Letter #128: The Sound of Your Heart

Good morning, Erin.

Hmm…I’ve put on Backstreet Rookie to play in the background as I write this letter. That’s an unusual decision for me. 

Now, in fairness, I had not intended to put it on. I mean, I did it deliberately, but I (inexplicably) got myself mixed up and, rather than putting on my regular fare for company, I clicked into my K-drama folder and…well, here we are. 

The downside to having done this is, of course, that it isn’t really background, is it. I mean, it’s one of the best/my favorite Korean shows, and it features Kim Yoo-jung at her most distractingly gorgeous. It’d be like trying to get ready for work with Hotel Del Luna in the background: it’s too easy to get absorbed and lose focus on the task at hand.

But the universe has its way of working out, if you take a moment to examine things. And…well, I’ll save that detail for when it’s relevant. Just know that this was less of a mistake than I originally thought. 

…I mean, I’m still far more distracted than I usually am when writing to you, but it’s fine. I’m still writing. See? Type type type. Consistently writing and not staring at the TV. 

Heh. Saet-byeol, you scamp. 

…

S-So I watched The Sound of Your Heart, a short, sitcom-y series on Netflix that I only started because, obviously, Jung So-min is in it, and she is my K-drama girlfriend. That was all I needed to know, and that was all I cared about. And we both know that always—always—works out for me.

Ready to find out just how much it worked out for me? Well, here we go!

1. This…is a really, really stupid show. I get that it’s a sitcom, essentially, and that it’s a translation of a comic of some kind—but that’s no excuse. Regardless of whether or not individual moments are amusing, the whole thing is a structural mess: every joke and every scenario goes on for waaaaaaaay too long, like they’d literally just adapted a series of daily comic strips into an episode of television. Sure, most comics will do a run of strips that are in some fashion a continuation of the same scenario, but they aren’t built like a long-form scene—that is, they aren’t set up to be direct continuations from the moment that ends the previous strip. They don’t flow, and they certainly don’t form the arc of a narrative scene. Every episode—I might even say every aspect—of The Sound of Your Heart is constructed in this overlong, disjointed manner. And I did not have a good time with it. 

1A. …unless Jung So-min is on screen, in which case it was awesome.

1B. No, I’m being serious: she is hilarious and easily the best part of the show. Jung So-min thrives when she gets to let loose and play at the extremes of a character, and she 100% gets to dig into a whackjob feast with Ae-bong. She lights up the screen whenever she appears, playing unquestionably the most amusing character on the show—and, looking back, the one who anchored things to some measure of believability (even when her scenes were absurd), probably because, as the love interest, she’s the only one in the bunch who is written with any measure of genuine human consideration. That is, she feels real, even in caricature. It’s a pity she wasn’t in it more. (And not just because she’s got an adorable bob.) 

1C. Which is not to say that there aren’t other things of worth scattered throughout the series, of course. But they were certainly scattered.

2. But before I get into whatever else I have in my notes (and I think I do have some things that aren’t just a variation on “why are we still doing this?!”), let’s talk about everyone I recognized:

• the tall, idiot detective from Busted! as Seok, the main guy

• Ji-ho from Because This is My First Life as Ae-bong

• Jiho’s dad from Because This is My First Life as Seok’s dad (mini-reunion!)

• Ju-ri’s mom from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as Seok’s mom

• the dad’s friend from 18 Again as the comic editor

• Gray Ghost from Goblin as Ae-bong’s friend

• Secretary Brother from Business Proposal as a soldier on the bus/a college student

• Ha-ri from Business Proposal as the loud girl next door (min-reunion! Sorta!)

• Saet-byeol’s little sister from Backstreet Rookie as herself 

• Vincenzo from Vincenzo as the needlessly handsome comic writer

• the cop lady with marriage troubles in Behind Your Touch as a bride

• the old convenience store owner jerkface from Sweet Home as Ae-bong’s dad

• Sam-dal’s dad from Welcome to Samdal-ri as the idiot brother’s supervisor

• the voice of “Thunder” (the robot) from Alienoid as the idiot brother

• the dude who interviews celebrities while doing gym stuff on YouTube as Seok’s twin cousins

• the neurology department head from (as yet unfinished) Bad-Memory Eraser as a priest

3. ….so, did you catch it? The reason behind the universe’s machinations to make me have Backstreet Rookie on in the background was because Saet-byeol’s little sister is in The Sound of Your Heart! Like, very briefly! Seems she’s in a K-pop group. Who knew? (You did, I bet. You always know.)

4. Now, I complained about the show being a structural mess, and one of the big reasons for this and for the gags going on for too long is that (as I said) it feels like each episode is a series of linked comic strips all played out in order, despite there not being a fluid connection from one to the next. HOWEVER…this would be much easier to deal with if the content of these episodes were broken up whenever a punchline hit—that is if, whenever the individual “strip” ended, we’d cut to a different plotline rather than following it up with the next “strip” in the sequence. Having the throughline for the specific gag be something we could come back to would give it the distance from the previous punchline in the same element that would allow us to appreciate the similarity of the gag more easily. 

4A. To its…credit(?), the show does eventually do this—ONCE—with Episode 7 cutting back and forth between the gag about the mom Facetiming the idiot brother and Seok teaching a class at a college. Both plotlines would have been absolutely insufferable in solo chunks, but they ended up being only dull and unfunny this way. Which is much better. 

4B. Of course, overall, it doesn’t help that pretty much every episode is absent of real story. And even plot, honestly. They’re mostly just a collection of stuff that happens. Of skits. Of setups and punchlines. Which is fine (even preferable) for a comic strip. Not so great for 15-minutes of live-action TV at a time. 

4C. And it doesn’t help in any way that I didn’t think the jokes were funny. But that’s something else altogether. 

5. That said, I don’t want you to think Jung So-min’s antics as Ae-bong were the only things I laughed at the whole time. No, there was also:

• the flashback to Seok’s old classmate’s wedding, where we’ve been told he’ll run into Ae-bong—“the one in the bob”—for the first time since they were in high school, and literally everyone in the flashback who isn’t Seok has a bob, so we have no idea who Ae-bong is going to be. It goes on for too long, of course, but it was a genuinely funny gag. 

• the episode where the family agrees to only speak in English at home with a monetary penalty to be paid whenever someone drops back into Korean—but only the part at the end where the dad finds out how expensive an English class would be, so he gets a nighttime construction job to make extra money…to then pay up whenever he wants to say anything at home, because f*** it, he’s just gonna speak Korean. The whole “speak English” thing goes on for too long, of course, but that was a hilarious punchline to the whole thing. 

• the episode where Ae-bong’s parents think Seok is the landlady’s husband goes on for too long, of course, but the stinger at the end where they think he’s using Ae-bong as a mistress and her dad secretly wants to know how Seok managed to Casanova his way into the situation was genuinely amusing. 

• the episode where the idiot brother convinces a couple of floors worth of (conveniently near-exclusively Korean) guests at a hotel in China that the hotel is on fire and they need to evacuate—and repurpose various women’s bras as masks for warding off the smoke from the fire—is legitimately funny. I mean, it goes on for too long, of course, but…still. 

6. I don’t know why Seok and Ae-bong’s first date takes place in a fancy restaurant with old Yankees memorabilia on the walls, but…I approve. 

6A. Similarly, we get Jung So-min in a short skirt for the date, and…wowza, I approve. 

6B. Don’t look at me like that—do you know how many times the dude in Love Next Door has been shirtless in just the first six episodes? Four, Erin. FOUR. Now ask me how many times I’ve seen Jung So-min flash her legs in literally any show I’ve ever seen her in. Once—and it was here. I GET TO ENJOY THIS.

6C. …I mean, I think this is the first time. I certainly reacted like I’d never seen it before.

7. At one point, Seok’s parents get in a rowboat, and the father starts rowing in the opposite direction as he would have to to propel the boat in the direction it was moving in. Which kind of ruined the illusion. 

8. In Episode 8, Seok’s friend is wearing a t-shirt with Mr. Happy, a character from the Mr. Men and Little Miss books I used to LOVE as a kid, on it. That threw me for a loop. My mom would play me their record, when I was little. And I want to say there was something on TV, too, but…well, I recognized the drawing right away. Hit me right in the nostalgia gland. 

9. Hats off to whoever played the waitress at the restaurant in China. Her English was PERFECT—like, accent and all. She literally sounded American. Good job!

10. Heh, I apparently made note that the episode with Seok’s twin cousins was so bad that the only good thing about it was how pretty the girl who was on the blind date was. (I haven’t seen her in anything else, it looks like. But she’s the older sister of a member of TWICE.)

11. And speaking of pretty girls: Kim Se-jeong spent most of the episode she was in bouncing around her apartment in an oversized shirt and adorable matching headband. So, I thought her performance was fantastic.

11A. …but the reason I’m mentioning this at all is that this show was made in 2016. Sejeong debuted with I.O.I in 2016. So, she’s a new item, as it were, when she appears on this show. And her two big gags in the episode are A) telling her boyfriend they should f*** loudly all night to drive the neighbors crazy, and B) and extended section where her boyfriend talks to her while she’s on the toilet (like, literally in full view of the camera). I mean…I dunno, that struck me as a weird couple of gags for a newly-debuted idol to be a part of, but…hey, what do I know. 

11B. I mean, yes, the episode ends with the girls from LABOUM being a bunch of delinquents behind closed doors, but that’s the joke (that they drink, smoke, and swear), since they’re playing themselves. I don’t think the joke with Sejeong is that she’s an idol, and this goes against the whole “idol” image. And, if it is…f***ing and using the bathroom? Really? That’s the way you go with it? I dunno.

And that seems a suitably oddball item to end on. 

What a stupid show. But at least it’s behind us so we can move on to…

[checks notes]

Oh, f*** my life, Love Andante. 

…

Well, I’m sure something good will come up, eventually. Didn’t A-List to Playlist drop? I can probably binge that, right? That’s probably okay?

…I am never going to get this right on my own, am I.

Sigh.

More soon.

—Daryl