confused), but when we got to the guy waking from his coma, my brain suddenly took stock of everything and had questions. 
 
27. Can you believe that Main Girl’s ex-boyfriend was so much of a dick that he was content to ruin his friend’s wedding just because she and the dude he hired to break up with her because he couldn’t be bothered to do it himself were now dating? 
 
27A. “This is all about how the girl he’s marrying has presented herself above her station so that the marriage will be less controversial!” Yeah, okay, whatever. Social conventions or not, you’re still a dick. 
 
28. I’m also a little confused about Main Guy’s reaction to his little brother being killed by a drunk driver being to, y’know, get drunk, but I realize there’s a very clear difference between the two things. I just always think this sort of thing is odd. 
 
29. I was not a fan of how the show recontextualized the death of the little brother so many times. I think it’s fine that they recontextualized it, but…I mean, after the fourth time, I started rolling my eyes. 
 
29A. Similarly, I was not a fan of how essentially, past a certain point, the only people who were dying were people we knew: the friend’s grandmother, the boss’s ex-girlfriend’s kid, the little girl and her mother, the ex-girlfriend’s mother, the dad. It got to the point where I started to wonder—in frustration rather than seriousness—if Main Girl was an omen of death, since everyone she ran into seemed to be an episode or two away from dying horribly. 
 
29B. And I mention both of these things at this point to set up what I’m going to say next, because, though these are independent issues, their persistence throughout the story—whether taken separately or in combination—undercuts a significant turn in the storytelling. 
 
30. So, recontextualizing was especially a problem for me when it came to Cop Guy, who starts out as this fun little side character whose easygoing “I’m from the country” veneer (much as it was actually his sincere personality) hid a much more perceptive and considered mind than you’d think he’d have at a glance but then ends up being the selfish monster he was desperate to fight against (i.e. his drunkard father) when he went into the police academy. His whole arc is quite the rug-pull…and I think it would have been a much more effective one if A) we hadn’t had an entire show of everything being a rug-pull (thus making it less special, when this particular one came around), and B) if the recontextualization of Cop Guy’s role had been paced better. I mean, first we see that he was there, seemingly as the cop who found the accident (“Oh, what a terrible thing for a rookie to come across! He must be so shocked!”)…then we see that he stopped the van from rolling over the kid but at the cost of accidentally nearly killing the driver and putting him into a coma (“Oh man…the guilt he must feel!”)…then we see that it was his brother (“Oh, what a terrible burden that isn’t his but he surely carries with him!”)…then we see that he was the driver all along and had framed his brother and, like, maybe was hoping he would have died at the scene so his secret would be kept (maybe?)…and then it turns out he’s not feeling guilty about any of it and is solely concerned with not being found out—to the point of smiling like a gloating psychopath at his brother’s funeral. Not smiling in relief but as if his hard work and patience had finally paid off. That’s…A LOT. And it’s not even the main plot! But also sort of is. But also really, really isn’t. Which is itself a problem, because it sucks up so much of the oxygen in the room—which is already being split too heavily between Main Girl’s conversations with the dead and Main Guy’s struggles to pull himself together.
 
31. As another wrinkle to all this, we have the end reveal that the whole point was that, yes, Main Girl was connected to all the people who died (or whose loved ones died) because they all contributed in some way to ensuring that she was born after her mother was caught in that fire. Now, in isolation, I really, really like this. I love the idea that her ability (and its limit) is God’s way of giving her the chance to say thank you, in one fashion or another, to the people who helped bring her into the world. The problem I have with it is that the whole mystery of why she’s able to talk to the dead is buried so far behind the rest of the story, and the lack of focus on the why of it makes the whole “small world” aspect of the story seem silly or lazy instead of integral. But, with her priest uncle letting the audience know what was happening in the waning moments of the finale, this is, by virtue of how insignificant the question has been to this point, ultimately an afterthought—even as it is presented as the biggest reveal of all. 
 
31A. …though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just about that, given I don’t think the mother-daughter murder-suicide was directly connected to that event, nor Cop Guy’s brother, nor the murdered pregnant woman. (Though they were all still connected to our leads and/or bringing them together.) But, even so, I like the concept as the explanation for it, and I still wish the story had been about solving the mystery of why it was happening. 
 
32. On the other hand, I thought the subversion with the dead cabbie—that is, with Main Guy turning out to not be his son—was really good. It would have been too twee if he had been the son.
 
33. And on the other other hand…Main Girl’s dad. I mean, it’s kinda bull**** that he had to die as the final “heartstrings!” act of the show. But, beyond that, the death itself was so…eye roll-inducing, no? I mean, it’s pretty much his last day, and he’s standing near a struggling pregnant woman who’s under a wobbly crane on a windy day. “Gosh, I wonder what’s going to happen in this scene?” I said with a theatrical sigh.
 
33A. …which is not to say it wasn’t gut-wrenching watching Main Girl try to leave with him, when he finally went off to the afterlife. It was. But just because I’m a big softie, these days, doesn’t mean getting to that moment wasn’t silly. 
 
34. Actually, jumping back to the Cop Guy fiasco: much like with the “small world” issue with all of the people who died over the course of the show, the Cop Guy reveals would probably have been helped by there being a consistent focus on Main Guy trying to figure out something about the incident that killed his little brother rather than everyone fully accepting that it was the dude in the coma. 
 
35. That the members of the church referred to each other by baptismal names (rather than their given names) surprised me, but it also made the “My baptismal name is Gabriel” line from Surley Lawyer Guy in Extraordinary Attorney make a lot more sense. 
 
35A. Oh, fun fact: the priest at the Christmas mass I went to was from Korea. He seemed very nice. I got lost about halfway through his homily, but he seemed very nice. 
 
36. I still can’t believe they murdered a pregnant woman. Gosh, that’s dark.
 
37. I also can’t believe they took such a hardline stance against suicide. Not because I have a strong feeling in either direction about whether or not it’s an unforgivable sin—and not even because the Catholic Church’s stance on suicide is…as slippery as it is straightforward (which I mention because the priest is the one who addresses it). No, I was surprised because there was no structural need to speculate about the mother’s suicide and what it may or may not mean in the eyes of God when she—regardless of how she died—was already guilty of murder, which is the plot-significant aspect to get across with this incident: that those who have taken another’s life forfeit being able to talk to Main Girl before they move on to the afterlife. It just felt like an extraneous point to add, from a writing perspective, is all. 
 
37A. That said, the restriction of “killing” is awfully vague. Like, what counts as killing? Is this just the subtitles too-casually using killing and murdering interchangeably? It launched a whole philosophical discussion with my sister, when I got to this point in the show, which is why I bring it up. I know it’s a distinction made just to that Main Girl can figure out that Cop Guy’s brother didn’t kill Main Guy’s little brother, but…still would have liked some clarification, there. 
 
38. Okay, jumping back to the Cop Guy fiasco just the one more time, because I just thought of this: the cops who investigated the little brother’s death said that the memory card in the van’s dashcam had been stolen prior to the accident—and that there was a police report to that effect on file. Now, we see Cop Guy take the memory card out of the dashcam on the night of the accident, so it wouldn’t have been reported stolen before that, right? So, is there a detail about this that I’m not understanding (such as whether Cop Guy forged an earlier report or if the cop who was investigating was referring to the report for the little brother’s death stating that Cop Guy said the memory card was stolen), or is this a writing mistake? 
 
39. And, um…is it weird to think the mourning dress the ladies wear is kinda beautiful? I’m not, like, sitting here fanning myself over it or anything gross like that, I just think it’s a nice dress. And it seems to look nice on everyone. 
 
And…yeah, okay, I think we can end it there. 
 
Probably as much to like as to not like about this series, all in all. But I liked the romance plot, which you know makes just about anything worth watching, for me. Plus, it had Excessive English Girl. Which is a heck of a card to play, with me, so…how dissatisfied could I really be, right?
 
Also, it took a little longer to finish this letter than it should have, so I’m actually rounding it out on the other side of New Year’s. So…Happy New Year, Erin! I hope you have the best time in 2023—and that it is only the first in many, many, many consecutively better years. (Whatever that may mean for you.)
 
Fun fact: 23 is my favorite number. So…maybe this really will turn out to be an awesome year all-around! Y’know, and not a chance for cosmic levels of irony! 
 
No, don’t worry, it’s gonna be great. I mean, you and I are going to keep doing this whole K-drama buddy thing, so it’s already guaranteed to be a ton of fun!
 
…wait, why are you pouting?
 
—Daryl
 
 
 
 
 
P.S. – See? I told you I had photos to prove it!

    ^May I Help You?                              ^Glitch