⚠️ this review contains vague spoilers in terms of plot and heavy spoilers in quotes and character dynamics. read at your own risk. ⚠️

(those on my friends feed will know that i watched the last three episodes twice the day i finished it and cried like a bitch. i rewatched them this morning again, bc they contain some of the best moments in this show, and still cried like a bitch. i have no excuse)

i said i would take some time to collect my thoughts after finishing this, but i still don't know exactly how collected i am rn? @Shiro and @AnQuat put out their most recent editorial on screenwriter Park Hae Young (the mastermind behind this masterpiece) and i looked at my notes and decided that if i didn't post this i would be 1. missing out on the opportunity and 2. this might never see the light of day bc i just like to procrastinate
should probably preface the actual word dump by saying that i have a ptw list that is suffering atm and before this ran me over like a train wreck, last week Sunday i was THIS close to starting Stranger. was literally on Dramacool about to click on the first episode when i got a YouTube notification, went to check it, saw a FMV for this drama in my recommended, suddenly recalled that the Lee Sun Kyun was in it, and abandoned all plans with Cho Seung Woo and Bae Doo Na for the weekend. i will make it up to the both of you, somehow, after i explain how my heart was ripped out of my chest with this

Lee Sun Kyun. (i watched Coffee Prince recently and was slapped with the SLS so hard i think something broke inside of me—this show aired almost exactly nine years after that and the fact that his voice is still as,,,,,, how should i put this without sounding jealous of his wife,,,,,,,, f*ckable as it was back then? is illegal, should be illegal, constitutes grounds for a legal suit—this is why they call him The Voice ™ in Korea and that is entirely valid, imo, so why tf do on-screen women keep cheating on him 😔 no one in this cinematic universe appreciates the blessing that is having this man as a committed life partner with a stable job and that's a crime) IU. (i have yet to watch Scarlet Heart which, in the drama community, is akin to murder so idk about her previous skills but here? she acted her ass off with this role and we have no choice but to stan. immediately added to the list of artists/idols who actually know wtf they're doing when they crossover to the film industry) Park Ho San. Song Sae Byuk. Lee Ji Ah. Kim Young Min. (kind of an assh*le here but he's hot! and apparently older than LSK which sent me for a f*cking loop bc he does not look like it) i was going to wait until Viki stopped being homophobic and gave me back my QC benefits to support my fellow subbers but the call of 750p and no ads was too strong—watch me rewatching this in December in HD just to see how different the subs are so i can get away with a trip to therapy

“some girl told me the other day that she's 30,000 years old. she says that if she counts up all the times she's been reincarnated and all the birthdays she's had, it will probably add up to that. and she says she doesn't know why she keeps being born. but i know. it's because this world, here, isn't her home, but she keeps making a mistake and thinking it is. so she keeps coming back. and then she keeps thinking of how to return to her home, and just keeps being reborn.”

no one in this show had the right to be this talented. no one, not the screenwriter, not the director, not Lee Sun Kyun, not IU, not the supporting cast, i'm going to lay that out on the table rn. the delivery of the lines in here have destroyed my storage bc i kept pausing every five minutes to write it down,,,,,, and the body language? (every time a man's hands shake i simultaneously gain and lose fifteen years off of my life. when they throw up i tack five more years onto that total. Dong Hoon did both in the last episode and idk what to do with myself after this) the way things are said without being said, partially utilized in the impeccable addition of sign language? the parallels? the subtle references to previous scenes, previous dynamics, previous dramas, even?
it's “she's here. the girl with the pretty face.” / “he's here.” and “just say sorry. say ‘i was wrong’ ten times. say it. hurry up and say it.” / “i was wrong. i was wrong. i was wrong.” and “you think it's because of my willpower that i haven't had anything happen? ani. there's been no temptation. there's nothing to be wary of, so i'm not sure if i have any willpower at all.” / “don't do it. don't do it, are you listening to me?” (ft. the Coffee Prince vibes almost immediately after This Scene ™, bc Park Dong Hoon brushing back his hair from his forehead looking like he's just fought a war is the 2010s equivalent of “i was just shaken, that's all. i don't feel anything for her, truly, i don't—” “how would you know? you've never been shaken before. i have.”) and (Dong Hoon to Ji Ahn) “live by the name that you were given” / (Gyum Deok to Dong Hoon) “be selfish and take care of yourself. be happy. you're allowed to do that” = “i do not want you to suffer bc of the things you have had to do to survive,” along with my personal favorite, which is so good it needs its own line in this block of text despite the fact that Ji Ahn is blatantly lying in the first half,

“... why do you like him? tell me. i'm curious.” “i don't like him. i want to ruin him.” ... “you must have come to this neighborhood just to save me. i was on the verge of dying, but you were the one who saved me.” = “my savior Han Joo Won, who came to destroy my life.” = “the savior who came to destroy me. my Tamako. my Sookee.” (ignore the fact that i have not watched The Handmaiden. focus on the vibes) *screeches*

on that point (and building off of the Handmaiden quote) i have seen some people say that Dong Hoon and Ji Ann's relationship is purely platonic and i'm sorry but i have to disagree, i really do, bc i literally saw a comment on Dramacool that said “imagine loving someone so much you love to hear him breathe” in reference to this quote (“i liked hearing all of the sounds you made, ahjeossi. and all of your words, and thoughts, and the sound of your footsteps… all of it. it felt as if i saw what a human being was for the first time.”) and this,,,,,,, coupled with the way she knows him better than his own wife,,,,,,, with the way she eventually leaves bc she does not want him to have to understand that,,,,,, with the way he still goes looking for her, bc it is too late for him not to understand (“if you get to know a person… nothing they do bothers you. and i know you.”) ,,,,,,, all of this,,,,,,,, i cannot NOT see this as a love story
and bc of that, My Mister is very forgettable but then it isn't, in a way? there's a specifically rewatchable aspect to it that allows for the opportunity to never get tired of the plot and that imo is its strength, but i can guarantee that three months from now i will be minding my own business and then my brain will choose to pull the almost-kiss scene side-by-side with thoughts like “how far can you go before love is not just love but ferality, all teeth, all claws, all hunger, all untouchable with longing, an i-did-not-expect-you-but-you-are-here-and-i-am-learning-to-understand-that type ache” and “he is a deer caught in the headlights and still he tries to understand why he will not move in the face of it, why there is so much death he is willing to court for one girl” and “they are human, they are human, they are human, and they starve,” bc they do, they do—

in a nutshell this show is basically just *motions* a bunch of literary excerpts and feelings! i can quote so many from both in show (like i have already) and outside, like that one excerpt from Ilya Kaminsky's poem "After Bombardment, Sonya" that goes “you can f*ck anyone / but with whom can you sit in the water?” but without the actual, physical f*ckery, and Mary Shelley and Mary Oliver (and the latter's lesbian soul) coming out here and saying that they would invent the foundation of the second half of this show on the basis that every good plot needs some kind of genuine sorrow and despair bc “you must not permit sorrow to destroy you” and “you do not have to be good. / you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. / tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine. / meanwhile the world goes on,” and Hanif Abdurraqib going off on the one-sided Kwang Il/Ji Ahn dynamic and saying “there is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet. there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to a person, even if you spent your dreaming hours cutting them a casket from the tree in their mother's front yard. it is a blessing to know someone wants a funeral for you,” and—
*inhales* it was consistently “six feet under the f*cking floorboards” time for the entirety of this series but it's a 10/10, pry that good sh*t out of my cold dead hands

(something that another person in the Dramacool comments pointed out in the last episode and that eventually wrecked me as a result of being more good sh*t is that the meaning of the hanja for “Ji,” “之” (or alternately “至”), is to “arrive, to reach, to get.” the meaning of the hanja for “Ahn,” “安,” is to “comfort, to live comfortably, to be at peace.” Dong Hoon's last line, then, is this—“have you reached comfort, Ji Ahn?”)

but all of this—all of this—would not have been possible without the OST, and the OST will live rent-free with me for the rest of my life. what i initially thought was Sun Kyun's voice as a surprise (and possibly unreleased?) OST in the middle of episode 8—but what eventually turned out to be One Million Roses sung by Ko Woo Rim of Forestella (who was only 22 at the time [!!!] and is also getting married to figure skating legend Kim Yuna this year in October)—is a blessing to my eardrums either way while managing to sound almost exactly like Sun Kyun in terms of enunciation and i need more of it. Adults by Sondia puts me on the operating table, flatlines me and sends me to the autopsy department.
this sh*t has obtained “Pavlovs me into crying every f*cking time the OST comes on” status and the only other things i can think of that rank the same are Goblin, The Red Sleeve, a very specific section of The Devil Judge, Goodbye, My Princess, The Untamed and Sado. Love Me by Nafla is also the unofficial theme song for Dong Hoon and Yoon Hee and Hello, Stranger by KAI is the theme song for Dong Hoon and Ji Ahn, am not taking questions at this time

the length of this review is scaring me but TL;DR: get your ass over to Netflix, Viki, Dramacool, whatever tf people use to watch dramas these days, and if you're like me and are 4 years late to the phenomenon, watch this. watch it, and cry, and then suffer through a drama slump for the foreseeable future bc there is nothing—nothing—in this particular genre that can top this.