Letter #121: Possessed Love

Good morning, Erin.

Did you know that I have been continuously watching a new Korean dating show weekly for the last 7 months? Yes, I went straight from Single’s Inferno 3 to Transit Love 3 to My Sibling’s Romance to the subject of today’s letter, Possessed Love.

Clearly, getting me to try a new K-date series isn’t a hard sell. But you hit me with a twist like “this time with fortune tellers!” and toss in Yoo In-na as one of the hosts, and you know I’d have been there even if I wasn't already a sucker for these shows. 

So, sucker or not…was it any good?

Well, before we get into that, I want to set something up for you—by doing a little fortune telling. Or, actually, I really just want to let you know that the members of our cast all fell into one of three fortune telling classes: tarot card reader, shaman, or saju reader.

Now, I’m gonna guess that you are familiar with tarot and shamans, but have you ever heard of saju? I hadn’t, and, from the explanation the show gave us, I kept referring to it as “zodiacology” because it’s basically a Chinese astrological chart that required the readers to do what looked like a complex math proof’s-worth of notebook jotting. It has to do with the Four Pillars of Destiny (based on the year, month, day, and exact time of your birth) and your zodiac sign and what elements are in your…um…okay, I don’t actually know what most of it is or specifically how it’s derived, and no one source I’ve found actually gets into it—though there’s an immense amount of information about bazi, which is maybe the same thing on a functional level…again, I dunno, I tried to look it up and could only find bits and bobs. 

Point is, it’s an expansive zodiac-ish thing which is used to plot out your makeup as a person, your personality, your destiny—all the fun stuff we love about astrology. And, in doing my research (or, like, attempting to research, at least), I found an online calculator that would give me my basic chart—in terms of bazi, I think, rather than saju. And, unsurprisingly, I have no idea what any of it means. 

But, even so, I thought it might get us in the fortune-telling mood to share a little bit of my chart. Specifically, I’m going to share my Day Pillar, which (as the note in the image makes clear) is considered the most important of the Four Pillars:

So, as you can see, I…um, have fire in a yin kind of way, which influences my, uh, ally/rival stats; and there’s also the earthy yin, which influences my thinky-ness and has some…some ox in it. I guess. 

…

Y’know what, let’s pull a tarot card. Those come with explanation booklets. 

Okay, Erin, here we go…shuffle shuffle shuffle…let’s see what the universe wants you to know—and there we go, a card has popped out and it is…The Fool! A fresh start, a new beginning, a sign that you should trust yourself enough to take that leap of faith. How exciting!

And I got…The High Priestess! Sit tight, retreat into your mind, and trust your intuition as the world around you is not what it appears to be. G-Great! Just what I want to hear: do nothing and trust nothing anyone says. Sigh.

That said…you leaving a dating show as an endgame couple and me spending the whole time assuming the girls aren’t really flirting with me sounds pretty on-brand, to me. So, hey, maybe there’s something to this after all.

Regardless, I think it’s safe to say that we’re both fully in that fortune-telling mindscape, so…you ready for a little Possessed Love? 

1. All in all, this show is about as generic a Korean dating show as I’ve ever seen—and there are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which is that the whole fortune teller aspect of the show is kind of…not much of one. It’s there, to be sure, and it matters to a lot of “story” beats. But, if you go into this thinking that the cast being fortune tellers was going to drastically alter the makeup of the show…I hate to break it to you, but, um, no. Not really. I enjoyed it well enough, overall, but it was also kind of a nothing show, ultimately. 

1A. There are a lot of constraints to deal with, here. First, the cast is there for less than a week, which is not a lot of time for a story to develop. Plus, the show is only six episodes long, with each episode being about 90 minutes long—which is about as much time as you’d get with nine episodes of Single’s Inferno, about five episodes of Heart Signal, and maybe three-ish episodes of Transit Love—which is not a lot of space for storytelling. 

1B. Which, fine, isn’t the end of the world. Single’s Inferno is about a week long, and that’s a fun time; plenty of room for sparks to fly with a week in a house together, talking and going on dates. We don’t need every show to be a month long. 

1C. …except there’s also this: the show was originally going to be 10 episodes long but was cut short so it would be out of the way in time for the Olympics. Which means that whatever they were planning to show us would need to be cut back, regardless. 

1D. So what we got, ultimately, was every piece of plot we needed for the arc of the show to make sense but very little time with all the flirty dating goodness that makes a show like Heart Signal so much fun to watch or the paradise dates on Single’s Inferno so exciting. We saw dates, of course, and we saw flirting. But the cutest, flirtiest moments from the dates ended up being released on YouTube as “deleted scenes”—after EVERY…SINGLE…EPISODE. The show clearly wasn’t leaving them out because they spoiled the storyline (otherwise, they wouldn’t put them out for people to see at all), so it was just for time purposes. Which sucks.

1E. But, again, we definitely get time for some character stuff—and there’s definitely some time for dra-ma-ma-ma-ma—but very little of it packs all that much of a punch, because we don’t really feel the weight of the emotions the cast deals with. Because, with a couple of exceptions, we don’t spend time going through the things they went through, even as we could clearly see that they felt certain things and what had caused them to feel that way.

1F. However, some of the cast was quite charming, and some of the emotional stuff was enough to keep your interest. So, I enjoyed it well enough. And I’d watch another season. But…probably I also wouldn’t insist anyone give this one a try. 

2. Every episode of the show starts with an awkward equivocation about the show neither asserting nor denying the veracity of fortune telling, and it made me give a laugh every time I saw it. 

3. The hosts were…not especially noteworthy in their contributions to the show, but one of the best things was how frequently they would complain that the cast took fortune telling too seriously instead of just letting their feelings guide them in their attempts to find love—at which point the one fortune teller on the panel would quietly lean over and remind everyone that the cast was made up of fortune tellers, so this stuff wasn’t just playful magazine horoscopes to them. At which the hosts would try to pretend they didn’t just admit they think fortune telling is bogus and reframe their complaints as sadness that feelings alone aren’t enough to make love succeed. Which also made me laugh every time. 

4. Before we step away from mentioning the hosts—I actually knew three of them!

• Yoo In-na, of course, who is (among so many things) our Sunny from Goblin

• the younger step-brother from Park’s Marriage Contract

• Gabee (from dance group LaChica) who was also a host on Love Catcher in Bali

5. The show actually begins the night before the show begins: each of the eight member of the cast goes to this theatrical facsimile of a sacred cave (which is this polystyrene boulder with a door in it resting in the middle of an empty field) with an altar under a “carved” demon face inside it, where they find four wooden plaques, each containing a birth date and zodiac sign of one of the four cast members of the opposite sex. Each person would then have to use their fortune telling skills to determine which of these four will end up being his or her “fated partner”—that is, they were to call their endgames ahead of time. 

5A. This was a really fun element to add for the show—not just because it’s a big showcase of the whole fortune telling angle, but also because it gave the show an air of mystery: no one knew which zodiac signs were whose. So, the cast would try to see if their fortune telling was leading them to whomever they thought they’d picked or if something was out of step between their hearts and their skills. 

5B. Plus, instead of end-of-day texts, everyone would go back to the polystyrene cave and pick which person he or she “liked,” which would prompt that person to receive a text from production letting him or her know that “the blue dog” or “the black ox” was maybe crushing on him or her. Which would slowly help us figure out who was which sign, since each sign was unique, and in some cases made the signs clear to the cast. (Like, if we spent all day flirting with each other, then I got a text message telling me “the Aries in the house picked you,” I’d probably be able to figure out that you were the Aries. But if, given the same situation, I got two messages, “the Aries and the Scorpio in the house picked you,” I might not know which you were—which could create drama if, for example, I’d picked the Scorpio as my fated partner.)

5C. The plaque choosing scene clues the audience in to which members of the cast use which kind of fortune telling, but they aren’t allowed to tell each other what their specialties are until the typical “age/occupation reveal” segment. During which they reveal neither their ages nor their occupations (assuming they have any outside of telling fortunes, which the shamans don’t). Ever. Which is especially funny because one of our endgame couples were born literally three days apart from each other. (She’s older. #NoonaRomance)

6. The other great thing about the whole cave sequence is how much time production chooses to spend on each participant—and how they are portrayed. The boys are given pretty much equal time and equal gravitas, with perhaps only the first of the four given slightly more emphasis during his choosing process than the others. The girls, on the other hand, are all but sped through so they can give us a huge, badass music/slow motion/wind-in-her-hair entrance for the fourth girl in the bunch. She’s hot, the show knows she’s hot, and they milk it for everything it’s worth.

7. …only for the second girl of the four to become the main character of the season almost immediately afterward. Which I thought was hilarious. And great—because I loooooved the second girl. And did not like the fourth girl. 

7A. That said, the fourth girl is absolutely a major character. She just doesn’t get the immediate play that her intro suggested she would.

7B. Though, in fairness to her, all four of the guys picked her as the girl who caught their eyes upon entering the house—a fact they had to share, out loud, in front of the other girls. 

7C. Speaking of: the girls were less unanimous in their choices, though one of the boys remained unpicked in their half of the initial “I think you’re hot” segment. 

7D. Don’t worry: he wins, in the end. 

8. One of the best things about this show is that it utilizes flash-forward scenes—as post-credits teases for later episodes, as opening scenes to build suspense for the episode you’re about to watch, as cutaways in the middle of conversations to introduce dramatic irony—and they really, really add a dramatic sizzle to the whole thing. (...regardless of whether the flash-forwards ever come back around to mean anything. Which, in a couple of cases, they absolutely don’t.)

9. When everyone reveals his or her fortune-telling specialty, there is a consensus that one of the boys was obviously a shaman, supposedly because of something about his eyes (or perhaps how he would look at people)—which, given the extended nature of this conversation, the subtitles repeatedly translate as “peepers.” To my great consternation. 

10. Two of the girls are named Han-na, and both are A) tarot card readers and B) Christians named after Hannah in the Old Testament. So, when it comes time to figure out how they’re going to differentiate which is which, they decide to give them nicknames in the old Italian style: Big Hanna and Little Hanna. 

10A. …of course, in the old Italian style, this would be for a distinction based on age (big being older, and little being younger), which…I’m pretty sure it’s just that one is noticeably taller than the other, in this case. So…literally the “big” Han-na and the “little” Han-na. Still—it made me laugh. 

11. Initially, so many members of the cast are so blunt with each other that it prompts Yoo In-na to sit back in her chair and say to herself, “Does…none of them know how to imply things?” Which is just funny.

12. Pretty early on, it seems possible that only half the cast is going to much matter to the story of the show. Then, about halfway through, it becomes pretty obvious that this is the case. Then, for the preview of the finale, the show all but says it outright. So…I hope you liked at least one of those four cast members. (Which I did! Yay me!)

13. …oh, maybe I should mention the cast. Okay, uh, there isn’t really a lot to say about them, because, again, we didn’t spend a whole lotta time getting to know them or their romance strategies. And, as I mentioned above, half the cast didn’t really matter. But they were certainly distinct enough people, and I did have thoughts about them, so…here we go:

13A. THE BOYS, from zero to hero!

• Gu-bong - dull, uninspired, and kind of a drag—for most of the show. He lets himself show a little more personality in the latter episodes as his one big romantic option goes entirely up in smoke. He’s fairly insightful—and, believe it or not, the only one to accurately predict the entire course of how his experience on the show would run. But I didn’t care a whit about him. Oh, and he was a saju reader. 

• Jae-won - dull, uninspired, and kind of a drag—but he quits at the end of Ep 3, so he spared me having to yawn at him. He’s a saju reader who was so upset about his soul mate not reciprocating his feelings that he had to leave, lest his whole worldview collapse in on itself. The irony, of course, is that his fated partner kept trying to get his attention, but he was too distracted by the hot girl who wanted nothing to do with him who he swore must be the one he picked before the show. 

• Hong-jo - my initial favorite. He was quiet, cool, and mysterious—and then later on a bit of a pretentious jag. A shaman who really should have done a better job of articulating his feelings. But at least he was interesting. He’s part of one of the two endgame couples.

• I-yul - this dude came outta nowhere to be the best boy in the house. I initially liked him just because he was relaxed and quiet without coming across as dull, but he turned out to be patient and wise and supportive and adorable, eventually becoming the internet’s fave. Not just a shaman but an exorcist—who left his deity at the door and just went along with dating like a regular person. He’s part of one of the endgame couples. 

13B. THE GIRLS, from worst to first!

• Su-hyeon - the mega-hottie shaman who all the boys were crazy about, at first…and who I could not have cared less about. Extremely blunt, not especially friendly, but very cute when she’s with a guy she likes. All things being equal, I wish she hadn’t been in one of the endgame couples, because then I’d have had to sit through less of her…but I’d also be lying if I didn’t say her romantic scenes with the guy she ends up with were pretty good. 

• Big Hanna - the truly outgoing one in the group, the sort of Han-bin “MC” type who sort of herded everyone into doing things in the first couple of episodes. Straightforward and open, but her tarot cards didn’t prepare her for never getting a single “I like you” vote the entire time she was on the show—not even a polite “well, we went on a date, so…” pick. I enjoyed her, but I can understand why she didn’t quite click with anyone. 

• Yun-a - a total weirdo—and I kinda loved her. She managed to get a “we went on a date” vote once, but she had no traction with anyone outside of that. I knew she was going to struggle as soon as she walked in, being the obviously least pretty of the four girls, but the more I got to see of her, the odder she came across, which I knew wasn’t going to be as charming to the boys as it was to me at home. She was a saju reader who would literally paint you a picture inspired by what she saw in your chart. Eventually, everything she said or did made me smile. She was a total bias wrecker, by the end of the show. 

• Little Hanna - immediately my favorite girl, and I never wavered. Cute, bubbly, great smile, easily succumbs to feelings of melancholy—she’s like my dream girl! Well, maybe not dream girl, but I sure liked her bunches. Her storyline was easily the most interesting and the most dramatic, and her cute romantic moments (many of which were in those YouTube deleted scenes I mentioned earlier) were easily the best. I was drawn to the intensity of her self-doubt as much as her bursts of optimism. She was a tarot card reader—and maybe the only one whose fortune telling during the show gave her consistent (and apparently correct) advice about how to approach her feelings. She ends up in one of the two endgame couples, to the cheers of the internet. 

13C. Oh—the two endgame couples are Little Hanna x I-yul and Su-hyeon x Hong-jo. Which is interesting because initially Hong-jo and Little Hanna had something going on, and I-yul was interested in Su-hyeon (though she never considered him at all)—but then Su-hyeon and Hong-jo found out they were both shamans and they were off to the races, staying up all night laughing and chatting…in Hong-jo’s room, which he shared with I-yul, who had to spend time elsewhere, and so he found himself hanging out with Little Hanna, who was upset to hear the guy she liked (Hong-jo) laughing and carrying on with Su-hyeon, which led I-yul to comfort Little Hanna, forming the connected love triangle among the four. (That is, I-yul → ← Little Hanna → ← Hong-jo → ← Su-hyeon.)

13D. What’s further interesting is that, in the pre-show polystyrene cave

• Little Hanna ended up picking Hong-jo’s zodiac plaque 

• Hong-jo ended up picking Little Hanna’s zodiac plaque

• I-yul picked Su-hyeon’s zodiac plaque

• Su-hyeon considered picking I-yul’s zodiac plaque, heard her deity tell her to pick what would be Hong-jo’s zodiac plaque, and then went for a third option 

• Little Hanna picks Hong-jo’s plaque because she pulled the Lovers card from her tarot deck for it—but every subsequent tarot reading she does about him results in pulling one of the handful of “betrayal” cards

• Su-hyeon ultimately picks Gu-bong’s plaque, whom she dated until the reveal that Hong-jo was a shaman, as well, and then…well, mostly just the two of them giggling like school children for the entire rest of the show whenever they got near each other...which means she should have listened to her deity

• Hong-jo and Little Hanna are the only ones to match their pre-show picks

14. I’ve seen some awkward first meetings for these shows, but this one was ridiculous. Like, no one talked to each other. At all. Not until Big Hanna made them. 

15. One of my favorite Yun-a moments is when Big Hanna musters all her courage to go see Hong-jo and let him know she likes him…and Yun-a just runs into the room from out of nowhere in total “I’m here too!” mode. Which, judging from her time on the show, might be the only way she ever gets included in anything. 

16. There’s a big deal made about how intensely Hong-jo apparently felt about Jae-won leaving the show, but Little Hanna is the one we see reacting most overtly to it, sobbing about how his departure was exactly the kind of thing she feared would happen—that is, that they’d be tempted by their feelings in contradiction of what “fate” had in store for them, which she said from the start was something that would never end well.

16A. Which, yes, is terribly ironic, given how her final decision ends up playing out, but…it’s what she said.

17. Oh, and final picks are structured in such a way that you are required to announce whether you are sticking with your pre-show “fated” partner for your final pick or following your heart—and, with only one person sticking with his original choice, it is hilarious hearing how hard they all backpedal over their thoughts on the need to follow the fates they see with their fortune telling. 

18. Of all the “how you’ll pick your dates for today” assignments on the show, my favorite is the one where the girls have to secretly give the boys invites without anyone else seeing. It’s absolute chaos as the two women who want to ask out Hong-jo have to fight for the best way to get him alone for a moment—but the two girls who ask out I-yul are slick as f*** about it: Yun-a returns a book she borrowed from him with the invite in it…but Little Hanna got to him first by straight-up reverse pickpocketing him as she passed him on the stairs. She just dumps it in his pocket, and walks off, drinking her tea without so much as acknowledging him. It was amazing. 

18A. This stealth delivery quest takes about 7 minutes to fully play out, but because they have to show us each girl’s attempt from start to finish, that brief section of time becomes a full 20-minute segment of the show, and it was really amusing to watch the other parts of it playing out in the background. 

19. No, I did not make a mistake in the point above: no one picks Gu-bong for this date, and it’s hilarious, because he doesn’t know that everyone else is going on dates. He just realizes he’s alone at the house, at one point, and goes to stack rocks outside for a bit to keep busy. It’s very funny.

20. Daryl, circa Ep 1: “Boy, they sure are playing bizarrely ominous music as Hong-jo decorates the vanity in his room with the polaroids he took of everyone. What’s that about?”

21. Daryl, circa Ep 5: “Oh, Little Hanna doesn’t like what he wrote as a caption for the picture Hong-jo took of her with I-yul! That’s what they’re having this big fight about! Oo, fairplay to the edit from four episodes ago. Well done.”

22. Yun-a and Big Hanna are so unpopular with the boys that they go on a date with each other, near the end of the show, just to get out of the house. 

22A. YUN-A: “Should we brag to everyone about spending the day at this spa?”

BIG HANNA: “...no.”

23. Another one of my favorite Yun-a moments is her input on a discussion she’s having about the potential outcomes for everyone on the show: I-yul says everyone has a good ending and a bad ending—that is, an ending where they match up and one where they don’t. But Yun-a says that she doesn’t think not matching up is a bad ending. She thinks the only bad ending is not having anyone you even want to pick. Which probably loses something with me just typing it out to you, but which, in context, was a totally badass line. 

24. Maybe this is more the translation than the line itself, but Little Hanna tells one of the boys she’s happy to chit-chat with him but wants to “empty herself” first. (She then laughs, because it’s obvious that she’s not interested in the guy romantically and, therefore, doesn’t mind sounding too-casual in front of him.) I don’t know if this is a common “slang” for urination or a Little Hanna original, but it certainly got a laugh out of me. 

25. Another another one of my favorite Yun-a moments is her shoveling a whole pork cutlet into her mouth because cutting it never enters her mind. 

26. The most romantic part of the show (ignoring the deleted scenes) is undoubtedly the final pick ceremony, where the boys and girls line up across from each other and, in turn, walk over to whomever they like and confess their feelings. Like, literally, you give a spiel and more or less conclude with “I like you.” It’s kind of incredible. 

26A. Big Hanna gives the most schoolgirl anime confession in the world to Hong-jo, even running off with her hands over her face when she finishes. It was adorable.

26B. Of course, it was also straightforward and honest, as is her style. But…it was still like watching a 12-year-old girl. (So good.)

27. The order in which everyone is prompted to confess 100% gives away who’s going to couple-up, but…hey, not every final picks segment is going to be as clean as Transit Love 2. 

28. We got at least one instance of the show hiding a strong friendship from us: Gu-bong and I-yul were apparently frequent confidants, but I don’t think I ever saw them speak to each other before the final episode, where Gu-bong thanks I-yul for always looking out for him. (I say “at least one” because there’s the possibility that Su-hyeon and Big Hanna were pals because Su-hyeon asks Big Hanna for some important advice in the final episode, which was surprising because I’d never seen them talk—but it’s equal possible that they weren’t friends and that Su-hyeon in face had not been friendly with any of the girls but knew Big Hanna was the most neutral of the three other girls she could talk to (because she was in a love triangle with Little Hanna and because Yun-a is…Yun-a).)

29. When Little Hanna is upset about having to hear Hong-jo and Su-hyeon giggle and guffaw in his room for hours on end, she slumps down by herself at this little table outside her bedroom. In response to this scene, Yoo In-na says, “Aww, Little Hanna’s feeling so down that she doesn’t have the energy to sit like a lady!” Which…lol. 

30. We get TWO separate instances of the boys doing skin moisturizer product placement.

31. And one more another one of my favorite Yun-a moments comes when the boys are supposed to ask the girls out on dates—first come, first served. Yun-a, when a couple of the boys come to the girls’ room, shouts from her bed, “PLEASE PICK ME,” pouting and sort of stamping her feet as she does so. One of the boys does, in fact, ask her out, and her response is to throw her arms in the air and scream, “YES!!! I GET TO LEAVE THE HOUSE!” 

31A. I repeat: she is a total loon, and I kind of love her.

32. When the boys have to first-come-first-served the girls for their dates, everyone receives the prompt from the show while they are all seated at the breakfast table. The atmosphere immediately becomes awkward, so Little Hanna eventually tells the boys that the girls will scatter to different parts of the house so that the boys can safely ask them in private. Hong-jo quickly asks how the boys are supposed to know where the girls are, if they do that—and Little Hanna shouts, “USE FORTUNE TELLING!” and leaves. 

And that’s that. For what it’s worth. 

With Possessed Love in the rearview, my K-date calendar is suddenly clear. And…I mean, who knows what will become of me, now. (Everyone, I suspect, since I’ve got three full seasons of backlog Heart Signal downloaded and ready to go. But…y’never know. Maybe I’ll take a break. Or maybe…I dunno, something that could believably happen.)

Regardless, it’s time to get Christmas shopping. It’s practically December.

And remember: you got The Fool card, so…throw caution to the wind. That thing you’re thinking about? Go for it. It just might work out.

I mean, Little Hanna trusted her cards. And she won the show. So.

More soon.

—Daryl