Kokdu: Season of Deity: Episodes 14-15

by DaebakGrits

Our drama doubles down on the angst this week because our (not a) grim reaper’s days are almost up. As the countdown clock ticks closer to zero, our OTP realizes they’re on the path towards repeating history, so grab an umbrella, Beanies. The weather forecast calls for at least six inches of dramatic tears.

 
EPISODES 14-15

Although there were a few bright spots of humor this week, our story mostly took another long and depressing turn as we dived deeper into the convoluted mythos that has tried to hold this drama together like a metaphorical duct tape. You see, Gye-jeol decides to keep it a secret that she has remembered her past life in order to spare Kokdu from being miserable that she is feeling guilty over being the cause of his curse. And if that last sentence confuses you, get used to it because this couple is on a seesaw, going back and forth trying to hide their own feelings — or certain key details about curses — in order to prevent each another from feeling pain.

But hey, miscommunications are the best way to eat up time in a K-drama, and when the main villain is a weak ol’ human, the writers have to find some way to delay his inevitably anticlimactic takedown. And because Kokdu: Season of Deity hasn’t tried to be a legal drama yet, Kokdu follows through on trying to punish Chairman Kim through the judicial system, which is (realistically) the only setting in which Chairman Kim can fight dirty and still come out on top against a god. Case in point, on their first day in court, Chairman Kim threatened Kokdu’s key witness into lying on the stand. Instead of telling the truth about the suspicious circumstances of her relative’s death after participating in the drug trial, one of the witnesses accuses Ok Shin of bribing her to give a false statement.

After a bad day in court, Kokdu finds the hairpin in Gye-jeol’s room and seeks out the mysterious ajumma, who tells him that all his misfortune is his fault. Yeah, yeah, nothing new here — except, if I’m interpreting the ajumma’s cryptic words correctly, we’re to believe Kokdu was the Prince Hodong in his life before he was Oh-hyun. And the hairpin is what the Princess of Nakrang used to destroy her kingdom’s mythical drum and betray her people, which caused a war and a whole lot of death.

Ahhhhh, now the severity of Kokdu’s curse makes a lot of sense, but I wish we’d learned about this sooner because it explains so much about the curse and Kokdu’s personality. I always thought Kokdu’s selfishness seemed at odds with what we’d seen of Oh-hyun, and I was confused how centuries of being a god of death and destruction would warp his personality in such a way. However, if he was selfish enough in his past life to woo a princess for personal gain and the destruction of her country, then his modern day personality checks out. Oh-hyun still feels like an outlier, though.

Unfortunately, all signs point to the curse doing its thing again and making history repeat itself. With Joong-shik in a coma after an attempt was made on his life, Kokdu is in need of a new witness, and — much to Kokdu’s annoyance — Yi-deun doesn’t get on his plane to the U.S. for his cancer treatments. Instead, Yi-deun volunteers to be a witness and provide his body as evidence to prove Chairman Kim’s new drug causes cancer.

Yeah, that uplifting we’re-about-to-turn-the-tide-in-our-favor moment doesn’t last long. In what is probably the most WTF scene of this drama thus far, Chairmen Kim hires some men to drop a sign on some poor unsuspecting child in the lobby of the courtroom, and while Kokdu uses his powers to rescue the kid, another hired thug shows up and stabs Yi-deun. I guess I should be thankful that the writers were trying to be creative and avoid the truck of doom cliché, but it was still just as random and over just as quickly.

On the bright side, Yi-deun lives, but he’s in a coma. And he still has cancer. So… does this mean that there is no escaping the curse, or is it proof that they can break it? Not sure, but Kokdu sets out to try and end the cycle and, at the very least, prevent Gye-jeol from killing Chairman Kim and herself.

With a little help from Cheol, Kokdu finds a way to make Chairman Kim believe that Kokdu’s stab wound from Joong-shik, which hasn’t healed yet, is Kokdu’s weak spot. So when Kokdu shows up at Chairman Kim’s office, hairpin in hand, acting menacing and claiming that Gye-jeol has stripped him of his no-kill training wheels, it’s no wonder that a terrified Chairman Kim grabs the hairpin when he gets the chance and uses it to stab Kokdu right in the chest.

Chairman Kim’s hubris is his downfall, though, and as he boasts about how he killed a god, he fails to see the obvious: that he, like, totally just killed someone. And it all went down as Kokdu had planned. He’d timed his arrival at Chairman Kim’s office to be shortly before the clock struck midnight — well, 9:09 PM — on the last of his 99 days, meaning after Chairman Kim would be on the hook for murder charges after Kokdu’s soul left Jin-woo’s body.

The only thing Kokdu didn’t account for was Gye-jeol figuring out his plan — and his intention to leave her without so much as a goodbye. (Because, it’s soooo much better for her to be mad at him than to have to go through a sad goodbye.) She arrives on the scene after Kokdu is already on the road to the afterlife, and she’s on the verge of taking the hairpin and killing Chairman Kim with it when she hears Kokdu’s voice telling her to stop. Although Kokdu was well on his way to the afterlife when Gye-jeol showed up, he heard her call his name (Oh-hyun) and turned around. So Kokdu lives, but he’s unconscious for a little bit.

Meanwhile Cheol, who showed up to arrest Chairman Kim as part of Kokdu’s plan, isn’t quite sure what he should do now that they can only charge Chairman Kim with attempted murder. He has bigger problems to worry about now, though: the animosity between his sister and girlfriend. Cheol has finally figured out that Gye-jeol and Jung-won are not on the best of terms, and Gye-jeol is understandably pissed to realize that her nemesis is dating her brother.

As expected, though, the writers found a way to explain Jung-won’s past behaviors and make the audience more forgiving of her character. I mean, I was already willing to just overlook the whole thing because of her stellar dynamic with Cheol, but I feel a little less guilty knowing she didn’t actually betray Gye-jeol and have an affair with Yi-deun. You see, what had happened was, around the time Yi-deun figured out his cartilage was shot and his uncertain career prospects (re: his noble idiocy) made him think Gye-jeol was better off without him, Joong-shik got out of prison. Fearful that her dad would come after her, Jung-won wanted nothing more than to move far, far away where she felt safe. In exchange for being Yi-deun’s private doctor so she could move to the U.S. with him, Jung-won corroborated Yi-deun’s lie that they had an affair.

Of course, Jung-won delivers her confession while she’s drunk off her rocker, so Gye-jeol doesn’t understand half her gibberish. Cheol, however, due to his secret knowledge of Jung-won’s backstory, understands why she was so desperate to leave South Korea, and he has no plans to dump her. He’ll work things out with Gye-jeol eventually.

After Kokdu woke up again, he was pretty much the same old god of death he was before but with one noticeable difference: He’s no longer bound by Gye-jeol’s commands. Which is fine, except Gye-jeol doesn’t have the power to silence the voices in his head. And now that he’s turned over a new leaf of not killing the bad people, as his curse demands, the voices are driving him insane.

So poor Kokdu tries to put on a happy front and do cute couples activities with Gye-jeol, but he’s in unfathomable pain. And so he plans to end the curse as the Creator instructed: with Gye-jeol telling him that she loves him. He starts prepping for the end by amending his cohabitation contract with Gye-jeol, giving her permission to say she loves him, but only when he asks her to say it. He also pops by the hospital to scare Joong-shik, who was totally faking his coma, into turning on Chairman Kim so that story arc will be closed after he’s departed.

Sadly, before he’s ready to say goodbye, Gye-jeol finds out that he’s preparing for the end, and she refuses to be the one who says the magic words that will put him out of his misery because she doesn’t want to be left behind. I know I’ve had my issues with Gye-jeol, specifically her stupidity and naivete, but the writers really took it a step too far with this added selfishness.

If she is so high and mighty that she can’t get behind Kokdu killing rapists and child murderers, then how can she just stand by and watch her loved one be put through so much pain? She’s supposed to be a doctor for goodness sakes. It does not compute. She could have been just as emotional and mad at the injustice of their fate without forcing Kokdu to stay and suffer on earth.

Instead, she holds on to him as long as she can, until he can’t fight the voices, and she realizes that she’s powerless to stop him from killing. As he steps away, poised to go on a murder spree, she calls out and tearfully tells him that she loves him. Instantly, it looks as though a weight has been lifted. He’s found peace, and he has the clarity to give her a proper farewell, urging her to find happiness without him. And then, for added symbolism — as if the church setting wasn’t enough — he walks out the door and into the light.

Honestly, even though I didn’t like the added selfishness to Gye-jeol’s character, I really enjoyed the final moments of this week’s episodes. Kim Jung-hyun made me feel Kokdu’s agony, and I also found myself reflecting on how far he’s come as a character over the course of this (excruciatingly) long drama. I can’t honestly say that I’ve followed or fully understood the rules and logic of the curse that has plagued his character — thanks, writers and director — but Kokdu is actually multifaceted. I can see why Kim Jung-hyun might have been drawn to the role, and it’s such a shame that the actor and character got boxed in by subpar writing. But, on a more positive note, there’s one episode left, Beanies. Hwaiting!

 
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