Well, we made it to the end of our tale, and we’ve got some making up, making out, and moving on. Oh! Master does its best to give us a satisfying ending and a meaningful moral to linger on, but like many of this drama’s good intentions, those intentions fall flat.
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP
Alas, the high note (passionate rain kiss) upon which we ended our episodes last week came to naught. Bi-soo, in flashback, pushed Joo-in away yet again, and we open Episode 15 with them moping together, separately, in the house. Yay.
On the bright side, production on Guitarist, Female Killer finally starts! We get to see the cast and crew prepping and finally shooting, which is what I’ve been wanting to see all along. Sadly, it’s mostly used as yet another plot arc — viz., that Bi-soo is randomly accused of plagiarism, the production is on (figurative) fire, and Bi-soo continues to push Joo-in away. And yet, she persists.
Joo-in saves Bi-soo’s neck, and reputation, by doing a live stream and talking about how the script was inspired by… her (and really, their romance). Long story short, Joo-in eventually, finally cracks through Bi-soo’s noble idiocy and they not only cry together over his impending “disappearance,” but make out and then sleep together.
It’s racy stuff for a K-drama and the two are pretty frank about the new dimension to their relationship; they also agree to just enjoy the present and not worry about the impending doom of the future. I kinda wish they had come to this conclusion about 5+ episodes ago, but clearly the writer of this script doesn’t agree with me.
With the return of lead couple cuteness comes the strange decision to bring Yoo-jin into the plot and house yet again. His marriage proposal has been rejected, he knows the two are back together, and yet he still insists on being the third wheel. He even stays over, interrupting the couple’s precious (and dwindling) hot nights together. You would think this would annoy them more than it did, since the sands of time are literally racing against them, but nope. They brush it off.
Then we get to our “big twist.” As Bi-soo is looking through his late mother’s box of random keepsakes, he finds a tiny photo of a young man’s face. Bi-soo knows him as the angelic guy that gave him a warning and second chance at life, but overall, it takes our crew way too long to realize that this is his biological father.
Then, apropos of nothing, Bi-soo heads to a beautiful riverbank where he again meets his guardian angel father. They have a moment of recognition, and then his father explains that he gave Bi-soo a second chance at life because he didn’t want his beloved (Bi-soo’s mother) to spend her final days alone. So, the whole purpose of this “you have 49 days left to live” thing was for Bi-soo to be a comfort to his mother, and to become a better man after experiencing the sublime love of Joo-in.
Bi-soo now fully accepts his fate, doing good to the people in his life, and treasuring his final days with Joo-in. This culminates to a tearful scene where they are holding each other in bed, waiting for the clock to strike midnight and end Bi-soo’s final day on earth. He disappears at midnight on the dot. Joo-in weeps uncontrollably.
When we next meet Joo-in, it’s a year later, and she has the hair color change to prove it (and looks even more gorgeous, if you think it possible). She’s still as bubbly and bright as ever, even though we learn that Bi-soo has been gone for a year now.
Joo-in receives his letter that was written the year prior, and though she’s spending her life without him, she’s at peace. She’s grateful for the love that he gave to her, and that’s enough to last her the rest of her life. The end.
Dramaland is not a place where a couple usually ends up separated, so I have to give Oh! Master points for that. That being said, this is certainly a case where I would have preferred any other ending, from Bi-soo’s magical return, to the entire drama being a dream nightmare while in his coma.
Instead, we have a vaguely strung together story that’s so desperate to insert a positive message about living in the present, that it does anything but that. Not only did the characters get cheated out of a good story, but we viewers got cheated, too, since the drama ignored its potential in favor of something that was practically incoherent. But oh, the drama this should have been.