Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter: Episode 2

by LollyPip

Our stranded fairy goes to the city to find out more about the man she thinks may be her husband. Despite being out of her element, she manages to find help along the way, and at least one person that’s glad she came. Unfortunately, that’s not the person she wishes were happy to see her, so she realizes that she’s going to have to do more if she wants to get her wish.

 
EPISODE 2 RECAP

Scenes from fairy Ok-nam’s life with her husband, six hundred and ninety-nine years ago, run through her mind. He was setting out on a trip the last time she saw him, and after he kissed their young son and daughter goodbye, Ok-nam gave him her scarf to ward off the cold. He’d said he’d be back soon, but he’d never returned, and she’s been waiting almost seven hundred years for him to be reincarnated.

In the present, Geum finds Ok-nam sleeping outside in her older guise and invites her to stay in his room for the night. She thinks to herself that he’s a nice young man, then she picks up a nearly-dead plant, suddenly appearing young again. As Geum watches, the plant turns green and flowers, and Ok-nam ages again.

Geum asks if she’s a gumiho, then immediately takes back the question, afraid she’ll eat his liver. But she tells him she’s a fairy, and he’s all, “You mean… butterfly hairdo, magical winged clothes, that fairy?”

Speaking of fairies, Yi-hyun dreams that he’s flying through the sky with several of them, hee. But his dream is interrupted by Geum, who asks if he can bunk with Yi-hyun since he doesn’t like people sleeping on his couch, and a fairy is borrowing his room.

Ha, Yi-hyun thinks he’s being facetious and flops back into bed. Geum tells him that the flower barista is an actual fairy, but Yi-hyun is already asleep.

Upstairs, Jeom-soon phases into her human form and says that she likes Geum and wants to stay here, but her mother says that would be asking too much. Jeom-soon takes out her laptop (which she carries as a picture on a scroll – it only becomes real when she wants it) to work on her Joseon fanfic, her tiger whiskers and tail popping out when she gets to the naughty bits.

Ok-nam goes to the veranda and looks up at the stars as she thinks, “It’s been six hundred ninety-nine years since I left the fairy realm. A star must return to its place. The stars must all be in place for the human realm to be in order. My husband must get his memory back.”

In the morning, Yi-hyun wakes to a note from Geum that he’s gone to take care of some things. He stumbles to the bathroom, but something makes him stop and scream.

When Jeom-soon doesn’t whine for food like most mornings, Ok-nam asks if she sneaked downstairs. Jeom-soon confesses that she had to since there’s no bathroom upstairs, and that she didn’t know how to flush the toilet. HAHAHA, so that’s why Yi-hyun is downstairs freaking out.

Ok-nam notices something on Jeom-soon’s face, and Jeom-soon says that she found a lot of “it” but only ate a little. “It” turns out to be Yi-hyun’s pot of curry, which he’d planned on having for breakfast but which is almost completely gone. He’s furious, assuming this and the flushing fail are all Geum’s doing.

Ok-nam thinks they need to leave before causing Yi-hyun any more trouble, but Jeom-soon whines that Ok-nam said he’s her dad, and she’s never had a dad. Ok-na, replies that she’s not entirely sure Yi-hyun is her reincarnated husband, and she tells the pouting Jeom-soon to pack.

They go to guardian deity Bong-dae’s coffee kiosk, where Ok-nam asks Bong-dae if she can have some time to find a place to stay before she starts her new job there. Bong-dae offers to let them stay in her warehouse, which seems to be just a simple empty room, but Bong-dae shows them through another door inside to a large, traditionally furnished apartment.

Geum goes looking for Ok-nam when he gets home, but she’s not there. He calls Yi-hyun to tell him that he’s heading to the lab soon, and he’s confused when Yi-hyun asks if he has anything to confess. Yi-hyun starts to rant about the toilet and the curry, but Geum is distracted by a noise.

It’s Ok-nam, standing on the veranda looking like her young self, then old again as she tells him that she left something behind. Geum accidentally hangs up on Yi-hyun, who decides that they are now in a fight.

Yi-hyun heads to his work lab, where he hears from one of his other research assistants, Kyung-shik, that Geum went shopping to buy a gift for someone. Another assistant, Jung-min, laughs sarcastically at the idea of Geum having a girlfriend, making Yi-hyun wonder if Geum really brought a girl home last night.

Geum gives Ok-nam the gift he bought her — ajumma pants like the ones his mother wears, lol. She puts them on over her hanbok, and HAHAHA, they’re so huge she can pull them up to her shoulders and put her entire body inside. There’s a flowered top which inspires Ok-nam to turn young when she puts it on, and Geum goes slack-jawed again.

That night, Yi-hyun asks Geum if he bought a gift for a girl, and Geum is all, “Is it a girl, though?” Yi-hyun says he doesn’t care so long as he’s not late to work again, but Geum says it’s not like that, and that his guest left anyway.

Yi-hyun has a nightmare about three frightening beings hovering over his bed. He experiences sleep paralysis, where he’s aware he’s dreaming but unable to move or speak. Scary ~shudder~!

He and Geum stop at Bong-dae’s coffee kiosk in the morning, and at the sight of Ok-nam behind the counter, Yi-hyun yelps and hides behind his briefcase, thinking that he’s seeing things. Ok-nam tells them that she’ll be working at the kiosk from now on, and to their dismay, she’s making the same oddly-named varieties as she did at the Fairy Cafe.

When she serves their coffee, there’s a leaf in Yi-hyun’s cup (hollow gourds, this time). Ok-nam says that it’s to prevent him from gulping his coffee, and as he protests that he doesn’t do that, she looks deeply disappointed as she remembers her husband drinking from his own gourd too fast and choking. To stop Yi-hyun from making her feel worse, Geum requests his own leaf.

As they leave, Yi-hyun asks Geum why he keeps calling Ok-nam a fairy, and Geum says that she is one. She pops up right behind Yi-hyun to ask him to meet her at the hour of the dog so she can ask him something. She hurries away while he’s wondering what time that’s supposed to be, but she turns back to give him a smile, and he’s startled to see her suddenly looking like a fairy complete with the signature butterfly hair.

Geum is glowing, half in love already, as he gets to the lab and drinks his coffee. The aroma wakes Kyung-shik, who’s been sleeping, and he rouses, hissing and snarling for coffee like a zombie scenting brains. Jung-min also comes after Geum like a monster, gasping that the coffee from that kiosk has never smelled this good. Geum tells them to get their own, and they collapse in disappointment.

HA, Yi-hyun has to carefully pour his coffee from the gourd into his tumbler, still grumbling about Ok-nam. He’s annoyed when he can’t stop picturing her in her younger form, and as he drinks his coffee, he grows sleepier and sleepier until he nods off in his chair. This time he dreams that he’s a child, being pulled away by someone, then calling desperately for his mommy from a locked room.

He wakes in a panic and wonders how he slept for half an hour. He rushes to the lab and makes a slide with a drop of Ok-nam’s coffee, sure that there’s a parasite in the coffee causing him to have sleeping sickness. He actually seems disappointed when the coffee is untainted, but he’s convinced that there’s something in there that’s affecting him, so he calls in a favor with a professor who has a better-equipped lab.

He goes to see Dr. Lee to complain that he’s having conflicting symptoms — sometimes he can barely sleep, and other times he drops off like he’s drugged and has confusing nightmares. He asks how it’s possible that the woman who made his coffee can alternate between looking old, young, and like a fairy.

Dr. Lee explains that your subconscious can lock away memories even from yourself, but that the memories can pop up in your dreams. Yi-hyun asks what this has to do with Ok-nam, so Dr. Lee says she’s probably somehow triggering his subconscious memories.

In her new home, Ok-nam makes a three-tiered hanging basket out of gourds, and she puts a plant in the top tier. She uses her powers to grow the plant until its vines are long and lush.

Back at the Fairy Cafe, Seon-shin (who turns out to be an immortal wizard) wakes from a nightmare and tells Fairy Oh that he saw Ok-nam in a dream which made him worried about her. Master Gu says that no news is good news, but when Seon-shin says he should ask one of his pigeon friends to check on Ok-nam, Master Gu’s frown gives away that he’s lost his pigeon friendships.

Fairy Oh chastises Seon-shin for his recent short temper, asking if he’s experiencing menopause, but he insists he’s still young. She says that even immortals can lose their mojo if they don’t exercise their powers, which is why Master Gu can’t fly properly and Seon-shin only has his magic beans.

She points out Ok-nam’s coffee bush, which is wilting now that she’s gone. She says she misses Ok-nam and decides to go to Seoul to see her, inviting the others along.

Jeom-soon is having trouble finding a place with free Wi-Fi so that she can upload her latest yaoi fanfic. She’s still searching, in cat form and wearing a backpack (weird, and cute), when she runs into Geum. She pretends not to see him, but he recognizes her and asks if she needs help.

He seems to understand her meows, saying that he sometimes knows what animals are thinking. He buys her a sausage and asks her about Ok-nam, but she doesn’t answer… until he wonders out loud if he can remember his Wi-Fi password. She tells him that Ok-nam likes peaches, earning the password.

Curious about Yi-hyun’s problem, Dr. Lee goes to the coffee kiosk, where she sees Ok-nam as an old woman. She orders the same coffee Yi-hyun ordered (Sparrow’s Breakfast) and Ok-nam, who recognizes her from yesterday, starts to say something but changes her mind.

After Dr. Lee is gone, Bong-dae comes by to ask Ok-nam why she seems down today. Ok-nam says it’s nothing and offers to make Bong-dae coffee, then she admits that seeing Yi-hyun with Dr. Lee upsets her. Bong-dae tells her that humans are busy living their lives, very different from fairies with the patience to wait six hundred ninety-nine years for their husband. She reassures Ok-nam that the rumor mill says that Yi-hyun doesn’t even date.

Jeom-soon stomps home, in human form now, annoyed that she keeps changing from cat to human unexpectedly since coming to Seoul. Ok-nam confirms that she hasn’t accidentally become a tiger, and she warns Jeom-soon never to drink. Seeing her new gourd hanging basket, Jeom-soon uses her own powers to make the gourds grow tiger-striped fur.

She tells her mother about running into Geum, and how he understood her while she was in cat form. Ok-nam says thoughtfully that he has a pure heart, but she had no idea he had such powers.

She takes a protesting Jeom-soon somewhere, and on the way, Jeom-soon admits that she’s a little embarrassed by her mom’s outfit, which people are staring at. Ok-nam says that it’s okay because she’s embarrassed by Jeom-soon’s clothing too (a bright orange jumpsuit, ha).

They end up at a hair salon, where Ok-nam is informed that long hair is out and perms are in. She thinks about Fairy Oh’s ajumma curls, and she shudders and asks for just a wash and simple style. Having never been to a salon before, Ok-nam reaches up to help massage the shampoo into her hair, startling her stylist, but eventually she gets her hair washed and put back into a bun.

Jeom-soon ends up with a bright orange perm, which Ok-nam quips makes her look like a lion, not a tiger. Ok-nam confesses that she feels nervous to see Yi-hyun again, and mother and daughter head back hand in hand.

Still under the impression that Geum is dating, Jung-min tells him that he needs to update his look, but he says he’s not interested in changing his style. He recalls Jeom-soon telling him that Ok-nam likes peaches, so he researches where to get some, then he looks up what time “the hour of the dog” is.

Yi-hyun finds a student to ask about the hour of the dog, which turns out to be between 7 and 9 p.m. He wants to know when he should be there if he has an appointment at that time, and whether he’s risking waiting for two hours if he shows at 7 p.m., but she doesn’t know.

When he heads to the coffee kiosk for his meeting with Ok-nam, he sees that Geum is already there, talking and laughing with her in her elderly form. He tries to join them like he’s not bothered by Geum’s flirting, but Jeom-soon meows loudly right under his feet, making him yelp and ruining his entrance.

He grumps that Geum should probably be in the lab, but Geum doesn’t pick up the hint, so finally Yi-hyun barks, “You. Go!” Poor Geum wants to stay and talk some more, but even Ok-nam tells him that he should come back tomorrow, so he leaves with Jeom-soon right on his heels.

Ok-nam closes the kiosk, then gets right to the point. She asks Yi-hyun his name and gives him hers, and asks if he has time to hear a story. She says there was a poor woodcutter, who was chopping wood in the forest one day when a deer ran up to him and begged him to save it from a hunter. The woodcutter hid the deer and sent the hunter in the wrong direction, and in thanks, the deer told him about a spring where fairies come down to Earth to bathe.

Ok-nam stops to ask Yi-hyun how he feels about this story, and whether he remembers anything. He thinks hard, then tells her that it’s absurd that the deer talks. LOL. Ok-nam is so disappointed that she sinks to the ground, but then she gets an idea and pulls out her pouch. She shows Yi-hyun an embroidered charm, and something about it makes him pause.

She thinks that on the day she last saw her husband, she’d given him her scarf, and after he left, she’d found the charm hanging from the tree in their yard. She believes her husband left it there, but she’s never been able to confirm it.

Now she asks Yi-hyun if he recognizes it, but he says he doesn’t, and tells her that he’s not the person she’s looking for. He adds that he has a question for her: Ever since seeing her at the spring, she’s appeared as a young woman to his eyes. How is this happening? To boot, she even suddenly had a butterfly hairdo earlier, and Ok-nam thinks hopefully, “He’s not a normal man. He’s one of us.”

Yi-hyun demands to know who and what she is, and Ok-nam asks if he really remembers nothing. She takes his hands and brings them to her face, just as her husband did the last time she saw him. with hope shining in her eyes, she asks him to try to remember, but Yi-hyun only struggles to get free as he thinks, “This woman is weird!”

 
COMMENTS

I really like how Ok-nam switches from young to old and back again so smoothly that it’s almost a non-issue most times. I don’t know exactly why, but I find it really charming how she just takes it in stride, and as much as I love Moon Chae-won, I’ll never complain about getting to see more Go Du-shim. I had assumed that, once the guys saw her in her young form, that she would remain that way to them all the time, but I’m pleasantly surprised by the way she fluctuates, and I like that the transformation doesn’t seem to be solely determined by Yi-hyun and Geum’s knowledge of her true form. I’m still not entirely sure what causes her to seem young one second and old the next (and I don’t mean “old” as a negative, and I find both ladies equally gorgeous and charming — I’m just using the word “old” because it’s easiest), but it still seems to be somehow linked to her powers and her level of energy at the moment.

Geum is such a sweet kid, but there’s obviously something going on with him that isn’t normal. Assuming that Yi-hyun is Ok-nam’s reincarnated husband, Geum should just be a regular everyday student, yet he can see Ok-nam in her young form, and more surprisingly, he can understand and talk to animals. He’s surprised by Ok-nam’s transformations, but not really shocked by them like Yi-hyun is, and although Yi-hyun’s reactions are a little over-the-top, they’re a lot more accepting than Geum’s are. Even as a scientist, he’s a lot more open to the mystical explanations of Ok-nam’s nature, and I wonder if that and his strange abilities are linked to the fact that he’s from the same mountain village as she is (for that matter, how could he grow up there and never have met Ok-nam or the other supernatural beings?). Geum even seems able to affect the magical creatures in a way — after all, it was his touch that caused Ok-nam’s egg to start cracking. I’m curious to know if he’s somehow related to the mystical realm, or if there’s something else going on with him.

I’m glad to see Ok-nam and Yi-hyun finally get some screen time together, because so far, they’ve hardly interacted at all. Yi-hyun’s reaction to Ok-nam has mostly been a reaction to how meeting her has affected his life, with his changing sleep patterns and dreams and how he can’t get her off his mind, but I want to see more of them together. I’m also happy that we got to see a little more of Ok-nam and her daughter, because they’re the ones I find really fascinating and I want to know more about them, like how they’ve been living for seven hundred years and why Ok-nam’s older child is in an egg. Ok-nam is easy to like, she’s so sweet and open with her emotions, but I want to learn more about her life, both past and present.

In fact, I’m a little concerned after this episode, because it just left me wanting more of everything. There wasn’t any forward plot movement for most of the hour, nor did we get much of the humor that the first episode offered. It worries me to get a filler episode so soon — there wasn’t even any information about say, the supernatural creatures that live in the world alongside humans, or even anything more about Ok-nam’s past with her husband. The show is still cute and I still like the characters, and it’s not enough to dampen my enthusiasm about the show in general. I’m willing to overlook one dud episode, but I hope this was just a fluke. I’ll wait to make a judgment call after next week’s episodes, so I hope the show offers some more of the things that I loved about it in the first place.

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