Hey there reader, thanks for tuning into Split Screen! It’s your intro host Madelyn here. Emma and I have been doing Split Screen for about five months now, and it’s finally time to admit it: I’m a real fan of both of our shows. I never expected this, but I have genuinely found myself thinking several times over the past week, “I wonder what’s going to happen next on Boys Over Flowers?” I told Emma that we’re going to have to do some double episodes when we’re together over the holidays, because at this rate, we won’t finish season one until sometime this summer and that is TOO FAR AWAY.
My Hero Academia is both less of a dark horse and a shorter series, but given that I complain every single week about how nothing has happened, it might come as a shock to you, reader, that I’m also enjoying the adventures of Deku and friends.
All this to say, after doing this for almost half a year, I’m having a blast! Thanks for chilling in the off-topic corner with us, readers. And now, let’s find out what’s happening with our favorite dysfunctional bands of teenagers!
(New to Split Screen? Boys Over Flowers is probably even better without context, but you can catch up here.)
Boys Over Flowers Episode 10 (from minute 33)
M: Apparently we ended right on the edge of the cliffhanger last week!
E: Yeah, I was really surprised by how suddenly they turned on Mama Jun-pyo. Whats-her-face. Gotta learn her name eventually.
M: It’s gonna take me another month to learn her name. More importantly, go Mama Geum! I was so shocked by the salt offensive. The assault, if you will.
E: I liked the use of salt because it was literally she was banishing a demon from her home.
M: Obviously based on last week’s predictions, I expected the Geums to to be on-board with Jan-di signing away love for that kind of money. I underestimated them!
E: You underestimated how much money they wanted.
M: And how much scheming they’re capable of.
E: I mean it makes sense. Why cave for 3 million when you have chance to get it all? On the game shows, they’d be going on all in all the time.
M: So far, minus a bunch of personal trauma, it seems like a good bet for them.
E: Minus Kang-san starving himself.
M: Kang-san does not deserve that. Go get a pumpkin porridge at the shop.
E: So, in response to their refusal, Mamma JP cracks down on their laundry business, makes sure no one will rent to them, so they sell stuff on the side of the road, but by the end of this episode, that’s ruined too.
M: Pop rice! Pop pop pop!
E: $2!!!!!
M: Can coffee!!!
E: Honestly, that’s pretty sketch. I would never buy anything from someone on the side of the road.
M: They seemed to be making a pretty nice business of it though.
E: Maybe it’s a me thing.
M: You wouldn’t buy can coffee from Kang-san?
E: Kang-san was wearing a cardboard box. I’d be little sketched out.
M: Speaking of roadside shenanigans, which mother do you think planned the run-in with Jun-pyo? Was it Mama JP trying to embarrass pop rice Jan-di? Or was it Mama Geum who was trying to orchestrate a meeting on Jun-pyo’s regular route?
E: Oh, the mind games!
M: Could it be both?
E: Maybe it was both, I don’t know. Mamma JP’s plan backfires, however, because Jun-pyo is a good person. Now.
M: Remember when we hated him?
E: How far we’ve come. Cue musical montage.
M: *Madelyn humming the theme song for montages* I’m fully Team Jun-pyo now, which is crazy. That sun-kissed smooch in the middle of the road? Come on!
E: I was glad, however, that Jan-di acknowledged that he’s kind of been a horrible person before. Because she wouldn’t promise that she wouldn’t run away, just that his mother wouldn’t be the reason. That was a nice measured response. I’m really happy she’s not just mindlessly devoted.
M: Very mature! I have to point out yet another Pride and Prejudice parallel. That kiss with the sun between their lips? Straight out of the Keira Knightley movie. Just saying.
E: I’m not arguing. I feel like this story is very heavily influenced by that kind of trope.
M: I don’t know where we go now with this relationship. There’s definitely going to be more craziness with his mom, but they’ve already agreed that’s not going to be the wedge. All that’s left otherwise is Ji-hoo, which sucks.
E: Ji-hoo, the troll.
M: Okay, so what happened in that phone call that we didn’t see any resolution for?
E: I don’t know! But I really liked that scene, for no reason. It’s nice to see a Ji-hoo that’s just straight up messing with everyone instead of a deliberately antagonistic Ji-hoo.
M: “Oh, let me use your phone?” “Is yours dead?” “Haha.” “Here’s Ga-Eul!”
E: The look on his face as he was doing it was good too. I knew he was pulling something.
M: That random moment aside, we didn’t see much of Yi-jung, or see Woo-bin at all. He’s been missing the whole episode.
E: Scheduling conflicts?
M: Other unrelated Woo-bin adventures?
E: Writing him, without comment, out of the show?
M: It’s always been F3, what are you talking about?
E: *twilight zone music*
M: I’m very concerned about Ji-hoo’s arc right now. He’s obviously still in love with Jan-di. That whole fireman BS. Miss me with that cute stuff.
E: I’m not sure where this arc would go if they ran with it, beyond what we’ve already seen in the show.
M: Diving into an early romance tracker, I think what’s going to go down is that the torture from Jun-pyo’s mom is going to get to be ridiculous, and Jun-pyo will end the relationships to save the Geums. Then Jan-di will go running to Ji-hoo for one last terrible love triangle before everything gets resolved.
E: Hmmm. I’m not totally convinced, but I’m not unconvinced either.
M: I just don’t see how we get to the end of the show without Jan-di and Ji-hoo being together one more time.
E: I am kind of surprised that we still have more than half of this season left.
M: It really feels like the endgame. Unless there’s going to be some big outside conflict in the latter half, like the Shinhwa group going under.
E: That does seem like a reasonable place to take the conflict. Once Jun-pyo’s mother is won over, ruin it with Jan-di’s family by taking the money out of the equation. A nice position shift. Plus a chance for more commoner Jun-pyo which is always delightful.
M: There’s one last major plot point from the episode to discuss, and it looks like a doozy: is Jan-di going to become like a nude model?
E: I don’t think so. It’s pretty clear at this point that this isn’t a real agency of any sort. For context to those who only read our posts, Jan-di was offered a business card from someone who came into the porridge shop. Their one customer ever. Besides fish man. For some sort of modelling thing. And after trying a job at the gas station, she decides to check it out. I think it’s just some kind of set-up. Maybe similar to what her rich friend did all those episodes ago.
M: It’s bad news. Odds are it’s Jun-pyo’s mom trying to get some compromising pictures to leak of her. Which, yikes.
E: The guy coming to the porridge shop right after she was calling all those jobs…it was a little bit too perfect timing. And as soon as I saw the paper on the window as the sign for the agency, I would have been out of there.
M: Jan-di’s pretty desperate.
E: I guess, but I feel like that’s a sign (heh) that they’re not gonna pay you as much as he seemed to promise.
M: We left Jan-di in the scary den of stuffed animals and cuddly erotica, so we’ll find out next week.
E: The next-on this week was replaced with bloopers which were wonderful.
M: Yi-jung can’t hold it together.
E: “What’s wrong with you?”
M: I can’t decide which my favorite was.
E: I really liked the one where Jun-pyo’s actor whiffed the golf ball and everybody clapped anyway.
M: They should have kept that in. I think I prefer Jun-pyo’s spit take, and then when everyone breaks he’s like “I was acting.” “You’re a good actor”
E: All of them were pretty great. The series of shots where Ji-hoo’s actor cannot get the horse to cooperate.
M: “Do you want to die for real?”
E: Oh, I didn’t even get that when he said it. Although I guess it was the other horse that died. And it didn’t die, it was just lamed. But still.
M: Still funny. I hope there are more of these to come, I heart bloopers.
E: If they replaced all the next-ons with bloopers, I would totally be okay with that.
M: We already did our romance tracker, what’s your non-romantic prediction? Other than more bloopers.
E: I don’t know! Like you said, it’s kind of hard to think about where the story will go from here. I mean, I think that whatever happens to Jan-di next will be bad but not crazy bad. I guess that’s my prediction.
M: I predict that the photographer will be Woo-bin.
E: Woo-bin joins the dark side!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My Hero Academia S2E8: Battle On, Challengers!
M: No bloopers on My Hero Academia, so, disappointment.
E: Some English dubs do release bloopers because sometimes they have trouble fitting the lip flaps.
M: That’s not as funny.
E: Well, they can’t exactly animate bloopers. They’re already dying, Madelyn.
M: I like it when animated movies do fake bloopers for the credits. And didn’t God of War have bloopers?
E: Oh, did I send that tweet? It’s glitches.
M: Basically the same thing.
E: Anyway, we run down most of the first round in this episode, excluding the tiebreaker for Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, and Bakugo and Uraraka. And that’s it, right?
M: I was so close with my prediction too. It wasn’t the beginning of the second round for the closing shot, but the end of the first.
E: Yeah, just wait ‘til you hear next episode title.
M: I’m already worried. Anyway, if I was a spectator at these games, I would have left already for a snack.
E: Well, we had two really quick ones, one medium sized one, and two incredibly drawn out ones that thankfully we didn’t watch all of.
M: All of which were incredibly boring.
E: Iida as test dummy was incredibly boring?
M: As a paying customer, looking for some children beating each other up? Yes.
E: Fair enough. You had to wait for the Kirishima and Tetsutetsu match for your fill of children beating each other up.
M: Which was also super boring, because it was just like two Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em robots.
E: In the subbed version, their intros into the ring were actually exactly the same.
M: As opposed to not the same, even though Kirishima seemed to think they were.
E: Well, the structure was the same. Two adjectives and a set up.
M: Still kind of ruined the joke. The spectators would have more fun playing Pokemon than watching these matches right now.
E: It is the first round, and some of the match-ups really feel like they’re heavily weighted to one side or the other.
M: I would have skipped this day when buying my multi-day-pass.
E: It’s only one day. Think of it like a baseball game. This is the part where everybody goes and buys hot dogs.
M: That’s fair. We got to see some of Deku acting in-character, which is cool, because it completely goes against what happened last episode.
E: The Return of Mutter Deku: The Muttering.
M: It makes no sense that he usually takes these intensely detailed notes, but when he’s literally handed a winning strategy on a silver platter, he throws it away in ten seconds.
E: Let’s try this for my justification: he has all these notes on class 1-A, and Shinso insults somebody and he just wanted to enlighten him about all his notes on Ojiro. He got too excited about it.
M: Man, I don’t know.
E: Deku clearly does have some problems controlling his verbal output, so there’s something.
M: This week’s episodes are all about pride. How dare Uraraka, who is basically the same as Jan-di trying to feed her family, right? How dare she say “nope, I don’t want your strategy to defeat the guy who placed first in our class, I wanna do it myself.”
E: I mean, it feels like cheating.
M: Why? Deku talked with Ojiro.
E: It feels like plagiarism. If she’s just gonna copy his plan as opposed to getting general advice.
M: I still think, if your goal is to become a pro hero purely to make money for your family, you’re foolish not to take it.
E: Well, if you want to be a successful pro hero who makes a lot of money, that means being self-sufficient and being able to figure things out on your own.
M: And it means being able to work with other heroes and using all the information you can get when you’re going into a fight.
E: Let’s move on, because clearly we’re not agreeing on this
M: Fine, fine. I don’t have super strong memories of most of these battles. I remember them, but they don’t feel super important.
E: Well, they’re not. So that makes sense.
M: Yeah, I know.
E: If you gave every single battle like half an episode, we’d be here forever.
M: I know! I wonder if we’ll get more of these lopsided battles in round two. Because it seems pretty arbitrary. It’s mostly type advantage.
E: Well, currently, we have Deku vs Todoroki.
M: Normal vs. Ice/Fire
E: Vine girl vs Iida.
M: Grass vs. Fighting, maybe. Hitmonlee.
E: Ashido who is the acid girl vs Tokoyami
M: Poison vs. Dark, that’ll be interesting.
E: And then we don’t know either person in the last round.
M: Okay, but Rock/Steel vs. Psychic or Fire. It’s all Pokemon, man.
E: Every show or game with powers could pretty much be Pokemon.
M: Well, I’m excited to see who makes it to the Elite Four. Too bad Misty’s already out for Class 1-B.
E: I didn’t even realize, but when you pointed it out, Kendo does look like Misty. Except with long hair.
M: You ready for Lawsuit Watch? I think it’s easy this week.
E: Boys Over Flowers?
M: Duh. Literally everyone has a case. Even Mama JP for her opening kitchen assault.
E: I feel like somebody could sue Present Mic for slander. Or just favoritism.
M: Present Mic sux.
E: He has no impartiality. I guess he’s just a commentator, not a judge, so it doesn’t particularly matter.
M: Okay, I’m ready for what will surely be a useless title.
E: Well, not useless, it does tell you what’s gonna take place. Guess it. What’s your guess?
M: Uraraka vs. Bakugo
E: Actually, it’s “Bakugo vs. Uraraka”.
M: “Do you want to die for real?”
E: So, with this stunning title in mind, what do you think will happen!
M: Man, I quit.
E: I’m ready! Lay it on me!
M: Prediction 1: Deku has a panic attack just watching this battle. And gets carpal tunnel.
E:
M: Prediction 2: Class 1-A splits into factions with rival cheers. Such as “Ur ra ROCK YA WORLD.”
E: That’s a good cheer.
M: Or “Ba Ku GO TO THE TOP!”
E: Those are some great cheers that would work great for an English dub.
M: I’m sure there are similar options in Japanese.
E:
M: Prediction 3: I have to call who wins, don’t I? I feel like things have been going too well for Deku and Crew, DeKrew if you will, so I think that Uraraka is going to lose.
E:
M: But, prediction 3a: I think there’s a slim chance that she loses because Bakugo really hurts her, so they’re both out, and we have a Tetsu Squared and Kirishima rematch in round two in lieu of the tiebreaker.
E: My prediction for the crowd:
M: Prediction four: Present Mic and Aizawa get into a commentary fight about how to talk about students respectfully.
E:
M: And final prediction: Mineta says something gross.
E: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
–
Thanks for hanging out with us on Split Screen and watching along on Boys Over Flowers and My Hero Academia. If you want to jump in, we’re checking Boys Over Flowers on Netflix and the My Hero Academia dub on Hulu. Catch up, they’re great, I swear!
Next time! My favorite episode of the sports festival arc (I know, I’m controversial) is here for MHA, and Boys Over Flowers delves deeper into threatening family drama and weird rooms with stuffed animals. Hopefully, there’s more bloopers! See ya then!