Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter: Episode 4

by LollyPip

While one potential husband grows closer to our lovely, long-lived fairy, the other is concerned about how he’s been feeling strange and disconnected lately. We finally get a little more movement in terms of plot and characterization, which is a nice change, and hopefully means that things will start happening soon.

 
EPISODE 4 RECAP

When Geum returns from retrieving his and Yi-hyun’s phones from the restaurant (and getting stuck with the bill), he discovers that Yi-hyun is no longer where he left him. He’s with Jeom-soon, who carried him in her tiger form to Ok-nam, scared that he’s dying when in fact he’s just passed out drunk.

Ok-nam settles him with his head in her lap, and while he sleeps, he murmurs an apology to Jeom-soon that she had to grow up fatherless. Smiling through tears, Ok-nam whispers, “Dear husband…”

In the morning, Yi-hyun wakes in a strange room, lying next to a gigantic sleeping tiger. He assumes he’s still dreaming, but the tiger lets loose a very real (and very stinky) fart, which gives Yi-hyun pause. His logical brain quickly file this under “things to think about later,” and he calmly leaves and stumbles home.

Ok-nam is disappointed when she brings breakfast in, only to find Jeom-soon sleeping alone.

Geum is relieved to find Yi-hyun in his own bed a bit later. He fusses at Yi-hyun for worrying him to the point that he even went to the police, and Yi-hyun croaks sleepily that he doesn’t know where he was. He tells the still upset Geum to slow his roll and get some sleep, grumbling that Geum acts like a wife sometimes.

The three immortals spend the night sleeping in the street under pigeon blankets, and a pickpocket takes Master Gu’s wallet despite the flock of angry birds. Master Gu wakes first, and he’s alarmed to see the sign for Mokpo Station, only now realizing that they’re not in Seoul as they thought.

Geum collapses in bed, and when he finally wakes up, he panics when he sees that he’s nearly late for his movie date with Ok-nam. When he arrives at the kiosk, he finds her happily telling her flowers that Yi-hyun remembered Jeom-soon, and that she hopes he remembers her soon, too. He’s happy to see her wearing the ajumma pants he bought her, and he doesn’t tell her that they were meant to be pajamas, ha.

When Shin-seon and Fairy Oh finally wake up, Shin-seon gets a kick out of making fun of Master Gu for bringing them to Mokpo instead of Seoul. They decide to eat breakfast before grabbing another train, where Shin-seon notices the owner ajumma’s octopus tattoo.

Master Gu can’t find his wallet when it’s time to pay, so the octopus ajumma puts them to work cooking and doing dishes. Shin-seon freaks out when a live octopus attaches itself to his hand, swearing it’s got way more than eight legs, then he yells at Master Gu for gifting them with the valuable lesson of hard work.

Ok-nam gets emotionally involved in the movie, loudly urging Fay Wray to run when King Kong comes after her. She jumps up when King Kong kidnaps the girl, (spoiler alert) then cries when he dies. Aw, she’s so cute.

Yi-hyun takes out the shirt Ok-nam embroidered for him, and he briefly hears strange flute music when he holds it up, heh. He wads it up and throws it in a fit of annoyance.

Feeling bad for upsetting her, Geum promises to take Ok-nam to a happier movie next time. Ok-nam gets stared at by the other movie patrons for the flower in her hair (because of the saying that crazy people wear flowers in their hair), so Geum buys a flowered hairpin from a vendor… for himself. Sweet boy.

While Geum is in the restroom, Ok-nam is approached by a lady wearing wild clothes and a flower in her hair. She starts ranting about politics and her childhood, and when Geum returns, she tells them about being kidnapped once. They seem interested, so she backs away, calling them crazy, ha.

They head to the park, where Geum tells her that he once fell into a pit toilet when he was a kid. Ok-nam says that she’s been on Earth so long, that’s happened to her many times, and still happens to Jeom-soon, lol. She suggests they play a game where the person who discovers the thing they have most in common wins, and since he’s seen her talking to her plants, Geum reveals that he can understand animals.

He tells Ok-nam that he could understand birds as a child, and as he grew older, he understood more types of creatures. He says that people thought he was hallucinating, so he stopped talking about it, and Ok-nam thinks, “So, he’s one of us as well. He’s inexperienced, but with proper training, his skills will improve.”

Out loud, she tells Geum that he’s a special being whose good nature shines despite the fog of the world. He counters that he makes a lot of mistakes and women don’t like him, but that he thinks she’s special, too.

Bored, Yi-hyun calls Dr. Lee, who’s also hung over after a department dinner. He suggests they go for hangover soup, and as they eat, Dr. Lee criticizes Yi-hyun for being too picky about his food. She wonders out loud what woman would marry him, and he snaps that she shouldn’t worry because it won’t be her.

Conversation somehow turns to Jeom-soon’s racy web novel, and Dr. Lee says that she likes the Young Master. Yi-hyun quips that he’s definitely into men, but she asks what he knows about it when he never dates.

She adds that they’re fictional characters anyway, questioning his intelligence. That gets Yi-hyun’s hackles all up, and he claims that he’s so smart it exhausts him. They forget their argument when they see Geum and Ok-nam walk past the restaurant, both wearing flowers in their hair.

Geum’s mother lets herself into Yi-hyun’s apartment to drop off some food, complaining when she finds his fridge completely empty with most of the shelves removed.

After eating, Yi-hyun asks Dr. Lee if he can swing by her office on Monday. She says she’s only free until noon, but when he says he’s busy then, she suddenly has some time available after noon. In-teresting.

When Yi-hyun arrives home, he goes to hang up his jacket in the fridge (what?), and he’s surprised to see Geum’s mom coming down the stairs. She says she’s in town for a wedding so she brought them food, then went up to rest in Geum’s room while he’s out.

Later that night, Yi-hyun oh-so-casually mentions seeing Geum with a flower in his hair. He seems annoyed that Geum took Ok-nam to a movie, and fusses at him for acting like children with the matching hairpins.

They hear Geum’s mom cry out downstairs and run down to find her sitting among her spoiled food, complaining about the jacket in the fridge. While Yi-hyun laments his ruined jacket, Geum explains that it’s not a fridge but a closet that steams clothes.

Mom manages to make them a decent dinner anyway, and she offers to stay a few days to clean the closet of the leaked food. Yi-hyun yelps that it’s not necessary, but Geum offers to help her so he’s overridden.

The immortal trio work at the octopus restaurant for two days to pay off their restaurant debt. After the restaurant ajumma dismisses them, they hang around, figuring that she owes them some pay for how much extra they’ve worked. She objects and chases them out, leaving them broke again.

Word of Ok-nam’s excellent coffee makes the rounds on campus, though Ok-nam tells everyone she’s a fairy, so the general consensus is that she’s a whacko. Yi-hyun overhears two students chuckling that she probably really likes the story of the fairy and the woodcutter, and he sighs heavily.

But the students are polite to Ok-nam, telling her that her coffee is so popular that they all refer to it in abbreviations and taking her suggestions for which types to try. Yi-hyun creates a bit of a stir when he shows up at the kiosk (he’s considered a Hot Professor), and he gets roped into buying coffee for a couple of coeds.

He’s unsettled when Ok-nam transforms from old to young right in front of his eyes and asks if he’s feeling better. His brain pulls the “tiger” file out of his subconscious and revisits it, and he considers that it may have actually happened. But when he tries to ask Ok-nam, one of the students interrupts to ask if Ok-nam is really a fairy.

She starts to answer truthfully, and when the girls dissolve into giggles, Yi-hyun pulls her aside to ask her to stop calling herself a fairy. He says that people call her insane, but she doesn’t care since it’s the true that she’s a fairy. Yi-hyun tells her to stop saying it anyway, and she accuses him of not believing her.

He doesn’t have an answer for that, and the line is growing at the kiosk, so he glares at her sternly until she agrees to do as her husband says. It’s not until she walks away that it hits him… “Husband? Me? WHY??”

Ok-nam is noticeably downcast when she talks to the students again, and Yi-hyun watches as she tells them that she was just joking about being a fairy. He nods at her, satisfied, and she gives him a tight little smile.

She remembers the day in the fairy realm when she learned that one of her friends died because the deity she served was forgotten and ceased to exist. The fairies had been warned that if this kept happening, someday there would only be one fairy left.

Some time in the late Joseon era, Master Gu had found Ok-nam looking sad. She’d said that fairies will one day be forgotten, but that she kept worrying about worldly matters, and she’d been concerned that she’s been in the human realm for too long.

Jeom-soon writes about emotions as a flowing river as she continues her story of the Young Master and his servant. We see her typing (and yep, she’s missing her right pinky finger just like Yi-hyun dreamed) with her fur and tail creeping out, and she yells at Bong-dae for interrupting her creative flow.

Bong-dae came to ask about her missing chocolate liqueurs, since she knows that Jeom-soon can’t have alcohol or she turns into a tiger, and a tiger was recently seen roaming around, carrying someone in its back. Jeom-soon confesses that she brought Yi-hyun here the other night, and that Ok-nam said he recognized her.

Since she also changes into a tiger when she eats meat, she wonders if she should keep eating meat and stay a tiger to help jog Yi-hyun’s memory further. Bong-dae warns her to stay human or she’ll be sent to a zoo, and to keep away from Yi-hyun.

The immortal trio trudge along the train tracks since they can’t afford tickets. Master Gu gets a craving for meat and wonders if they have some of Jeom-soon’s jerky left, but since he refused to help carry Shin-seon’s pack, Shin-seon yells at him that he’d better not even think of meat.

Master Gu loudly decries their problems, and his nerve in asking for jerky when he’s the cause of them. He screams that he should just kill himself, but Shin-seon says that they can’t just die and hands out the jerky. HA, Master Gu’s plan worked.

The strange student, Kyung-seul, shows up for his appointment with Dr. Lee, without his camera and brings lunch along with him. She says he must be upset that she didn’t recognize him at first, but he grins that he’s grown up since she last saw him. Dr. Lee asks about his condition, but he says he’s not here for a consultation and that he feels entirely normal now.

Yi-hyun arrives, also with lunch, so Dr. Lee invites him to join them. Kyung-seul quickly leaves and says cheerfully that he’ll come back later, but he reveals his irritation (and the hidden camera in his shirt) after he leaves.

Yi-hyun tells Dr. Lee that he’s sleeping better lately, but he feels odd, like his life is disappearing into a different time and place. Dr. Lee jokes that the parallel theory is overdone in dramas, and Yi-hyun asks her to at least pretend to care, ha.

He says he feels divided, but that he can’t tell where his other parts are, and sometimes he imagines weird things like riding on a tiger’s back. He continues that he’s even been denying the things that seem clear because they’re so implausible, but that something different is happening now.

Worried about his mental state, Dr. Lee advises Yi-hyun to see her daily for a while, and he tells her that the fairy barista called him her husband. Dr. Lee jumps up, cursing, then quickly pretends that it’s just her shoe pinching her. Later she watches Ok-nam as she works, wishing she could just destroy the coffee kiosk, ha.

When Jeom-soon has trouble connecting to the internet in a cafe, she’s approached by a helpful stranger — Kyung-seul. He introduces himself, and she pretends to be a student and tells him her name is Jung-soo.

She fibs that she’s from Mongolia when he calls attention to her use of banmal with a sunbae, and Kyung-seul says with a cheeky grin to watch her manners or he’ll get annoyed. He asks her to join the documentary club, saying they need a writer, and invites her to come by the bar where he works if she’s interested.

Once he’s alone, Kyung-seul pulls out his phone to save the hidden camera video he made of Jeom-soon, filing it under “Girlfriend.”

The immortals continue walking along the train tracks (with Shin-seon making annoying dad jokes), and after a while Fairy Oh feels the tracks shaking. They start to run, but Shin-seon drops some jerky and goes back to rescue it, then he trips and snags his foot under the tracks.

The others struggle to free Shin-seon’s leg with the train barreling down on them, but he gives Master Gu the jerky and wails, “It’s too late for me!!” Fairy Oh slaps his face and orders him to give her the magic beans he brought from the fairy realm, the ones that he claims can take him back any time. He pulls them out of his pocket, but he says he’s not sure which is which, so Fairy Oh just grabs one and tosses it into the air.

Jeom-soon grows hungry, but instead of food, she keeps thinking about Kyung-seul. She’s distracted by an email from a publishing house, and she runs to tell her mother, but something is terribly wrong with Ok-nam.

In cat form, Jeom-soon speeds to the biology building to find Geum and bring him back to the kiosk. Ok-nam is burning up with fever, so Geum throws her on his back to carry her home.

EPILOGUE.

Students tease Ok-nam as they order their coffee by using words with double meanings that she doesn’t understand. But they’re not being mean, and Ok-nam takes the joke well and upgrades their coffee for free. They seem to enjoy her stories of being a barista for five hundred years, making her smile as she works.

 
COMMENTS

Okay, this show has me so confused when it comes to the ships! That’s not a bad thing, because it’s nice not to know who will end up with whom before the show even starts (eyeballs almost every drama ever), but it’s certainly an odd feeling. Ok-nam believes that Yi-hyun is her husband reincarnated, but there are many indications that her husband may actually be Geum — he’s connected to the fairy realm judging by his ability to speak to animals and his affinity for plants, he feels drawn to Ok-nam, and he behaves in a very fatherly wawy towards Jeom-soon. I’m actually beginning to like the idea of Geum with Ok-nam more than Yi-hyun, and it would be fun to see the story deviate from the usual “One True Pairing” formula.

As for Yi-hyun, I actually think he’s much more suited to Dr. Lee. They’re both intellectuals and they get along very well, even hanging out socially sometimes. Yi-hyun obviously feels very comfortable around Dr. Lee — he’s not twitchy and nervous with her, like he is with Ok-nam — and she has an obvious crush on him. There’s the pesky fact that Dr. Lee is treating Yi-hyun for his insomnia, but that can always be fixed. I just think that they’d make a great couple, because they obviously already like each other despite their constant bickering (which they seem to really enjoy), while Yi-hyun and Ok-nam hardly spend any time together at all, and when they do, it’s all awkward and weird. In most dramas this would be a clear sign that they’re Meant To Be, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel that cut and dried in this show. But it’s still early days and I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

That’s not to say that Yi-hyun isn’t deeply involved with the whole fairy issue, because he obviously is. Yes, he sees Ok-nam in her young and beautiful form, but he also seems to have some memories relating to the fairy realm (the ghosts he saw) and Ok-nam’s family in particular (his dream of Jeom-soon). The whole thing makes me wonder if the truth is that Geum is Ok-nam’s husband, since he’s so familiar with Ok-nam, and Yi-hyun is somehow connected with Jeom-soon (maybe he loved her in a past life?). I would actually find this much more interesting than simply Yi-hyun being the husband, and it doesn’t mean that the four can’t fall in love in different ways in this incarnation.

This episode seemed to have heard my request and stepped up on the story progression — it felt like relationships were evolving, and we got to learn some more of the fairy lore, which is one thing I really wanted. I don’t think this drama is ever going to be zippy or have a complicated plot (I could be wrong though, it’s happened once or twice!), but at least this episode felt more balanced than the previous two. I’m still frustrated by Ok-nam’s lack of characterization, though… she doesn’t have much to do other than to be a catalyst for everyone else’s character growth, but I want to see more of her personality and back story. At this point, it’s beginning to feel like a waste of two normally interesting, charismatic actresses, so I’m going to be pretty annoyed if Ok-nam never becomes more than a mild-mannered, sweet, but honestly pretty vapid living prop.

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