Hacker Cinema
My Mister
나의 아저씨
2018 · TV series · 90 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Park Hae-young, Kim Won-suk
In a world that is less than kind, a young woman and a middle-aged man develop a sense of kinship as they find warmth and comfort in one another.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
Debt is a common trope in Korean shows and establishes the characters are destitute and answers why they would become contestants in this show. Then the show creator has the set up that allows them to start poking at class hierarchy.
In asking for a critique of debt in general, you are asking for a different show.
Squid Games is gets a lot of attention from the games and mass deaths of the contestants, but ultimately it is a Korean show using a different "language of film" than international audiences might be used to. Think of how silly a lot of hollywood tropes are if you stand back and look.
Try "My Mister" if you want a different take on a destitute character.
He had such a great talking voice. After reading this news when it happened, I rewatched My Mister, which is peak kdrama for me. He makes a great role. There is a plot device introduced in episode three that really highlights his voice throughout the rest of the show. Recommended.
This one is hitting hard for me. He was the male lead in a K-Drama called My Mister. I've watched the entire thing twice. Since I heard this news, I've started my third watching. Few works in TV/movies (or art, really) have effected me as much as My Mister.
It's impossible to understand what really happened with Mr. Lee here, but the possibility that the message of My Mister applied to him in this situation, and that he might have missed that message, feels even more tragic to me.
My takeaway from My Mister...
There might be things in our lives that let us conclude that we do not have value as human beings. But there are often people out there who can see the value in us, even when we can't see it in ourselves. And it's quite possible that their view of us is closer to reality than our own. The reason for that is that they can see the impact we have on them - real, direct evidence of value. When we experience this mismatch between how we view ourselves and how others view us, it's easy to assume that they have some ulterior motive or that they are being overly kind when they tell us of our value. We should do what we can to find who those people are, hear them, and show them the respect of believing they are speaking their own truth about you. It might just save us.
This perspective has had a profound impact on me. I've been lucky enough to find a couple of those other people in my life in the last couple of years. In both cases, they were people I cared so much about that I was judging myself as letting them down because I set my bar of support for them impossibly high. Once I truly heard them, I found out I had profoundly affected their lives for the better - something I had been totally blind to. Accepting that was difficult, as it required accepting that I had been completely wrong for a long time.
I've also been more forceful in the other direction. I tend to be kind. That leads to people easily dismissing praise from me. But I do not give praise lightly. Being aware of this conflict, I've started looking for when people are dismissing my praise. When I see it, I'll say something like, "Please show me the respect of believing that I know what I'm seeing, I like what I'm seeing, and I'm telling you the truth about it." It often results in them tearing up as they internalize praise they normally wouldn't. Seeing those tears is hard because I know the internal conflict they are going through. But it is also good to know that they are seeing that they might me undervaluing themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Mister
There are some Korean shows that don't do that and have more realistic/older characters, e.g. "My Mister" and "Liberation Notes". It's a bit of a niche but there's good work in that area too.
Since virtually all Korean dramas are in mini-series format, the right way to do it is to basically wait until the year's awards season, see which dramas of the 200+ the industry produces annually made the cut, then pick the 2-3 you find interesting and watch those.