Split Screen: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Thanks for tuning in to this special Thanksgiving Eve edition of Split Screen! Nothing about these episodes has anything to do with Thanksgiving, but they are both best enjoyed with copious quantities of pie and carbohydrates.

 

Some things that we’re thankful for this year:

-Everyone’s favorite little brother Kang-san

-Iida’s thicc calves

-Inappropriate sound effects during dramatic moments

-Gratuitous use of flashback

-The existence of these two weird and wonderful television shows!

 

(Catching up on Split Screen over the holiday weekend? We’re thankful for you! You can read the full series here.)

 

Boys Over Flowers Episode 11 (up to minute 34)

M: I’m not going to mince words here: this episode was trash.

E: Everything just happened so suddenly and came so out of nowhere. I’m still not convinced that this new model guy has good intentions at all.

M: I have a theory about him that we can talk about later, but let’s start at the very beginning. The creepy photoshoot was exactly what we expected it to be, although not quite as sinister as I predicted.

E: They were so over-the-top creepy that it wasn’t creepy. It was just confusing. Also, I know that she was scared, but Jan-di can beat people up. We’ve seen her beat people up.

M: She was the most intimidating person in that room by a long shot. No confirmation that Mama Jun-pyo was the instigator, but I’m eighty percent sure she set this up.

E: And that’s why I think model guy must be part of the scheme too. His rescue was just too convenient.

M: I agree. Being in the right place at the right time like that, unless these guys have a sketchy office in the fashion district right by his studio, was suspicious.

E: What bothers me about him is that she ran into him going into the building last episode, and he was clearly heading in the opposite direction. And it’s not just a case of running into someone and being like “oh that seemed bad” and turning back around. Because she was clearly in there for awhile.

M: You’re right, it’s weird. You can explain some of it away because he clearly admires her greatly, even in a non-romantic sense, as a “commoner hero.” When he saw her going into this gross agency, he knew to stick around and listen for signs of trouble.

E: Maybe. I do think your theory about him being the younger brother of the boy who almost jumped off the roof is on point.

M: Way to spoil my big reveal. Thanks.

E: Whoopsie. I was just so impressed with it.

M: It has to be true. Otherwise, it makes no sense for this dude to be so fascinated with Jan-di, except that maybe he’s also half-common. It was unclear to me whether he’s actually the product of an affair or if that was a joke.

E: I mean the brother thing explains why he doesn’t seem to like F4 very much too. Plus they brought up that he has a brother which means he’s probably important in some way.

M: Chekhov’s brother, yes.

E: So, model dude…what’s his model name? Haje, I think? He offers Jan-di a job as an assistant on his magazine shoot. And she ends up being a model herself. For the money, Which I get. It probably pays really well. Since she was on the cover of everything single magazine.

M: Also, it’s fun! If someone offered me the chance to model for something and get my hair and make-up done all fancy, I would try to make it happen even if it didn’t pay at all.

E: But the porridge shop, Madelyn!

M: It’s clear that Jan-di never really works there. Also, we needed our requisite episode makeover.

E: We didn’t actually get the make-over section though just the after.

M: There was too much to pack into half an hour already.

E: They were Dracula.

M: Let’s dig into Jan-di’s lies, shall we?

E: I just don’t get it. I get why maybe she wouldn’t want to mention the embarrassing thing at the sketchy model place and why she wouldn’t want to mention the guy, but I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell Jun-pyo that she needed to work.

M: Jan-di is the Pride in this Jane Austen adaptation. I think the root of this nonsense is that she doesn’t want to admit that Kang-san and her family are starving. Mama Jun-pyo is winning. Which makes it doubly awkward and not just about pride, because it’s her boyfriend’s mom’s fault that her kid brother is skipping lunch.

E: But they had that healthy sun-lit conversation last week. Where she told him to not help and she said she wouldn’t run away because of his mother, and he knew already that they were selling stuff on the side of the road.

M: She doesn’t want to admit the Geums aren’t self-sufficient. It’s not the degrading work, it’s that they’re doing that work and still coming up short.

E: I guess, but even saying that she needs to do her normal job (which she had before any of this happened!) is better than making up Ga-eul’s birthday.

M: I’m totally with you. Jan-di’s regression this episode was immensely frustrating, because we spent the last two or three episodes laying the groundwork for much healthier communication and apparently we’re throwing it all away. But also, isn’t Jan-di smarter than to use the excuse of her best friend’s birthday? Her best friend who knows F4 personally and is in a weird romantic tangle with Yi-Jung? It’s a terrible excuse.

E: I don’t want to let Jun-pyo off the hook either. I mean he’s kind of more of a seesaw than Jan-di usually anyway, but he certainly regressed at the end of this half-episode too.

M: He has beaten up so many people lately. I think at least one every episode for the past few weeks.

E: Well, Ji-hoo. Rando whats his face. And Haje. Right? Am I missing one?

M: It’s bad that I’m not totally sure.

E: I mean, Haje was right when he taunted him by saying he has no trust in Jan-di. But I thought they were kinda past that at this point. I don’t know.

M: Let’s put ourselves in Jun-pyo’s shoes here. I’ll preface this by saying that the beat down at the end was obviously way too much. But, Jan-di has been avoiding dates with him for at least a month now. She makes up a birthday for her best friend to avoid him and go shoot semi-erotic photos with a popular male model. The same male model he catches her cutting class with and sort-of holding hands. That looks real bad.

E: I mean, I agree. Of course. But yeah, I was just so taken aback and uncomfortable by how long they let that one-sided beatdown go on. Before anyone said anything!

M: It was just so shocking. It’s a return to form for Jun-pyo though, right? We were just talking about how brutal the first few episodes were, and how successfully the show has made us forget that part of his personality. This is what he’s like when he’s mad. It’s just another regression.

E: It feels like too many conflicts at once, too. What’s the point of his mother disliking her if they were gonna have relationship issues again?

M: His mother is the root of this one though.

E: I know it makes logical sense, I feel like it doesn’t make narrative sense to have both these things at the same time.

M: It’s hard to pit Jan-di against his mom directly at this point. The power imbalance there is too great. So I sort of understand why the writers would choose to bring things back into focus at Shinhwa before we tackle the institutional conflict of class differences.

E: Okay, I think my main problem is that I feel like they could have had this conflict without bringing a new guy into it. Like there could have been the same communication issues without Haje getting involved. Take him out of this episode, insert another sketchy job for Jan-di and you get the same arc.

M: I think the “other man” thing is important for provoking this kind of response from Jun-pyo.

E: But I don’t like this kind of response.

M: ME EITHER.

E: Maybe they’ll do something with it. I mean we watch this so gradually that it’s sometimes easy to forget how much we disliked Jun-pyo at the beginning. So, I guess it’s important to reckon with the fact that he has real anger management issues. But I don’t really trust the writers to reckon with that.

M: I think they have to. If not his anger management issues on a psychological level, at least the fact that we were introduced to Jun-pyo as the instigator of a forced suicide. He has become a much more likeable character recently, but he’s never really atoned for or dealt with that. I’m hopeful that’s the purpose of this arc.

E: Maybe. I would be willing to forgive how bad this episode made me feel if they managed to do something interesting or at least not terrible with that.

M: Are we ready for Romance Tracker?

E: I don’t know. I want to shout out Mom Friend Ji-hoo though. Why wasn’t he always like this?

M: It’s a much better use of Ji-hoo. He just wants to watch his programs, tuck you into bed, and monitor the goings about of his son’s girlfriend. Is that so much to ask?

E: Anyway, romance, things are still happening with Ga-eul and Yi-jung.

M: Can you imagine going up to the person that you rejected a few weeks earlier with a birthday cake, a heart-shaped birthday cake, on the street. Only to discover it isn’t their birthday.

E: Not even one bit. But Yi-jung is much more confident than I am.

M: He’s a smooth operator.

E: Oh! Woo-bin made an unceremonious return. Where was he? The world will never know.

M: He was there while Jun-pyo was turning the school pool into a hot spring, which very sweet by the way. He could have used servants but he did it personally.

E: He could have replaced the water with hot spring water.

M: And then he’s there to neg Jun-pyo’s idea of playing hard to get, or “pricey,” whatever that means.

E: He’s already pricey. Everything about him is pricey.

M: I’m waiting for Woo-bin’s eleventh hour arc.

E: Where’s Woo-bin’s romance?

M: At least he has a nametag on his desk.

E: They all do! I had forgotten about that room.

M: Shhh, it’s the little things. By the way, remember Yi-Jung’s dad? What happened there?

E: I don’t know. I don’t know.

M: And his crazy mom? Or something?

E: I don’t know! Maybe it comes up in the second half of this episode.

M: Good joke. Anyway, romance?

E: I did my romance! I want more Yule!

M: You dodged the question. Is Jan-di going to date Haje?

E: I don’t want her to. I really hope they don’t. Because. I don’t know. This episode messed me up.

M: There are real tears trickling down her face.

E:

M: Ji-hoo is going to put a stop to this.

E: Oh god, we’ve reached a new low. Ji-hoo is our only hope.

M: He’ll pull some strings through his modeling world connections to shut this down.

E: I honestly just don’t know what’s going to happen on the second half of this episode. I mean, I wasn’t expecting this half of the episode at all. So there’s just no point anymore.

M: You still have to make a non-romantic prediction.

E: Um, Jun-pyo broke Haje’s nose and now his modeling career is ruined and he wants restitution from Jan-di.

M: He wouldn’t do that do Jan-di sunbae.

E: I DON’T TRUST HIM

M: I predict that Jun-pyo is going to change his whole wardrobe. It looked like he was throwing it out.

E: Not another normie makeover!

M: Always room for one more.

My Hero Academia S2E9: Bakugo vs Uraraka

E: So, I’ll be honest. The first time I watched this episode, I cried just a little.

M: It’s a tearjerker.

E: It was like…I had never been close to crying watching this show before. And I realized I was close to crying and it surprised me into actually crying. Does that ever happen to you?

M: Sort of? I usually just cry.

E: Anyway, it’s the less popular pick, but this is my favorite episode of the sports festival.

M: It’s a nice, contained episode. It feels like the right amount of content for a single episode, which is a rare occurrence for both of our shows.

E: As the title implied, we started with Bakugo vs Uraraka. And honestly everyone in the stands who was booing and saying “just send her out” or whatever, like screw those guys.

M: Justice for Bakugo 2018.

E: And Uraraka! That’s so offensive.

M: For Uraraka’s justice we’d have to combat rampant sexism in the hero community. That’s endemic, it’s a long-term goal. Let’s at least take the respect baby step of yelling a few less villainy slurs at a fifteen year old boy.

E: Especially after we got that Shinso episode about the harm of calling someone a villain all the time. I feel like, at hero school, that should be a terrible insult.

M: I would never have dreamed of telling classmates in my acting program that they weren’t good enough to perform professionally, let alone that they should be like, anti-actors.

E: What would an anti-actor do?

M: The people that protest outside of shows.

E: Anyway, Uraraka comes up with a better plan than Deku was going to offer her.

M: Deku’s plan was horrible.

E: I honestly think that even if she had touched him, it wouldn’t have guaranteed victory for her. His quirk is great for moving around in the air.

M: I think if he was floating and he tried to fire a blast, he might just shoot himself backwards because of the momentum.

E: I mean fair, yeah, I’m just saying something else was clearly necessary in that plan, which Uraraka decided was a meteor storm.

M: I called it, just saying.

E: Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work, and she ended up fainting.

M: I thought she might actually die.

E: I mean, Bakugo says it a lot. I think he means it metaphorically though. Maybe.

M: He’s gotta take hero vocabulary lessons. Lesson one: you can’t go around screaming “die!” at teenage girls. That’s inappropriate.

E: That’s why he said it at a normal volume.

M: Not good enough. Still, credit to Bakugo: he could have blasted just the ever-loving crap out of her. He could have blown her to smithereens. He was taking care, intentionally, not to do that.

E: I mean you can tell that just by comparing the scale of the explosions he sent towards her and the explosion he sent towards the falling rocks. Clearly he has good control of how much power he’s putting out.

M: How important is good hydration to Bakugo’s success?

E: You know, I don’t know. He sweats nitroglycerin so I don’t know if it works like normal sweat.

M: He must have one fascinating endocrine system.

E: Sure. You heard it here first folks. Madelyn wants to study Bakugo’s insides.

M: How does he convert the water he drinks to the nitroglycerine he sweats?

E: Quirk magiiiiiccc

M: Flash forward to Deku defending Uraraka’s honor.

E: Good thing she didn’t take his advice or he wouldn’t have been able to.

M: His advice was literally “use your quirk.”

E: I mean, I think it’s a sign that he doesn’t even know how he would go about directly beating Bakugo. I mean the combat training he managed to win, but he didn’t beat Bakugo. So he can’t give advice about what he doesn’t know himself.

M: That’s fine, but he had the nerve to try anyway.

E: Yeah, a little full of himself.

M: Let me mansplain your quirk to you, little girl.

E: Deku also mainsplains identity to Endeavor.

M: Deku’s a freaking idiot. Endeavor could have murdered him right then and there, and no one would have blamed him.

E: I don’t think that’s quite how it works.

M: It would be an overreaction, sure. But this preteen thinks he can tell the number two hero in the world how to parent?

E: I mean, he kind of needs some help.

M: This episode is all about Deku giving advice when he has none to give.

E: Whatever, I don’t like Endeavor. He can take some small child’s lecture.

M: The last five minutes of this episode, apart from Endeavor’s parenting tutoring courtesy of Deku, was chock-full of wholesome parents!

E: Yes! Uraraka’s dad is so sweet.

M: They’re never going to take her money. She’s going to become rich pro hero and her parents are going to force her to put it into a retirement account or something.

E: I mean, that’s good though! She can at least take them on vacation, like they said in their flashback.

M: Pretty sure we had already seen that flashback, so it was a flashback to a flashback.

E: I don’t think we’d seen all of it.

M: Still, quite wholesome. So much support.

E: And we also got Deku’s mom who now lives on tissue mountain.

M: Thank goodness for the Deku’s mom update. I was worried about her. I’m still afraid the stinger for this season will be Deku arriving home to find his mom having a heart attack on the ground. Like that one episode of Buffy.

E: We also got a flash to the League of Villains. I think you asked where they were like last episode or the episode before. So there ya go!

M: This is exactly why it is a colossally bad idea for Small Might to attend.

E: You’re right. I hadn’t really thought about the villain angle. Just that the average person wouldn’t think anything.

M: This is taking place about a week after the fight with the villains who suspected that he was secretly weak. It’s unnecessarily risky.

E: Lawsuit watch? Anything else to add from this episode?

M: I’ll throw in anything else that comes up. Lawsuit watch this week is a little tough. There was some astonishing violence on both shows.

E: My Hero Academia’s was more sanctioned though. Since there’s teachers to step in if it gets too violent.

M: I think Bakugo has a defamation suit against Present Mic.

E: Goddammit Present Mic. Do your job.

M: He tells it like it is. He’s a live wire.

E: Aizawa literally had to elbow him in the face with his broken arms.

M: Has Aizawa ever had a face? I don’t remember.

E: I don’t think so. He’s always looked like this.

M: I also think that Uraraka’s dad (who doesn’t have a name, by the way, rude) has a pain and suffering case to bring against his own daughter for not immediately answering his phone call after she appeared to die on national television.

E: She was moving, she wasn’t dead.

M: Mmmmkay.

E: Also it’s not like she would say “I want to make money for my parents whose names are….”

M: Yeah, but they could have the names in the sub.

E: Ah, I guess so.

M: On the other hand, Jun-pyo brutally beat up a fellow student. And there’s definitely some shady undersage stuff going on at that modeling agency.

E: Yeah, I think it’s a clear win for Boys Over Flowers this week.

M: I know, I just wanted to protect Jun-pyo.

E: You ready for next episode’s title? It’s a little better than this one.

M: Is it titled Episode 9? Or whatever number we’re on.

E: Episode 10. This was 9.

M: That would be even more mysterious.

E: Okay, the title is “Shoto Todoroki: Origin”

M: I’m sorry, did you mean to search “Zuko Alone?”

E: No, thanks though Google.

M: Okay, my first prediction was going to be that we’d get a few more shots of resident thiccie Iida in the stands, but forget that now.

E: “You’re so wise.”

M: So my real first prediction is that Endeavor and All-Might will get into a fist fight behind the scenes during this fight.

E:

M: Prediction two:…how many episodes are left?

E: Of what, the arc or the season?

M: Is that not the same thing?

E: This season is what’s called two-cour (it takes place over two seasons of anime) which generally means there’s 2-3 arcs within it. Like the sports festival is an arc.

M: But isn’t it only thirteen episodes?

E: No, it’s 25.

M: Ohhhhh. Hmmm. Okay. Well, prediction two: Deku loses. This season becomes more about Todoroki and Bakugo.

E:                               

M: Prediction three: Minetta makes some other inappropriate comment about sadism or something. Wait no, I take it back, I take it back. Don’t do it.

E: (͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖)

M: Oh god.  Moving on, moving on. Prediction four: the crowd freaking riots if there’s another fight where they can’t see anything that’s going on.

E:

M: Prediction five: Present Mic has to be ejected from the arena after he says something over the speakers that actually impacts the match. He gives advice to a student or makes someone cry or something.

E: ———–> ————>

M: Good riddance.

–

Hello everyone! Emma here! As always, thanks for following along on our journey through Boys Over Flowers and My Hero Academia, even when the going gets rough. Please tell your female friends that you are confident they could take several explosions to the face. 

Next time! Todoroki vs Midoriya, everybody else’s favorite episode of the sports festival, and Boys Over Flowers hopefully course corrects just slightly.