My Mister – Korean Drama Review 28

8/10: I am not usually the type to sit through a slow, depressing slice-of-life drama, simply because I have a short attention span, hahaha, but this drama really lived up to the high praise I’ve heard about it. It’s a slow burning drama that is unassuming, muted, and quietly tragic, but like the protagonists Lee Ji-an and Park Dong-hoon, it has a really beautiful story to tell, a story of the complexity of family, the necessity of friendships, and the resilience of the human spirit.

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IU really blew it out of the park with this one. Her performance as Lee Ji-an was so realistic and subtle, and she truly disappeared behind her character. When she was on-screen, I didn’t see the lively and charismatic mega-celebrity IU. I saw Lee Ji-an, a young woman who was beaten down by the world so many times that she perpetually held a downward gaze, rarely spoke, and basically just kept putting one foot in front of the other because her body stayed alive. She was the definition of a dead woman walking. As a child, she became the inheritor of a ton of debt from her father, and was chased by loan sharks her entire life. Eventually, she ends up killing the loan shark because he beat her deaf grandmother, The loan shark’s son, Lee Kwang-il, continues his father’s work and stalks and harasses Ji-an to collect her debt and to abuse her out of spite and vengeance. Ji-an ends up taking a temporary work position at an architectural company, where she meets Park Dong-hoon.

Park Dong-hoon is the “ajeossi” mentioned in the title of the drama, and wow, he is actually a gem of a human being. Patient, kind, and enduring, he is the one of three brothers to actually secure stable employment, has a wife who is a lawyer, and one young son whom they were able to send to the United States for school. On the surface he is a quiet and reserved man who succeeded in life by being hard-working and considerate. But in reality, Dong-hoon is empty inside. He and his wife continue to become distant, and his obligation to support his unemployed older and younger brothers and his elderly mother, weigh on him and bring him a lot of pressure. At work, while he enjoys being a general manager at the architectural company, his easy-going and quiet demeanor makes him an easy target for the CEO and his subordinates. The CEO in question, Do Joon-young, knows Park Doon-hoon from university, and it’s a classic example of how bullies are the victims of bullying, too. Do Joon-young is younger than a lot of the people working under him, including Doon-hoon, so he is constantly on guard against those who may wish to oppose him, or resent him for disrupting the cultural hierarchy that Korea takes very seriously. That pressure and negativity transfers to him lashing out against people he finds threatening, namely, Doon-hoon, because unlike Joon-young, Doon-hoon is well-loved by his co-workers and is in the perfect position to be promoted soon. The irony is that Doon-hoon is not competitive or super ambitious at all, and if Joon-young just treated everyone nicer and didn’t project so much unnecessary hate and insecurity, they probably would have been able to work together just fine in higher-ranking positions.

But alas, without conflict there would be no story. Do Joon-young has an affair with Doon-hoon’s wife, Kang Yoon-hee, and although it’s never explicitly stated, it’s clear that he does it not because he loves Yoon-hee, but because he hates Dong-hoon. Seeing a weakness in their marriage, he takes advantage of Yoon-hee, who is burdened with caring for Dong-hoon’s poorer family, and is brushed to the side as the middle son’s wife. Although there is no way I could ever condone her behaviour, I guess I can understand how being second fiddle to your husband’s family for x number of years could cause a person to turn to other people for love and validation. To make matters even more spicy, Lee Ji-an was actually placed in the company by Joon-young (with the promise of money to help her pay off her debts), to spy on Dong-hoon and sabotage him so that he can get fired. Amidst all this, Ji-an and Dong-hoon slowly get to know each other and actually reach an unspoken mutual agreement to be friends. And it’s not hard to see how a conflict of interest emerges there, lolol.

Ji-an wire taps Dong-hoon’s phone very early on, in order to keep tabs on him and report back to Joon-young, but ironically, it is this window into his life that slowly endears him to Ji-an. She listens to his interactions with his family, his colleagues, and friends, and it becomes very clear that he is a super kind man. He gives people the benefit of the doubt, and stands up for Ji-an, since she does not speak up for herself. When Dong-hoon finds out that his wife was cheating on him with his boss, it is heart-breaking to see Ji-an mourn and cry with him as he tries to keep things together for the sake of his son and rest of his family.

I would definitely say that the show did a great job of keeping their relationship ambiguous and in the grey zone. Ji-an confesses to Dong-hoon multiple times but knows herself that he has way too much integrity to like her back, and Dong-hoon is consistent in treating her like a cherished friend, younger sister, and even sort of a daughter figure. I think this was the right call. I’m not against larger age gap relationships, but Ji-an is supposed to be 20-21 years old, and Dong-hoon is in his 40’s. So yeah, that would definitely be pushing it, lol.

(As a sidenote, I admired Dong-hoon so much for the way he handled the affair. He was shocked and angry of course, but he never retaliated out of rage, or vowed revenge against his wife. Instead, he still considered her well-being, and was willing to endure the pain of such a betrayal. Thankfully, his wife feels the full brunt of guilt and remorse that she ought to, after having done something so unforgiveable. Her character definitely became more likeable as the drama went on, and I was glad that she took responsibility for her actions and accepted the consequences. She tries to do what she can to make amends, and even though by the end of the drama their marriage isn’t just miraculously right as rain again, it seemed that both of them still cared about each other and were committed to working through the scars together.)

Ji-an’s motivation begins to change, and she becomes someone who wants to protect Dong-hoon and wants him to be happy. Ji-an says herself that he is the first person to be nice to her more than 4 times, and she starts to truly love him. Similarly, Dong-hoon sees Ji-an as someone who has so much potential, but just has never been given the opportunity to thrive and experience joy. He finds out about her very elderly grandmother, as well as her debt and past crime, and he does everything he can to help. One of the most powerful scenes in the show was when Dong-hoon confronts Kwang-il for continuing to harass Ji-an for money, and the two men end up getting into a full-on fistfight. Because Dong-hoon is such a quiet, non-violent person, to see him completely lose it and display such righteous anger on Ji-an’s behalf was a great display of character development. Dong-hoon was becoming someone who would stand up for himself and others, and fight for what’s right rather than passively let life take its toll. And of course, Ji-an could hear the whole encounter via her wire tap, and just seeing her cry so pitifully as she listened to the person she loved fight for her, it was honestly beautiful. As someone who was not loved and not supported, it changes everything to know that there were people who cared about her.

As a last note, I thought one of the most powerful moments in the show was actually one that didn’t involve the two main characters. It involved Kwang-il, the loan shark, who throughout the show was portrayed as a violent, abusive man that hated Ji-an for killing his father. We find out, however, that he actually knew Ji-an from childhood, and even protected her from abuse from his father. He often shielded her and took the blows instead, and obviously had a crush on her. So when Ji-an killed his father, it was heart-shattering, and the only way he could reconcile things was to maintain this sort of abusive love-hate relationship. Anyways, circumstances arose which allowed him to steal all the recordings Ji-an had of Dong-hoon’s wire taps, and he began listening to all of their conversations. During one exchange, Dong-hoon questions Ji-an about Kwang-il, and she replies that he wasn’t always so hurtful and full of rage, and that she remembers a time when he was kind. Kwang-il is cut to the core, and in the end, decides to send all the recordings to Dong-hoon so that it can be used to reveal all the corruption and scheming surrounding Do Joon-young. He chooses to let go of his resentment, and does one final act of kindness towards Ji-an, and the person she cares about. It was quite heart-breaking, honestly, because he had filled his heart with this resentment and desire for revenge for so long, that once he let go of it, he was empty…he wandered the streets afterwards, crying with what was probably regret.

The ending of the drama was very heart-warming. Ji-an started to let people in, and became willing to form connections with people. She started to smile more, talk more, and appreciate existence. She gained ambitions to do well, and to live, not just survive. Dong-hoon became more confident in himself, staying true to being the kind man he always was, but no longer feeling suffocated by life’s obligations. I would definitely recommend this drama for anyone who enjoys a heavier slice of life, and who wants to go for an emotional roller coaster that leaves you feeling hopeful in a bittersweet way.

Thanks for reading, and happy watching!!