It’s a good day to make choices! Following last week’s dive into the past, our heroine finally learns about the origin of her family’s curse. The good news is: the curse can be lifted. But the bad news is: it’s going to cost her more than she could ever imagine.
EPISODE 11
A Good Day to Be a Dog has fully leaned into its dark side, and it makes me wonder what happened to the fun doggy show we started out with. This has become quite the tedious watch, and that’s never a good sign.
Moving on to the happenings of the week. Ji-ah recovers the memories of her past life in bits and pieces, and she makes good on Cho-young’s promise to find Bo-gyeom. At first, he acts like he has no idea what she’s talking about. But when she persists, he insists that past lives are a thing of the past, and she should live a peaceful and comfortable life in the present. Really, Bo-gyeom? This entire story is hinged on your refusal to let go of the past, but okay.
Ji-ah sees beyond Bo-gyeom’s walls, and she promises to be on his side and help him so that he doesn’t continue to suffer from the hurt of the past. Still, he tells her not to ever come to see him again. But later on, we glean from Bo-gyeom’s conversation with the vice principal that he shutdown Ji-ah’s attempts to reach him because the Bo-gyeom that Cho-young knew is gone. No kidding.
On to some good news: Woo-taek was able to revive Hae-na’s dog uncle, and I’ve never been happier for an uncle who isn’t mine. Phew! But the show said “hold my beer,” and provided us with even better news: dog uncle transforms back to human! The way I gasped! This transformation is a miracle that shocks Woo-taek and excites Hae-na’s entire family.
The transformation arc is also fodder for some humor now that Uncle has to re-learn human behavior. Like eating with his hands instead of wolfing down food, and picking things with his hands instead of his mouth.
Uncle has no idea how he turned back to human. But thanks to his time as a dog, he was able to sniff a tiger scent from the suspicious bracelet the vice principal gave to Hae-na. I almost forgot about the existence of this bracelet. Uncle’s observation doesn’t make any sense to Hae-na, so she pays it no mind. For now, what is most important is figuring out how Uncle transformed without a kiss. And my guess is Bo-gyeom’s visit to the vet clinic had everything to do with the “miracle.”
Hae-na figures things out when Bo-gyeom comes to their house — this time, dropping his “ordinary high school teacher” pretense. “I put the dog curse on you,” he reveals, and to prove that he’s not lying, he instantly turns Yoo-ra into a dog. Messing around with humans must be fun for this mountain spirit.
“Who are you?” Hae-na spurts. And this time, Bo-gyeom returns to his beloved vague persona. He tells her to take her time and think about it. But he gives her a hint: he had been around their family for a much longer time than she might think. Curiously enough, Yoo-ra transforms back to human after Bo-gyeom leaves, but she has no recollection of either his visit or being turned into a dog.
Hae-na pours through old picture albums and finds Bo-gyeom in the background of one of her childhood photos. But it looks like she’s not the only one with a childhood encounter with the vengeful mountain spirit. It turns out that Seo-won also met Bo-gyeom back when he was a boy. And of all times to drop by, Bo-gyeom chose the moment little Seo-won was almost attacked by a dog. Yunno, the incident that led to his dog phobia.
Bo-gyeom is not done putting Hae-na and her family through the wringer, so he turns Uncle back into a dog. What!? When Hae-na demands to know the rationale behind his actions, Bo-gyeom takes her down memory lane to her Joseon past. In the memory, Soo-hyun is flat on the ground (presumably dead), and an angry Bo-gyeom holds his favorite sword to Mak-soon’s neck. When she begs him to spare the child in her womb, at least, he placed the dog curse on said child and all its descendants.
Through a more recent flashback, we see that Bo-gyeom orchestrated the events that led to Hae-na kissing Seo-won and activating the curse — which in turn led them to falling in love. In the present, Bo-gyeom tells Hae-na that he’ll lift the curse on her family on one condition: she’ll have to put things back to the way they were originally. Meaning Seo-won will lose all his fond memories of Hae-na. Sigh. Not this show giving me terrible flashbacks of See You in My 19th Life.
Hae-na is given one day to make the biggest choice she’ll probably ever have to make in her life: will she lift her family’s curse? Or will she choose her love for Seo-won instead? Curse you, Lee Bo-gyeom! Curse your mountain and curse your sword!
When Seo-won learns about this, he goes to confront Bo-gyeom and in the process, he grabs the sword. Ugh! If I see this sword one more time! “Because of the two of you, I lost [Cho-young]. It’s only fair that you two pay for it too, don’t you think?” Bo-gyeom calmly states. But Seo-won is confident that even if his memories of Hae-na are wiped, they’ll still fall in love again. “All right, then,” Bo-gyeom smirks. And the game is on!
Seo-won reiterates his stance to Hae-na and tells her to choose lifting the curse over him. He loved her before the curse-activating kiss, and even if their memories are gone, their feelings will remain. “So I’ll go to you. If you take a step back, I’ll take two steps towards you. Even if I get a little lost, I’ll be okay because I’ve walked the path before.” How reassuring.
We get some more boring and repetitive scenes from last week’s Joseon flashback. *Yawn* But we learn something new: when Mak-soon heard that Soo-hyun will be beheaded for helping Cho-young escape, she ended up ratting Cho-young out to the authorities in a bid to save his life. Damn!
So Mak-soon snitched. Big deal. I’m not exactly defending her actions, but I still can’t empathize with Bo-gyeom’s plight. Maybe the problem is me, or maybe it’s in his characterization that just screams “villain.” Indeed, he’s a “victim” of the past life incident, but he just doesn’t feel like it. Instead, he’s essentially giving off antagonistic vibes that makes me want to side with the perpetrators of his misfortune.
We end the week with Seo-won and Hae-na walking past each other without a word. But while Seo-won turns around giving off a posture of familiarity, Hae-na walks away without a backward glance. Hmmmm. Hae-na is built like me for real, because I’m almost tempted to walk away from the show. This is what happens when you over-stretch a story beyond its capacity in an attempt to squeeze out unnecessary angst.
On a lighter note, we got the “stranded on an island and stuck in a one room” trope with Yoo-ra and Woo-taek. They poke fun at themselves for falling victim to the stereotypical trope, but things soon get awkward. I wonder when the show will make them official. Also, when will the show remember it has a character named Yul and bring him back to the forefront? And when are we going to return to the earlier cuteness? So many questions, so few answers from the show.