Review: My Mister, a Masterful K-Drama on Darkness and Redemption
Spoiler alert: The following gives some spoilers for My Mister, but not too many.
So, I just finished the Korean drama series My Mister. As the series wrapped up my attachment to the characters was very high, and I approached the final episode with the kind of anticipation and trepidation that you feel when a favorite show is about to wrap up and you’re praying for a worthy send off.
Let me say, the final episode was enormously rewarding, and I spent the rest of the night in a sort of afterglow, just reflecting on the quality of the characters and messages. So, although I’m not sure if this subject is of interest to anyone, in this entry I will explore the show’s themes, if for no other reason so that I can selfishly keep thinking about it for a few more hours, ha!
What the show does tremendously well, and why I think it so so worthy of being taken seriously is how it deals with redemption. It’s a story of two characters living in Seoul, each dying in their own way. A young girl of 21 who’s been abused, has almost no family, is being harassed and beaten by a loan shark, and consequently turns to a life of crime in order to pay off the debt. The other main character is a man in his mid 40’s who seemes to have made all of the right decisions: steady job, wife, the respect of his peers. But inside he has no joy, his wife is cheating on him, and he is basically a husk of a man.
The man and girl work in the same office and they begin to interact as the girl is hired by his professional rival to spy on him in order to try to trump up reasons to get him fired. Instead, because life can be extremely beautiful, she develops an attachment to him.
The story unfolds at a slow and sensitive pace, with the characters beginning to interact through mistrust and conniving, but as an unexpected friendship evolves, they become a sort of cure for the damage in other’s lives. Slowly they lead each other to recovery and growth.
One plot device which was extremely effective was a phone tap that the girl had on the man’s phone. The tap provided a direct line to what people said to the main in secret, and revealed the true nature of many characters. Through it she learned of the man’s struggles, and also found out he defended her when she was not around. As a result, compassion grew that led to her thawing and beginning the redemptive process.
Certain scenes of her eves-dropping were the most beautiful and surprising in the show, partly because they are so unexpected: while she spies on him in a plot to take his job, he is defending her, and living an upright life. Her spying on him became a vehicle for her to be forcefully exposed to a deeply authentic and honest form of living, one that she’d stopped believing in. This cut her to the core because the man was kind, despite being quite sad. Her sympathy for him became a catalyst for transformation.
The show proceeds with a masterful arc. It begins with a decent into crime, betrayal, and sabotage. Then as the elements of truth, kindness, and compassion emerge, they slowly work a kind of magic on all of the darkness between the characters, eliminating it. Friendships develop a firm foundation, and dark, divisive characters are rooted out.
That’s one of the subtle messages of My Mister — it highlights the transformational quality of goodness in the face of darkness.
The story also deals very well with forgiveness. There is a point where the man was informed that the girl had been trying to get him fired. At this point the man and girl had already started a friendship and you can see that her redemption, her extraction from the dark world she’s living in hangs in the balance, so the idea that their friendship could be destroyed by this revelation is very worrying. But the man, rather than simply saying “damaged goods!” and cutting her off forever, chose to investigate. He eventually got to the truth of her story, her suffering and hardships. It was through hearing of her hardships that he developed a compassion for her. Rather than simply reacting with anger at her lies, and fear for his job, he reacted immediately with forgiveness and sympathy and chooses not to let it come between them.
Incredibly, she is never accused or made to feel guilty by the man, and as the show is concluding and the truth is coming out, the community comes around her with tremendous warmth, offering friendship and support when she needs it most. And finally, as her compassion moves her toward honesty, she transforms frictionlessly from antagonist to protagonist. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping when you think about it.
While this element of forgiveness / redemption is one of the most satisfying in the show, it also feels perhaps the most foreign to a Western audience. The Western viewer might ask himself — so the man never gets angry at her for her lies? So she’s not even fired from the job where she’s spied on people? She doesn’t receive legal punishment? Everyone just forgives her?
Yes. Everyone just forgives her.
But that doesn’t make it an easy path for her. She then has to face authorities and adversaries, and admit publicly to her deception. But the community comes in around her to help her through it. Through the compassion of a man she tried to betray, and the embrace of a community he brings to her aide, she is brought from darkness to light. And, through her loyalty and concern for him, she ended up saving him in the process.
