Letter #84: Pink Lie

Good morning, Erin.

First off—happy half-birthday!

Second…I feel like you deserve more celebration that just this letter, but…alas, what is there to be done? My papier mache Hotel Del Luna won’t fit cleanly in the box I set aside to mail it in. And so we are left with this.  

So, on Pink Lie, the participants come into the series deliberately lying about one aspect of their backgrounds or histories that is or can be a serious roadblock (or, I guess, dealbreaker) for dating. 

My lie, for the purposes of this letter, is that I don’t spend my evenings scrolling through dance covers for Le Sserafim’s “Eve, Psyche, & the Bluebeard’s Wife.”

…anyway—wanna hear about this latest dating show I watched?

1. I’m gonna be straight with you, Erin: this show is terrible. It didn’t have to be, but this cast is just full of jerks, red flags, and ego maniacs. They have very, very little chemistry—as a group—or the show was so content to focus on the more belabored “drama” aspects of the story that all the charming stuff got deliberately edited out so the edge could never be taken off anything. Absolute woof of a time. Like, it’s worse and full of more toxic ***holes than Change Days. 

1A. Now, in practical terms, this means I’m going to spoil stuff all over the place, but, at the same time, I’m not going to get into many details (I don’t think) about aspects of the plot. Because literally who cares. I was checked out on most of this show, and I know you would be, as well. 

1B. The theme song is rad, though: “The Moon” by INNI. So it has that going for it.

2. I didn’t bother learning anyone’s name. Because I just didn’t care to. Well, okay—admittedly, this was originally prompted by the cast being given fake names for their time in the house (lest someone be able to maybe google them and discover their secrets), so as soon as I heard the names were fake, I lost interest in paying attention to them. (That I also didn’t care about the cast turned out to be a happy accident.) Buuuuuuuuut…this did mean that I had to immediately come up with nicknames for them. And, as a fun bonus, because I knew that I couldn’t necessarily trust the information they gave each other, I couldn’t base the nicknames on anything like their jobs or hometowns or whatever else they shared about themselves. Which means my nicknames were mostly given, if not quite arbitrarily, then based on my whims as much as some kind of initial impression or representative detail—which, of course, I will share now:

• Sweatervest (because he wore a gaudy sweatervest on the first day)

• Dorkapotamus (because he was clearly a dork)

• Stickybuns (because she…looked…sweet? Fine, it’s ‘cus I thought it sounded funny)

• My Sweet Angel (because I loved her)

• Mr. Handsome (because that’s clearly how he saw himself)

• Finger Guns (because he seemed like the type to give finger guns)

• The “Gal” (because she seemed like a pre-hipster Brooklynite) 

• Flopsy (she…well, wait for it…)

• Mopsy (and she…again, wait for it…)

• Cottontail (because he and the two ladies were the three latecomers, and I wanted a trio name)

3. My Sweet Angel is actually the hook for the show, with her “this is my secret” video being the lead-in for the whole show—specifically because her secret is the most enticing: she’s a former adult film star. Her video is very heartfelt, and she is incredibly sympathetic. She’s just so vulnerable with the whole thing, which is really what pulls you in even more than the “scandal” of her secret: she’s absolutely terrified to date anyone for fear that he or someone he knows will recognize her from one of her naughty movies. And then she’ll be ridiculed and abandoned. Again. If your heart isn’t breaking by the end of that opening segment…well, then I suggest you turn off the show, because it ain’t gettin’ better than that. 

3A. I’m not kidding when I said that I fell in love with her, either. Like, yes, I thought she was attractive, but that’s not what got me (...I mean, it helped, of course, but…). It was that she was so obviously full of love, that she wanted to be able to give that love to someone who would accept it and, of course, show her that she was worth loving. It activated all the lights in my brain. She had me from the moment she started speaking—and I didn’t care one whit about her past. All I saw was the girl in front of me, and her sincerity, and her pain. The rest was details. I’d have been trailing after her like a puppy the whole time (because she’s my kind of cute), regardless, but finding out her secret probably would have driven me to propose to her or something stupid like that. That’s how much it moved me. 

3B. …that said, I spent the better part of a long weekend trying to figure out exactly what she meant by “adult film star.” And it was very hard to find out. But, being the world’s greatest detective, I was able to finally track down some of her movies and can confirm, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she looks fantastic naked was in Cinemax-style softcore movies. So, we’re talking low-budget, often (but not always) raunch-comedy movies with full-length plots and acting and all the normal things that movies have—it’s just that her sex scenes were a little longer than in most regular movies. 

3C. THAT SAID…I’ve seen tons of well respected actresses do exactly what she was doing (in scenes that lasted almost as long) in “artsy” or “serious” movies and no one thinks the worst of them, so…I call bull**** on the whole thing. I mean, literally, I’ve seen Kim Go-eun, Kim Tae-ri, and EL each do extensive sex scenes that probably didn’t need to be as detailed or lengthy, and yet…I don’t see society shunning them.

3D. …which is not to say that she doesn’t have qualities apart from this “dealbreaker” secret that might otherwise nix her chances of a guy liking her. I mean, she is clingy, desperate, and sort of cloying in her attention-giving, coming across like that girl in college who didn’t have any friends in high school and wasn’t used to when to share her thoughts and when to keep them to herself. 

3E. None of which would have deterred me. For the record. 

3F. Like, one of the boys buys her flowers as a perfunctory gesture on her birthday, and she just WILL NOT shut up about it. Like, I wondered if she’d ever actually been in a real relationship, or if she was just that smitten with the guy that she’d have bigged up literally anything he’d said or done. But, either way, she’s kind of a mess. (Which she at one point explicitly jokes about. So…she knows how she is.) 

3G. Though, again, not deterred. 

3H. Y’know, I’ve actually checked my notes, and she literally cries in her first post-date interview because walking around the downtown area (and then having an embarrassing trip to the batting cage) with a boy who’s being nice to her reminded her of all the normal fun she’s been missing out on for years and years and years. So, yeah, she may never have been on a real date. 

3I. And, in Episode 9, when the cast has a fancy dinner party and everyone’s taking pictures of the place settings and food, she does it in the most awkward fashion imaginable, again feeling like someone who is imitating what she sees popular people do. Which hurts my heart. And makes me love her more. 

3J. …all that being said: don’t ever doubt that So-e’s still my girl.

4. Over the course of the show, individual members of the house are given the chance to sneak off to a hidden room to learn the secret of someone of their choosing. Not everyone goes, and not every secret is revealed to the audience prior to the finale. But you can’t talk about the revelation of the secrets without first mentioning that these individual secret reveals take place in a creepy murder basement. I mean, it’s been done up so that it looks like you’re standing in the middle of a disco ball looking down at a wishing well, but…a creepy murder basement by any other name and all that. 

5. I had a list of 10 possible secrets I guessed ahead of time. And only three of them were right. 

6. …which is one of the major issues with the show: the secrets were absolutely not of equal weight. So, on one hand, you have My Sweet Angel and her anxiety-inducing former life, and on the other you have someone whose secret is that she’s really pretty. Like…what the f***, show. 

6A. Okay, that’s a little disingenuous, but it’s not really that far off the mark, even so. Specifically, the issue is that everyone’s secret is something that could easily be a problem for someone they might date to handle. The girl with the “I’m pretty” secret isn’t strictly saying that her secret is that she’s just too pretty, but that’s what it boils down to: she used to be an idol and is currently a freelance model—meaning she doesn’t have a set schedule and can frequently cancel dates or other big plans at the last minute. Certainly annoying…but where does that scale next to “traumatized by and prone to socially-crippling anxiety over being coerced into porn” on the big ol’ secret-o-meter? I mean, both can certainly turn off your significant other, but…come on. 

6B. Other examples of secrets: “I’m a weather girl,” “I don’t have a college degree,” and “my extraordinarily wealthy mother gives me about $15,000 (USD) a month to spend however I like.”

6C. So, the whole length of the show, My Sweet Angel is fighting off anxiety attacks at the thought that her secret will one day be revealed, and then comes the day when they’re all surprised with the “sit down so we can play all your ‘this is my secret’ videos in front of everyone” message. (She literally runs off in tears over this announcement, by the way.) And they start going through the secrets one by one—and we all know hers is going to be last. So imagine how she felt with each progressive one: “My secret is that I’m taking care of my downtrodden parents.” “My secret is that I work on a farm.” “My secret is that I’m slightly older than I said I was.” She’s spent the entire time terrified by how everyone will react to her secret…and then she has to sit through nine other secrets that are banal as f*** until it’s finally her turn. And it goes almost exactly as badly as she feared: rather than laughing supportively or offering encouraging affirmations as they did for all the other secrets, hers is met with stone-faced silence. No one reacts. It was horrible to watch. I felt so bad. 

7. …but enough about My Sweet Angel (as if there’s ever enough)—let’s talk about how none of the boys liked My Sweet Angel at all and how that immediately disqualifies them from being allowed to live. 

8. Seriously, though, three of the five guys are MASSIVE red flags: one is a full-on gaslighter, one is far too thin-skinned (when he isn’t being the gentlest soul), and one is…hmm…I think the medical term is a bag of dicks.

8A. No, seriously, I have hated people on these dating shows I’ve watched, but I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone anywhere near as much as I hated this guy. He’s the absolute worst. Like, he’s a total dickbag, but he’s also such a spineless little pansy that he can’t even commit to his dickbag decisions once he’s made them. You push back even a little—especially if you’re a girl—and he crumbles like a scolded little mama’s boy. 

9. Probably the only really fun “typical dating show” moment came after the first text-who-you-like round of the show, wherein we got a classic case of everyone likes someone who likes someone else: Dorkapotamus likes My Sweet Angel; My Sweet Angel likes Mr. Handsome; Mr. Handsome likes Stickybuns; Stickybuns likes Sweatervest; Sweatervest likes The “Gal;” and The “Gal” likes Finger Guns. (I think they hid who Finger Guns liked, at that point.) So…straight, unrequited line.

10. Apropos of nothing: After Signal is still rad as f***. And you should watch it. (Though, of course, for it to be worthwhile, you’d have to watch Heart Signal 4 first. Sooooooo…)

11. Oh! One of the hosts of Pink Lie is the chef who Ha-ri is initially in love with in Business Proposal. So, that’s fun.

12. Stickybuns has a brief geek-out about loving the band Deep Purple. I…don’t have any idea why she even knows who Deep Purple is, let alone loves them.

13. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail are eventually revealed to only be latecomers to the folks we’ve been following since episode one: as it turns out, those three had been living in another murder basement in the house watching the cast via 24-hour camera feeds since the moment they arrived. It doesn’t really…do anything to the dynamics of the game, but it sure freaked everyone out. Which was fun for a few minutes. 

14. One of the initial seven participants gets left behind on the second day as the others pair up and go on dates, spending his alone time sleeping, staring out the window, and watching the movie Yaksha on his phone. I’ve seen Yaksha! So I knew what he was talking about!

15. When Flopsy and Mopsy arrive, they are immediately able to choose guys to go on dates with. Mopsy ends up with Sweatervest—which is only important because they discuss their “ideal types” by revealing actors they think are hot. Sweatervest picks…um, the grown-up version of the protagonist in 20th Century Girl. (Which, uh, sure. I guess.) And Mopsy picks…yeah, that’s right, f***ing Nam Do-san. Will I ever be rid of this ma—WHAT DO YOU MEAN HIS BIRTHDAY IS THE DAY BEFORE MINE?! For heaven’s sake—of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be.

16. It is ridiculous how pretty Stickybuns is, by the way. 

17. I quite enjoyed the hosts of the show, but the older guy (from Super Junior) had the best reactions to things. Including being like me and needing to walk away from the TV to hide behind the couch for a little bit to regain his composure. 

18. We eventually find out that Finger Guns and Dorkapotamus were besties the whole time and totally had this incredible admiration and appreciation for each other that WE NEVER FRIKKIN’ SAW. 

19. On the other hand, the truly difficult to understand but apparently very, very sincere friendship between My Sweet Angel and Stickybuns that was as endearing as it was weird. We’d get it every now and then, but I wish it had been a much bigger focus of the show. 

20. Let it be known that I am secure enough in my masculinity to admit that Cottontail was f***ing gorgeous. Holy smokes, that dude was just…wow. Good for him.

21. In a not-at-all scripted turn of events, Stickybuns ends up wandering into rooms on THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS and overhearing a key conversation between a boy she’s interested in discussing his feelings about her very candidly to another dude. I mean, maybe it was totally spontaneous all three times, but it sure was helpful to telling a story over the course of the series, I have to say. 

22. The cast members’ fake names were apparently clues about their secrets. But I don’t know Korean, so I couldn’t pick up on any of the puns/pun-like clues in their names. But golly gee did the hosts try to unravel that mystery. 

23. I just want to repeat that Mr. Handsome is the absolute goddamn f***ing worst. Because I wrote it a million times in my notes, so I feel like the emphasis is warranted. 

24. One of the handful of genuinely amusing moments on the show was My Sweet Angel intellectually outmaneuvering someone who tried to reject her. The guy does it in such an idiotic, self-absorbed fashion that she just takes his argument apart at the seams and gets him to apologize for even considering it. Hilarious stuff. 

25. At one point, the host from Business Proposal was basically wearing the glittery tweed outfit the younger sister in See You in My 19th Life was wearing. And I don’t know why. 

26. Ha! About halfway through my notes, I was so annoyed with the show that I wrote out that I was no longer burned out on any of the Heart Signal 4 contestants and wanted desperately to go back. (And then I started After Signal, and it was like a wish come true!) Man, I was mad at Pink Lie, let me tell you.

27. Stickybuns, being far-and-away the prettiest (and perhaps most flirty-responsive) of the girls, got a lot of attention. Unfortunately, it was mostly from the walking red flags of the show. (That is, unfortunately by my reckoning, not necessarily by hers.) This led to MULTIPLE instances of dudes deliberately trying to make her feel bad about herself. Which sucked big time…except that this also led to three absolutely stellar moments:

• Stickybuns countering one set of gaslighting tactics by being so high on herself that she couldn’t possibly conceive of having done any of the bad things the guy assured her she had done. 

• Dorkapotamus casually riding in like a total boss to use his pure left-brain thinking to reassure Stickybuns that all of the bad tidings brought against her by the red flag dudes didn’t have a single basis in reality nd that she shouldn’t feel bad because they’re morons. 

• More Stickybuns x My Sweet Angel bonding time as she vented about the guys being mean. 

27A. …which is not to say that Stickybuns was without her own set of absolutely crimson flags. “I think guys misjudge me based on my background,” she says in her video. And I’m like, “No, I think you’re just like that, and the guys are post facto rationalizing why that might be, is all.”

27B. To say nothing of her final choice. And her rationale for it. 

27C. And yet she was still my #2 girl. Which says as much about me as it does about the cast. 

28. The cast never talks about (or, at least, never seems to talk about) going to the creepy murder basement to learn someone’s secret, but pretty much all of them go. And when someone reveals that she knows one of the guys’ secret, everyone flips out and doesn’t once consider that this is because of her likely foray into the creepy murder basement. She literally jokes that she knows because they used to date, and the dumb as f*** red flag guys actually believe her because they can’t think of another way she could have known. 

29. That said, it turns out The “Gal” knew Cottontail’s secret the whole time (because she’d sort of met him before), so I guess it's not silly to think it doesn’t have to be because of the creepy murder basement. 

30. Okay, we’re going to wrap things up by talking about final decisions—though I don’t mean the decisions themselves (though a couple of them are great), but the way the show chooses to do the whole process of final decisions. Because this…

…is how we do final decisions: everyone in a dystopic concrete psych prison. 

30A. I mean, it’s a little on the nose, but…

30B. Anyway, the conceit is this: one at a time, someone will walk from his or her cell to the cell of the person he or she picks. A little spiel is given, and then the lights in the cell cut out. When the lights come back on, we see if the person who was picked is still there (“Congrats! You’re a couple!”) or has disappeared (“Sorry, bro, but she ain’t into you.”). It is wild.

30C. And convoluted. And, honestly, confusing as f***, because they don’t tell you how it’s supposed to work. We just see them in their cells, then the first person walks to a cell, the two of them talk—and then suddenly the lights go out. And when they come back up…they’re both still in there. And I’m like, “Um…did they record a production error? What was that?” But, no, they picked each other, so this was just how it was supposed to go. It was bizarre. It isn’t until the first rejection that the mechanic becomes clear—and it’s at that point that things get fun. Because that turns into a sort of repeat of the earlier everyone-you-like-likes-someone-else daisy chain: A likes B who rejects A to pick C who rejects B to pick D who etc etc etc and it is SOOOOOOOO satisfying to watch. Like, in at least one of these cases (and maybe even three), it made the whole rest of the journey to that point worthwhile. Totally turned my mood around, if not my opinion of the show.

30D. THAT SAID…it’s overly complicated, but not necessarily more ridiculous than the way the other shows I’ve watched have done their choosing sequences: Heart Signal’s phone calls is probably the worst, being clunky and silly; Transit Love’s “dropped off by your ex-” is better and more fitting, but it takes waaaaaaay too frikkin’ long; I think the Single’s Inferno stand-by-the-girl ending is pretty good, but it also means that the girl is picking from whichever options she gets rather than the pair having to match up like most of the other dates, which takes something away from the decision; and Change Days…actually, I thought that was probably the best one, particularly since it so firmly fit with the theme of the show—but since no one chose to switch partners, we didn’t really see how it would have worked out past the first stage of the endgame conversations. So, all in all, at least the Pink Lie ending has some theatrical flair to it. And I do appreciate a good flair. 

And that’s us closing the book on Pink Lie. Possibly forever. And ever and ever. 

The hosts ask us to come back for a second season, but…oof, I don’t think I would want to at all. Like, this show may have put me off Korean dating shows in general for a while.

Well, except Single’s Inferno 3 is probably out in a couple of months, so I’m obviously watching that. Oh, and a YouTube channel I really enjoy is supposedly going to start Nineteen to Twenty pretty soon, so I’ll probably give in and watch that. And, of course, I’m loving the pants off of After Signal, so it’s not like I’m going to abandon that. 

But aside from those…I’m probably done for a while. 

Wait—they confirmed filming for Transit Love 3?! Sweet! Can’t wait for th—

…ahem. 

Anyway. Behind Your Touch is next. So, you’d better have watched it. Because I so very much want to talk to you about it. 

Hope you’re enjoying the day. Or, at least, half-enjoying it. 

More soon.

—Daryl