Extraordinary You - final thoughts
Warning - this is longer than Trumpet Creeper’s Kyung’s hair.
Wow. Wow. I never thought a drama this high concept (aw, satiric high school romcom? How about a mindbending, parable-like take on religion and philosophy and free will and sense of self and existence after death instead) could ever ever stick the landing. After all, something like W Two Worlds did not (I loved W but the ending was not on par with the rest.) But it did, and it is that incredibly rare perfect drama in which I would change nothing.
Honestly, the whole story could be viewed as a meditation of the meaning of existence, with the author standing in for your deity of choice; not a benevolent deity many religions picture, sure, sometimes actively malevolent against those that disobey - the drama plain text admits that the author punishes those like Haru that try to challenge the divine plan, but that is not that uncommon in a number of religions.
And the end, with its giant no exit - just an endless circle of being in other stories or put away and dead entirely - comes across as surprisingly hopeful despite the bleakness because I think what EY told me (and I fully understand it is different for everyone) is that control and permanence and existence are all fleeting and illusory, sure. But then, all you can do is live enjoying your today to the utmost, and love and free will and self-knowledge as much as you can get of it, is the sole light in a bleak, cruel, irrational world and is worth everything.
Haru and Dan Oh, the ultimate fighters, cannot escape the cursed reincarnation circle and the worlds of the stories; but what they can do is try to change it as much as they can and to never ever give up and fight for their self-determination and their right to be together; even if it is ultimately futile and ends in erasure every time, the meaning of their life, the worth of their life is in that love and in that fight.
And I love that they take even the limitations imposed and persist through them - remember the whole question of whether the scenes and words repeat because it’s their own or the author’s? Dan Oh’s take was the incredible that it is not the author - that they remember it from story to story because that is what they really felt and wanted to express to each other but couldn’t. She has taken all the existential insanity and decided she is a person and her wants are her own and not the narrative’s.
But of course, the capricious deity punishes Haru and punishes Dan Oh by taking him away, by not letting them stay together until the last page (though that “1 year away” is largely illusory imo - I am pretty sure the bulk of that year was “skipped.”) The scene with the lights going out, and Haru and Dan Oh, clinging, knowing the end has come, and Haru telling her she was his beginning and end and to call him by his name (so it would be the last thing he hears) is - I am freaking crying at the keyboard now.
And her name is the last thing he says in this existence.
And he is gone and she is left trying to grab his floating name tag.
The thing with the names though is very important in other than a purely romantic sense. Their names is the one unchanging thing from one world to the next; even when the author does not name them, they get the same names - give them to each other or themselves. Because the name is such a sense of basic self, basic identity. Look at the scene with the Squid Fairy and the Court Lady, which also pulled every last heartstring - names are brought up again.
But of course, their time together is all so brief because the world ends in a few minutes and we do not see them in the new story. I am glad they got this one happy memory to erase the previous horror but still - so little, so fragile, so gone. But Squid Fairy and Court Lady are on the opposite side of the spectrum from Haru and Dan Oh, who will fight and fight and fight forever, no matter the odds or the risks or the outcomes. These two have accepted these worlds and these controls and the limitations and believe it is futile to fight; but the tragedy is they cannot keep their zen fully - they still love and miss each other, they still care for others.
Haru and Dan Oh have created their own meaning in the arbitrary, cruel, impermanent world and that meaning is each other; to seize the brief moments of happiness as they come and grab on to free will even if it is punished, even if they never know whether, once this world ends, they will get another world or another chance (but hey, that’s normal life too - nobody has a certainty about the after of death.) That is why they can continue on through sheer will, why Haru literally forced his way into the story, why they remember; they do not accept defeat. But Squid Fairy and Court Lady have tried to go to the other extreme of powerless acceptance and I can get that choice.
You know what has just occurred to me - in addition to fate, divine and free will, the other thing this drama addresses the concept of soul mates. The concept of someone destined by the fate for you is one many people find very appealing. But this drama posits that the true soulmate is one you affirmatively choose yourself. Because the technical soulmates here are pairs that the author puts together like Kyung and Dan Oh, and it shows not just potential incompatibility but the fact that if you do not know the love is based on true free choice, it lacks appeal. But when it’s based on genuine connection and love, it can transcend deity and worlds and the end of them all.
The ending is as hopeful as it gets in this bleak world - Haru and Dan Oh as extras and thus free to do their own thing in a benevolent enough world - college setting. When they find each other, and of course the names are again their talisman, it’ s amazing. (And they are allowed to be at least a little older though one of the horrors is that they will never really get a choice to grow old together or have a long life - many short ones is what they get. Not that everyone wants a silver wedding anniversary and 2.5 children, but the fact that they never get that choice is awful.)
But the dark underpinning never goes away either - they are still puppets of an uncaring, and sometimes actively malevolent, deity. And we do not see Kyung or Squid Fairy or Court Lady or Juda or Do Hwa - reminding us of the fact that the world ends and you may never be pulled out of the box again, be dead forever or inserted into an insane suffering set up or whatever.
Now to get to the other characters and strands:
* It’s surprising how OK I ended up being with Kyung in light of my earlier feelings for him. He really did get better, the more liberated from the authorial straight jacket he’s become. He wasn’t perfect (he clearly had Haru’s notebook but did not give it to Dan Oh; either because Haru didn’t want him to or because he wanted to keep it, who knows) but he was miles from the old Kyung. His face as he saw the end coming will haunt me.
* I know some people were unhappy with the resolution of the Do Hwa - Juda - Nam Joo story but I loved it. Maybe Juda would have picked differently if she knew the happy ending was an illusion and all that faces them is a possible eternity of nothingness or a new storyline entirely, at the moment of “triumph.” But maybe not. Unlike her stage counterpart, it’s clear that the real Juda is practical to the marrow of her bones, not prone to throwing the world away for love, and also what she really thrives on is being needed, being the one who saves and defends and is the leader in the relationship. She was never going to have that with Do Hwa, despite his gentleness. But with oblivious to the narrative to the last page Nam Joo she can have that - she can have someone who loves and needs her more than she loves and needs them, she can defend him and lead and be the boss (when she gave him a money balancing allowance book and he meekly took it, it all made so much sense.) This said, her joke about dating the boys on alternate days wasn’t as much of a joke as it was supposed to be. I could see her being the boss, money maker, polyamorous girl pretty easily. It would have been cool.
* I am pretty sure Kyung’s stepbrother/half-brother was in love with him in Trumpet Creeper - the way he talked about him in TC, the way he wanted to stay by him until the end, explicitly comparing it to Dan Oh and Haru, screams silent love to me (which adds another level of horribleness to the reincarnation/memory wipe concept here and in reality - in some of these endless worlds, people who loved each other might end up being family, even.)
Anyway, this is now my n1 kdrama of all time.
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