Letter #144: At a Distance, Spring is Green

Good morning, Erin.

I’m going to give you a moment to recover from just how stunned I know you must be, right now: we’re going to talk about a show you actually recommended to me. 

I know. I know. Red letter day. 

…potentially because all my usual K-drama sites were axed and therefore unable to provide me with the final few episodes of the weeklies I was watching and forcing me to reach back into my available backlog but the important thing is I’m watching your recommendation!!!

That’s right, today we are going to chat about At a Distance, Spring is Green, which has been patiently waiting on my computer since one of your post-it note recommendation lists in…2022? (Aww, 2022. It was so…actually, wait—2022 mostly sucked. Though, I did get to wave hello to you every few days, so…on balance, I guess it was pretty good.) And now it’s time has come. 

I don’t remember if you recommended it because you’d seen it or because you wanted to see it. And I certainly don’t know if you’ve seen it since. But I think the only way to talk about it is to talk about it, so…spoilers ahead.

If you care.

Which you shouldn’t. 

Because—spoilers—f*** this show. 

1. Now, in fairness, the first episode is quite good, and I had high hopes for what was to come because of it. Was it amazing? No—but it was exactly the kind of opening that you’d want to this kind of series: lightly introspective, variety of distinct characters, inoffensive pops of humor, and tons of character friction that you just know is going to ultimately lead to friendship. It was solid, it was pleasantly cliché, and I absolutely told everyone how excited I was to get into something that felt nice and cozy after a run of tense thrillers and frustrating dramatic stumbles. 

2. …until it became clear that Jun was going to be our protagonist—because Jun SUUUUUUUUCKS. 

3. Which we can get into a little bit later, because, for now, I’d like to go over all the folks I recognized:

• the girly friend from True Beauty as So-bin

• the losing angle of the love triangle from My Roommate is a Gumiho as Soo-hyun

• “Bad” Boy’s chubby thug lackey from True Beauty as Chubby Thug Classmate (mini-reunion!)

• the bleach-haired mage from Alchemy of Souls as Thin Thug Classmate

• the gossipy Chinese restaurant owner from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha as Professor Song

• one of the dead girls from Doubt as So-bin’s playboy friend’s ex-girlfriend

3A. I was quite excited to see the actors playing Soo-hyun and Thin Thug Classmate. I quite like them both. I don’t think either is at all a good actor, but…still, I quite like them both. 

3B. Having said that, the guy playing Thin Thug Classmate does seem strangely capable of playing a total jerkface villain. So, all in all, he’s not bad in this. 

3C. And it was fitting to see the guy playing Soo-hyun in this after having just watched Lee Se-young in What Comes After Love, since those two were the main characters in Park’s Marriage Contract. (Where, of course, I found her incredible and him enjoyable but not very good.)

3D. The actress playing Professor Song, though, is always very good—and she is far-and-away the best actor in the series. In fact, I’d argue that she’s too good for it. Her character isn’t written particularly well (though she’s not written horribly, either), but she’s probably the only one who’s able to at all get around the inconsistencies of the writing, forcing a clear emotional arc from one scene to the next—even when no explanation for her changes happen on screen. I should really know her name…Cha Chung-hwa. I will probably forget that almost immediately, but, yeah, Cha Chung-hwa. Always happy to see her. (And, unrelatedly: she was sportin’ some killer eyeshadow.)

3E. And then there’s the girl playing So-bin, who, as was the case in Monchouchou Global House, is a capable actor given nothing to work with. Now, I don’t think being given something good will result in a sudden award-winning turn for her, but there’s some manner of talent there that deserves better than I’ve seen her get. (She’s also in a show that features Lucy from Weki Meki as part of the support cast, so I’m definitely watching that at some point—though it appears to be considered quite a bad show. Which means nothing, of course, since the commentary around this would suggest that it is beautiful and poignant. Which it is not. But, um, the point being that it seems unlikely she’ll have been given something better to work with in that show, and so I wish someone would utilize her better.)

3F. There were also two locations I swore I knew from other shows but absolutely did not. 

4. I’m not sure if fans of this show know how much heavy lifting is done by the emotional plinking of the piano soundtrack. 

5. The show does a hilarious job of covering the Audi logo on a character’s car, covering it in duct tape…in the shape of the Audi logo.

6. …but we do get a shot of someone’s vomit that isn’t censored, so it kind of balances out. 

7. One of my earliest notes is about the fact that we get a lot of voiceover narration from our central characters and how it seems to be more in line with what I’d expect from employing voiceover narration. I also make sure to note that I’d keep an eye on it throughout the show…only for it to never be used again. Which I guess technically means it passed!

8. At the end of the show, our central characters have been assigned a group project for their business class: shoot a commercial for something. They decide they want to cast some previously unseen student from the journalism department as their lead by stopping her as she passes by on her way to class. They ask if she’s interested in helping them out, and she agrees. It’s not an important plot point—but they end Episode 11 on this dramatic cliffhanger reveal as they stop her and ask. And I cannot for the life of me figure out why. She’s not played by a famous actress or idol or anything, so it’s not a surprise cameo. (Um, as far as I can tell, at least.) The closest explanation I could come up with was that the character is called “Kim Hye-yoon,” which is the name of the actress who plays Dan-oh on Extraordinary You. They call this girl by name before we see her face, so…were we supposed to think it was Dan-oh? Y’know, for that half-second before they dramatically reveal she’s not? (I tried looking this up, but all I found was a bunch of people arguing over whether actual Kim Hye-yoon should be considered pretty. Which…how is this even an argument?)

9. Because this show is from two or three years ago, there are a couple of product placement spots for that, like, pink makeup stick that’s supposed to magically make it look like you’ve slept well when you rub it under your eyes. And it was nice to see an old friend. 

10.The pen I was using to take notes died somewhere around Episode 6, presumably because it couldn’t stand to finish the show. 

11. To wit:

11A. “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it.” That’s a line from A Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which is (as I’m sure you know) the best Christmas movie of all time. It’s Kermit (as Bob Cratchit) talking to his family about remembering Tiny Tim on their first Christmas after his death. It’s a beautiful moment, simultaneously heartbreaking and comforting: a hard fact stated simply but gently, affirming the need to mourn while also firmly warning against despair. And I absolutely love it. 

11B. I mention this because, at the end of the day, my favorite kind of story is about connection. I love, love, love stories about the connections between people: falling in love, finding true friendship, fully realizing what it means to be a family—and the more complex the emotions involved, the more fascinating I find it. And I don’t just mean that finding or making the connection is complex, but whether there is a consequence or resolution to the connection as well. (For example, the two leads in My Mister find each other in the craziest way possible…but the uncertainty of exactly what they’ve found in each other doesn’t make for the most straightforward path in their relationship.) Essentially, I’m drawn to the emotional potential in meetings and partings. 

11C. So, as I watched Episode 1 play out, that’s exactly the kind of show I thought we’d be getting: three similarly despondent college students who would find each other and in some way deal with their individual obstacles because of it. And, after having watched the whole thing, I am convinced that this is what the show should have been—because, by design or not, it absolutely IS NOT that. Because this show is not about three similarly despondent college students finding each other—it’s about Jun and his journey to utterly subsume the other two central characters into his narrative. Which sucks. Because, as I have already mentioned, Jun SUUUUUUUUCKS. 

11D. Which is especially galling because, as the first episode unfolds, So-bin and Soo-hyun (our other two central characters) already have a vague friction from a prior interaction that immediately puts them into…not conflict, exactly, but a kind of small opposition—an opposition that A) directly involves their main character flaws, and B) leads to a quick resolution to their “conflict” that both brings them closer together and introduces a clear path for them to be integral parts of each other’s specific character arcs. I mean, by the halfway point, I was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllll in on So-bin x Soo-hyung, whether they were headed towards romance or not—that’s how strong the signs of their connection were. (Not that it was overly complicated stuff: she needed some “who cares?” confidence, and he needed to realize the value in accepting help from others. Simple, but effective—especially as an introduction.) Meanwhile, Jun was clearly set up to be third part of their triumvirate, having no prior connection to So-bin or Soo-hyun and needing something much less specific to either of them: he wants to feel genuinely valued. Which means we’ve got (at least broadly) a kind of mom/dad/child situation on the horizon, where So-bin and Soo-hyun help each other, and they both—as a unit—help Jun. 

11E. …except no, because it turns out Jun—and Jun alone—is our protagonist. In fact, Jun is the show. EVERYTHING (and I am not exaggerating) becomes about him and his struggles and his wants and his perceptions. Like, even our tertiary characters are ultimately in service to his whims, because their arcs are mostly connected to So-bin and Soo-hyun—both of whom Jun fully monopolizes. What’s that about So-bin needing to learn to believe in herself a bit more? Don’t worry! Jun just forces the long-standing trauma at the root of it right out of her! In an afternoon! Because it’s getting in the way of her liking him even more! And Soo-hyun’s inability to let anyone else take on hardships? Well, Jun’s got that covered! He just relentlessly demands Soo-hyun pay attention to him! That way, the only hardships he has to worry about are Jun’s hardships! Which is waaaaaay better than worrying about a whole bunch of other people’s woes (like his own! or his family’s!), right? Right! Because who cares about what specific things So-bin and Soo-hyun were dealing with when they could be dealing with Jun’s problems? Or, even better, when all they think about and talk about is Jun! Or or or even better…when all they do is sit around waiting for when Jun ALLOWS THEM to interact with him for his own benefit! It’s the perfect story!

11F. Seriously: the show genuinely thinks this. And…well, I can’t say there isn’t a HUGE swath of the online commentary that totally agrees. But as with both Mr. Plankton and Nevertheless, you will never be able to convince me that this isn’t because the online commentary is driven by people who think the male lead is hot—and that’s all they need.

11G. Because here’s the thing about Jun: he SUUUUUUUUCKS. He’s whiny, narcissistic, and (for expediency’s sake) thoroughly unconcerned with the feelings—or autonomy—of others. He repeatedly mistreats the people he’s supposedly most concerned about, repeatedly gaslighting (and I mean that in the proper sense of the word!) or guilt-tripping So-bin whenever she tries to do things her own way and consistently manipulating people in Soo-hyun’s life so that he will be forced to veer back into Jun’s orbit no matter how many times Soo-hyun makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with him. (Hell, Jun even orchestrates a situation where So-bin goes to confess her feelings to her long-time crush, having spent a full day hyping her up and convincing her that she can win this guy, knowing full well that he’s sending her off to see her crush with the girl he’s having a fling with—which absolutely devastates So-bin, causing her to run to Jun for a shoulder to cry on.) He constantly swings back and forth between sociopathy and spoiled tantrum, never satisfied until everything around him is focused on making him happy. He’s a trashcan excuse for a human being, and he deserves to be kicked into the sea. 

11H. …and the show thinks this is fine. I don’t mean that the show does this deliberately to show us Jun has to learn to overcome these character failings. No, I mean the show doesn’t judge him for this. Like, maybe it will sort of offhandedly admit that something he does is a little bit over the line, but there’s never a consequence for it. No one kicks him to the curb over it. He never has to scramble to rectify some situation he’s screwed up. He acts like a brat (...or an abusive boyfriend), and then EVERYONE ELSE goes crazy trying to re-earn his affections. It’s intolerable. 

11I. And, frankly, doesn’t make sense for who Jun is supposed to be as a character. Like, his whole thing at the start of the show is that he craves real affection: his family hates him and has essentially exiled him, handing him tons and tons of cash just to stay out of everyone’s hair; the girls on campus only like him because they think he’s hot; and the guys on campus only approach him because he’s all too happy to pay for literally anything if it keeps people hanging out with him and giving him at least the shallowest feelings of camaraderie. That he’s bad at making real friends and is so desperate for real connection that he selfishly and even underhandedly pursues the two people he wants most to befriend is believable enough…but that everyone and everything is, in a sense, a cakewalk for him as he does is the least interesting thing to do with a character whose goals are innocent enough but who’s incapable of meeting those innocent goals innocently.

11J. Which is really the worst part: it’s boring. Or, more specifically, his motivations are utterly mundane given the circumstances. Like, he pursues So-bin because he wants to date her. That’s it. Now, much like with a lot of the show, the very earliest part of this seems like it’s going to be something more interesting, with him trying to charm her because that’s all he knows how to do—and, when that fails, he ends up drunkenly begging her to just “like” him. Which I took to mean that he was so melancholic in that moment than he’d let his mask slip, admitting that he wasn’t really trying to woo her, just get her to want to befriend him (Of course, when I say he tried to charm her, I mean he was kind of an arrogant dickhead to her, promising to get her a job if she spent time with him—including forcing her to bungee jump, which she didn’t want to do (BECAUSE SHE’S NOT A LUNATIC)—and lying to her about exactly what he promised when she didn’t seem to fall for the sweet move of pushing a terrified girl off a 10-story platform against her will. But I digress.) And whining about wanting to date is soooooo much less interesting than being vulnerable and admitting that she’s maybe the only person he’s met who seems to treat him genuinely—which he’s tripping over himself to cultivate and keep. It’s the kind of complex emotional hook that I enjoy…which made it that much worse when it turned out not to be the case.

11K. Slightly better is Jun’s pursuit of Soo-hyun because…well, because Soo-hyun does not care about Jun. That Soo-hyun doesn’t buy the whole “I’m a cool popular guy who loves spending my money on folks!” veneer attracts him, another instance of Jun taking that as someone treating him genuinely, albeit negatively. There’s at least depth of some kind to that scenario, but it’s still boring because there’s nothing to the conflict as Soo-hyun continues to resist his pursuit because Jun just acts like a dickhead sociopath to him with no consequences when Soo-hyun won’t give in to his advances. (No, he literally blackmails Soo-hyun into having to talk to him whenever he wants him to. This is a real thing that happens—and he and Soo-hyun are total besties at the end of this. No problems.)

11L. And, again, for So-bin and Soo-hyun to just become, like, lackeys to his narrative…ugh. I don’t know what they were thinking. Those two have their own things going on, but…bah, it’s just so stupid. 

11M. Also: I like So-bin…so I f***ing HATE that she and Jun get together. Just FYI.

11N. …but my point is that this show would have been much better served if it were about these three characters (and their secondary/tertiary associates) being brought together by virtue of their individual struggles, finding a deep and meaningful connection that helps them overcome their obstacles, and then have to face the reality that, with their troubles solved, their paths will lead them away from each other. Because there are elements of that in the story (and we’ll get to some of those), reminders that what you want and what you need and what you can manage are not always in alignment, that all things end. And, given the finale, it seems to want to do something like that…but it also doesn’t—and it absolutely does not ever put in the work to make any of this happen. It just skips over all the details about the actual inter-character connections and assumes them into existence. Because Jun. Or something. 

11O. Which is to say: turns out this show isn’t about anything but narratively fellating Jun—which I absolutely did not sign on for. Nor should anyone have. Disappointing, frustrating, dull, and an insult to the audience. Again I say: f*** this show. 

12. Not that the whole thing was unbearable: they showed outtakes at the end of Episode 11 instead of a preview, and it was the most charming thing in the entire series. 

13. But the very best thing about this series is—inarguably—So-bin’s roommates: mega-hot preppy princess Mi-ju and mega-hot action girl Young-ran. 

13A. …which sounds like this is just another case of Daryl fawning over pretty K-drama girls, but it’s not. These two are AWESOME (and, sadly, underutilized). Like, I knew their names right away, but I just kept referring to them in my notes as “Best Girl” and “Bias Wrecker.”

13B. Now, before we even meet either of them, we get So-bin asking God for a dramaless semester, hoping that he will ensure her roommates are only slightly prettier than she is. Which I thought was hilarious. Because she’s like, “Obviously they’re going to be prettier than I am, but if they could not be total hotties, I’d appreciate it.” Now, I dunno if saying that is supposed to tell us she’s down on herself or just that she knows the kind of luck she has, but it struck me as being quite unexpected and, as such, quite funny. Even apart from the fact that, to no great surprise, Mi-ju and Young-ran both turn out to be scorching-hot babes. 

13C. Not that the show ever really does anything with them being scorching hot, of course, since they are both sent trotting after romantically indifferent Soo-hyun. And, even then, the show wastes the potential in the two girls being after the same boy. Especially since, to the show’s credit, their “rivalry” avoids being about trying to beat each other and, instead, is focused on the girls respecting each other’s feelings (and their attempts to win) as they try to work their way through those early stages of wooing someone. Both of their individual emotional journeys are solid and interesting, albeit limited entirely to their romantic pursuits because they are waaaaaaaay down the list of the show’s storytelling priorities, unfortunately. 

13D. But, even being so often relegated to the background, both Mi-ju and Young-ran manage to have some of the best moments of the show. And I don’t think I ever really resolved the #bestgirl argument—on a technicality: they write Mi-ju out of the show without telling us around Episode 11, giving Young-ran a little more room to actually have something resembling an independent character arc. Which just seems unfair. 

13E. Also, for the sake of completion: So-bin is very attractive. Obviously not at Mi-ju or Young-ran level, but…still. I think I was too busy falling all over myself about Kim Si-eun in the Monchouchou letter to mention it before now.

13F. Oo, and the actress who played Mi-ju is in that new Kim Tae-ri show I’ve already got set aside to watch! Which is extra-fun because, as I think I’ve mentioned before, Piano Girl from Vincenzo is also in it—and I spent much of Spring is Green thinking about how much Mi-ju’s actress reminded me of her.

13G. And…hold the phone—the girl who played Young-ran was in Hierarchy? How did I miss her? Lemme see who she was in th—OH MY GOD SHE WAS THE LACKEY FRIEND I DIDN’T THINK WAS ALL THAT CUTE?! How did tha—was I drunk?!

13H. …look, I had to sit through 12 episodes of everyone talking about how Jun was so hot and cool and amazing. I get to pig out about the girls. I’ve earned it. 

14. In an amazing choice by the subtitles, a character desperately shouts for someone to “Stop, darn it!” in a particularly harrowing moment in the series. Which I think sounds totally legit, I dunno about you.

15. There’s a dance club scene for about 25 seconds in Episode 4, and whatever generic electro they post-productioned in for it was pretty rad.

16. The show doesn’t really do much to backstop this, but Professor Song goes from being a total grouch to a firm but understanding figure in the story, in what I think is supposed to be a character arc and not just the writers being wishy-washy. Regardless, though, you can tell when the change happens not just by noticing her behavior but by making note of the glasses she’s wearing: she goes from a stern-looking black frame to a softer gold frame. And that’s not me reading too much into things, either—because she briefly goes back to the black frames when she goes to stir up trouble with the grad student she thinks has been putting moves on her love interest. 

16A. I’d also like to take a moment to apologize to Cha Chung-hwa for once again thinking she was much older than she actually is. (She’s currently 45. I keep assuming she’s in her mid-50s.) I know she’s been playing older roles in the last couple of things I’ve seen her in, but that’s not an excuse. I’m always bad at guessing ages, but this is off the mark even for me.

17. About halfway through the show, So-bin gives Jun a hyacinth as an apology for…something I can’t remember, telling him that he can look up the meaning of the flower to understand why she’s doing it. He does, and he finds that hyacinths can mean “eternal love” or “an apology”—ignoring the apology option and assuming she’s just declared that she’s madly in love with him. (She’s not.) This mix-up never comes into play. At all. He just assumes she loves him and is eventually proven right. 

18. Most galling of all, though: he names the flower “Bo-ra.” You know that’s unofficially my favorite Korean name, Erin—he clearly did this just to annoy me. 

19. Daryl claps at Mi-ju #1: Knowing that So-bin is upset about something but not wanting to give up her we’re-not-friends-just-roommates aloofness, Mi-ju offers to let So-bin vent to her by saying, “Consider me a pretty wall—since I won’t engage with you.” She then proceeds to totally read a magazine wink wink as So-bin recounts her troubles. 

20. I don’t know anything about fashion, but I know enough to know that, as beautiful as So-bin looked in that yellow dress she bought, it needed a belt to better separate the top and bottom parts of the dress. 

21. Speaking of the Monchouchou letter, again, we’ve talked about how leaving actors to adlib unimportant actions can frequently look silly or unnatural. Well, in Episode 1, Soo-hyun gets this treatment: he’s supposed to be cleaning up after a bunch of students have spent the night drinking and So-bin is supposed to interrupt him…which means he’s basically just rearranging the beer bottles into slightly different already-gathered piles, since the bottles aren’t reset into “messy” positions between takes. 

22. In Episode 9, Thin Thug Classmate tries to “get revenge” on Jun by…well, he lures her into a club room, secretly locks the door behind her, and then secretly livestreams wanting her to drink something that he’s maybe dosed? Or something? I genuinely don’t know what he was going to do. Rape her? Hope she’d embarrass herself when under the influence? The live-chat from his audience seems to have a better idea, and they tell him to reconsider—but I have no idea what was supposed to be up during that whole thing. 

22A. And then So-bin forgives him so everyone can be friends at the end. 

22B. Well, I say “everyone,” but that’s just the main trio, the two thuggish classmates, and the mean girl who hangs around with the thuggish boys. Mi-ju, Young-ran, and So-bin’s playboy best friend can suck it, apparently. 

22C. To reiterate: one of the thuggish boys may have tried to rape So-bin live on the internet…but Mi-ju, Young-ran, and the playboy best friend don’t get to be in the group by the end of the story. 

23. Bias wrecker Young-ran comes in with the best line of the series in Episode 11: “No one intends to have a crush on someone for seven years. Things happen, and your crush…just…continues.” Oof. Hit me right in the chest with that one. 

24. The show goes out of its way to let us know that Soo-hyun has a day planner/diary he obsessively makes notes in several times a day (tracking his spending, making his work schedule, noting class assignments), only for it to be deliberately stolen by someone…and then never returned. And he never mentions it. Or seems to notice. And then he just has it again at the end of the show. Because they need him to use it to show that he has friends now or something. 

24A. And don’t even get me started on how Jun just so happened to flip through it (when he realized he still hadn’t returned the diary) and discover that Soo-hyun had scheduled—months in advance his suicide for that very night. Not even a sliver of it made any sense, and it…just…gaaaaaaahhhh. 

25. Daryl claps at Mi-ju #2: After failing to move Soo-hyun with her love confession, Mi-ju declares, “I wish you weren’t so hot—because I can’t make you mine!”

26. The bulk of the major characters spend most of the show being unaware that their different circles of acquaintances all overlap, which doesn’t ultimately lead to any kind of big payoff when it’s revealed that they’ve all been aware of each other the whole time without realizing it. Which was more than a bit of a letdown. But, ironically, the one part of this puzzle that doesn’t ever understand its connection is actually great: Young-ran and So-bin’s playboy best friend eventually find each other, acting as objective confidants and distant cheerleaders for their individual romantic woes. Which is nice on its own, but what’s great about it is that they were both mirroring and paralleling each other, over the course of the show, therefore making them narratively perfect ports in each other’s emotional storm—which was shocking to see, given how bungled the rest of the characters’ connections turn out to be. Young-ran has a long-running crush on her best friend, and she’s terrified of losing that relationship by admitting her feelings. Meanwhile, the playboy friend is the object of a long-running crush (from So-bin) and loses the relationship after the “confession” (...ignoring for the moment that he’s screwed out of the chance to accept the confession because Jun manipulated that whole thing to blow up in their faces). She’s a more masculine girl, and he’s a…well, not feminine guy, but he’s more of a talker than a physical presence. And they both do romance fortune telling. That’s three overlaps—which all pay off. Making them the most complex pairing in the whole series. Which gets…a collective 15 minutes of screen time? Something like that. And we still get the best narrative structure from their whatever they wind up being.

26A. Actually, hang on—I just remembered: at the end, as these two stand on the brink of maybe wanting to be more than distant but sympathetic acquaintances, the playboy friend says that he’s going off to do his military service. So, their connection starts and stops in exactly the way I said the whole show should have worked. No wonder it worked so well—because I was right!

27. Daryl claps at Mi-ju #3: While on a hastily organized group trip, Mi-ju gives her already-rejected crush on Soo-hyun a last go…by staring at him unblinkingly and muttering all of her observations about his personality, habits, and idiosyncrasies. Like a total lunatic. 

28. I still don’t know why the grad student in the checkered shirt had it out for So-bin. Or why he was part of the thuggish classmates’ posse for one episode.

29. When Jun’s father’s lackey stops Jun on campus so that he can be taken to see his father, the show makes a big deal of the characters deducing that finding him on a big college campus would have been incredibly difficult to do—unless the lackey had been following Jun all this time! (Which he was.) Yet, at the beginning of the series, So-bin angrily storms out of an academic department office looking to shout at Jun for some shenanigans he’d pulled on her…and finds him immediately. No one finds this odd or indicative of some ulterior motive. Which, for the record, I clocked as awfully convenient right away, which is long before I got annoyed at the show. So, I’m not retroactively finding fault. The big deal they made about the lackey finding Jun, though, just underlined how silly I thought So-bin finding him was. 

30. Similarly, Jun’s brother is able to be exactly in Jun’s path, early in the show, making a big show of honking his car horn to get Jun’s attention, then striding intensely over to him in the middle of campus, to loudly tell Jun that he doesn’t want him acknowledging that they know each other whenever they see each other on campus. No one thinks it’s weird that he so easily found him, and no one seems to have noticed that these two have a very obvious interaction. (Well, technically, Soo-hyun does. But that’s it. And basically nothing comes of that.)

31. The plot eventually devolves into drama that is justified by creating excuses for it to happen about 10 seconds before the dramatic beat hits. Which is not surprising, in a sense, because time is an irrelevant consideration for the events of the series, which take place whenever the scene sees fit, regardless of where characters just were or what they were doing—buuuuuuuuut this inconsistency does allow for a scene of Young-ran essentially humping Mi-ju at the school festival (ostensibly to pop a series of balloons placed between them), so I think it’s totally fine. 

…which are my thoughts about At a Distance, Spring is Green. 

Wow, what a disappointment that turned out to be. And after such a nice start! Just…woof. 

I’d hoped to get this to you a lot sooner, but…well, between this and a weird semi-cold I’ve been fighting, it’s been a less-than-optimal last couple of weeks. 

On the upside, I’ve decided Gaeul is officially my second-fave from IVE. Around Episode 10 or so, I’d needed a break from At a Distance, Spring is Green, and I saw that the newest episode of IVE’s reality show had been posted. The girls were trapped in a village overrun by zombies and had to do a scavenger hunt to escape. So, I was only too happy to jump into a couple of episodes of that arc to distract me from my frustration. It was a lot of fun—but I mention it because the episodes reminded me of why Gaeul has been so close to becoming my bias when I first started getting into the group: she’s very, very witty. I wouldn’t quite describe her as dry, but, because she’s very even keeled and cool, there’s often a quiet precision to the jokes she makes. (As opposed to Liz being a total goof without trying.) I’m just very impressed by her. And I continue to find the group as a whole quite charming. Which is nice. 

On the downside, I think Min-kyu and Yi-soo from Heart Signal 4 broke up. Which sucks. I was quite invested in them. 

But on the other upside, Se-seung and Ju-yeon, my two favorite girls from My Sibling’s Romance, still see each other regularly. They were my one true ship, and I’m glad that’s still sailing. 

And while everyone’s counting down to Season 2 of Squid Game, I’m over here waiting for the Single’s Inferno 4 announcement. Which is all I really want for Christmas. 

Well, that and for Young-ran to hump me, ostensibly for a balloon-popping game.

(What? I sat through 12 episodes of this. I’ve earned it.)

More soon.

—Daryl 

P.S. - Oh my God...th-they posted the Single's Inferno 4 announcement! Like, a couple of hours after I posted this letter! IT'S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! 

Well, half a Christmas miracle. 

I'm still waiting for the Young-ran part.

I'll keep you updated.