Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter: Episode 5

by LollyPip

Memories are funny things, often reminding us of the truth of what’s been, but at other times completely misleading. And what does it mean when two people remember the same things? Our fairy is pretty convinced that she’s found her husband after long last, and it may be true, but in a way that she’s never considered.

 
EPISODE 5 RECAP

Ok-nam inexplicably collapses, so Jeom-soon finds Geum and leads him back to the coffee kiosk. Ok-nam is burning up with fever, and he throws her on his back and follows Jeom-soon to their little hidden apartment. Geum can’t get Ok-nam’s fever down, and Jeom-soon tells him worriedly (without moving her mouth) that her mother has a stomachache.

In the fairy realm, we see the red fairy (whose name we’ll soon learn is IZY, Yoon So-yi) that we previously saw with Ok-nam being lectures by the Master of the Northern Star. He tells her that immortals must never use their powers to disrupt the human world, or for personal gain. He continues that if one denies oneself, the rulers of the sky will punish them.

Izy is in obvious pain, and the Master tells her to enjoy the stomachache she earned. She collapses, but the Master doesn’t move to help her.

Jeom-soon explains to Geum that immortals get stomachaches when they disobey the rulers of the sky, and that Ok-nam’s pain is probably because she denied being a fairy. Geum calls her on her sudden use of banmal, but he seems to think she’s cute when she whines that she can’t control herself today, and he tells her to keep using banmal with him.

She interrupts to say that there’s a cure, though she doubts he can get any of it. Another flashback shows Ok-nam talking to a fairy who’s preparing a bowl of peaches… and he looks exactly like Geum. Ok-nam narrates that there were seven immortals who served the Master of the Northern Star, and that of the seven, she, Izy, and BAUSAE — the immortal who resembles Geum — arrived in the fairy realm at about the same time.

Bausae had brought Izy the peaches to cure her stomachache, though she’d been prickly to him, saying she didn’t need them and wasn’t at all bored. When Ok-nam asked, she’d confessed defiantly that she burned down the storeroom of a landowner who exploited his workers.

Ok-nam had said that she heard from the other fairies that the landowner was enraged by the fire so he stole all of his people’s crops and grains. She’d chastised Izy for making the situation worse, but Izy had only vowed to burn everything the landowner stole, as well.

Izy’s power had been fire, and her fiery temperament had led to many such stomachaches, while Bausae’s power was control of the wind. He and Izy had come from the same part of the realm, and one day, they had both simply disappeared.

When Ok-nam wakes, she finds Jeom-soon waiting with canned peaches and peach juice, which was all Geum could find since peaches are out of season. He’d returned from the store and found Jeom-soon asleep on the floor, exhausted from nursing Ok-nam. He’d covered her with a blanket then spoon-fed Ok-nam some peach juice, and he’d watched over them until he couldn’t stay awake any longer.

Ok-nam is feeling much better, so Jeom-soon considers telling her about the call from the publishing house about her web novel. But she imagines her mother worrying that she’ll turn into a tiger in front of someone, and she changes her mind.

Ok-nam says that she dreamed of her past, but apparently she’s not the only one dreaming of fairies. Yi-hyun has a dream about a huge eelworm with a fairy’s butterfly hair ornament. The eelworm grows arms and invites him to go for a walk, and he figures that as dreams go, this one is weird but not so bad.

He tells the eelworm that he stopped having nightmares since he quit drinking Ok-nam’s coffee. But suddenly the eelworm is gone and Ok-nam is standing behind him, and he wails that he had a lot of scientific questions to ask the eelworm, lol.

Ok-nam shows him a jade ring that she received during her new fairy orientation. She says that wearing it at night allows her to enter people’s dreams, and Yi-hyun admits that he feels like he’s known her for a long time. She says that they’ve been tied together by a string of fate, and that he was once her moon and star.

Yi-hyun can’t remember, and he asks if they were friends, or maybe lovers. Ok-nam tells him that they were married, and that she’s loved him for a very long time. Yi-hyun is woken by loud music at that point — it’s Geum’s mom, rocking out to trot music in the kitchen, ha.

She teases Yi-hyun as she serves him breakfast, telling him not to be so serious, because girls don’t like guys who aren’t fun. When he asks where Geum is, she tells him that Geum was nursing a sick friend all night so he’s still in bed.

Mom says that she’s felt bad for Yi-hyun since he visited at Chuseok, so she’s found a lady for him. But the picture she shows him isn’t flattering to the lady, and he burns his tongue on his soup in his alarm.

Yi-hyun heads to work, and to the coffee kiosk, wondering if visiting Ok-nam every morning will give her the wrong idea. He’s startled to find Bong-dae working the kiosk instead of Ok-nam (LOL, so are the students), and she has no idea what he’s talking about when he orders a Sparrow’s Breakfast. As she makes his coffee, she notices that he’s craning his neck like he’s looking for someone, but he innocently denies it… then asks how old Ok-nam is, hee.

Ok-nam is busy caring for a lotus flower, explaining to Jeom-soon that it’s the purest of the flowers. Jeom-soon teases that she just like it because there’s a lotus flower on the incense talisman her husband left her, which reminds Ok-nam how caring and kind he was.

The last time we saw our immortal trio, they were walking down the train tracks on their way to Seoul when Shin-seon’s foot got stuck on the track. The train was barreling down on them, and Fairy Oh had grabbed one of Shin-seon’s magic beans and tossed it in the air in desperation.

It had sent them back in time several days to the morning when they woke at Mokpo Station, but this time they’re thrilled to find themselves there. Luckily, Fairy Oh spots the man who picked Master Gu’s pocket, and they give chase. The pickpocket leads them into an alley, and when he turns back to look at them, Fairy Oh stops in shocked recognition.

A few hundred years ago, Fairy Oh and a senior fairy had been bathing at the magical spring, purposely trying to lure a man for the senior fairy. But when he shows up, he steals Fairy Oh’s winged clothing instead.

He screams and runs when he sees Fairy Oh coming to meet her new husband. Shortest relationship ever. Now Fairy Oh recognizes him in the pickpocket, and again, he screams and runs from her.

Dr. Lee is also pretty upset about a fairy calling a man “husband,” after Yi-hyun told her that Ok-nam referred to him as her husband. She stops by his office to invite him for coffee, but instead he gives her the coffee he got from Bong-dae, then laughs at her disgusted reaction.

She jokingly asks if the fairy barista finally ascended to the fairy realm, and when Yi-hyun snarls, she points out that it’s important to him whether or not she’s really a fairy. Yi-hyun says that Ok-nam claimed that they’re a married couple in his dream, and that he felt like he’s known her for a very long time.

Speaking as a friend, Dr. Lee tells Yi-hyun that Ok-nam (who she sees as an elderly woman), can’t possibly be his wife. She says that she doesn’t know how Ok-nam has gotten so entrenched in his subconscious, but it’s possible that she just interests him for some reason rather than that he’s known her for centuries.

She gets a little too worked up, and Yi-hyun makes it clear that she’s being the weird one today. She storms out, slamming and huffing in anger, and goes to the gym to take her upset out on the machines. She falls off the bicycle, and nearby, odd student Kyung-seul adjusts so that his wrist camera is pointing directly at her.

Master Gu and Shin-seon fail to catch the pickpocket. When they return to Fairy Oh, she informs them that he was the reincarnation of her husband who stole her fairy clothes and ran away.

Once Geum wakes after his long night, he and his mom talk about how Mom gave Yi-hyun a picture of her friend and Yi-hyun got really quiet. She thinks it’s weird that he never shows interest in women, but Geum laughs that he’s really popular with women on campus.

Mom asks Geum about his love life, but he just ducks his head and tells her not to worry about him. She says that she’ll approve of any woman who likes him, and that he likes back.

While Yi-hyun is studying eelworms in the lab, one turns into the eelworm from his dream and tells him that it’s loved him for a long time. JM offers to get him some of that Black Water coffee that boosts focus, and Yi-hyun lights up at the thought that Ok-nam might have finally gone to work.

Dr. Lee drops by in a much better mood, but Yi-hyun barely notices her as Ok-nam has just passed his office carrying a package. He grins hugely at her, thinking that she’s there for him, but she confesses that she’s actually looking for Geum. Yi-hyun nervously points her to the other lab while Dr. Lee grumbles at Yi-hyun’s obvious disappointment.

Ok-nam finds Geum and gives him the package — the lotus flower she’s been carefully nursing, as thanks for taking care of her. She says that her talent is blossoming flowers, and tells him how to care for it so that it will bloom soon.

Poor Yi-hyun is terribly distracted after seeing Ok-nam, so Dr. Lee leaves in a snit. She sees Ok-nam and Geum in the hallway looking awfully chummy, and she squints at them suspiciously, somehow seeing Ok-nam in her young form.

Geum wanders into the lab staring at his lotus flower like he’s in love with it. Yi-hyun snaps in his face to get his attention, and Geum says dreamily that he thinks he’s developing feelings for Ok-nam.

Geum narrates that he was slower than most kids when he was young, and that he got teased for not being able to read and for spending most of his time alone. His only friends were the animals and bugs he could talk to, until he’d grown afraid of being sent to a mental hospital and had decided to focus on school.

His frog friend had told him that a lotus flower blooms beautifully no matter how muddy the water is. Geum hadn’t known what that meant, but he grew to understand when Ok-nam told him that he has an honest nature that shines through the worldly fog.

On their way home after work, Yi-hyun makes fun of Geum for the way he babies his lotus flower. Geum asks Yi-hyun if he’s planning to meet the woman his mom is trying to set him up with, only to get yelled at to knock off the matchmaking.

Yi-hyun works up the nerve to ask why Ok-nam gave Geum the flower. Geum tells him about nursing Ok-nam back to health after she lied about being a fairy and gave herself a stomachache. Yi-hyun knows that she only did it because he browbeat her into it, and he sighs to hear that it made her sick.

Jeom-soon introduces us to herself, a tiger, her brother, who is still inside his egg, and her mother, who is six hundred ninety-nine years old in human years. She tells us that her father died when she was little, so her mother’s search for him doesn’t feel real to her. She would prefer that her brother hatch soon.

She mentions Geum, who visits her mother often these days. He brings her a gift, a little hat and scarf, but she (in her cat form) gets more excited over the box, hee. Jeom-soon likes Geum because he spends time with her, so she asks him for a favor — to meet with the publishing house for her.

Her mother is worried that she’ll get excited and turn into a tiger, so she wants Geum to pretend that he wrote the web novel. He hesitates, knowing nothing about writing, but Jeom-soon offers him half of her royalties and gives him her best pouty face, wearing him down.

She runs off to get snacks, and while she’s gone, Geum sees Ok-nam’s incense talisman. It looks familiar to him, and he experiences a vague memory of hanging it in a tree. He definitely remembers the egg that’s sitting on the floor, and how it cracked when he touched it back at the coffee shop.

He reaches down to gently touch it again and it begins to shake, and the crack in the shell widens. Startled, Geum gets out of there, and from inside the egg a voice asks, “Father? Father, is that you? It’s Jeom-dal, Father!”

Jeom-soon returns to find Geum gone and her brother’s egg still shaking violently. She runs to find Ok-nam, worried that she caused this by playing with Oppa’s egg this morning. Ok-nam knocks on the egg but nothing happens, and Jeom-soon pouts, remembering how Jeom-dal used to defend her from the village bullies who teased her for having no father and for missing a finger.

She’d been worried that the bullies were right, that she was too ugly to find a husband. But Jeom-dal had told her sweetly that that won’t happen, and that even if it did, they could always just live together with their mother. He’d walked ahead of her, suddenly an old man, and Jeom-soon an old woman.

Shin-seon is sure that he saw Fairy Oh’s husband come out of a certain building, so they go to check out the place. It’s a temp agency, so they go inside and pretend to get a job, purposely asking for whichever job the pickpocket will be working next. The owner assures them that they’ll all be on the same shrimp boat and gives them some money to spend the night in a sauna.

Yi-hyun calls Dr. Lee looking for a book he borrowed from Geum, but he finds it in his own desk while they’re talking. She snaps that he’s so obsessed with a weird woman that he’s even forgetting important things, and when she describes Ok-nam with her big eyes, Yi-hyun asks if Dr. Lee has seen her in her young form, too. She admits it, upset that Ok-nam only appears young and pretty to them.

Jeom-soon is glad to hear that Ok-nam found Geum’s office to give him the lotus flower. She tells her mother that Geum went to great lengths to take care of her yesterday, but that he was also annoying, turning the wrong way when she tried to lead him to their room and taking two hours to find peaches for her, but coming back empty-handed.

Ok-nam says that Jeom-soon’s father was similar, sometimes coming home without selling any firewood all day, when he could have exchanged it for something. Jeom-soon remembers being very poor, but Ok-nam tells her that thanks to her father, their house was always warm, and he made their hearts feel warm, too. Jeom-soon is unimpressed, but Ok-nam is just happy that she’s found him again.

Yi-hyun comes across Geum’s lotus flower, which looks like it might bloom at any moment, and reaches out to touch it. But Geum catches him so he wanders off. On his way downstairs he knocks his head pretty heard on the banister, and he has a sudden flash of memory… Ok-nam’s incense talisman.

He also sees her coming out of the spring to find her magical winged clothes gone. He shyly removes his own clothes to give her something to wear and tells her that her clothes were taken by the deer that sent him here. She asks him his name, and he tells her that his name is Bausae.

Remembering that her old friend’s name was Bausae, Ok-nam asks if he remembers her. He says that she’s thinking of someone else, but Ok-nam hugs him tightly, sobbing that there are some things you never forget.

Bausae picks up Ok-nam in his arms and vows to find her winged clothes. He carries her home, and the deer watches them go.

 
COMMENTS

Well, just when I thought I knew what was going on, things got even more confusing! I was so happy to finally get some answers about Geum and why he has some fairy powers and feels drawn to Ok-nam, but then we find out that Ok-nam believes her husband was Bausae, her old fairy friend, and I have no idea what’s happening anymore. Not that that’s a bad thing — I’ve been wanting more fairy lore and plot, and I’m getting it, so that’s good. I’m just confused!

Bausae seems to be an interesting character… apparently he just appeared one day along with the fire fairy, Izy, then they disappeared again. I’m very curious to know what happened to them, whether Geum or Yi-hyun is Bausae’s reincarnation, and if Izy has been reincarnated as well. It’s even possible that Bausae’s spirit was somehow split and that both Yi-hyun and Geum are him — it would explain why they both have latent memories of Ok-nam, why they both feel drawn to her, and why even Ok-nam’s children react to Geum and why Yi-hyun seems familiar with Jeom-soon. With Yi-hyun’s excessive prickliness and Geum’s extreme politeness, I can definitely imagine them being two sides of the same soul. Or maybe Yi-hyun is Izy’s reincarnation! That would give him the memories and explain his short temper. I’m throwing darts at the wall here, people.

Speaking of Ok-nam’s egg, I’m very confused by Jeom-soon and Jeom-dal and how their life cycles work. I had assumed that Jeom-soon was just still very young even at almost seven hundred years old due to being a fairy’s child, and I’ve been waiting to find out how Jeom-dal was once a little boy (we’ve seen him in flashbacks) but is now inside an egg. But then we saw them both briefly as old people, and I wonder if they experience a sort of continuous cycle of life and death. Jeom-soon could simply be in the puberty phase of her current life while Jeom-dal is in the infant/egg phase of his own cycle.

It’s cute how Yi-hyun is starting to forget to be grumpy around Ok-nam. His great big smile when he thought she was visiting him, then his obvious disappointment, were pretty adorable. Even though they don’t have many scenes together, I kind of like how Ok-nam is being respectful of the fact that Yi-hyun isn’t ready to consider that he’s the reincarnation of her husband. As she said, she’s waited this long, so she can afford to be patient. Yi-hyun is definitely bothered by the way she so casually calls him “husband” but doesn’t push her presence on him, and his memories and dreams are increasing, so I think it’s not long before he comes around.

With all the dreams and such in this episode, I’ve decided that this show is just silly, and I’m just going to go with it. It’s cute if you don’t expect too much from it. I believe that sometimes, it’s fine not to have high expectations of a drama to be great or have a lofty message. If I just watch the show for its entertainment value, I find that I like it a lot better when I stop expecting it to make sense and just go with it. I’m not so much lowering my expectations as I am accepting the show for what it is… fluffy, whimsical entertainment, and that’s all.

RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter, Happy to Die
• Accepting the unexplainable in tvN’s Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter
• The coffee-brewing Fairy in search of her reincarnated Woodcutter
• Moon Chae-won sparkles in teaser for Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter
• Yoon Hyun-min up to romance fairy barista Kang So-ra