Letter #109: White Nights

Good morning, Erin.

I’ve dipped back into my 2008 iPod, again, and found myself as pleasantly surprised to see that it still works as I was to hear songs I’d not listened to in years (...and, in some cases, may have forgotten even existed (sorry, John Mayer)). While I wouldn’t describe the experience as nostalgic, exactly, I have certainly enjoyed the dive into my memories that many of the songs elicited—more grateful for the reminders than wistful for days gone by.

One song in particular struck such a chord in me that I immediately exclaimed, “I should tell Erin about this!”—an impulse so clear and intense that, much like the most creative ideas that come to me in the middle of the night, I can only now remember that I wanted to remember something, not the thing I wanted to remember. (And, as ever, even clearer is the memory of saying, “Nah, I don’t need to write this down. I’ll remember it!”)

So, instead, I offer you this quick tale regarding They Might Be Giants (yes, the band I have previously mentioned in the context of wanting to memorize as much of their discography as I possibly could in an attempt to impress a girl), whose music is much more present on that iPod than my current one:

My favorite They Might Be Giants album is Mink Car, probably the most listenable album in their discography, marrying their old sound with their new, and maybe even the most cohesive, as it smoothly flits back and forth between the steadily diverging styles of its two central band members. It’s clever and weird and catchy as hell—an album that’s just quintessentially them. 

Mink Car released on September 11, 2001.

In the summer of 2001, I remember being on the phone with my then-girlfriend and telling her they’d revealed the release date for the new album. “September 11th is gonna be awesome,” I told her. 

In case my K-drama picks have not already driven home how bad my instincts are.

Which brings us to White Nights—and the absolute coin flip that is the success of my unguided picks for what to watch next. 

So…call it, seonbae: did I pick a winner or a flop? 

1. First off, let me assure you that we are safely back to sticking to the Phase IV “catch-up” premise, because this is a show I was watching for the “older K-dramas” element of Phase III that I simply got distracted from finishing at the time. Which I’m sure is a great relief to you, given how much you not only love dedication to arbitrary themes but also how excited I know you get to hear about shows you have absolutely no interest in that aren’t even vaguely in the zeitgeist. 

2. I’ve had this show in my Netflix queue since probably 2017—and spent the last seven years completely misremembering what it was about. Specifically, I kept thinking this was a lighthearted drama about a young woman joining a fancy women’s underwear designer. Which it is not. (That’s a Japanese series called Atelier, if you’re keeping score at home.)

3. Ostensibly, this is a cat-and-mouse revenge melodrama mixed with a story about platonic soulmates finding each other. And I’d say it doesn’t really succeed as either of those things. 

3A. Now, in fairness, there is quite a lot of revenge-driven stuff, and much of it is this back-and-forth battle between the main character and her rivals. But it’s also one of those instances where one side of this duel is deliberately stupid so that the other can seem smart. Which is no fun. 

3B. I’m also gonna throw a flag on the whole platonic soulmates thing. The plot frequently hinges on one or the other caring more about their relationship than striking a blow against their “enemies,” but it also doesn’t do much of anything to A) show that these two actually became friends, or B) show us that it isn’t just a one-sided friendship where the more vengeance-minded woman does whatever she wants and the other woman alternately runs from and crawls back to her like an abused spouse.

4. Vengeful Girl (...which is what I call the female protagonist on the revenge mission) has such a tryhard anime team working for her: a super-hacker, a personal assistant who knows kung fu, and a driver with something tantamount to a full range of 00 Agent skills. It’s ridiculous to the point of being almost embarrassingly juvenile—and, though I initially chuckled at it, it becomes a frustration in later episodes, with the team granting Vengeful Girl so lopsided an advantage that she is essentially able to cheat code her way through her enemies’ countermoves by dispatching one or another of her overpowered minions to magic the problem away. (Y’know, in those rare instances when her enemies weren’t being too stupid to function and actually managed to do something.)

5. Also: I do not like Vengeful Girl. I couldn’t stand her. I found her to be the villain of the story, honestly, and I could not believe the show wanted me to root for her. I didn’t like her enemies, but I didn’t despise them—and I certainly didn’t feel any need to see them brought low by our protagonist. The show did an awful job with her, both by failing to make her sympathetic and by having her actress perform as though she has no idea what human emotions are. She’s unrelatable, unlikeable, and uninteresting—and I don’t have any idea why the other two protagonists gave a damn about her. 

5A. …outside of plot necessity, of course. The show is supposed to be about Vengeful Girl’s thirst for power and her connections with the other two (her brand new bestie, Pretty Girl, and her still-smoldering old flame, Do-Gooder Guy) throwing that single-minded drive off-course as she struggles to decide what’s more important: living well or living happily. For this plot to unfold, both Pretty Girl and Do-Gooder Guy must have very deep feelings about Vengeful Girl…and, while I can see the structural ways in which this is true, the reality of the situation is that she’s horrible to them both—with no reprieve that could convince you otherwise. 

5B. Now, if we’re being completely fair, Do-Gooder Guy is still kind of in love with her, so he’s remembering her as she used to be, what she used to mean to him, what she still means to him when he finds her again. So, to him, it’s much easier to push aside her current behavior as an aberration than to accept that she’s not at all the person he remembers. And, because his actions regarding her do reflect this attitude, there is nothing wrong with this element—structurally. That is, we don’t need to be shown his past feelings to assume they existed and still influence his decisions. The plot element absolutely functions. However, it doesn’t feel like it should, given how unlikeable (if not irredeemable) she seems to be now—which is undoubtedly why they give us a few flashbacks to when they dated: to show us why he is so committed to seeing her as an ally in need and not an enemy. Unfortunately, what we see of them as a couple is far from some great romance for the ages, and, as such, makes it seem that much less understandable for his past affections to so heavily influence his current assessment of the situation. 

5C. Much worse, though, is Pretty Girl’s persistent adoration of Vengeful Girl, whom she meets for the first time at the start of the plot—and whose first gesture of friendship is abject betrayal. She follows this up by claiming she “knew” Pretty Girl would be able to survive the betrayal (the first of numerous “all according to plan” absurdities) and prove herself worthy of being let into Vengeful Girl’s trusted inner circle. Which is ridiculous, sure, but not an unheard of plot point for this kind of story: the young protege placed into the crucible without warning, his survival proof that the master’s instinct about him is right, the danger never being truly dangerous because the master could have saved him at any moment. But the danger is so pointed and the entrance into the trusted inner circle so absent of positive reinforcement (and, in fact, filled with rejection, disappointment, and thanklessness) that I cannot see why she would show this woman any loyalty at all. At least in the case of Do-Gooder Guy, their previous relationship establishes that they at least liked each other for a while. But Pretty Girl? There might be a case for the two women feeling a connection on an instinctive level, but, after nothing but the “spaniel” treatment (...which is a Shakespeare reference), there should be more evidence that this instinct was wrong than that it weighed heavier than Vengeful Girl’s treatment of Pretty Girl.

6. Meanwhile, Pretty Girl and (especially) Do-Gooder Guy are quite easy to root for. (Perhaps by accident.) And their chemistry with each other is terrific—and, not insignificantly, is so much better than either’s with Vengeful Girl. 

7. Thing is…I enjoyed this series at the start. It was soapy melodrama with the promise of some fun cat-and-mouse battles for the levers of power with a pleasantly obvious arc to the story: we root for Vengeful Girl as she hurts her enemies; we root against Vengeful Girl when her vengeance turns her against her friends; we cheer when the power of friendship heals all wounds and takes out the bad guys. But it doesn’t take long for the pacing to drag and the story to tread water—inexplicably, in both cases. That is, things quickly fall into the same pattern over and over: A) action is taken, B) the consequences of the action are delayed by…something something something, C) Pretty Girl wanders around silently emoting into the sky after Vengeful Girl raises an eyebrow over her naivete, then D) an action or reaction ends us on a cliffhanger that becomes the “A” to the formula that starts the next episode. Which, in some ways, would be fine if the episodes slowed to concentrate on the emotional struggles between the two women (rather than on the game of revenge chess), using that series of small conflicts to develop the relationship between Pretty Girl and Vengeful Girl…maybe elaborating on the way they mirrored each other, with Vengeful Girl’s interest in Pretty Girl maybe being a subconscious attempt to pull herself out of the death spiral that is revenge I DON’T KNOW I’M JUST SPITBALLING HERE…but, no, it’s mostly a lot of repetitive conversations and people saying what they’re going to do later at some unspecified “right time.” And it’s tiresome. Not unwatchable, just…tiresome. 

7A. To say nothing of how all the really juicy stuff ends up crammed into the final quarter of the series because of this, rather than it kicking off with a mid-season twist that shakes up the established character dynamics and changes the trajectory of the story like this kind of show normally would. 

7B. To say nothing of how easy (and logical) it would have been for all of Vengeful Girl’s enemies to team up and crush her. I mean, they were already all familiar with each other. Past a certain point, whatever rivalries they might have traditionally had were moot in the face of their common enemy. But, y’know, can’t have the hero’s villains being too clever, or our hero won’t seem invincible. 

8. “...and if I cared about a lengthy analysis of the show’s underpinning strengths and weaknesses, I’d have watched it before reading this, Daryl—which you know darn well I did not.” Right as ever, dear Erin. I can always count on you to reign me in when I’ve overindulged in my too-casual critical analysis. As such, I’d say a tactical redirection to the litany of silly details that only I care about is in order, no? And what better place to start than the list of people I recognized:

• #bestgirl Sol from Nevertheless as Ma-ri, the bratty rich girl

• Eun-tak’s baseball friend from Goblin as the chauffeur/bodyguard 

• the old manager from Hotel Del Luna as a powerful former politician

• one of the less interesting girls from All of Us are Dead as Pretty Girl’s cousin

• the dad’s friend who posed as his father in 18 Again as Ma-ri’s ex-boyfriend

• the corrupt book reviewer from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a gangster

• the autistic brother from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a conman (mini-reunion! woo!)

9. Fun fact: in my Backstreet Rookie letter, I lamented that there was a fancy lounge that I knew I knew from somewhere but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. Well, guess what? It’s White Nights: Vengeful Girl meets the gangster in the fancy lounge in Episode 1. It had just been, like, 8 months since I’d seen the episode, by the time I got to Backstreet Rookie. But getting back into this to finish the series up brought it all back to me. So…mystery solved! 

10. This will not shock you, but Ma-ri is #bestgirl. She’s the strongest and most defined character in the series, for my money, and easily the best performance (which should also not shock you, since I’ve already gone on in previous letters about how much I like Lee Ho-jung as an actress). That she was also the bratty rich girl character—often one of my favorite archetypes—was just a bonus. But she never failed to be the best thing in the show, when she was on screen. I’m only sorry that her role didn’t require her to be around more often. 

11. When she first appeared, Pretty Girl seemed to be a rent-a-girlfriend, which immediately endeared her to me. (Because Rent-a-Girlfriend is one of my favorite anime series of all time, as I’m sure you remember.) That this turned out to pretty much just be a one-off scenario…less endearing.

12. At some point, someone declares that “politics is a bird fight”—and I have no idea what that could mean. At the same time, I can’t really argue that it isn’t true.

13. Episode 1 has this delightful typographical error in the subtitles: “It is now has a twin.” Presumably, the line had originally been translated as “It is now a twin” and was later switched over to the grammatically clearer “It now has a twin,” but someone didn’t proofread the edit after the change was made. (Which…I mean, I can’t imagine what that’s like. To not proofread. Clearly.) As such, we get a combination of the two. Which, again, I thought was delightful.

14. Speaking of editing choices: the subtitles use western naming conventions (first name, last name) when addressing the characters, and it threw me for a loop every time I saw it. 

15. Given the focus on revenge, I was once again expecting at least one reference to Edmond Dantes. And, once again, I was sorely disappointed. 

16. In previous letters, I’ve mentioned how special it is to see an actor or actress give a performance that implies his or her character exists in the world outside of the scene we’re watching (for example, walking into a room and giving the impression that he’s just come from doing something somewhere else and is now heading to do something else somewhere else that requires that he enter the room where the scene takes place). Well, White Nights is absolutely not one of those shows. And I mean, forget trying to get them to act as though the world exists outside of the scenes they’re in—none of them walks into a scene as though the scene he was just in exists. The actors don’t emotionally reset to “neutral” at the start of every scene, but they all do kind of have a generic “feeling emotions” default they start every scene with, as though they literally don’t know what happened in the script just prior to that scene. 

16A. Well, no one except #bestgirl Ma-ri. Of course.

17. There is something very pleasant about the show’s theme song. I can’t say it’s good, per se, but I don’t mind hearing it.

18. Speaking of music: there’s a brief reference to The Who. And I like The Who. So that was nice.

19. There’s a chaotic scene involving a gun that has great attention to continuity: when the bad guy has the gun, it has a silencer…but the silencer is gone when the good guy takes it—because, as the camera takes care to show us, the silencer is on the floor, next to some of the bad guy’s equipment, implying he’d taken the silencer off sometime prior to the good guy grabbing it. Nice job!

20. …less nice, though, is how, once the good guy has the gun, she can’t remember which way she was holding it from shot to shot—like, not just the way she’s holding it but in which hand she’s holding it. 

21. Speaking of guns: I’m pretty sure the show added a “pump-action shotgun” sound (that sharp cha-chack you get in all the movies) to a skeet-shooting shotgun that doesn’t have the slide that loads the next round in the chamber to be fired—which is the thing that makes that sound. 

22. And speaking of sounds…the show lets an in-camera sound (that is, a sound made on-set, rather than an effect added in post-production) come through that it shouldn’t have at the end of Episode 1: Vengeful Girl opening a small container and placing the lid down on her desk. Initially, the camera is pretty much focused on her face, and we don’t actually see the container in the shot—but you can clearly hear the lid get lifted and then placed down. But then we get a closeup of her hands lifting the lid and placing it down. Obviously the initial shot was just supposed to relay that Vengeful Girl was being contemplative, but they forgot to mute the audio that gave away the game. Caught by the world’s greatest detective, White Nights!

23. Early on, Vengeful Girl gives a little speech about the power of money that I consider unremarkable apart from how it reminded me that money has literal power (like, physically possessing it gives you magic powers) in the awesome graphic novel series The Black Monday Murders. Which…still waiting for Volume 3, guys. 

24. That Pretty Girl is shocked to hear that money laundering could be happening at an art gallery—known as being one of the top choices for laundering money (along with casinos and real estate)—amused me greatly. 

25. It was fun guessing whose glasses did or did not have lenses in them. 

26. For all my griping, the show does an okay job of basing the characters’ frequent shifts in allegiance on circumstances that would logically create reasons for friends to become enemies and enemies to become friends. They don’t do it just because the plot demands it but because the battlefield ahead of them is constantly shifting as the plot goes on.

27. Speaking of: there’s an amazing montage of all the different factions waiting for the “big battle” to happen that is also a product placement segment for Maybelline cosmetics. Which is…something. 

28. Somebody forgot to hide one of the Hyundai logos in Episode 5, and it was awesome. 

29. The subtitles once again don’t distinguish between people who are and are not speaking Korean. And you know I just love when that happens. 

30. BUT…we did get a subber who knew to translate wae as “What?” and not “Why?” And you know I just loved when that happened. 

And that, as they say, is that. 

It goes from okay to eh to meh to ugh. Which…isn’t an ideal trajectory. And yet, how bad could it really be if I managed to finish every moment of it but not of Welcome to Samdal-ri?

Mysteries of our age, Erin. We may never know.

Hope you’re doing well. And not, like, experiencing a recurring dream where you’re being hunted by Dr. Strange in a battle royale. Just, like, as an example. Off the top of my head. Of a thing that would suck. Like, I assume. 

… 

More soon.

—Daryl