Pandemic Diary November: Happy Birthday To Me

A birthday present to myself


In March, I did not think I’d be having my November birthday during the pandemic. And yet, I did. Alone in my apartment. Eating a cupcake.

Middle age is for sure here and with it came bifocals. Got a new pair of glasses which involved walking miles, up hill and down, back and forth through Queens, three times this month.

Everything just takes more time and effort right now.

Things have been hard. The aggregation of the past 8 months really caught up with me in November.  The election, non-election, election, my struggles in Korean class, unrelenting sadness, weight gain, time passing, time passing me by, and standing still all just weighed on me.

Some haunting ghost leaves
At some point, putting my life on hold for a year felt like no big deal and maybe even a welcome respite from the grind of what my everyday had become with 3 jobs. But as this birthday crept up on me, I started to panic about what losing this year meant. Because it’s not just one year.  It will likely be two. And by the time I can get back to things I used to care about I’m not sure I will recognize myself anymore. This is all doing damage, but I cannot yet see what that damage will be.

I don’t have the language yet to articulate what has been happening.  I’m still negotiating how to interact with people. I’m worried the distance between us is not just physical but philosophical.

With all this internal turmoil, I could not settle on a show in November. I kept switching off every show I started. Nothing quite fit. Nothing was what I wanted. And even what I watched was not good. December is already looking up and I’ve found some shows to buoy my mood. So, fear not.

In my quest to just enjoy something, I feel so easily broken by the simplest setback or interference. 

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One Spring Night

All of a sudden as I was watching this show I recognized an apartment complex. I had DEFINITELY seen it in a drama before. Had I become a Seoul real estate savant? No.

I did some googling and realized that the director (Ahn Pan Seok) and writer (Kim Eun) of Something in the Rain also created One Spring Night. This explained why there was a huge overlap in cast between those shows, common locations, and the same relentlessly annoying soundtrack of English-language songs used to fill in every single emotional beat.

Both dramas operate at specific low-grade frequency.  There are not crazy coincidences nor big events. Everything is quite quotidian and scaled to real life challenges. They are also particularly interested in issues facing aspiring middle-class families and their focus on advancing social status through their daughters’ relationships. 

In each show, it is known in advance that the romance will cause tension/problems with the woman’s family. The families fight and fight against what these women want. And it’s terrible for everyone. 

In these narratives, love comes quickly and the character have sex (not just chaste k-drama kisses here), but the anguish over the relationship and how it impacts the families drives the conflict.  It’s a slow twist of a knife because someone or something has to give and the family pressure is immense.

Both shows also layer this with additional social commentary.  For Something in the Rain, it was age differences for the couple, being an orphan, sexual harassment, and workplace abuse. With One Spring Night, they delved into the stigma of single parenthood and intimate partner violence.

Jung Hae-in remains an adorable, sweet lead who suffers quietly and has fine chemistry with Han Ji-min who is lively and sassy. My personal fave Joo Min-kyung plays a no-nonsense, wild younger sister.

But what was hard for me with both shows, was that the women were well-educated and self-possessed people being dragged down by these family expectations. In addition, the choices these women had were like 2000% awful man or this perfectly good dude who their parents refuse to consider for questionable reasons. The parental obstacles just come off as extreme and abusive.

Meanwhile, I had no interest in any of the side stories.  There were so many terrible men in One Spring Night that I fast-forwarded every time they were on-screen—bad dads, bad dudes.  There’s a relentless ex-boyfriend who will not accept that the couple has broken-up. There’s a soon-to-be ex-husband who will not accept a divorce. These women deserve better and they tolerate far too much abuse, stalking, and coercion for my comfort.

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Chicago Typewriter

The version of this show in my head is 200% better than the version of this show they made for television.

In 1930s, three people were part of a secret rebellion against the Japanese colonial government. Fast forward 80 years and those three people meet again…sort of. Unfortunately, the 1930s story is fascinating, but we spend most of our time in the near present. 

In the present, Han Se-joo (Yoo Ah-in) is a wildly successful author who ends up with writer’s block until a ghostwriter Yoo Jin-oh (Go Kyung-pyo) starts writing this story about the 1930s under Han Se-joo’s name. Jeon Seol (Im Soo-jung) is the author’s number one fan and gets mysteriously drawn into his life and orbit, despite him constantly being mean to her.

First off, Yoo Ah-in is like 1000% hotter in the 1930s—both as a character and physically. Without question, I would overthrow the Japanese for him. There is an absolute A+ sizzling 1930s kiss in this show that we revisit from time to time.  But in the present, his character is a jerk (and as always in K-dramas, with reasons). But it’s a struggle to want to spend any time with him as he shouts at everyone and is just miserable. Also, watching Jeon Seol take this abuse over and over again is really uncomfortable. She’s so willing to do anything for him, even when he hasn’t earned it.

I have to imagine there were budgetary issues that limited the show and kept us mostly in the present. There’s a lot of “explaining” what happened in the 1930s rather than showing. But the narrative of trying to overthrow the Japanese occupation is obviously a lot more compelling than a rich author being mean and isolated and trying to learn to make friends.

I feel compelled to also report there’s some ridiculous altheleisure wear and outrageous designer sweaters in this show. What was with that deep v-neck with the open knit pattern? It’s not sexy. Stop it. At some point, he’s wearing bell sleeves and maybe the worst bucket hat in the history of hats. It’s not helping his tiresome character to also dress like a style buffoon.

Also, inexplicably Im Soo-jung’s character in the 1930s sings in a nightclub…but in the whole show we can never hear her sing. The scenes play as if she is singing, but we cannot hear any vocals. Your two choices are to dub her singing or don’t make her a singer/don't show singing scenes and you went with a third ridiculous option.  

Basically, I watched for Yoo Ah-in being smoldering in suspenders, the brief glimpses of political intrigue, the past sadness and woe of the 1930s characters, while suffering through some bad sweaters in the present.

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My ID is Gangnam Beauty

This show is bad. I’m not sure it knows what it wants to say about plastic surgery.

Maybe better if she was a meerkat. 


Kang Mi-rae (Im Soo-hyang) thinks she is ugly and hates that people look at her, so she has secret plastic surgery on her whole face and body before going off to college. She gets to college and everyone thinks she’s hot, but she’s still plagued by low self-esteem. She now struggles with her sensitivity over having had the surgery which is obvious to others she has had. She also meets a “natural” beauty Hyun Soo-ah (Jo Woo-ri) who pretends to be her friend but is absolute evil to her core.  She runs into the most handsome guy from high school, Do Kyung-seok (Cha Eun-woo) who remains the most handsome guy at college, but he doesn’t care about looks at all.

While the show dives into the issues surrounding beauty standards, plastic surgery, and discrimination based on looks in Korea, the show spends very little time on interiority. Kang Mi-rae’s psychological issues are barely explored. She ends up making a lot of dumb choices and is so easily manipulated. While at the same time, Do Kyung-seok’s backstory is more interesting.

The story then tries to explain Soo-ah’s unforgiveable behavior and abusive nature. By that point, all interest I had in the show had totally waned and I was furious they were trying to make me feel bad for her. Also, there’s an incel.

There’s an important conversation to be had about beauty, self-abuse, societal expectations, self-esteem, and eating disorders, but this show doesn’t find a sensitive, smart, or thoughtful path through them.

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