SPOILER THREAD for Mr. Plankton
Added 2024-11-11 17:50:08 +0000 UTCI was going to hold off on making a spoiler thread to give some people more time to watch this, but I see we already have some patreons posting in chat about it, so I wanted to give everyone a chance to talk out your feelings here. Because whew I'm sure you have a lot. I (Megan) finished it, but Amy and Lia are still watching. So, you have been warned, MAJOR spoilers in the comments. Including some of my thoughts. Okay? Okay. Here we go.
Comments
I don't think Hae Jo is supposed to be a good guy in the traditional ML sense. Totally agree that the kidnapping was over the line and he made a lot of selfish choices along the way. Even dropping her at bio mom's house is pretty difficult to defend. To me, it felt more like here's this damaged character who has gotren along by not committing to anything - even his own life - and who is suddenly confronted with his own mortality and finds he's holding on tighter than he knew. And even in spite of reacting in ways that are selfish and lashing out, the fact of trying to hold on creates human connections and ends up pulling together this unlikely group of people. Definitely not perfect. The last episode felt choppy to me, like they were trying to tick through a lot of boxes very quickly. And Jae Mi felt a little shortchanged compared to the arc of all the other characters. The nakedness I have no good explanation for but I wasn't mad. 😄 Maybe just because they could?
Emily B.W.
2024-11-30 21:47:56 +0000 UTCStarcrossed Second Chance is not usually my genre, but the first episode of Mr. Plankton pulled me in. I’m glad they opened with the end because I didn’t hold out hope for a miracle cure, especially with the fish dying the next scene. I was like, right, I know where we’re going with this. No trip to a German hospital for an experimental treatment here. So many things about this drama were so well done. I loved the symbolism with the shoes and the light from the stars continuing after their death, and the plankton, and the theme that everyone has worth no matter what their background, but I couldn’t completely buy in because of a couple of things: -Hae Jo’s selfish, passive aggressive behaviors. Too much red flag for me to be behind him one hundred percent. -So much of the fun game segment was disturbing instead of funny to me – the kidnapping, the tying her up, chasing her down in the rice paddy. All of that was played for laughs, but it bothered me, especially because he was physically so much larger than her. -I was glad that Jae Mi wasn’t passive, that she was feisty, but, man was there a lot of screaming, especially that scene in the funeral hall where she basically has a tantrum like a two-year-old. I understand, plot-wise, he needed to know what had happened to her, but it seemed like lazy writing to me to just have him overhear her meltdown. But at least it wasn’t some rando doctor telling him out of the blue. :) All that said, I did find it a fascinating drama, and I’m always here for a good road trip story. I liked the mystery around his biological father. And I’d totally watch spin off about John Na and Bong Suk. I think he was my favorite character. Other random thoughts: -What was the deal with Heung constantly taking off his clothes? He was constantly in his undewear or threatening to unzip his pants. -I’ve never seen a love triangle like that before! -California Dreamin’ seems to be the anthem for tragic stories. Anyone remember Less Than Zero? Now I’ll always think of Mr. Plankton and Less Than Zero when I hear California Dreamin’
Sara Rosett
2024-11-27 15:17:58 +0000 UTCSo interesting reading other people's reactions. I was likewise pulled along by the intense emotions and fantastic performances. I was not bothered by the unresolved quest or hints, rather I really loved the daring way the writer played with our expectations. Hae Jo starts out as the kind of invulnerable hero we're used to but the drama teases all the way through whether the scene we saw at the start is his real end, making him mortal after all. He kidnaps Jae Mi and sets up a traditional romance plot, but then instead of the usual forced proximity beats (I had Uncontrollably Fond in the back of my head) she tries to break free of him and go back to her fiancee. He's on a quest to find his bio dad but that turns out to have been just an excuse to bring Jae Mi along with him, and the dad he was really looking for all along was the dad who abandoned him. Cue reunion, but not really because that dad doesn't deserve a nice resolution. The magic cure doesn't come through. None of the characters are tidily paired off in the end. To me the core story revealed itself as the way Hae Jo's fear and desperation in the face of death pushed him out of his drifter passivity and made him seek out and cling to the people who truly loved and understood him. Jae Mi, the other abandoned child who felt his same loneliness, and Bong Suk, his complicated Oedipal mother figure. Along the way he added loyal Kkari and Heung, his opposite. (And John Na, who knew the silent tough guy could be used for comic relief? Loved it.) To me the drama comes heavily down on the side of these families we make through need and love over the bio family. Bong Suk is a more important mother to Hae Jo than his birth mother. His bio dad is insignificant (though did anyone else think it *was* actually Jo Han Chul? that was the only test result we didn't see). His original dad is more important, but because he was so fixated on biological connection he lost his chance to be a father to his son. Heung's mother goes on a journey from hunting down Jae Mi solely because she's carrying the unborn heir to seeing Jae Mi as a valuable person knowing she can't bear children, and more importantly learning to see her own son as an individual separate from his biological purpose of carrying on the family legacy. Heung is completely transformed through being freed from this suffocating role. All of this because Hae Jo needed love in the face of fear and through his actions brought them all to him and to each other. In the end there are no miracles except this one.
Emily B.W.
2024-11-25 05:06:11 +0000 UTC
