Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter: Episode 6

by LollyPip

Doesn’t this picture just perfectly sum up how everyone feels about our fairy? Dr. Lee is scowling at her jealously, Geum is completely focused on her, and Yi-hyun is gaping at Geum in disbelief at his out-of-character behavior. Ok-nam may be mild-mannered and sweet, but she certainly brings out a lot of emotion in others. She’s someone who changes people just by being near them, and I think the changing has just begun.

 
EPISODE 6 RECAP

On the day that Ok-nam took her fateful bath with her fairy friends, their teacher had warned them that they were being watched by a man. Thrilled, Teacher had decided it was time to get herself married, but it was Ok-nam’s winged dress that went missing. The woodcutter had been waiting when she got out of the spring and had given Ok-nam his shirt to wear.

Ok-nam narrates that memories fade and change, but feelings never leave you. Bausae had been the name of Ok-nam’s fairy friend who had disappeared, and she hadn’t realized until he was gone that she’d loved him. So when the woodcutter told her his name was Bausae, Ok-nam had assumed he was her old friend despite him telling her she had the wrong man.

Bausae had carried Ok-nam home and they’d conducted their own wedding, using only a bowl of water. They had been happy, but then one day he’d gone to sell wood and had fallen off a cliff and died. Ok-nam had been left alone with their two small children, unable to return to the fairy realm without her missing winged dress.

Almost seven hundred years later, Ok-nam happily works at the coffee kiosk, where Yi-hyun and Geum come to buy her coffee every single morning. This morning, Dr. Lee is with Yi-hyun, and she stares at Ok-nam, able to see her as a young woman now.

Geum starts to ask Ok-nam something, but Yi-hyun blurts out, “Did we ever bathe together?” When he’s served three helpings of wide-eyed shock, he deadpans that he’s just joking, heh. Geum again tries to ask Ok-nam about the egg she keeps in her house, intending to confess that he made it crack further, but this time Dr. Lee butts in to ask Ok-nam how old she is.

Suddenly, Yi-hyun clutches his head and runs off. He finds a bench and tells Geum and Dr. Lee that strange scenes keep popping into his head, like the one he had in the shower of Ok-nam in a spring, telling him that she likes bathing with him. When Dr. Lee asked Ok-nam’s age, it had triggered another scene, this time of Ok-nam holding a bouquet of flowers and talking about death.

Geum has an appointment but Dr. Lee uses her status as Yi-hyun’s doctor to hang around. Yi-hyun muses about dreams and wonders if what he’s seeing are actually memories, but he wails that if he tells Dr. Lee about them, she’ll think he’s crazy.

Dr. Lee’s solution is that Yi-hyun needs to date, as he’s never been in a relationship and suffers from a lack of oxytocin. She generously offers herself up as a sacrifice to the cause, but at his horrified expression, she snaps at him to just go find a girl.

He declares that he’d rather get a hormone shot and stomps off. Dr. Lee grumbles that she’s waited for years, and now she’s about to lose Yi-hyun to someone he just met.

Meanwhile, Ok-nam blushes at the thought of Yi-hyun asking if they’ve bathed together. She tells a curious Bong-dae that she thinks Yi-hyun is starting to remember her, but then she realizes that she never actually bathed with her husband.

Bong-dae gives Ok-nam her wages, although Ok-nam objects that she’s already giving her a home and food. Bong-dae preens that she’s the best boss ever, even giving Jeom-soon clothes and shoes, but she says that Ok-nam makes fantastic coffee and deserves to be paid. She tells Ok-nam to find her if anything happens in the future, just in case.

Returning for his coffee, Geum attempts to make his confession, but he can’t bring himself to tell Ok-nam that he’s the one who cracked her egg. Ok-nam offers him her wages, saying that she doesn’t need money. He refuses it, so she wonders if she should give it to Yi-hyun instead, but Geum tells her that Yi-hyun won’t take it, either.

He invites her to go shopping with him this weekend, where they can spend the money on new clothes for her for when it gets cold. She accepts, knowing that men like women in pretty clothing and recalling how she’d always wanted to look pretty for her husband.

Shin-seon wants to use the little bit of money they got from the employment agency to buy train tickets to Seoul, but Master Gu snaps that it’s not enough. Besides, if they break their promises to work on the shrimp boat, they’ll all get stomachaches for lying.

Fairy Oh stubbornly says she’s going to work on the boat, since her reincarnated husband is supposed to be there, and she’s determined to find her winged dress and return to the fairy realm. She shoves her money into Shin-seon’s pocket, tells them to go to Seoul without her, and runs off alone.

Shin-seon pulls his magic beans from his pocket, but instead of beans, they’re raisins. Fairy Oh must have taken the beans when she put her money in his pocket, ha. Shin-seon screams that if he catches Fairy Oh, he’ll kill her.

Jeom-soon complains to Geum that her Oppa is in an egg and will hatch soon, but that his shell is all cracked. Geum says sheepishly that the egg cracked because of him, and that he heard a voice calling him “father” from inside. Jeom-soon thinks he must be mistaken since Jeom-dal hasn’t made a peep for a hundred years.

Geum asks how her brother got inside an egg. Jeom-soon explains that Ok-nam just found the egg one day, with a note on it that said “Jeom-dal,” and that she’d been overjoyed that her son was finally reborn. She says he must have misheard, since Jeom-dal only responds to family or immortals, but Geum is just a human.

They’re on their way to the meeting with the publisher who wants to publish Jeom-soon’s book, and Geum hears for the first time that it’s an erotic novel. He gapes, realizing that he agreed to pretend to be a writer of naughty stories, hee.

After Yi-hyun’s class, he hears some students talking about Ok-nam’s coffee and smiles when he realizes that he never got his this morning, giving him an excuse to go back to the kiosk. As Ok-nam makes his coffee, he recalls Dr. Lee’s advice to date someone, though he chickens out without saying anything to Ok-nam.

But Ok-nam asks Yi-hyun if he’s eaten, so he stays to share her lunch. The lotus leaf wrapped around the rice triggers a faint memory… Ok-nam, Izy, and Bausae had been walking in the fairy realm when Ok-nam had snatched a note from Bausae’s pocket, teasing him about a rumor that he liked someone.

She’d run off playfully with the note, so he’d whipped up a breeze with his lotus leaf fan to blow it out of her hands. It had hit Izy in the face, and Bausae had nervously grabbed it before she could read it. Ok-nam had threatened to make a wrap out of Bausae’s lotus leaf fan, and in the present, Yi-hyun idly wonders, “Am I finally getting to eat it?”

He cringes when he hears himself and gulps down a huge bite to cover his odd blunder. He asks Ok-nam if she always eats alone, so she says that she usually eats with Jeom-soon. Yi-hyun only knows Jeom-soon as Ok-nam’s cat, but Ok-nam tells him that she’s her daughter.

She starts to say something, and he’s scared she’s going to ask about his bathing together comment. He quickly says it was just a dream that she was a fairy bathing at a waterfall, and definitely not an erotic dream.

Ok-nam is excited that Yi-hyun called her a fairy, taking it to mean that he believes her. Yi-hyun insists that he doesn’t believe in anything that can’t be proven, but Ok-nam just beams at his familiar inflexibility. To prove that he’s actually quite flexible, Yi-hyun pulls his leg over his head, then regrets the resulting leg cramp, ha.

He starts to offer to eat lunch with Ok-nam whenever Jeom-soon isn’t around and he’s free, and she finishes his sentence, saying that he’s always welcome. Yi-hyun literally dances back to his office, so cute.

Dr. Lee spends her afternoon searching online for seduction advice. She congratulates herself for being ahead of the game with good looks and a fit body, but she passes on the tip to wait hand and foot on the guy she likes, and it’s way too late for her to act ladylike. The final piece of advice is to initiate a lot of skinship, and Dr. Lee gets a crafty glint in her eye.

Geum is successful at signing the contract to publish Jeom-soon’s stories, though he sighs that he would have liked a heads-up about the content. He’d been flustered during the meeting, unaware that the story is about a noble in love with his male servant.

He has to go back to work and can’t celebrate with Jeom-soon, so he asks if she has any friends her own age. The only person Jeom-soon can think of is Kyung-seul, but she doesn’t mention him to Geum.

Jeom-soon goes to the coffee kiosk to see if Bong-dae would like to hang out with her, but Ok-nam is there and says that the deity isn’t her friend. She tells Jeom-soon to go make some new friends her own age, so Jeom-soon threatens to start going to clubs, then has to explain what a “club” is, heh.

Her threat fails when Ok-nam sweetly offers to go to this club thing with her. Jeom-soon heads to the club where Kyung-seul works as a bartender, and she guzzles down the drink he pours for her in one gulp. I don’t like that look in his eyes, not one bit.

At home, Yi-hyun teases Geum that his lotus blossom looks fake and won’t ever bloom. Geum warns him not to discourage his flower, so Yi-hyun jokes that he’s going to stay right here and root for the lotus to bloom. They end up in a weird wrestle/tickle fight on the floor of Geum’s room.

Before Jeom-soon realizes it, she’s had several drinks, and she belatedly remembers that she turns into a tiger when she’s drunk. She checks her reflection in a spoon and is relieved that she’s not sprouting whiskers, and she grins to Kyung-seul that she’s going to come back here every day.

Master Gu and Shin-seon follow Fairy Oh back to the employment agency, where she’s dressed like a man because they don’t allow women on shrimp boats. Master Gu mutters that she’s actually quite a lady, so Shin-seon asks if they’re dating, making Master Gu object that he’s got standards, sheesh.

Their plan is to grab Fairy Oh and run, but the van arrives to take the workers to the boat before they get to her. They jump in the van and they all end up at the dock, where Master Gu claims that something urgent came up so they can’t get on the shrimp boat. But they’re told that there’s a steep fee for backing out since the boat already paid the agency, and a huge worker shows up to threaten them, so they run to board the boat.

While cleaning Geum’s room, his mom accidentally turns on his computer and sees an article naming him as the erotic novelist “Jeom-soon the Tiger.” Geum runs across the same article on his phone, while Yi-hyun sees it on his tablet and laughs his butt off.

When Geum gets to the office, Yi-hyun confronts him about the reason he’s been so tired, laughing right in his face (“I’ll look forward to your ‘endless desires!'”). Geum escapes to the lab, where even Jung-min makes jokes about the article.

So he heads to the coffee kiosk, where Jeom-soon finds him pouting that he’s being pestered by student fans of hers. He gets a call from the publisher, who’s so happy with the response to the article that she wants to release the story next month, and Jeom-soon is so excited that Geum agrees.

Jeom-soon tells Geum happily that she even made a friend yesterday like he suggested, but she clams up when Ok-nam approaches them. She’s wearing the mismatched pajamas he got her again, so he suggests they go shopping together tomorrow.

At home that evening, Jeom-soon asks Ok-nam if she likes Geum, since she keeps hanging out with him. She points out that even if Ok-nam finds her reincarnated husband, he won’t remember them or her winged dress, so she’ll probably never get her dress back. But Ok-nam says that she still wants to find him, because even if he doesn’t remember her, he’s her only love.

Dr. Lee challenges Yi-hyun to a swim race, and he complains when she consistently wins. She thinks about the internet’s advice to act ladylike, so when Yi-hyun agrees to four more laps, Dr. Lee pretends to drown so that he can “save” her. But when Yi-hyun starts to do chest compressions, Dr. Lee busts out laughing, yelling that she’s ticklish.

The immortal trio don’t learn until after they’re on the shrimp boat that they won’t see land again for three months. They go below deck, where they find Fairy Oh’s long-lost husband, just as they’d hoped.

While manning the coffee kiosk, Bong-dae is visited by Kyung-seul, and she’s completely blown away by his pretty face. He’s impressed that she plays online games, though he seems a bit disappointed that the granny he’s heard so much about isn’t working today. Bong-dae has Kyung-seul write down his name and major, claiming that it’s so she can give him his first cup of coffee for free.

Yi-hyun shows up, but leaves again when he sees Bong-dae working the kiosk. He heads to the lab instead, where he finds Jung-min and Kyung-shik sharing a bowl of ramyun. They jump up guiltily, but Yi-hyun tells them it’s fine, then launches into a lecture on eating healthy

The thought of food reminds him of Ok-nam’s standing lunch invitation, and he wonders out loud where she is today. Assuming he means Geum, Kyung-shik says he’s out shopping.

He’s at the store with Ok-nam, whose taste in clothing runs heavily towards loud flower prints. He nixes all of her choices until she comes out in a pair of jeans and a cute t-shirt, nearly making him choke with how pretty she looks.

The shopkeeper sees Ok-nam in her granny form — until she spots a jacket with a tiger printed on it, and suddenly he’s seeing a young, pretty woman. But he recovers his wits and offers her a pair of sunglasses for free.

She says she wants to get something for Geum and Yi-hyun as well, and Geum goes a little starry-eyed as he watches her shopping. We see Ok-nam looking up at the moon wearing Joseon-era clothing, and Geum, also in traditional clothes and with long hair, approaches her and gives her a backhug.

Ok-nam calls him “husband,” noting that he seems upset about something, and he says that he’s worried she’ll fly away and leave him. Back in the present, Geum suddenly backhugs Ok-nam, and although she’s surprised, she doesn’t try to get away.

 
COMMENTS

Once I decided to appreciate Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter for the cute fluff that it is, I found myself enjoying it a lot more. At least I’m getting my wish for more fairy backstory, and I’m very interested in the friendship-or-maybe-more between Ok-nam, Bausae, and Izy back when they all lived in the fairy realm. We know that Ok-nam fancied herself in love with Bausae to the point that she convinced herself that her woodcutter husband was his reincarnation, with no more evidence than that he had the same name. It looks to me as though Bausae was in love with Izy, with the way he brought her all those peaches when she was sick and how he looked so nervous when she almost saw his love letter. We don’t know how Izy felt, but she and Bausae did disappear from the fairy realm at the same time, so it’s possible they ran off together. That doesn’t mean that Ok-nam was wrong about her husband being Bausae’s reincarnation, but it does make things more complicated.

This show just continues to confuse me with it’s indications that both Yi-hyun and Geum might be Ok-nam’s reincarnated husband. As I’ve said before, they both have experienced what seem like memories of Ok-nam, and they’re both strongly drawn to her, so at this point I still feel like it could go either way. Oddly, I actually don’t have a preference regarding who I hope is her husband — I like them both for different reasons, and I like each of them with Ok-nam, though I do feel that right now, Geum has a stronger claim on the position. He’s the one making the most effort to spend time with Ok-nam, and he’s the one that feels and experiences the most connection to Ok-nam’s children… though Yi-hyun does seem to know Jeom-soon somehow.

I don’t think we can count on physical appearance to give us any clues — whatever Ok-nam’s husband looked like in the past, he could look like anyone now. Present-day Yi-hyun resembling Ok-nam’s husband doesn’t necessarily mean he’s her husband’s reincarnation, and the fact that Geum looks like Ok-nam’s fairy friend Bausae doesn’t have to prove that Geum is the reincarnation of a fairy. I do think that fairy Bausae, Ok-nam’s husband, Yi-hyun, and Geum are all connected somehow, simply because both guys are remembering things they couldn’t possibly know if they hadn’t known Ok-nam in past lives. There’s something bigger than simple reincarnation going on.

Speaking of Bausae-the-husband, I suspect that he never actually stole Ok-nam’s winged dress at all, and that she married him because of a misunderstanding. The deer that led him to the waterfall was definitely up to something, and we’ve never actually seen him with Ok-nam’s dress. We’ve only seen him watching her bathe, then covering her and taking her home… so what if Ok-nam has spent six hundred and ninety-nine years waiting for a man who won’t be able to help her find her dress after all? I’m not familiar with the webtoon, so I don’t know how closely the drama is following the “original” story (which was adapted and changed from the actual original folk tale), but I think that the story has the potential to go in some fun directions and could get pretty interesting before it’s all over.

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