Letter #103: Clean with Passion for Now

Good morning, Erin.

Having decided to refocus my efforts on going back to the shows I’ve let sit on the sideline for far too long, it seems my thoughts have also drifted over to a few of the myriad creative projects lingering in stasis in the back of my mind, looking over them with a pair of fresh eyes and wondering if any might be worth resurrecting. 


One of these is a novel/novella I’ve been kicking around since I was an undergrad, the details of which I will spare you the burden of having to listen to—but I bring this particular one up because my new way of looking at the story is to structure it like I was writing a K-drama: I made a list of my favorite cliches and tropes and melodrama conventions, and I thought about how many of them I could use to help tell the story. And, believe it or not, it helped me rearrange and reorganize a lot of what I’d been playing with over the years, to the point where I might actually be able to make an outline of a complete plotline. At long last. 


Crushingly, I have not yet figured out how to work a fake relationship into the mix (apart from there being an implied relationship I will eventually reveal not to be one), but you can bet I’m not going to rest until I can find a way to make it happen. 


Anyway, I thought you’d find it sort of vaguely interesting to know that even my old creative writing projects have been influenced by this whole thing we’ve got going on here. (The operative word being vaguely.)


Regardless, I’ve watched Clean with Passion for Now, completing my promise of a Kim Yoo-jung trilogy and staying true to my announced Phase IV designs through two whole letters. (What can I say? Ya boy’s the total package.)


AND…I’ve only got four pages of notes! Which, I mean, could make this a short letter, right? Right! 


…maybe!


1. I think we’re going to start with your absolute favorite segment, which is the list of folks I recognized: 

  • our lead girl from 20th Century Girl as O-sol, the female lead

  • the goofy town leader from The Good Bad Mother as O-sol’s father

  • Firefly Guy from Hotel Del Luna as O-sol’s younger brother

  • Gray Ghost from Goblin as a suitor (of sorts) for Dr. Tracksuit

  • the rich old man from 100 Days My Prince as the male lead’s grandfather 

  • the fencing coach from Twenty-Five, Twenty-One as the male lead’s mother

  • the little boy “servant” from Goblin as the young version of the male lead

  • Ji-ho’s mom from One Spring Night as the male lead’s former nanny


2. Why yes, I did start with this point so I could jump right into talking about how pretty Kim Yoo-jung is, Erin, how did you know???


2A. …not really.


2B. …except yes, very much really because KIM YOO-JUNG IS SO FRIKKIN’ PRETTY. Which, sure, is me being…well, me, but it’s also a point I want to make in light of my similar point for My Demon: for plot reasons, this show does everything in its power to make her look sloppy and unwashed, and it just doesn’t work. I mean, to its credit, the show does a good job at accentuating her less-gorgeous features and deemphasizing her gorgeous features, so she ends up only looking extraordinarily cute. But what it certainly does not do, is make her look generic. 


2C. Also—she’s really good, here, likely because she’s much more in her wheelhouse. (It’s a very different performance from her turn in Backstreet Rookie, but it’s on the same side of the fence.) She's adorable and charming, and she nails the quiet humor. Once again, when she’s on, she is on—so…what were you doing, My Demon?


3. …but since we’ve broached the subject of looks…the fencing coach from Twenty-Five, Twenty-One is a total babe in this show. Not to sound harsh, but her plastic surgery is still working to her benefit, here, where it was much more obvious and, therefore, a detriment to her in Twenty-Five, Twenty-One. 


4. Oh, gosh—in my fervor to get to how pretty Kim Yoo-jung is, I forgot to mention that our cast has two mini-reunions: O-sol’s brother and father were both in The Good Bad Mother, and Dr. Tracksuit’s suitor (of sorts) and the young version of the male lead were both in Goblin. Woo-hoo!


5. Also: the leads go to a movie, at one point, and one of the previews they see is for The Light has Left Your Eyes, a drama featuring my girl Han Ji-min and your fellah Nam Do-san. So we both get a little somethin’ there, Erin.


5A. Of course, I also get the added fuel to my paranoia that Nam Do-san is stalking me, but…still. Somethin’ for us both.


6. For the record: when this show wants to be cute, it can be really frikkin’ cute.


7. That said, a lot of the show is very, very contrived. Lots of having an idea of the kind of moment the writers want, but not knowing how to get to the moment (and, in some cases, how to do the moment)—so they just sort of have these moments happen in clunky and unnatural ways.


8. That said…there are a couple of absolutely ridiculous anime-level plot twists that get a total pass because I F***ING LOVED THEM. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but I know what I like.


9. …which is not to say that the last few episodes of the series don’t go far too deep into anime-level ridiculousness as it steadily wades into treading water territory, dragging out the almost stupidly-obvious cliche central conflict to a sigh-inducing degree. It doesn’t tank the series that this is how we mostly round out the show, but it definitely gives it more of a limp.


10. Relatedly: you know I love a cliche, but I’m more than a little tired of every romantic duo having secretly met as children. Like, one of my favorite things is two people being in each other’s orbit for a while without knowing it, slowly being drawn closer and closer together, but this is that taken a bridge too far. I mean, it strains credulity, but you can get away with it being a special though not when it’s every case, y’know?


10A. And do not get me started on the TWO YEAR TIME JUMP at the end.


11. I really like O-sol’s younger brother’s friend. He amused me, especially when he would find himself caught between thinking of O-sol as his buddy and as his older sister. It was a fun internal conflict to watch him struggle through, usually for laughs.


12. Many of the jokes in the series fall flat, often because they stray further into absurdity than the tone of the show allows (see the above point about the contrived writing), but I’d say it probably succeeds more often than it fails. 


12A. For example: O-sol goes to wake her brother for breakfast, and he jumps awake shouting, “You’re not supposed to enter a teenage boy’s room in the morning!” Which is quite funny. 


12B. Or, wait, you see why that’s funny, right? Is it…no, you get it.


12C. …wait, do you know what the phrase “think about baseball” refers to? I once used it in a short story and the girls in my class had no idea what I was saying. 


13. W-Well, anyway, the show tried to fuzz it out, but O-sol’s brother has an AOA poster in his room. And I know who they are! They sing “Like a Cat,” which is f***ing rad. I like Hyejeong best. (Unless I like Jimin best. Or maybe…Choa? Look, I know this one song and that Hyejeong looked smokin’ hot in her guest appearance in the first season of Busted; it’s not much of an informed opinion.)


14. Another good joke: after the romance subplot takes off, O-sol’s best friend immediately tells her to spike the dude’s drink with an aphrodisiac and go to town. Which is hilarious. And maybe sexist that it is hilarious, but also…still hilarious. 


15. The show tries to do an opposites-attract kind of deal with O-sol and Mr. Clean (that’s what I called the male lead because I could not remember his name), since he is a germaphobe and she’s not especially concerned with personal cleanliness—except we don’t really get much about O-sol being physically dirty apart from characters telling us that she doesn’t wash her hair. Nothing about her appearance or habits seems to stand out as being especially gross or even sloppy.


15A. Alternatively, she absolutely does things that indicate she’s messy or grimy, and I’m just too convinced Kim Yoo-jung is an immaculate princess for it to register with me. 


16. Similarly, when you have a character like Mr. Clean (that is, one with peculiar quirks), consistency becomes a weight that’s very difficult to carry—by which I mean it is very easy to be inconsistent about when these quirks kick in. And it takes about 10 minutes for the show to go from setting up how stringent his germaphobia is to downplaying it for the sake of a joke. Things aren’t ever quite as blatantly inconsistent as that for the rest of the series, but there are definitely moments where the show sort of handwaves his compulsive behavior because it’d bog down the flow of the scene to deal with it. 


17. …I swear I enjoyed this show, overall. I’m, um…I’m sure I have something nice in my notes, if I just look through them real qui—aha! Here’s one:


17A. The day after O-sol and Mr. Clean kiss, every time she sees him at work, she involuntarily puckers her lips just a bit. Which is a great detail. 


17B. Also: wowza, can Kim Yoo-jung sell a kiss. 


18. O-sol’s younger brother’s friend constantly posing like he’s doing a photoshoot for an arthouse piece on brooding after he gets rejected by a girl was perfect. Such a mood.


19. Towards the end of the series, I made a note about the show screwing up the Vincenzo-esque “his hairstyle reflects his state of mind” detail, but it turns out the show knew exactly what it was doing and pulled the rug out from under me. 


20. Near the end of the show, at the end of the night, Mr. Clean asks O-sol if she wants to come to his place for some ramyeon—and I sat up in my chair and said, “Oh! Oh I know what that means!” Because, thanks to Secretary Kim, I’m aware that this is the Korean version of asking if some wants to“have a nightcap.” So, when she agrees and they excitedly run off to his apartment, I was shocked to see that they literally just make ramyeon as a late-night snack. But I can’t tell if this was supposed to be a joke or not, because neither of them treats the moment like it’s meant to be a joke. I don’t know if this beat just didn’t translate or if the moment was botched, but…it didn’t play out at all like I’d thought it would, regardless. 


20A. In that vein, let me tell you: if you invite me up for a snack as a euphemistic invitation for sexytime, you’d better have that snack available. Do not lie to me about snacks. 


20B. Or Iron Man. I love that movie. Don’t promise me Iron Man and then take it back. (Did I tell you that story? This girl I was kind-of-dating asked if I wanted to come over to watch Iron Man, and I was like, “Awesome! I love that movie!” So we watched Iron Man. Which, it turns out, had not been the way she’d thought things would go.)


21. At one point, O-sol bursts into tears, and the person she’s with—and I hope you’re sitting down for this—puts his arm around her to console her. I was floored. How many times have you heard me complain about the lack of supportive hugs in these shows? And suddenly here it was. Incredible. 


And…okay, yeah, those are all my notes. Huzzah.


Pretty good show. Mostly a fun time, even if it is sometimes too silly for its own good. I know I didn’t make it sound very appealing, but I would say there’s no reason not to watch it, if you want to give it a shot. And it has Kim Yoo-jung doing Kim Yoo-jung things. Which is always a good time. 


I finished Transit Love 3, last week, and I’ve got—no exaggeration—26 pages of notes for it. But I’ve also got five letters to write before I even get to that one. (Spoiler: it was really good.)


Which I mention because the internet made sure I knew that they were less pleased with Transit Love 3 and that I should, instead, watch My Sibling’s Romance, which is Transit Love but with secret brother-sister pairs coming into the house rather than exes. So I started that. Because of course I did.


Have you gotten wind of that series, Erin? Have the clips been making the rounds? If so, guess which pairing is my ship. It might surprise you. 


Or it might be totally expected. 


Stay tuned to find out.


More soon. (And more later, as well.)


—Daryl

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