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Nov. 29th, 2020 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe last kdrama we finished was Mystic Pop-Up Bar, which I initially described to genarti and tenillypo after we'd finished the first few episodes as 'like Hotel Del Luna, but everyone is 3x ditzier.'
In fact Mystic Pop-Up Bar turned out to be really thematically distinct from Hotel del Luna in a number of ways, but the starting premise is similar: after some extremely dramatic historical backstory tragedy, Our Antisocial Heroine Weol-ju is cursed to spend her afterlife in the supernatural hospitality industry until an earnest and bright-eyed new employee helps her come to terms with her long-term trauma!
Here's our main cast:
In the middle we have Weol-ju, a former teen spirit medium who died young after a romance with a prince went extremely south. Weol-ju's job is to help 100,000 people 'settle their grudges' by giving them magic booze and then interfering in their dreams and also their life until they've resolved their problem.
Inexplicably but beneficially, Immortal Ghost Weol-ju is played by a different and significantly older actress than at the time of her death ... I say beneficially because Immortal Ghost Weol-ju's actress is sharp and compelling, and Teen Spirit Medium Weol-ju is, with all affection and respect, an earnest baby potato who wears the same vaguely gormless expression in every single one of her flashback scenes with her equally gormless potato prince.
But back to the present!
The tall one is senior coworker Chief Gwi, a former ghost cop who quit his job to come work as a sous-chef and dishwasher at Weol-ju's pop-up bar; the short one is junior coworker Kang-bae, whose unwanted special ability is that whenever he touches another human, they immediately start emotionally oversharing at him to a degree that is embarrassing to all parties but very useful if you are an antisocial ghost in the hospitality industry who has a deadline by which to identify and settle 100,000 customers' problems.
(There's something really interestingly gendered about Kang-bae's power, actually; nine times out of ten I would expect a female kdrama character to be devastatingly afflicted with emotional labor disease.)
Anyway, the principle dynamic of the show is very much cute-found-family-in-the-supernatural-workplace, which turns out to be real-family-in-the-workplace with the eventual endgame reveal that a.) Chief Gwi is the ghost of baby potato Weol-ju's potato prince, who's been cheerfully hanging out unrecognized chopping onions in her kitchen for months or years, and b.) Kang-bae is the reincarnation of their unborn child, who was cursed by a magical tree ....
On the one hand I am not sure how I feel about the broader implications of "your found family is also coincidentally your real family actually!" but on the other hand they really are extremely cute, and also it is SO funny that Weol-ju and her prince had this incredibly boring tragic potato romance as youths and then leapt straight into this delightful unromantic bickering immortal coworkers dynamic BY ACCIDENT. Five hundred years divorced! Top tier!
The fourth major character is Yeo-rin, a professional bodyguard who ends up working as security at Kang-bae's department store. She is immune to Kang-bae's powers because she herself inspires profound fear and antipathy in anybody who touches her, and thus they cancel each other out! As a result, they get assigned to be each other's partners in my personal favorite episode, the "work team bonding via enforced social dance competition" subplot. We referred to this as K-Mart Prom.
In my actual favorite twist of the series, it turns out that Yeo-rin's power to inspire hate and fear in the result of the fact that her love life is being deliberately sabotaged by her preincarnation, a misandrist magical rock.
They solve the problem by taking the rock out to karaoke. I love kdramas so much, actually.
I don't think this quite is as luminous or indeed thematically coherent a show as Hotel del Luna but it was an extremely fun twelve episodes and I would absolutely recommend (although warning for the fact that the cases-of-the-week generally involve people grappling with quite serious topics like sexual harassment, infertility, death of a partner, dementia, etc. -- happy to provide any specific warnings if requested.)
genarti and tenillypo after we'd finished the first few episodes as 'like Hotel Del Luna, but everyone is 3x ditzier.' In fact Mystic Pop-Up Bar turned out to be really thematically distinct from Hotel del Luna in a number of ways, but the starting premise is similar: after some extremely dramatic historical backstory tragedy, Our Antisocial Heroine Weol-ju is cursed to spend her afterlife in the supernatural hospitality industry until an earnest and bright-eyed new employee helps her come to terms with her long-term trauma!
Here's our main cast:
In the middle we have Weol-ju, a former teen spirit medium who died young after a romance with a prince went extremely south. Weol-ju's job is to help 100,000 people 'settle their grudges' by giving them magic booze and then interfering in their dreams and also their life until they've resolved their problem.
Inexplicably but beneficially, Immortal Ghost Weol-ju is played by a different and significantly older actress than at the time of her death ... I say beneficially because Immortal Ghost Weol-ju's actress is sharp and compelling, and Teen Spirit Medium Weol-ju is, with all affection and respect, an earnest baby potato who wears the same vaguely gormless expression in every single one of her flashback scenes with her equally gormless potato prince.
But back to the present!
The tall one is senior coworker Chief Gwi, a former ghost cop who quit his job to come work as a sous-chef and dishwasher at Weol-ju's pop-up bar; the short one is junior coworker Kang-bae, whose unwanted special ability is that whenever he touches another human, they immediately start emotionally oversharing at him to a degree that is embarrassing to all parties but very useful if you are an antisocial ghost in the hospitality industry who has a deadline by which to identify and settle 100,000 customers' problems.
(There's something really interestingly gendered about Kang-bae's power, actually; nine times out of ten I would expect a female kdrama character to be devastatingly afflicted with emotional labor disease.)
Anyway, the principle dynamic of the show is very much cute-found-family-in-the-supernatural-workplace, which turns out to be real-family-in-the-workplace with the eventual endgame reveal that a.) Chief Gwi is the ghost of baby potato Weol-ju's potato prince, who's been cheerfully hanging out unrecognized chopping onions in her kitchen for months or years, and b.) Kang-bae is the reincarnation of their unborn child, who was cursed by a magical tree ....
On the one hand I am not sure how I feel about the broader implications of "your found family is also coincidentally your real family actually!" but on the other hand they really are extremely cute, and also it is SO funny that Weol-ju and her prince had this incredibly boring tragic potato romance as youths and then leapt straight into this delightful unromantic bickering immortal coworkers dynamic BY ACCIDENT. Five hundred years divorced! Top tier!
The fourth major character is Yeo-rin, a professional bodyguard who ends up working as security at Kang-bae's department store. She is immune to Kang-bae's powers because she herself inspires profound fear and antipathy in anybody who touches her, and thus they cancel each other out! As a result, they get assigned to be each other's partners in my personal favorite episode, the "work team bonding via enforced social dance competition" subplot. We referred to this as K-Mart Prom.
In my actual favorite twist of the series, it turns out that Yeo-rin's power to inspire hate and fear in the result of the fact that her love life is being deliberately sabotaged by her preincarnation, a misandrist magical rock.
They solve the problem by taking the rock out to karaoke. I love kdramas so much, actually.
I don't think this quite is as luminous or indeed thematically coherent a show as Hotel del Luna but it was an extremely fun twelve episodes and I would absolutely recommend (although warning for the fact that the cases-of-the-week generally involve people grappling with quite serious topics like sexual harassment, infertility, death of a partner, dementia, etc. -- happy to provide any specific warnings if requested.)
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Date: 2020-11-29 09:07 pm (UTC)Excellent problem-solving xD
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Date: 2020-11-29 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 12:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 10:26 pm (UTC)I have a non-supernatural version of this superpower or at least I used to in the days when it was possible to be standing around in public minding your own business and have strangers suddenly start telling you their life secrets (I WAS READING A BOOK THE TIME I WAS WAITING FOR A PAY PHONE AND THE PERSON WAITING FOR THE PAY PHONE IN FRONT OF ME TURNED AROUND AND BEGAN PROCESSING HER DIVORCE), and I am glad it is useful to him. I am delighted he's paired with the bodyguard. Does being the reincarnation of their unborn child who was cursed by a magical tree have anything to do with his powers, or is that just . . . also a thing that happened?
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Date: 2020-11-30 04:07 am (UTC)It's... vaguely related, in that he was cursed to be reincarnated to have awful lives, and Everyone You Touch Stares Intently Into Your Eyes As They Overshare Their Negative Emotions is indeed awful! And also vaguely/arguably in that it's a magic power and he's part magical tree. But it's not a direct line of "people would always bring their problems to the tree, ergo" logic, or anything.
There's a lot of "you know what, SURE, WHY NOT" in this show. But a solid percentage of it is great fun, so!
no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 06:16 am (UTC)Is he part magical tree in any way other than having a magical power? (I'm sorry, I find this guy's entire deal fascinating.)
There's a lot of "you know what, SURE, WHY NOT" in this show. But a solid percentage of it is great fun, so!
Legitimate!
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Date: 2020-11-30 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 11:18 pm (UTC)Apparently this is why I don't write kdramas, because I would expect being spiritually part tree to play a significant part in a person's life!
I am glad it works out for him, nonetheless.
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Date: 2020-11-30 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-30 04:19 pm (UTC)