If there’s one thing that Oh! Master proves this week, it’s that there’s no limit to the depths of noble idiocy. Torture yourself, or torture someone else, there’s actually a rather gigantic line between stupidity and self-sacrifice, and boy have we crossed it.
EPISODES 13-14 WEECAP
I want to believe Oh! Master can still pull this thing together, but my hopes are microscopic at this point in our story. The cruel-to-be-kind breakup that Bi-soo forced on Joo-in last week continues through both of our episodes this week, and it’s neither fun nor interesting.
At first, Joo-in is the kind, understanding, and loving woman we’ve seen her to be. She forgives Bi-soo of every slight, sticks by him regardless, and continues to hold onto their love — all of this despite him being an utter jerkface.
Nothing really works as intended in Oh! Master, though. The exasperating levels that Bi-soo’s noble idiocy has reached made me totally forget that I even liked these two together. At this point, I’d rather her just leave him.
Similarly, I was trying to get onboard with the puppy devotion of Yoo-jin, but it just doesn’t compute. Proposing marriage to the woman you adore who sees you only as a friend and is clearly still in love with someone else… well, that’s kind of creepy. I don’t see any future for them that doesn’t end in unhappiness and/or resentment.
Then we have the storyline with Bi-soo’s mother. That which was once touching and compelling has become nothing but agonizing, and also useless. We watch this poor woman suffer for episodes, find a glimmer of freedom, say goodbye to it, and die in agony. It’s quite the bit of nihilism for a K-drama. And any wisdom she leaves behind for Bi-soo hasn’t done a damn thing to wake him up.
Instead, in his grief, Bi-soo throws himself into his writing, which means he’s churning out scripts for the drama that’s become as tangential as any other plotline here, and they’re supposedly genius. I actually like this idea — of turning the chaos of grief into creation — but the story doesn’t really have that much to say about this. Instead, the scripts (and the first formal script reading) are just another reason for Bi-soo to be cruel to Joo-in.
So what about Joo-in? She hasn’t had anything to do for episodes now, but this week is her turn for heartbreak. Nana is so absolutely winning and lovely — I wish this drama did her justice. I wish I cared about this breakup. I wish she didn’t think that Googling (or is that Naver-ing) “vanishing people” would actually turn up results that would explain the inkling she has about Bi-soo.
Eventually, Joo-in collapses in the most typical of fevers, causing her to be hospitalized. This seems to exist only to get Bi-soo to show a glimmer of his true feelings and turn up in her hospital room — only to spurn her yet again. It’s so completely frustrating and boring that the fact that she finally breaks through his wall by the end of the episode didn’t deliver the punch it wanted to.
We finally get a passionate kiss between them, but the on-cue rain and middle-of-the-street confrontation scene are so overplayed — and we are so out of patience at this point — that it all falls terribly flat. I guess I’m glad they’re kissing, but that’s about all I’m feeling right now.
So what awaits us in our finale week? We must deal with the fact that Bi-soo is running out of days on earth, that his random bouts of disappearing from the temporal plane keep happening with growing rapidity, and that Joo-in doesn’t seem to mind this fact at all.
Needless to say, this supernatural plot line is absolutely not working in favor of the drama. Instead, it’s dragging it down to the point of being unintelligible. And in trying to think of an ending that would actually satisfy me, I am coming up dry. There’s no purpose this (literal) vanishing act can fulfill that would make me feel better about this drama.