Letter #124: Miss Night and Day

Good morning, Erin.

The other day, I decided to be strategic for once and use my lunch break not to peruse YouTube but to get gas for my car, saving myself from having to stop after work so I could just go straight to the supermarket on my way home.

Naturally, I was rear-ended just as I got there, causing just enough damage that, given the age of my car, my insurance company will probably tell me it won’t pay for the repairs, forcing me to buy a new car. 

But, hey, who knows—maybe they will cover it, and then it will just be a matter of dealing with the shop taking seven weeks to make the repairs.

Sigh. It’s my own fault for doing something different. Obviously.

Not to worry, though: I’m rewatching the IVE variety show episode where they pretend to be on Transit Love to calm my nerves. And make it seem like I’m only crying because I’m laughing too hard. 

…

But y’know what isn’t a car wreck? Miss Night and Day! 

Now, I admit, I wanted to give this series a shot pretty much only because I saw Jung Eun-ji was starring in it—not strictly because (like with almost every other K-drama decision I make) I think she’s quite attractive but because, as I’m sure you remember, I started Branding in Seongsu thinking she would be in it only to find out that, in fact, it was a totally different actress whose MyDramaList picture looked sort-of like hers, so…really, I felt guilty and wanted to make it up to her. (Karmically.) Which, of course, is a totally normal thing that a totally normal person would do. 

So, put down the civil service exam study guide, seonbae—we’ve got some sunlight-based aging to do!

1. I really liked this series. How much? Enough that it might (might) be my favorite series of 2024, so far. It’s got a little bit of everything, and all those little everythings are done well—and done as though they actually belong there. I mean, when was the last time a sweet romcom had a murder plot in it that didn’t drag the story down? 

1A. Oo, wait, Behind Your Touch. Does that count? Or…hmm, I feel like that wasn’t a sweet romcom. It was a comedy with romance in it, but it wasn’t strictly a romance story so much as a zany murder caper with some romance on the side. Yeah, that one doesn’t count. The last romcoms with murder plots I saw were Doctor Slump and Park’s Marriage Contract, and I know the murder plots in those DID NOT help things. So…yeah, congrats to Miss Night and Day. 

1B. …which is charming and funny and adorable and tense and emotional and just a really, really good time. It didn’t hit me in the same kind of surprised-to-find-I-love-it way that The Matchmakers absolutely stealthed me (ugh, SUCH a good show!), but I would never have guessed that I’d stay at the same level of really-enjoying-this from the start of Episode 1 straight through the end of the finale. So, yeah, if you’ve somehow gotten this far into the letter and not yet watched it…go watch it. I promise it’s a very Erin-y good time. Or, y’know, the kind of show I’d expect you to tell me to drop everything to start watching. 

2. Wanna see the first thing I took notes on?

Absolute savage.

3. Y’know, I recognized just about everyone in the core cast, for this one:

• #bestgirl from That Winter, the Wind Blows as Mi-jin, our female lead

• Nam Do-san’s aunt/mom from Weightlifting Fairy as Old Mi-jin

• the man whose spirit goes back in time in Mr. Queen as Mr. Gye, the male lead

• the paralegal from Vincenzo as Mr. Ju, Mr. Gye’s investigator

• the punk-y assistant from Welcome to Samdal-ri as Ga-yeong, Mi-jin’s best friend

• the mom from A Good Day to be a Dog as Mi-jin’s mom

• Grandma’s lackey in Inspector Koo as Mi-jin’s father

• Ms. Choi from Hotel Del Luna as the snarky “senior” intern at the prosecutor's office

• young Cha-min from Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale as young Mr. Gye

• the second male lead from Doctor Slump as a prosecutor

3A. Oh—and look:

Our friend the distinctly-shaped cafe from Connection and Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale is back! 

3B. I kinda feel bad for the guy playing Mr. Gye: he’s the only one who has to act like a normal person. Everyone else gets to be zany and fun (and, in some cases, deeply emotional), but, for the most part, he has to be the steady, stoic, grounded one. Poor guy. 

3C. And everyone is really good in this, too. Old Mi-jin’s actress is obviously having A BLAST playing a young woman, which is endearing as hell. The guy playing Mr. Ju is hilarious, as he always is. Ga-yeong turns out to be not just funny but charming and surprisingly sincere. Mi-jin’s parents get to be over-the-top but also get to flex their heartbreak muscles. And, of course, we’ve got #bestgirl Jung Eun-ji, who is pitch-perfect as Mi-jin, nailing the constantly shifting moods of the character and making you feel every single one of them.

3D. …plus, Jung Eun-ji is real cute. 

3E. And gives me Yoojung from Weki Meki vibes. Which is gonna get me every time.

3F. Okay, just…for the record: Jung Eun-ji on the left; Kim Ji-eun (Branding in Seongsu) on the right.

I mean…you see it, right? I was just going off my memory of the picture on the left versus seeing the picture on the right. Did I, like, click through to see if this was who I thought it was, or look up the name to double-check? No. But, c’mon, going just from memory…you see it, right? Erin? 

4. In the early episodes of the show, they do some STELLAR quick-change tricks as Mi-jin goes from young to old (or back). Like, practical, magician-esque swaps, not just clever edits or cutting away or CGI transitions. They abandon this later on (because they don’t need it), but I missed it, once it was gone. ‘Cus more than a handful of them were just wonderful to behold. 

5. Given the early dig at her age by the woman at the job interview, the show missed a trick, in my opinion, by not having that joke come back after Mi-jin’s curse kicks in. When she switches back from being old for the first time, she desperately asks the people around her if she looks like she’s in her 20s, and I thought it would have been hilarious to have someone respond with, “Maybe early 30s?” or something like that. Seemed like an obvious joke to me, but…oh well. No one’s perfect. 

6. Ga-yeong’s birthday is your half-birthday! That’s fun.

7. There’s a hilarious (to me) unintentional joke in the episode where Mi-jin barges into Mr. Gye’s apartment to peek at some of his paperwork, in that he tries to get her to leave by saying that he needs to spend the night looking over documents—but his phone nickname for Mi-jin is actually “Documents,” so…I chuckled ‘cus it came off sounding like he was making a move on her. He obviously wasn’t, and the show doesn’t present it as anything but him saying he has work to do, but…I laughed. 

7A. That said: what works really well about this whole sequence that certainly is intended is that, though he repeatedly tells her he wants her to leave, he never actually does anything to back up this claim. He just lets her do whatever she wants. Because he likes that she’s there. It’s great, and I loved it. 

8. The only problem I ever had with the “love triangle” aspect of the story is that it was introduced as a cliffhanger at the end of an episode, which meant having to wait AN ENTIRE WEEK to see the fallout from it. 

9. The kid playing young Mr. Gye falls down on the pavement after chasing a car, just like he does in Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale. Which is a heck of a coincidence, given that these are the only two things I’ve ever seen him in—and I saw them back-to-back. 

10. I really like that, after they become friends, the Popstar Guy calls Old Mi-jin noona. I’m not clear on whether this is because he knows that she’s secretly only a couple of years older than he is or just a sign that they’re friends, but I still liked it. (Though, I do not doubt that he’d have called Old Mi-jin noona regardless, once they became close. So…I know it’s pretty much a distinction without a difference, but it’s the kind of thing I’d want to know.)

11. I thought the prosecutor lady who was all tsundere about Mr. Gye was going to be a more significant player in the series, but…no. She was pretty much just a functional member of the plot. 

11A. “...is that you being upset that you didn’t get as much ‘hot mean girl’ time as you thought you were going to, Daryl?” I hear you say. To which I respond, “N-No. I mean, why would you even, um, suspect that that could be why…y’know, why I’d mention that she, um…uh…uhhhh…”

11B. …no, but seriously, I just assumed she’d have more to do, given the strength of her introduction to the story as the person who knew Mr. Gye in the past. 

11C. Don’t give me that look—I swear, it was just a narrative structure thing!

12. I will never get over all the X-Files references we get in K-dramas. I mean, the show is older than the actress who makes the reference here! How has it made such an impact in Korea that it’s still the go-to for references to investigations? 

13. The actor playing Mr. Gye has to take these itty-bitty strides whenever he runs, presumably because his natural strides are too long or because he’s too fast for the way they want to film him, and he looks absolutely ridiculous. Almost like he’s doing a joke pantomime of running. 

14. Mr. Ju, meanwhile, looks pretty good when he runs. I don’t know if it’s that he doesn’t have the issue with his stride, that he’s better at seeming natural while fake-running, or if he was just able to run naturally for his running scenes. But he certainly didn’t look silly. 

15. The CGI for the cat is pretty good. 

16. They actually land a suicide joke, which impressed me. Like, impressed that they even tried to make one and that, importantly, it was funny. 

17. Is it just me, or did the (very famous) actress (whose name I could easily look up but won’t) playing Old Mi-jin lose weight? She looks thinner than I remember her being. If she did…good for her! Old Mi-jin is a very active role, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she started exercising to prep for it. Or maybe I’m an idiot, and she’s always looked like this. Either way, I thought she looked quite vivacious. (And, again, good for her!)

18. Now, Ms. Choi (from HDL) gets a bit of the “make her look older” treatment, so they don’t give her the standard TV makeup and accentuate her smile lines; they give her these wonderful “snooty older lady” dresses (I absolutely love how she wears this oversized sunflower brooch over her reflective work vest—such a good detail); and then she does the whole, y’know, acting thing (changing the way she moves, how she stands, the resting look on her face) to make it seem like she’s maybe 10 years older than she actually is. 

19. Actually….here’s a weird one for ya: every time I talk about Ms. Choi, I am reminded of a girl I went to school with when I was little. Her name was Julia Choi, and…I think we were in the same class from kindergarten through (maybe) second grade, but then we were only ever in these sort of tangential classes together. (And then I changed schools in fifth grade—but that’s not important to this story.) Anyway, I’m always reminded of her when I mention Ms. Choi (but never when I mention Coach Choi, interestingly), which I find particularly amusing because I didn’t, like, hang out with her or anything. So, I guess it’s more that my memories of her are very specific, so they stand out:

• The one and only time I ever played house was with her, when we were in kindergarten. I remember none of the details around how this happened, only that I remember not really understanding what it was she wanted me to do. 

• She played the violin. I was a bass player and stood in the back behind the cellos and violas, which meant I was always facing the violin section, so I’d watch her from where I stood on my side of the orchestra (because she was the only person on that side of the room that I recognized). I remember she was obviously already good at it, whereas I was only just learning how to play. So, comparatively, I had a lot more downtime during our performances, which is why I could spend time watching everyone else. (This would have been third and fourth grade.)

• I went to Julia’s birthday party when we were in second grade(?), and she and I were…not paired up, exactly, but standing across from each other in her yard to play a game with water balloons. I say “game,” but it was just all the kids holding their water balloons in ways her mother told us to. When she was finished, I asked what we were supposed to do with the water balloons. “Throw them at each other,” she said. And immediately, with a whoop of joy, I spun and nailed Julia in the chest with mine, running away before there could be a retaliation strike. My mother was horrified, and I got a good scolding for it. “Her mother said to throw them!” I protested, and then my mom pointed out that Julia had obviously been in a nice dress that she was probably excited to wear and I’d probably upset her by “ruining” it. I have no memory of whether or not Julia had been upset (she probably was), but I did feel bad, after my mom pointed out the thing about the dress. I still feel bad about it, honestly. I used to be a real jerk. 

19A. …hang on, did I have the world’s subtlest little-kid crush on Julia Choi? ‘Cus I remember having the  crushes I did when I was little, but I don’t remember that awkward nervousness feeling about her. But I just re-read what I wrote, above, and…it sure sounds crush-y, doesn’t it? 

20. Mr. Gye fighting a dozen gangsters at once at the nightclub is done quite believably, between him being hit from behind multiple times and his bottlenecking the gangsters so that he’d only have to fight one at a time. I approve. 

21. Mi-jin fighting off that one gangster who tries to grab her in the kitchen at the club is done both cleverly and believably: she’s weak, scared, wobbly on her feet because of her high heels—but she’s able to use her wits and her environment to eventually gain the upper hand. The scene is appropriately amusing but also never loses its sense of danger. I thought it was handled really well. 

21A. And then we get the scene in the elevator, where the dunk club-goer is leering at her in her sexy clubbing dress, so she asks to borrow Mr. Gye’s coat, deliberately swinging it around her shoulders in such a way that the leering man gets a good whack in the face (accidentally, of course), putting an end to that. She’s nothing if not resourceful, our Mi-jin. 

22. Ga-young is obsessed with the Popstar Guy, whom Mi-jin befriends. She knows Mi-jin is friends with him. But she is very, very unconcerned about the whole thing. Which felt very, very weird to me.

23. Nice try, show, but don’t think I didn’t notice that, when the Popstar Guy gives Old Mi-jin a ride home from work, she leaves her bicycle behind. But she has it again—at home—in the morning, so she can ride it to work? Don’t think so. You’re not getting away with that one, as long as I’m the world’s greatest detective. 

24. I enjoyed that Mr. Gye was so absorbed in his flirty-texting with Mi-jin that he didn’t notice Old Mi-jin was audibly giggling just a few feet away from him every time he hit send. 

25. In Episode 14, Mi-jin puts a door-stopper lock on the sliding glass doors to the outside that she has in her bedroom. This never comes back. In fact, in the morning, she has to escape out the sliding glass doors in a hurry so that Mr. Gye does not see her in her aged-up form…and she has no issues just throwing it open and leaving. So…despite that being the perfect time for that lock to come back into play, it doesn’t. Making me question why we saw her put the lock on to begin with. 

26. The “one of the senior interns is lying!” subplot didn’t make sense to me. Like, I get why the woman sent those notes, but…she sent something like 100 of them, altogether. Why did she send more than one? How did she know that nothing had been done about her warnings, thus requiring that she send more? How was that supposed to work?

27. I don’t know if it made sense, but the mom sure acted the hell out of her “I think Old Mi-jin is my missing younger sister!” scene. Great job, there. 

28. According to this show, South Korea has a statute of limitations on murder. Which…is not something I would have expected. 

29. I know the joke is that old ladies always carry sucking candies with them, but we never establish that Mi-jin has those tendencies as a 28-year-old, so I’m not sure why Old Mi-jin has them to pull out of her pockets. 

29A. That said, she says that lemon is the best candy flavor, which is objectively correct. So I can let it slide. 

30. The main couple is really cute together. 

31. …and so is the (surprise) secondary couple. 

32. It’s a minor point, but when Old Mi-jin starts to cry about possibly losing her job, the show artistically jumps back and forth between showing her as Mi-jin and Old Mi-jin—but the actresses don’t match the way they cry. Given how well they were able to do the switching in the early episodes, I expected them to be more on top of that, but…oh well. 

33. I’m not the biggest fan of Mr. Gye’s past being tied to Mi-jin’s past. But we’ve already gone over how I feel about that storytelling convention. 

34. And don’t get me started on how bad a job the senior interns do at pretending to drink from obviously empty cups. 

35. But they use “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” as one of their musical cues, so how mad can I be about anything? 

And, yeah, that’s Miss Night and Day.

Again, I really enjoyed this show, even when it jumped entirely into being a serious drama. Easily in my Top 25. And I really, really liked Jung Eun-ji. I’m excited to see her in more things. 

Which brings us to an interesting crossroads: I don’t know what my next letter is going to be. Or what I’m jumping into next. I mean, I have to finish The Whirlwind, but I dunno if I’m emotionally ready to jump back into that tension-fest. (It’s great, though. Just maybe too effective.) And I definitely have to get to the Weki Meki letter before the end of the month as my memorial for their disbandment—which is more involved than you’d think. And I just found out that “I have no chingu” girl is in Lovely Runner, so maybe I need to fast-track that one. 

So many roads in front of me. What is a boy to do?

What’s that? Pick the one with the prettiest girl in it? Well, Erin, you’re the boss. 

More soon. 

(...-ish.)

—Daryl

P.S. - Seriously, though, IVE is kind of great. And “Blue Blood” is frikkin’ rad.