Letter #147: When the Phone Rings

Good morning, Erin.

In my previous letter, I told you I’d spent about 10 hours cracking a murder-mystery-in-a-box. And, somewhat unexpectedly, I have a follow-up to that story: I passed the game to my sisters so they could give it a shot—which, to my surprise, they did the very next day.

My littler little sister texted me to say she’d been working on it for a bit and was stuck on the same password puzzle I’d been stuck on. But, she told me, things had been going very well outside of that one snag in their investigation. 

I asked whereabouts in the rest of the mystery she was, and she said…well, I’ll show you:  

Yes, Daryl. Yes, it does. It opens because there is a secret note inside.

I had not even considered that there was anything more to the lighter than the phone number prominently written on the outside of it. (Which leads to a voicemail box that is a clue.)

In fact, the rest of the text conversation let me know that there were two or three pieces of the overall puzzle I’d completely missed in my investigation. Which worked out well for my sister, in that those pieces were pristine and “unopened” when she went to play through the game, but it also made me feel more than a little bit dopey as a result. 

Now, in fairness to me, with the exception of a couple of small details, I’d been able to work out on my own the information those overlooked puzzles were designed to reveal—though, admittedly, they probably would have saved me a fair bit of time. (And, in one case, effort.) In fact, where it had taken me 10 hours, it took my sister about half that time. 

Because she’s the world’s even greater greatest detective? Because my bigger little sister dipped in to help with one of the puzzles? Because my littler little sister decided to brute-force her way into the protected computer files instead of looking for the clues to discern the exact passwords necessary to access them? Who can say. 

All I know is that I was clearly in the mood for a mystery, because the description for When the Phone Rings suddenly jumped it right to the top of my list. 

…well, that and I saw my second-favorite girl from fromis_9 was in it, which, um, maybe had more to do with jumping it to the top of my list than the description BUT THE POINT IS we’re gonna have a little chat about When the Phone Rings, Erin, because who doesn’t love a thriller, right?

1. Okay, in point of fact, Gyuri left fromis_9 in 2022, but I didn’t find the group until 2023, so I think I’m still allowed to consider her my second-favorite.

1A. …it goes Jiheon, Gyuri, Nagyung, Hayoung. I haven’t spent enough time to really get to know everyone, but those are the four that have stood out to me. 

1B. Of course, now they’ve sort of stopped being a group, maybe? They’re no longer part of their company or something. I dunno. K-pop is a sphere that takes way too much effort to follow, for me. But I don’t have a good track record: Weki Meki disbanded, fromis_9 hiatus, Loona…look, I didn’t even like Loona, but I like Chuu, and she was booted from the group—which disbanded. I’m starting to get worried about IVE. Yeah, they’re going quite strong and have just had a comeback, but…gosh, I hope I’m just being paranoid. And not cursed. 

1C. Though, to be safe, if there are any groups you’d like me not to get into so as to stave off any sudden disbandments…

2. But, um, we’re talking about When the Phone Rings. And how it’s…fine. Kind of. Like, I think it’s structurally/narratively sloppy, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I had a good time tuning in to watch it every week. So, I think it’s probably not very good, but—week-to-week, at least, when you have a chance to forget some of the details of what’s happened in the episodes just before the one you’re currently watching—it’s entertaining enough to stick with. And, importantly, its negative points weren’t anything to get upset about. They were bad, but not offensive. Or, perhaps, the positives weren’t high enough for the negatives to much detract from the overall entertainment value. Which is to say, it’s kind of an airport read: it fills the time, keeps your attention, but is ultimately disposable.

3. Now, the why of this is probably the most interesting aspect of the whole show—because it is THE EXACT CONVERSE of the K-drama trend you repeatedly expressed distaste for: the “this is a chill romance but also suddenly a murder mystery” story. Because, goodness me, what’s billed as a thriller turns out to be a tropey romcom in a murder mystery snuggie. And, if you can accept that, it’s mostly a fun ride.

3A. Which might be a controversial take on the whole thing—thinking it’s a romcom, I mean, not that it’s kinda fun. Well, actually, I don’t even mean that thinking it’s a romcom is in and of itself a potentially controversial opinion about the series: while I don’t think anyone would argue that the show steers VERY hard into its romance and comedy elements, when they come around, I might be the only one who thinks the series’ frequent pendulum-esque swings from melodramatically serious drama to fluffy romcom over the course of almost every episode are less of an awkward (often somewhat dissonant) shift in tone than a deliberate send-up of goofy romcoms with super-serious subplots. At least, from my perspective, that’s the only way to explain the show’s…everything. 

3B. Because let’s not mince words, here: this show is ridiculous. Not at first, mind you, because it starts with a pretty consistent, serious tone, and the couple of twists we get in Episode 1 set things up for an exciting (if not entirely realistic) drama/thriller. What follows, though, gets increasingly difficult to take seriously at face value. Once the (SPOILER ALERT—unless you’ve seen the show, which I’m going to assume you have) female lead takes over the “kidnapper” persona and threatens the male lead, the individual reactions to the situation become farcical—literally, they take a bizarrely comedic turn. Rather than a psychological minefield navigated between a too-sharp husband and an utterly disguised saboteur wife, her side of the situation is played as a heroine in over her head with a scheme she’s stumbled into and hopes to secretly escape without notice (a la, say, Business Proposal) while his side is played with all the needless intensity of Jack Bauer trying to find a rogue nuke inside a box of cereal. I don’t know how I’m meant to take their interactions all that seriously—especially when, as the true “kidnapper” makes his much more violent moves, she finds herself in ever more danger of taking the fall for his crimes…yet takes more of a “gosh, what a pickle!” than simply relinquishing the stolen “kidnapper” persona so that the actual bad guy is the only person the authorities will chase. It sometimes feels like we’re watching the protagonist of Spice Up Our Love try to have a sensible conversation while trapped in a trashy romance novel—in the best way—but also wondering if this is happening by accident. 

3C. I mean, I defy you to watch the “I’ll send him an illicit picture of me in lingerie!” sequence and not laugh. Or to not roll your eyes at the pure, soapy unrealism of her tracking him down to a war zone, being kidnapped by rebels, being accidentally rescued by her husband, and then his love for her being so irresistibly intense that they F*** FOR THE FIRST TIME rather than get to safety. (To say nothing of the episodes dedicated entirely to him struggling to woo her while maintaining his overserious external persona. (Or…the title sequence, Erin. How much more un-thriller could it possibly be, hm?)) It’s so goofy and overdone. It just has to be a joke. 

3D. Which is not to say that every aspect of the show, serious or comedic, is overdone or handled incongruously. Some of the intense sections do feel genuinely tense, and some of the obviously lighthearted moments absolutely land in exactly the way they’re intended—and, importantly, feel like they are part of the same storytelling universe. It’s just that the frequent juxtapositions of the ridiculous with the highly serious can only be described as either satirical or bad. And I chose to interpret it as a deliberate goof. Which was mostly quite fun. 

4. Oh, uh, it took until I think the very last episode of the series for me to remember the names of the protagonists, so I’m just going to call them what I called them in my notes: Mr. Husband and Mrs. Wife. Just so you know.

5. But, regardless of whether or not I knew their names, I certainly recognized one of them—and a whole bunch of other people, as well!

• the handsome traitor detective from Busted! (S1) as Mr. Husband

• the aforementioned Gyuri from fromis_9 as You-ri, the second female lead

• Blind Ghost from Hotel Del Luna as In-a, Mrs. Wife’s sister

• Lt. Main Girl’s Brother from The Matchmakers as…uh, the second male lead

• the evil mayor from The Uncanny Counter as Mrs. Wife’s step-father

• Mr. An from Vincenzo as Mr. Husband’s subordinate

• the old manager from Hotel Del Luna as Mr. Husband’s grandfather (mini-reunion! woo!)

• the manipulative psych director from Bad Memory Eraser as Mr. Husband’s parents’ lackey

5A. Huh. Get this: turns out Gyuri was one of the nurses working with Park Gyu-young in It’s Okay to Not be Okay. Whether I noticed her, I could not say, because my vision was all-consumed by Park Gyu-young (as I’m sure you will remember), but…how about that? Another case of “I knew her before I knew her.”

5B. Actually, hang on…Gyuri was in Pyramid Game, too?! (Holy cow—she’s the twins at the very end!) Geez, I really knew her before I knew her. Wow.

5C. Wait wait wait—HANG THE F*** ON…the sociopath villain girl from Pyramid Game is the sister of  Wonyoung from IVE?! That’s nuts! And I made an IVE reference at the start of this letter, too…man, talk about a weird coincidence. 

5D. Okay, okay—I’m writing this part a few days later, and…now things are getting freaky: 

5E. I started to look back at the cast lists for some of the earliest K-dramas I watched, checking to see if there are any actors I would recognize at this stage who I obviously would not have three years ago, and I saw that the not-quote-Brazilian girl from Doona! had a recurring role in Goblin as one of the ghosts that hung around with Eun-tak. So, I fired up ye olde episodes of Goblin just to confirm, and…she is, in fact, one of the ghosts (specifically, the one who died while living at a study dorm). The thing is, Goblin is an awesome show, so what started as a quick peek-in to see the actress turned into me just, y’know, watching for a while. Which led to…okay, do you remember the part where Mr. Goblin thinks the king who betrayed him in the past (leading him to have the grudge that turned him into a goblin) might have been reincarnated as this K-pop idol he keeps seeing on television? It’s a funny sequence that ends with Mr. Death suggesting that maybe the king was reincarnated as a woman, potentially one of the members of the girl group that the TV switches over to, which prompts Mr. Goblin to smittenly say that, if the king came back as “her” (he points to one of the girls), then he’d have no problem forgiving the guy for betraying him. I remember it well, and it’s still as amusing as it was the first time I saw it.

5F. …except, this time, the brief clip of the girl group caught my attention. Because I recognized the song being performed: it’s “Pick Me,” which was created for use on the show Produce 101. In fact, I knew that I’d seen this very clip when I started my K-pop journey by looking up I.O.I.

See, here’s what they’re watching in Goblin and the Produce 101 clip:

Which in and of itself is not the freaky part—oh, no no, dear seonbae, we have to go one layer deeper for that. Because, just as I recognized that I knew the song and knew where it was from, my jaw hit the floor—because, though Mr. Goblin never specifies which of the girls he’s pointing at, there is one girl (the center) who would seem to stand out more than the others. And if we zoom in just a little bit…

Yes, that right, Erin—that’s my ultimate K-pop bias, Yoojung from Weki Meki!

<<< See? >>> 

Which means…Mr. Goblin has excellent taste—BUT ALSO that I knew Yoojung before I knew Yoojung! 

5G. Which, if you reach back in your memory, is extra-hilarious because Goblin stars Kim Go-eun, who I didn’t realize I knew from Eungyo YEARS before I ever started on my K-drama journey. So, how fitting is that? I knew her before I knew her, on the show where I had my first “knew her before I knew her,” which I only went back to because I saw that it was the show where I “knew her before I knew her” for another actress, which I only checked out because it turned out that I “knew her before I knew her” with Gyuri. I mean…wild stuff, huh?

5H. And, as a secret bonus, don’t think I didn’t pick up on the fact that, though obscured…

…that’s right, good ol’ Miss Intern was technically also on screen. Though, obviously, I already knew her from Hotel Del Luna. (Also, fun fact: searching for “Kang Mi-na” on YouTube now initially brings up clips of Song Ji-woo’s three minutes of screentime in Squid Game 2. I knew she’d be a hit!)

5I. Man oh man…Gyuri, Wonyoung, Yoojung (with a little Mina)—it’s like popstar-a-palooza in here! 

6. …but we were talking about When the Phone Rings. 

7. Mr. Husband and Mrs. Wife are really cute together. I don’t know that anything about their relationship (particularly their “they’ve loved each other all along!” arc) quite makes as much sense as the show wants me to think it does, but, even so, I was all for those crazy kids opening up to each other. 

8. Mrs. Wife works as a sign language interpreter. She knows sign language because she can’t communicate verbally, so this is a logical application of her skills. She applies to become a sign language interpreter for the government, and, when she gets the job, her colleagues at the sign language center congratulate her…by doing the sign language gesture for “applause.” Now, Mrs. Wife is not deaf but mute: she can hear just fine. (She can also speak, but that’s a big secret.) In fact, all of her colleagues—who are neither deaf nor mute—speak to her, verbally, ALL THE TIME. Now, I can come up with a dozen totally realistic reasons why they decided to sign their congratulations to her, but it came across to me like a really, really weird moment. I mean, yes, they do it verbally, too, but it was the first instance of anyone simultaneously signing and speaking to her. And, as such, I thought it stood out as strange (regardless of whether, in reality, it might not be at all). 

9. The dude playing the looney kidnapper was quite good at seeming like there’s something wrong with him. His tics and giddy inability to relate as a human being did not come across as “acting” at all. 

10. Then there’s Mr. Husband’s mom, who seems to be the only one who thinks she’s on a daytime soap opera, always pacing around and staring at nothing as she speaks, as though every moment she was on screen was a soliloquy.

11. I don’t know how Mrs. Wife survived falling off a cliff onto the rocky ground below, but…she did.

12. I don’t know how Mrs. Wife survived being bobbed up and down as she was carried on Mr. Husband’s back as he ran through the uneven terrain of the forest after falling off a cliff onto the rocky ground below, but…she did.

13. I think I immediately fell in love with In-a, when she showed up, because she seemed so much my type of character (and is played by Blind Ghost, who I’m fond of)...but I don’t think anyone would believe me if I didn’t say that You-ri is #bestgirl. She’s such a sunshine-y goofball who may as well have wandered in from a totally different (obviously romcom-y) show, given how different her overall tone is from the rest of When the Phone Rings. She’s consistently fun and charming, even when she finds herself taking very serious things very seriously, and I smiled every time she was on screen. If only this had been a proper romcom…

13A. Also, In-a was not much of a presence in the story, despite directly influencing a couple of major plot elements, so she didn’t even have all that much to do when she was around. I liked her well enough (though potentially just because I like the actress), but I was a little disappointed that she seemed so much more of an impactful character when she was off-screen than when she entered the story proper. Plus, I don’t know what they did to Blind Ghost, but she’s prettier than they made her look, in this. Sure, she’s not gorgeous, but…come on. 

14. Mr. An from Vincenzo seems like he wandered in from a lighthearted romp, as well. He’s unsurprisingly hilarious (he’s…so good), but I had no idea why he was playing an amusingly jealous sycophant in such a deeply serious show…until I watched more than the first episode and realized this thriller was desperate to be a romcom. 

15. I’m all for portraying politicians as power-hungry jackasses—because they (almost exclusively) are—but Mr. Husband’s dad is a parody of a two-dimensional portrayal of one. For someone who is meant to be the culmination of years and years of preparation and the seeding of public opinion as he steps into the ring to run for president, he’s a total incompetent. Like, he’s cartoonishly bad at being a politician. Which makes no sense for someone who is supposed to be part of the darker aspects of this story. Are there politicians who are essentially just there as figureheads, having the right pedigree or image, puppeteered by more competent (but less outwardly appealing) forces? Absolutely. But we see neither a puppeteer nor a slew of underlings just hoping to push him along enough to ride his coattails for their own personal gain. The show seems to want to have its cake and eat it, too, with him, laughing at his absolute lack of political savvy while also treating him like a scheming villain for having ambitions to begin with. It’s weird and one of the strongest examples of the show stumbling over its inability to pick a genre. 

15A. That said…Jeb in 2016, Kamala in 2020, and DeSantis in 2024 make an excellent case for my opinion of what’s realistic vs. absurdist being totally wrong. So…uh, I guess never mind. 

16. I don’t think the subtitles relay this, but the lunatic kidnapper repeatedly calls Mrs. Wife “eonni” and Mr. Husband “oppa.” That is, he’s speaking like a girl. Why? What does this mean? Dunno. It never really plays into anything, as far as I can tell, so it’s possible he’s just messing around, deliberately being strange. Or it’s some big writer’s contrivance (masked as him deliberately being weird) so that Mrs. Wife can take up his persona without adjusting the way she speaks (that is, as a woman) when she calls to threaten Mr. Husband. [shrug] I have no further information. I just know what I heard. 

17. Relatedly: for a dude who gets really, really frustrated that Mr. Husband doesn’t believe that he’s kidnapped Mrs. Wife, lunatic kidnapper does absolutely nothing to prove that he does, in fact, have Mrs. Wife held hostage. Which would probably be one of the first things I’d do to get Mr. Husband to take me seriously. But, hey, I’m not a lunatic. Or a kidnapper. What do I know.

18. And related to kidnapping Mrs. Wife: when lunatic kidnapper gets her the second time, near the end of the series, I could not believe that he—again—had her driving the car while he held her hostage from the backseat. “She crashed the car to escape, the first time! What are you thinking?!” I shouted at the screen…at which point Mrs. Wife—again—crashes the car to escape. AT WHICH POINT lunatic kidnapper is like, “Dammit—again?!” Which may have been the funniest line of the series. 

19. Early on, Mr. Husband brings Mrs. Wife with him to the British Embassy so she can translate for him to the ambassador’s wife, who is deaf. Which is interesting, considering the ambassador's wife would use British sign language while Mrs. Wife would use Korean sign language. So…unless Mrs. Wife is also fluent in British sign language, this seems to me to be the writers handwaving the situation. 

19A. Pun very much intended. 

20. When initially trying to figure out who the kidnapper might be, Mr. Husband tells his staff to “search the dark web” for anything that might help figure out who he was. Because apparently it’s 2013 in Korea, and folks are real worried about that there newfangled TOR browser. 

21. Miscellaneous beats that were straight out of a romcom:

• You-ri meeting the second male lead by being bumped over in the street and him dramatically catching her in his arms. 

• Mr. Husband jealousy inviting You-ri out to lunch at the restaurant where Mrs. Wife is meeting the second male lead just so he can awkwardly demand that the four of them eat together. 

• You-ri never once questioning why she and the three other main characters were constantly running into each other as a group. 

• Blind Ghost and Mrs. Wife just missing each other as they shop for clothes at the same store. 

• Mrs. Wife falls on Mr. Husband, and they accidentally kiss. 

• The opening of the show is Mr. Husband walking into the British Embassy for a party, and literally every woman in the building has to quickly whisper about how handsome he is. For three minutes. 

• That whole sequence where Mrs. Wife is supposed to meet with Mr. Husband face to face for the shocking reveal that she’s been the one threatening him over the phone for the last couple of weeks, only for him to keep changing the location of the meeting…to different spots in Lotte World. Which he has rented entirely for her. To go on the carousel and have ice cream and look at the beautiful night view from the lookout tower. Which she does. Unquestioningly. 

22. To the show’s credit, the cars in the made-up Balkan country of “Argan” all have license plates with “Argan” written on them. Good job, props department!

23. The closing song, “Say My Name,” is quite pretty. Good job, Mr. Husband! (Who sang it. FYI.)

And…yeah, I guess that’s When the Phone Rings. [shrug] They can’t all be winners. But that isn’t always a bad thing. 

You know what is absolutely a winner, though? That Single’s Inferno 4 is debuting in, like, 4 hours. I am PUMPED. I mean, it’s probably going to be another trash fire like it was in Season 3, but…still. A boy can dream. And set his alarm to wake up at 4AM and see how far he can get before having to go to work. 

I mean, I was also supposed to go to sleep, like, three hours ago, but…since when has anything ever worked out the way I planned it, right?

You know. You get it. 

—Daryl