Oh My Ghostess finale :(
Oct. 20th, 2016 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
It's over. :( Watched the finale of Oh My Ghostess last night, and now there’s no moooooooooore. Waaaaaah. (I’ve gone ahead and ordered the DVD set from Amazon, if only to make a bunch of gifs. There’s a dearth of them on Tumblr, weird considering how popular the show was.) It’s always hard to read/watch something you love and know it’s about to end… harder still when you’ve seen two such awesome shows in a row. I mean, what are the chances I can make it three?
Then again, I did manage to watch a bunch of great movies in a row, so I suppose there’s that. Also, I always meant to go back to finish Master’s Sun, so I suppose I can do that. I can’t remember now why I stopped watching that one. I think it might be because I was actually watching that in real time and it got to a point where I wasn’t enjoying it that much, so I just stopped following it. That’s the danger of watching stuff in real time, because when a drama loses a step or has a slow episode, it’s much harder to get over the hump. If you have more episodes in front of you, you can just keep going and another ep might capture your interest again. Master’s Sun also suffers from the fact that I’m not really into the male lead. I don’t even remember Seo In-guk in it, and he’s apparently the second male lead. He had an amusing cameo in the OMG finale, so that might be what’s sparking my interest in watching it again.
It’s possible that more than anything, I’m going to miss the antics of everyone who worked in the Sun Restaurant kitchen. Those guys were the best!
I’m going to go ahead and agree with the Dramabeans recapper again, because her feeling on the show overall was that it was a great show, full of heart and all the best things about romcoms, but its one weakness was in how it built the relationship for the leads. There was far too much of Soon-ae in Bong-sun’s body at the get go, and then she fell to the wayside at the end. I definitely think the show (and the relationship) would have benefitted from a more equal distribution of which girl was spending time with Sun-woo, particularly at the beginning.
I knowakscully disagrees, but I felt it was pretty obvious that the girl Sun-woo was falling/fell for initially was mostly Soon-ae. I didn’t like that and still don’t like it because she was clearly never going to be the one to end up with him, so they needed to build up Bong-sun/Sun-woo’s relationship a lot more. I think there were two problems. One was that they were expecting us to meld both entities into one, with Park Bo-young playing both roles so wonderfully. So it was “okay” that Soon-ae was in Bong-sun’s body, because all we saw was Park Bo-young being adorable. And to a certain extent that’s okay, because of course, that partly is why we ship Bong-sun with Sun-woo so strongly. The second problem was that they apparently wanted to do this triangle, with Soon-ae falling for him too, when they should have (imho) kept it lighter and more comedic by skipping that aspect, and having Soon-ae pursue the mystery of her death, which would necessitate that she leave Bong-sun to her own devices more often. Instead, they barely touched on the mystery of her death until the last quarter of the show, while focusing almost exclusively on Soon-ae/Sun-woo during the early part. I would have liked it so much better if the three of them could have been friends instead of a love triangle. I already love the show to pieces as it is; if they’d just done it that way, it would have been off-the-charts amazing. SIGH.
One thing that’s mollifying is that Sun-woo very obviously wanted it to be Bong-sun, all of it. Whether because he finds her physically attractive, or because he’d had a soft spot for her initially (despite what I said in my last spot, that almost has to be true, considering he doesn’t suffer fools, and she didn’t seem to be an ace at her job or anything), or just because the whole ghost thing is freaky, once he found out the truth he was mostly nervous, even repulsed, by the idea of a ghost possessing Bong-sun, regardless of the fact that the ghost had connected with him in various ways. The most he was willing to give was at the end, when he acknowledged Soon-ae by name, as her own person, but he definitely wasn’t pining for her or anything. I felt like he acknowledged her, and hugged her, for HER rather than for himself.
Having an entire finale dedicated to doing an epilogue is kind of nice, and seems to be popular with Asian dramas. It might’ve been a wee bit long though. And even though I was satisfied with it, and am fine with the way it all went down, there were a few changes that I would have made.
One is that it seems like everyone on the planet agrees that the “study broad for xx years” thing is a tired trope that needs to go away. I have not watched enough dramas to feel as strongly about it, but I do agree that using it in this case was a little deflating. The Bong-sun/Sun-woo relationship only JUST got to be resolved; her immediately leaving for two years is odd. I don’t have any problem with her eventually striking out on her own – in fact, for the health of the relationship and for Bong-sun herself, similar to Ga-eul in BoF, it was necessary. But it would have made more sense in the context of a stable relationship, rather than when it was so new and fragile. Plus, as much as I enjoyed watching Sun-woo try to convince himself that she wouldn’t cheat on him to crying himself to sleep about it, I also didn’t like the idea that she was radio silent with him for months, regardless of the reason. (Her reason was the best it could have been, under the circumstances, but created unnecessary angst at the end. Considering what Sun-woo has already been through with her, he didn’t deserve having to feel or think for a moment that she might have lost interest.)
Regardless, I’m glad they got their happy ending, and I’m glad they “did it” by the end, too, considering how much that aspect had permeated most of the show. Plus, that’s something Bong-sun and Sun-woo have together that is theirs and theirs only. Though given their dialogue, I have no idea what they could have been doing in the bedroom. O.o I mean, how kinky are they likely to be their first time?
Soon-ae’s dad finding out the truth about her death was just as wrenching as I expected; that was the only part of the show that made me cry, when he was going toward the light and she made the speech about his having to stay to see Kyung-mo get married and see his grandchildren. And his realization that he had fed his daughter’s murderer countless numbers of hot meals was so awful.
And of course, there’s Soon-ae herself, whose death was so tragic not just because she was so young, but because it was the result of her trying to do the right thing, and because she had had such a crush on Officer Choi, and had gone out of her way to make things he liked to eat, etc. It’s just so wrenching, and what a terrible way to die.
I’m not sure what the purpose was of Sun-woo opening a new restaurant – just a new challenge? I do like his working with Kyung-mo, just because it seems like such a weird pairing. :)) Plus Kyung-mo needs discipline, and his father seems totally incapable of giving that to him. It’s also a nice gesture to Soon-ae, because if not for her, they wouldn’t even know each other – and in fact, a mentor like Sun-woo would be way out of Kyung-mo’s reach.
I wish they’d done something a little less predictable/obvious with the situation over at Sun Restaurant. As amusing as Seo In-guk’s cameo was, I would have preferred a bigger shake up. It would have been nice if Min-soo had his own restaurant, and the chef was someone who was obviously more culinarily talented than him – Joon. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hilarious that Joon’s big change in two years was getting glasses (seriously, they wanted to make him more hot?!), but it would have been nice to see one of the other chefs move up the ranks, and he’d be the most natural choice, as the true winner of the MT cooking competition. Of course, then they wouldn’t have had everyone conveniently in one spot for Bong-sun’s return, but they could have had Min-soo there as a patron, lording his restaurant ownership over them all. Joon, as an admirer of Sun-woo’s, would also run the restaurant a lot more like his predecessor, and he also has a similar temperament, if a little more aloof. His reaction to Seo In-guk was excellent, though.
I really don’t understand the decision to bring Sung-jae back in any capacity. The only thing I can think is that they wanted to acknowledge the fact that it wasn’t him, but the evil spirit inside of him, that had done all those terrible things, so he shouldn’t die, but that’s dumb. He has his own tragic story – kind of, we’re not really given the full details – but ultimately he had to take responsibility for his actions, possessed by an evil spirit or not. In fact, I thought the way he went out, with the evil spirit going back into him and him deliberately jumping off the building, was the best possible ending for him. He had to pay for his crimes – no one would believe the evil spirit excuse – and his realization of what he’d done and what was in him, and that the only way to kill it was to kill himself, was actually the right conclusion for him. It said that regardless of what weakness he’d had in him to open himself up to an evil spirit to begin with, he had enough strength of character, and enough of a grasp of right and wrong, to do the right thing, and stop the thing in him from committing any further acts of evil. So bringing him back as an amnesiac was so pointless, at least in regards to his character. If by doing so they were doing it for Eun Hee, I can see it a LITTLE more – but only a little. Maybe they were saying that her love for him was unconditional, further cementing her bid for sainthood. Or maybe they felt that if he’d done all that horrible stuff AND died, she would never recover, and this way, she still has something to live for. But the idea of a woman – any woman, even one as nice as Eun Hee – being okay with the guy who’d run her over deliberately, and then insinuated himself into her life by marrying her, is fucking ridiculous.
Another ridiculous ending was PD Lee finding a guy who looked IDENTICAL to her dead husband. What?!
I cannot get the group’s various renditions of singing “Congratulations” out of my head. :)))))) God I love those guys. Makes me want to roll around laughing.
The first time it happened:
The second time:
And yes there was a third time:
The video cuts off right before Joon gives Bong-sun a big bear hug. I still wish there had been more Joon/Bong-sun. It's just that Park Bo-young and Kwak Si-yang look so good together!
SEE!!
While I’m sharing, here are a couple more of my favorite scenes:
The gang (minus Sun-woo, whose credit card they have) go out for dinner and karaoke. Their boy band imitation lolol:
And here’s Jo Jung-suk fucking playing the guitar and singing, omg. Like… this guy, really! This is one of those occasions when I’m glad I don’t understand Korean, because the lyrics are apparently really cheesy. :)))) But I just hear him singing in pretty Korean, with those cute/cringeworthy pronunciation of English words that’s so common in Asian dramas, lol. Vee-ta-min, honestly. :))
========
In beauty stuff news, I’ve purchased an Air Repair kit. I just wanted the moisturizer, but apparently they really only do travel-sized things, and the kit had the full-size moisturizer plus a bunch of other stuff for only $10 more or something. I know it’s a little ironic that the first thing that I actually bought after trying a sample from the beauty boxes was something that I initially pooh-poohed, but I just love that moisturizer. I still don’t understand how it can feel so thick yet go on so light, and it smells like lemon verbena.
Then again, I did manage to watch a bunch of great movies in a row, so I suppose there’s that. Also, I always meant to go back to finish Master’s Sun, so I suppose I can do that. I can’t remember now why I stopped watching that one. I think it might be because I was actually watching that in real time and it got to a point where I wasn’t enjoying it that much, so I just stopped following it. That’s the danger of watching stuff in real time, because when a drama loses a step or has a slow episode, it’s much harder to get over the hump. If you have more episodes in front of you, you can just keep going and another ep might capture your interest again. Master’s Sun also suffers from the fact that I’m not really into the male lead. I don’t even remember Seo In-guk in it, and he’s apparently the second male lead. He had an amusing cameo in the OMG finale, so that might be what’s sparking my interest in watching it again.
It’s possible that more than anything, I’m going to miss the antics of everyone who worked in the Sun Restaurant kitchen. Those guys were the best!
I’m going to go ahead and agree with the Dramabeans recapper again, because her feeling on the show overall was that it was a great show, full of heart and all the best things about romcoms, but its one weakness was in how it built the relationship for the leads. There was far too much of Soon-ae in Bong-sun’s body at the get go, and then she fell to the wayside at the end. I definitely think the show (and the relationship) would have benefitted from a more equal distribution of which girl was spending time with Sun-woo, particularly at the beginning.
I know
akscully disagrees, but I felt it was pretty obvious that the girl Sun-woo was falling/fell for initially was mostly Soon-ae. I didn’t like that and still don’t like it because she was clearly never going to be the one to end up with him, so they needed to build up Bong-sun/Sun-woo’s relationship a lot more. I think there were two problems. One was that they were expecting us to meld both entities into one, with Park Bo-young playing both roles so wonderfully. So it was “okay” that Soon-ae was in Bong-sun’s body, because all we saw was Park Bo-young being adorable. And to a certain extent that’s okay, because of course, that partly is why we ship Bong-sun with Sun-woo so strongly. The second problem was that they apparently wanted to do this triangle, with Soon-ae falling for him too, when they should have (imho) kept it lighter and more comedic by skipping that aspect, and having Soon-ae pursue the mystery of her death, which would necessitate that she leave Bong-sun to her own devices more often. Instead, they barely touched on the mystery of her death until the last quarter of the show, while focusing almost exclusively on Soon-ae/Sun-woo during the early part. I would have liked it so much better if the three of them could have been friends instead of a love triangle. I already love the show to pieces as it is; if they’d just done it that way, it would have been off-the-charts amazing. SIGH.One thing that’s mollifying is that Sun-woo very obviously wanted it to be Bong-sun, all of it. Whether because he finds her physically attractive, or because he’d had a soft spot for her initially (despite what I said in my last spot, that almost has to be true, considering he doesn’t suffer fools, and she didn’t seem to be an ace at her job or anything), or just because the whole ghost thing is freaky, once he found out the truth he was mostly nervous, even repulsed, by the idea of a ghost possessing Bong-sun, regardless of the fact that the ghost had connected with him in various ways. The most he was willing to give was at the end, when he acknowledged Soon-ae by name, as her own person, but he definitely wasn’t pining for her or anything. I felt like he acknowledged her, and hugged her, for HER rather than for himself.
Having an entire finale dedicated to doing an epilogue is kind of nice, and seems to be popular with Asian dramas. It might’ve been a wee bit long though. And even though I was satisfied with it, and am fine with the way it all went down, there were a few changes that I would have made.
One is that it seems like everyone on the planet agrees that the “study broad for xx years” thing is a tired trope that needs to go away. I have not watched enough dramas to feel as strongly about it, but I do agree that using it in this case was a little deflating. The Bong-sun/Sun-woo relationship only JUST got to be resolved; her immediately leaving for two years is odd. I don’t have any problem with her eventually striking out on her own – in fact, for the health of the relationship and for Bong-sun herself, similar to Ga-eul in BoF, it was necessary. But it would have made more sense in the context of a stable relationship, rather than when it was so new and fragile. Plus, as much as I enjoyed watching Sun-woo try to convince himself that she wouldn’t cheat on him to crying himself to sleep about it, I also didn’t like the idea that she was radio silent with him for months, regardless of the reason. (Her reason was the best it could have been, under the circumstances, but created unnecessary angst at the end. Considering what Sun-woo has already been through with her, he didn’t deserve having to feel or think for a moment that she might have lost interest.)
Regardless, I’m glad they got their happy ending, and I’m glad they “did it” by the end, too, considering how much that aspect had permeated most of the show. Plus, that’s something Bong-sun and Sun-woo have together that is theirs and theirs only. Though given their dialogue, I have no idea what they could have been doing in the bedroom. O.o I mean, how kinky are they likely to be their first time?
Soon-ae’s dad finding out the truth about her death was just as wrenching as I expected; that was the only part of the show that made me cry, when he was going toward the light and she made the speech about his having to stay to see Kyung-mo get married and see his grandchildren. And his realization that he had fed his daughter’s murderer countless numbers of hot meals was so awful.
And of course, there’s Soon-ae herself, whose death was so tragic not just because she was so young, but because it was the result of her trying to do the right thing, and because she had had such a crush on Officer Choi, and had gone out of her way to make things he liked to eat, etc. It’s just so wrenching, and what a terrible way to die.
I’m not sure what the purpose was of Sun-woo opening a new restaurant – just a new challenge? I do like his working with Kyung-mo, just because it seems like such a weird pairing. :)) Plus Kyung-mo needs discipline, and his father seems totally incapable of giving that to him. It’s also a nice gesture to Soon-ae, because if not for her, they wouldn’t even know each other – and in fact, a mentor like Sun-woo would be way out of Kyung-mo’s reach.
I wish they’d done something a little less predictable/obvious with the situation over at Sun Restaurant. As amusing as Seo In-guk’s cameo was, I would have preferred a bigger shake up. It would have been nice if Min-soo had his own restaurant, and the chef was someone who was obviously more culinarily talented than him – Joon. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hilarious that Joon’s big change in two years was getting glasses (seriously, they wanted to make him more hot?!), but it would have been nice to see one of the other chefs move up the ranks, and he’d be the most natural choice, as the true winner of the MT cooking competition. Of course, then they wouldn’t have had everyone conveniently in one spot for Bong-sun’s return, but they could have had Min-soo there as a patron, lording his restaurant ownership over them all. Joon, as an admirer of Sun-woo’s, would also run the restaurant a lot more like his predecessor, and he also has a similar temperament, if a little more aloof. His reaction to Seo In-guk was excellent, though.
I really don’t understand the decision to bring Sung-jae back in any capacity. The only thing I can think is that they wanted to acknowledge the fact that it wasn’t him, but the evil spirit inside of him, that had done all those terrible things, so he shouldn’t die, but that’s dumb. He has his own tragic story – kind of, we’re not really given the full details – but ultimately he had to take responsibility for his actions, possessed by an evil spirit or not. In fact, I thought the way he went out, with the evil spirit going back into him and him deliberately jumping off the building, was the best possible ending for him. He had to pay for his crimes – no one would believe the evil spirit excuse – and his realization of what he’d done and what was in him, and that the only way to kill it was to kill himself, was actually the right conclusion for him. It said that regardless of what weakness he’d had in him to open himself up to an evil spirit to begin with, he had enough strength of character, and enough of a grasp of right and wrong, to do the right thing, and stop the thing in him from committing any further acts of evil. So bringing him back as an amnesiac was so pointless, at least in regards to his character. If by doing so they were doing it for Eun Hee, I can see it a LITTLE more – but only a little. Maybe they were saying that her love for him was unconditional, further cementing her bid for sainthood. Or maybe they felt that if he’d done all that horrible stuff AND died, she would never recover, and this way, she still has something to live for. But the idea of a woman – any woman, even one as nice as Eun Hee – being okay with the guy who’d run her over deliberately, and then insinuated himself into her life by marrying her, is fucking ridiculous.
Another ridiculous ending was PD Lee finding a guy who looked IDENTICAL to her dead husband. What?!
I cannot get the group’s various renditions of singing “Congratulations” out of my head. :)))))) God I love those guys. Makes me want to roll around laughing.
The first time it happened:
The second time:
And yes there was a third time:
The video cuts off right before Joon gives Bong-sun a big bear hug. I still wish there had been more Joon/Bong-sun. It's just that Park Bo-young and Kwak Si-yang look so good together!
SEE!!
While I’m sharing, here are a couple more of my favorite scenes:
The gang (minus Sun-woo, whose credit card they have) go out for dinner and karaoke. Their boy band imitation lolol:
And here’s Jo Jung-suk fucking playing the guitar and singing, omg. Like… this guy, really! This is one of those occasions when I’m glad I don’t understand Korean, because the lyrics are apparently really cheesy. :)))) But I just hear him singing in pretty Korean, with those cute/cringeworthy pronunciation of English words that’s so common in Asian dramas, lol. Vee-ta-min, honestly. :))
========
In beauty stuff news, I’ve purchased an Air Repair kit. I just wanted the moisturizer, but apparently they really only do travel-sized things, and the kit had the full-size moisturizer plus a bunch of other stuff for only $10 more or something. I know it’s a little ironic that the first thing that I actually bought after trying a sample from the beauty boxes was something that I initially pooh-poohed, but I just love that moisturizer. I still don’t understand how it can feel so thick yet go on so light, and it smells like lemon verbena.
