Letter #68: That Winter, the Wind Blows

Good morning, Erin. And welcome to Phase III. (Can you believe it?)

So, the other day, I drove a work-friend to the office and wanted to seem very cool, so I just casually had Phoebe Bridger playing in the car. 

“Oh,” she said, “I know Phoebe Bridger. My daughter listens to her.”

We also listened to BTS and a couple of tracks I got from K-dramas on the way home. I’m sure you’re very proud of me. 

…of course, I also know you’re probably clucking your tongue that this isn’t a segue into marking the start of Phase III with my thoughts on literally any of the many, many BTS-focused assignments you’ve given me, so…“proud” is perhaps a relative term. (Those letters are coming, seonbae, I promise.)

Which is not to say that Phase III isn’t also going to feature many a diversion into the wide and wondrous world of the Bangtan Boys and undoubtedly a dating show or two (like maybe Heart Signal 4 or something I dunno who’s to say)—but we both know neither those is going to be the main theme for the next several months. No, for the foreseeable future, we’re going to do a little time travel.

…which is to say, we’re not doing any time travel stories (to your great relief) but, rather, going back into the annals of K-drama history and watching some older stuff. From far-flung, bygone eras. Such as 2013. 

So…are you ready for some That Winter, the Wind Blows? I bet you are. Of course you are. You’re definitely very, very ready for that and not at all wondering why this is not a letter about your recommendation, It’s Okay, That’s Love, which is 100% exactly the kind of show that qualifies for my Phase III plans and, importantly, would avoid my repeated lamentation that I should just let you make all my decisions for me. So very ready are you. 

And, as always for shows I don’t think you’ve seen, I will avoid spoilers as much as I possibly can. (Again, to your great relief. I’m sure.)

1. I think we’re actually going to start with the people I recognized, which isn’t a very long list, but it is a surprising list, considering this show is from 10 years ago:

• Gloria from The Glory (of course) as the blind girl, our female lead

• the older sister from True Beauty as the blind girl’s best friend

• the rhythmic gymnastics roommate from Weightlifting Fairy as the male lead’s dead girlfriend

2. This show was often just a straight-up soap opera, and I loved that about it. For the record. 

2A. No, seriously, I want to give you the setup for this series: our male protagonist’s crazy girlfriend is going on a long business trip overseas, so, to ensure that he doesn’t galavant off with some other girl, she frames him for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a businessman/gangster so that he’ll be thrown in prison for the duration of her trip. When he gets out, the businessman/gangster puts a hit out on him, unless he can come up with the money he is supposed to have stolen. At the same time, a lawyer comes looking for the male lead’s friend who A) was secretly the exiled heir to a major conglomerate, B) has the exact same name he does, and C) died a year ago without anyone associated with the conglomerate knowing. So, the male lead pretends to be the dead friend so that he can embezzle enough money to pay off the businessman/gangster for the money his crazy girlfriend framed him for stealing. This is the first 20 minutes of the show. It’s incredible. 

2C. Also, his sister is blind and his rival for taking over the conglomerate. So, he has to dupe her into believing he is her long-lost brother she’s been desperate to see for the last 20 years. But also she’s played by Gloria, so he instantly falls in love with her. Because obviously. 

3. The male lead is called Oh Soo, and I quickly decided to refer to him as Faux-Soo, because he is a faker and because it rhymes with his name. It’s not at all an impressive joke, but I am still tickled by this.

4. I want to jump back to Gloria for a moment, specifically to talk about how she looks—which, yes, she is gorgeous, here (being 10 years younger than she is in The Glory, this is probably not a surprise to you), but that’s not what I want to talk about. I wanted to mention that I was struck by how much she reminded me of Princess My Name—which I found so interesting since the two of them teased how they were going to be in a new series together by doing this photo where they appeared to be each other’s reflection. (Which is a terrible way to describe the picture. I’m sorry. It’s neat, if you look it up.) Like, is their similar appearance a deliberate angle in the series, or is it just coincidence that they cast two ladies who are pretty in the same way? 

4A. Though, as I’ve said before, Princess My Name doesn’t really do it for me, and neither does Gloria. 

4B. …that said: much like with Princes My Name in Soundtrack #1, Gloria’s allowed to smile, in this series, and it ain’t a bad thing. 

4C. And—holy smokes! That series I mentioned that Gloria and Princess My Name are going to be in? They’ve both left the project! As has the director! And this happened, like, five days ago! Man, talk about timing, huh?

5. We actually see the death of the friend who is the exiled conglomerate heir, and it’s a really well-shot scene. The rest of the series is pretty mundane, in terms of cinematography, but that scene was noteworthy, I thought. 

6. I feel bad for the guy playing Faux-Soo, because he’s often given scenes that don’t make much emotional sense to play, and so he just sort of wings it. 

7. I feel worse for his idiot best friend, though, because he’s often written to be so unrealistically stupid that only an incredible actor would be able to pull off his dialogue. (And this guy was not much of an actor. In this, anyway.)

8. The whole time I watched this series, I kept thinking about it through the lens of your final essay for that disability class you took. Or, like, how you might have analyzed it had you chosen this for your final essay instead of Extraordinary Attorney Woo. I kept going back and forth between thinking it might have had a lot to chew on and nothing much, because the blind girl’s blindness isn’t really as much a part of the story as it seems. I mean, it’s integral to the story and at no point is it not important, but it’s also not treated as particularly special, beyond the few moments when it’s played up for typical melodrama reasons. So, it’s not presented with much concern for “grounded realism,” but it’s also not treated as fantastical. The story just doesn’t rely much on the specifics of being blind as much as it does on the fact of her being blind. At least, that’s how I saw it. 

8A. That said, there is one instance where a character marvels at Gloria’s ability to move around the home she’s lived in for 30 years as though she can see, and he all but accuses her of witchcraft because of it. Which, given that the character in question is an idiot, I can’t say for certain is a sign of broader society’s ignorance when it could just as easily be him being an absolute dunderhead.

8B. Oh, but her fiance’s parents don’t like that she’s blind. So, there we go; that’s some prejudice for ya. The gorgeous, insanely wealthy girl is a no-go because she’s blind. Makes total sense. 

9. One of the best parts of the show was how every week would put Faux-Soo in some kind of seemingly impossible situation he’ll never get out of. I mean, it’s usually just him trying not to get revealed as a conman pretending to be his dead friend, but every possible way you think they’d catch him in this lie is brought up and brought up immediately, so he’s constantly in danger. And you have no idea how he’s going to get out of it this time! But he does. Unless he doesn’t. Who knows? You’ll have to watch the show to find out.

10. An odd note is that the show works equally as hard to get Gloria in a pair of wet tights every episode. And it doesn’t always succeed. But it succeeds a lot more than you’d think it would. 

11. Oh—okay, this is going back a bit, but I lied about the cinematography only being noteworthy in that one scene where we see the friend/exiled heir die: the scene where we watch Faux-Soo’s girlfriend die is also really well done. They do a really obvious camera trick that you’d think wouldn’t work at all because it’s such an obvious trick, but…dammit, it works way better than it has any right to. 

12. To the show’s credit, it doesn’t ignore the confusing/complicated emotions at play, here, between Gloria and her (supposed) brother, with the sibling desire to reconnect having to overcome their 20-year absence from each other—which means their last connection was as children, and so her attempts to show sisterly love pull her childhood affections for her brother into her newfound adult relationship with him and, as such, turn the youthful yearning for connection into a grown-up yearning for intimacy. Which is not what you’re generally looking for as siblings. In the same way that the show doesn’t go too far into the blindness stuff, it also steers clear of going too far into the “do I want to bang my brother?” subplot, but I like that it doesn’t act like she wouldn’t wonder why Faux-Soo—who is well aware that he is not her brother—is always trying to sniff her hair…and why that doesn’t seem to bother her. 

13. Relatedly: Gloria is adorably shocked to hear that her 30-year-old brother has had sex. Shocked and a little impressed. Like when a group of teenage girls finds out someone in their friend circle is the first of them to kiss a boy. She doesn’t ask for details, I don’t think, but…it was as weird a moment as it was cute. 

14. Faux-Soo’s idiot friend’s sister is like a knockoff Kim Se-jeong, and it made me laugh every time she showed up on screen. 

15. Because she is blind, Gloria doesn’t know what she looks like, so she asks Faux-Soo if she’s pretty. He doesn’t answer her right away, and she gets a little worried that he thinks she’s not and asks if she’s actually unattractive (and everyone’s been lying to her in an attempt to curry favor ‘cus she’s incredibly rich). And the subtitles for this moment are ludicrous: “Am I busted?” she asks, using slang she’d NEVER have cause to know, let alone use seriously. I can’t imagine she was using an equivalently topical (for 2013) Korean slang term that the subtitler thought “busted” was a good translation. 

16. Speaking of subtitles: you bet your bottom dollar that they did the thing where they reprise part of the previous end scene to start the next episode, and the dialogue is translated differently for both scenes. 

16A. There’s also an issue where someone says something about a character whose name is subtitled as “Soo-min” and “Su-min” within seconds of each other. So…

17. Did you know that blind soccer is a thing? Like, it’s a real, full-fledged, organized sport for blind people? I had no idea. They show it a couple of times in this series, and I had to look it up because I couldn’t believe it was real. Because it immediately made me think of a gag on the (old) X-Files spinoff series The Lone Gunmen, where a wealthy, good-hearted, but ultimately not very bright man tried to set up football for the blind. Like, American, gridiron football. Which was a disaster, for obvious reasons. But this blind soccer thing? Much less ridiculous. And it teaches trust and teamwork. Well, according to this show, at least. 

18. I mentioned in the quick synopsis for the show’s setup that Faux-Soo’s girlfriend is crazy—and she really is—but also in his orbit is his dead girlfriend’s little sister, Hee-sun, who is also a bit of a lunatic. She’s angry, jealous, possessive, modestly violent—and, yes, she’s my pick for #BestGirl. Because I have a problem. But also because she’s loyal, spunky, ultimately kind, and…okay, fine, I also think she’s quite attractive, sue me.

18A. “Wait,” I hear you say. “More attractive than young Gloria and the sister from True Beauty, who I’ve had to hear you gush over multiple times already?” Well…yes. I mean, objectively, she isn’t anywhere as pretty as either of those two—but you know I’m indifferent to Gloria, and they gave the sister from True Beauty an unflattering-enough haircut that it actually counted against her. Regardless, though, Hee-sun just had that certain something, y’know? That thing that elicits the “I dunno, I just do” explanation from you. Which is hard to beat. 

19. They cover up the Hyundai logos, here, and it’s really annoying. But then we get to, like, Episode 11, and then suddenly all the logos are uncovered. Which may or may not be symbolism. 

20. At one point, Faux-Soo and Gloria visit…someplace that has a bunch of street performers, and they are dancing to 1990s megahit “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).” For reasons we can only speculate. (“Hey, y’know what’ll really get everyone into our routine? A ubiquitous track from 20 years ago!”  “Good idea, Steven! Man, I’m so glad I gave up on mime school for this!”)

21. I was not a fan of the theme song to this series. But the 30-second lead-in to the full song? Oh, yeah. Gimme that all day long. It sounded like a demo version of the theme to My Liberation Notes. Which (as I’m sure you totally recall) I frikkin’ loved. 

22. For a blind girl, Gloria sure likes to have the lights on in every room she goes into. 

23. Similarly: because it’s…easier than keeping a braille journal, Gloria makes occasional video diaries (like, on the little cassettes, not digital files) that she will sometimes listen to. Faux-Soo knows this, so, preparing for the day when he has to tell Gloria the truth about everything, he records a video of himself explaining the backstory of his charade for her to play back after everything (he assumes) explodes in his face. Yes, it’s video diaries and not audio logs because it looks more dynamic on TV—but, more to the point, a key part of Faux-Soo’s message to Gloria hinges on SHOWING HER A PICTURE OF HER REAL BROTHER. He literally does it as if she can f***ing see it. 

24. I know this probably isn’t that much of a thing because blind people are almost certainly 100% as used to this as people who can see, but soooooooo much of what everyone on this show says to Gloria is phrased in ways that assume she can literally see. “You’ll have to see what happens” is a good one. But I think my favorite is the grammatically hilarious “I’m glad you don’t believe him blindly” (as if she has a choice). 

25. At one point, the show has Faux-Soo find a little snowman that Gloria has made and a neatly-written message to him in the snow next to it. And I call bull**** on one of those items.

26. Similarly: this show looooves a good ol’ fashioned glass of water tossed in someone’s face—and I love that it loves this. But it also pulls this in one scene in such a way that it hopes I’d forget that the character who does the tossing was actually holding a newly-poured cup of tea, rather than a cool glass of water. Which I did not. (Nice try, show, but, as Erin will confirm, you’re dealing with the world’s greatest detective, here.)

27. There are two separate instances where someone rushes into a house because of an emergency, and, in one of those instances, someone on the production side managed to argue that it would not make sense for the character to stop and switch over to house slippers. But only in one of the two scenes. In the other one? Totally stopped to adhere to social niceties. 

28. Believe it or not, but the show actually makes the title of the series make sense. And it’s pretty good.

29. Pretty much everyone on this show has a one-size-fits-all facial expression he or she puts on whenever there’s a silent reaction shot, and it never seems appropriate to any of the situations the look is used for. It’s kinda great. 

30. Just to show that I am an equal-opportunity nitpicker: Faux-Soo looks silly when he runs. 

31. One of the downsides to this show is its overall pacing. It’s mostly fine, but it ends up both speeding through and also dragging its heels towards the end, which makes me think earlier parts of the show could have been trimmed a bit so the drama at the end could play out more naturally. It’s not awful, but the last few episodes do feel like a bit of a slog. 

31A. …to say nothing of how they choose to wrap things up—but that’s something else entirely that I’m not going to get into. 

32. One of the biggest upsides to this show is the complex nature of all the character relationships. None of them is simple or straightforward. Each is realistically complex—in some instances complicated—and most are pretty much outright contradictory, with almost any pair in question having as good a reason to hate each other as love each other. It’s really good stuff.

33. …that the show doesn’t spend nearly enough time on, pretty much across the board, with the relationship between Gloria and her step-mother easily being the most egregious and ultimately nonsensical of the bunch. Like, it might be story-breaking, at the end of the day, and it’s a big black eye for the show, in my opinion. It doesn’t ruin it, but it doesn’t help with the already somewhat inglorious conclusion. 

34. Oh, gosh, I was supposed to tell you about the team building retreat I went on as a college freshman. It has to do with blind people, so it’s a relevant tangent (promise), but…I’ve already gone on for way too long about this show, so maybe I’ll save that one for a rainy day. 

35. And can I just…who is the kid with the basketball?! Why is he in this?! Why was he blissfully ignorant of literally anything that was happening in the scenes he was in?! 

…is all I have to say about that. 

This was a pretty good time, honestly, even with the last couple of episodes taking a bit of a hit as the story stumbled into its ending. And it was nice to see Gloria have to do a little bit more than deadpan her way through scenes.

I don’t know that I’d recommend it to you, exactly, but I wouldn’t dissuade you if you were interested. 

Anyway.

I hope the end of the year has wrapped up well for you and that appropriate celebrations have or soon will be had. And that your much-anticipated trip is everything you hope it will be, if I don’t talk to you before then. I hope to see pictures. And I’m not saying you have to track down IU to make her look into your camera and wink at me, but if you have the chance…I’m just saying, I gave you those notecards, the other day. And I didn’t even ask why you needed them.

So.

—Daryl