Letter #105: Chicken Nugget

Good morning, Erin.

Fate’s a tricky thing.

Over the years, as I’ve done my best to consolidate everything I believe (about myself, about the world, about life itself) into one cohesive, consistent, unified philosophy, my thoughts on fate have remained elusive—in that, no matter the amount of scrutiny I give it, no matter the hours of rumination, I still find myself divided on whether some greater influence or force can be ascribed to the seeming inevitability of events that unfold before us…or whether the human mind is just so drawn to order that it demands we draw meaning from what is actually the simple—perhaps even coincidental—overlap of separate, independent causalities.

Is our point of connection—not just in space and time but spirit, that ethereal something within you that called out and set alight the engine of my purpose—a happy accident? Or were the steps that led to you recommending Hotel Del Luna at the exact moment I would be most receptive to it the result of some deliberate cosmic machination? Can it be both? Can I even accept that it could be both?

I’m not sure. 

…except to say that, while watching Chicken Nugget—a show that is, as of now, less than two months old—might feel like a departure from my explicitly stated and heretofore adhered to Phase IV premise, I think we can both agree that this was an inevitability (fated, you might even say) and, as such, consider it a corollary to the completion of the Kim Yoo-jung trilogy, which absolutely fell under the auspices of my Phase IV premise and, therefore, totally still counts. 

…

[boops your nose]

All right, let’s get into it!

1. I’m sure you think I only gave this show a shot because I’m so enamored of Kim Yoo-jung—but, lo!, that is not the case! I gave it a shot because I am enamored of Kim Yoo-jung and one of the YouTube trailers featured her beating some people up and flipping them off as she ran away, which was more than enough Saet-byeol (her Backstreet Rookie character) energy to hook me in.

1A. …even though I totally knew she’d only be in the series for, like, 10 minutes. 

2. Okay, this is, um, this is an odd little show. Which, sure, might seem like a given, since the premise is that a girl is transmogrified into a chicken nugget, but I mean it’s odd in a way that left me wondering if there was a point to watching it to begin with. I laughed, I smiled, I raised an eyebrow or two as I tried to discern whether or not there was a narrative arc to the whole thing, whether the persistent absurdities aided the storytelling or (by perhaps not being quite zany enough) served to make it harder to connect with the characters and, therefore, the narrative. I think I had a good time, but I also don’t think I got much of anything out of it, leaving me with a sense that it was more clever than good.

3. …but dammit if every episode didn’t end on a thoroughly intriguing note that made you want to jump right into the next episode. 

4. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that there were an awful lot of people from the movie Dream in this show—but it did take me most of the show to realize that the writer/director of the series was also the writer/director of Dream, which explained the carryover casting. And why it so frequently reminded me of the comedy pacing of Dream. 

4A. But it wasn’t until an overt and explicit reference to the show Be Melodramatic that I realized both the casting and (presumably) comedy pacing of Be Melodramatic explained the casting and comedy pacing of Dream—since the writer/director of Dream wrote and directed Be Melodramatic first. 

5. To that end, it really does feel like a lot of the people in this got called in while they were working on other stuff but happened to have that day off so they could come in and help their director friend with his new project. I have nothing to support that hypothesis, but characters so frequently drift in and out of the show in a blink that it seems almost entirely cast with cameos. Even though it’s really not.

6. Speaking of the cast, though:

• the nerdy voyeur from Mask Girl as Yellow Pants

• our lead girl from 20th Century Girl as Min-ah, the girl who becomes a chicken nugget

• the evil First Minister from Kingdom as Min-ah’s father

• the vice-principal from A Good Day to be a Dog as Dr. Yoo

• the homeless guy with the girlfriend from Dream as Dr. Yoo’s nephew

• the down-and-out soccer player’s mom from Dream as Dr. Yoo’s sister

• the maybe-gangster homeless guy from Dream as the rival chicken nugget shop owner

• the down-and-out soccer player’s agent from Dream as the job interviewer

• the coach from Dream as a police detective

• the fat homeless guy from Dream as Yellow Pants’s father

• the evil not-brother from My Demon as the leader of the popular chicken nugget shop

• the slow patient from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as…as…gosh, I didn’t write it down—an old guy?

• Bible Man from Sweet Home as Yellow Pants and Min-ah’s father’s co-worker

7. At one point, Yellow Pants tries to transmogrify himself into Cha Eun-woo—prompting me to say, “Hey, I know who that is!” Which, of course, is no surprise to you, considering you know I’ve seen him in a few things already. But did you remember that one of those things was in A Good Day to be a Dog, a show that not only featured the actor playing Dr. Yoo, here, but also the actor who played the young homeless guy with the missing girlfriend in Dream? Coincidence? Maybe!

8. The folks who run the popular chicken nugget shop are pretty funny. I didn’t think they would be, but they are. (Especially the dude who was in My Demon. He really knows how to lean into the weirdness for laughs without betraying the dryness of his character.) 

9. I’m 70% sure there’s a Vincenzo reference when discussing what a good name for a pizzeria would be. 

10. The actress playing Hongcha, the food blogger, was f***ing incredible, and I’m still furious that she’s only in one episode. The character was great, and the performance was even better. I looked her up, and she’s been in one other thing: Squid Game. (As one of the big parts, too, it looks like.) I don’t know what she was like in that show, but—based solely on her turn in this—it’s a travesty that she hasn’t already been cast in 100 other things. 

10A. And, of course, Hongcha is #bestgirl. And not just because she made a Transit Love reference. 

11. …I’m not the only one who thought the high school girl on the phone at the beginning of the show who couldn’t stop looking at Yellow Pants as he sang and danced down the street was a total cutie, right? 

12. I totally understand why it was done, but…the f*** was that time jump?!

Which is all I have to say about that. 

It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, this one, alternately amusing and confounding, with a lingering question about whether its narrative shortcomings are an adaptation issue or pulled straight from the source—assuming there even is a narrative and not just a series of broadly connected events that happen to occur in succession. Definitely not a waste of time, but I think I got more out of looking into the filmography of the writer/director for future suggestions than watching the show.

Hey—what can ya do, right? Can’t all be winners.

Well, I mean, some of them very much can be, as you will soon find out.

…just not as “soon” as these last couple of letters have been, given how much I’ll probably have to say about the next show on the list. (Don’t try to guess what it is. I promise you won’t get it.)

Try not to miss me, in the meantime. 

…actually, on second thought, please miss me. I’d appreciate being missed.

—Daryl