Letter #113: The Atypical Family

Good morning, Erin.

Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only reason I started this series was to watch Park So-yi, the young actress who played little-girl Ji-eum in Episode 1 of See You in My 19th Life, act. Didn’t matter what the premise was, didn’t matter what the plot was gonna be—I just wanted to watch her do her thing. And if this show was going to make that happen, then I was in. No questions.

But…was she worth it?

Well, obviously yes. Goodness me, she is a treasure! Of course she was worth it!

But…was the show worth Park So-yi?

I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.

…well, technically, I don’t know what you’re here to find out—but I’m going to talk about The Atypical Family, so if you’re hoping to hear about that, then…you’re in the right place! Otherwise, um, I love what you’ve done with your hair!

1. The long and the short of it is that this show was all right. The plot was pretty lackluster, but the characters and the performances were charming enough that I wanted to keep coming back. I’m barely going to remember watching it, but it’s not bad.

1A. Oh—the characters, the performances, and the cliffhangers. This show knows how to end an episode, let me tell you! I mean, I can’t promise every single episode ends with a twist or daring reveal, but they would usually end on a beat that made me want to find out what happens next—and not in a “dammit, now I have to keep watching” kind of way, either. Pretty much each stopping point became a legitimate hook to keep me interested in where things were going. 

1B. …and, for the record, the first episode is an absolute slog before you hit the cliffhanger. 

2.  But I said that the characters/performances were the best part, so let’s get crackin' on everyone I recognized, hm?

• Mr. Gumiho from My Roommate is a Gumiho as Gwi-ju, our male lead

• little-girl Ji-eum from I’ll See You in My 19th Life as I-na, Gwi-ju’s tween daughter

• Lady Maeda from Gyeongseong Creature as Dong-hee, Gwi-ju’s older sister

• IU’s mom from You’re the Best (and a million other things) as Gwi-ju’s mom

• the older sister from A Good Day to be a Dog as Grace, the new trainer at Gwi-ju’s gym

• little-kid male lead from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a boy in I-na’s class 

• little-kid female lead from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as a girl in I-na’s class (mini-reunion! woo!)

3. Let’s talk for a minute about Dong-hee and why she is THE BEST. Just top-to-bottom greatness, from both the production side and the performance side. The writing for her character is dynamic and fun but still grounded in pathos, and Claudia Kim absolutely frikkin’ nails it. It would be so easy for her to stray into overacting or for the script to use her obesity as a gag (especially since they chose to have the actress in a fat suit), but Dong-hee is always safely shy of veering into the unserious, even as she is the source of 95% of the show’s humor. (To that end: the rest of the show is almost always quite…straight-faced, if not downright po-faced, so Dong-hee’s lighter or more expressive interactions always stand out—which is why she always seems to run the risk of devolving into parody.) She ended up being the reason I got excited to tune in every week, particularly once she and Grace started having almost their own, almost totally separate narrative track. I’d have watched a full series just about her, and she is 100% #bestgirl.

4. And, of course, Grace was also firing on all cylinders—though she had far less to do, so I’m really judging on her being funny and having such great chemistry with Dong-hee. But it’s two appearances in a row that I’ve enjoyed from this actress (the other being A Good Day to be a Dog), so kudos to her. 

4A. And…boy, they padded her up, huh? Grace is meant to be this mega-hottie, and she has got T&A for miles, here. I sat there gawking for the longest time (...f-from surprise, I mean, ‘cus I couldn’t understand how all those curves could have stayed hidden in her other roles!) before I concluded that she had to have been given a, ahem, boost or two. Which is kinda meta-clever, really, given that she’s dealing with Dong-hee, whose actress was under such heavy prosthetics. But which is also apparent in some of the later scenes when her backside looks more like a 2000s Lara Croft polygon than a J. Lo booty. 

4B. Oh! I almost forgot: Grace and Gwi-ju’s mom were also both in My Mister, so…mini-reunion! Woo!

5. “But Daryl, you unusually debonair epistolarian,” I hear you say, “what about Park So-yi? You called her a ‘treasure,’ earlier, but should that be taken as an objective assessment of her performance or regarded as yet more of your sycophantic fanboy adulation (albeit with—one hopes—far less of that schoolgirlish sighing you’re prone to doing)?” To which I say…that’s a little harsh. But also, yes! Park So-yi crushes it as I-na and gives arguably the second best performance of the series. She has to relay a lot without saying much or even looking up very often—and yet so much of her performance is in her eyes as they dart around. I-na’s got a lot going on, internally, to the point where I think it was a surprising ask for a young actress to try to make sense of it in a performance, but Park So-yi manages it through a clever layer of feigned detachment she lets slip every now and then when the emotional situation gets too big for I-na. And, in the handful of episodes before Dong-hee’s story really ramps up (and before the main plot really hits its stride), I-na’s pockets of tween anguish are what grip you the quickest and most thoroughly. Plus, she is so…frikkin’...adorable! I mean, yes, the 12-year-old is very, very pretty (please be kind to her, puberty!), but I’m talking about more than just how cute she can look—which, for the record, is super-duper cute. No, in this case, I mean her mannerisms, her temperament, her interactions with her classmates and especially with Da-hae—all of it squeezes your heart, whether fluffy or melancholic. I’d watch this girl read the phonebook. Like, read it to herself. Silently. I think she’s just that mesmerizing whenever she’s on screen. And so, yes, she is a treasure and a delight and a darn good portion of why you should consider giving the show a shot. 

6. …uh, Da-hae is the female lead. And she’s fine. Gwi-ju is also fine. Well, she’s pretty good, and he can say his lines with some hint of an idea of what being an actor is. But I don’t particularly care about either of them beyond their functions in the plot (and, even then, only when the plot gets interesting) or when they’re with I-na. 

7. Speaking of I-na: one of the clever choices the show made was casting a bunch of 15-year-olds to be her classmates, making the already petite Park So-yi seem that much smaller and physically immature by comparison. I mean, it was obvious that the actress was surrounded by older kids, but it was still a clever idea.

8. Less clever: the music. I don’t know who was in charge of the score, but…fire him. We’re talking One Spring Night-levels of misused audio, with thoroughly serious moments being underscored by overtly goofy, lighthearted comedy music, like some executive felt like people would get too stressed out if they weren’t subconsciously reassured that what they were witnessing on screen wasn’t going to be serious forever. It drove me nuts every time it popped up, and I genuinely don’t know who allowed that to make it into production.

9. This show is awful at superpowers, never quite concerning itself with how they would function outside of the specific plot moments they’ve built around them. Or how having them would affect the way the family members naturally interact with the world.

9A. …also, the show is about a family with superpowers. I don’t know if you know that. Do you know that? I can’t tell if I think you’d have seen this or not. Well, it’s about a family with superpowers whose “modern day ailments” (such as obesity, depression, and insomnia) have stunted their abilities to use their, well, abilities. 

9B. In particular, I think Gwi-ju’s time travel ability (don’t worry, it’s not typical time travel) gets the biggest handwave of all, with the dozen questions it begs—such as why he never thinks to take anything with him when he goes back in time even after he accidentally does so—being patently ignored because they don’t jive with the dramatic element the show wants for this mechanic in the story.

9C. To say nothing of the consequences or conveniences that go into never having to explain how certain elements of his power word—even after the one instance that sort of disproves the premise behind one of the details. But, whatever, I obviously cared more about it than the writer did. 

10. Okay, so, the “modern day ailments” interfering with your ability to use your powers angle got me thinking about what my superpower would be AND the “ailment” that would prevent me from being able to use it. And, after much deliberation, my rough idea is that I would have a light kind of mind control that would allow me to tell a person what to do—but social anxiety would make it extremely difficult to actually talk to someone. So, the Jedi mind trick, but I’m too nervous to approach the person. (“These are not the droids you’re looking for.”  “Hm? Were you talking to me?”  “N-No, I’m sorry.” [runs away])

11. I dunno if this was intentional or not, but…in Episode 2, Da-hae attempts to flirt with Gwi-ju by helping him pick out a present for his daughter. I forget what they end up buying, but I remember that the first thing she does is dissuade him from buying a pair of nice but uncool red dress shoes. And the next time we see Da-hae “coincidentally” run into Gwi-ju after the shopping adventure, she’s wearing red shoes. Which I thought was neat. Assuming it was on purpose. (As in, she thinks he must think red shoes look nice, so she wears a pair to impress him.)

12. We got some sweet coffee candy product placement. Classic.

13. I was quite confused about why Da-hae would have a fancy-looking fax machine in her bedroom, until I thought about it for a second and realized it was probably just a printer. (It was.) And then I covered my face in embarrassment for about 10 minutes. 

14. Despite what I said earlier, one of the best scenes in the series has to do with one of the family members interacting with the world in a way that would be unique to her because of her superpower. It’s the scene where Da-hae tries to figure out what I-na’s superpower is. I don’t think the logic of the scene quite makes sense if you really think about it, but the scene in isolation is great.

15. The later-middle section of the show is filler. Stupid, stupid filler. In fact, given how strapped for time the ending is, I’d even say it was insultingly stupid. 

16. There’s a section where everyone is talking about a gold watch with a brown leather strap…and I cannot for the life of me figure out why they can only refer to it as such in English. It’s like they think that’s the brand name for the watch. Am I missing something? Is there a language issue with this description, where there are not equivalent words in Korean? That seems unlikely, no?

17. Oh, I should give a little shine to the woman playing Da-hae’s mom, too, who kinda killed it as an intimidating dirtbag. She’s subtle—perhaps bordering on one-note—but very effective. 

18. After an incident at school involving some trouble with her classmates, Da-hae and Gwi-ju pick I-na up and, in what I found to be a confounding moment, bring her to a restaurant filled with kids from her school to try to get her to open up about what happened. That Gwi-ju would be too oblivious to realize this was the least comfortable place she could be, but that Da-hae didn’t immediately nix the venue blew my mind. She’s far too aware to have made that kind of mistake. (Of course, the show wanted the scene to take place there, so Da-hae acting like herself would be pretty inconvenient, right?)

19. I’m still don’t know who the hottie in the apartment was in Episode 11, but you can bet I’m going to go through every guest star for the show listed on My Drama List until I do. 

19A. …what? You know I couldn’t help myself. 

Anyway—that was The Atypical Family, a totally fine, relatively functional show that is as charming as it is forgettable. I wouldn’t be surprised if, a year from now, I distinctly remember the characters but absolutely none of the overall plot. 

If you haven’t seen it, there’s no rush to do so. And if you have…well, you probably get what I’m saying. Or maybe not. Maybe you loved it. Maybe everyone loved it. Maybe my lukewarm comments about its overall quality make me the lone naysayer everyone else makes fun of. Perhaps we’ll never know. 

But how about you, Erin? What do you think would be your superpower and the “modern ailment” that would keep you from using it?

It’s hard coming up with one for you. I can’t imagine you with a flaw that would counter your awesomeness. Unless that’s the issue: you have invisibility, but your awesomeness makes it impossible for people not to notice you, so you can’t be invisible.

Yup. Cracked it. 

More soon.

—Daryl