Split Screen: You Ain’t the Sharpest Tool in the Shed

Thanks for tuning in to Split Screen! It’s your intro host Madelyn, psyched for another great episode and a half from the all-star line-up of Boys Over Flowers and My Hero Academia. This week, we’ve got major second-hand anxiety from the My Hero Academia final exams and Jan-di’s fifteen different side hustles. Brew yourself a cup of tea, grab a chocolate bar or three, and get comfortable, because the stress levels are about to go off the charts for everyone’s favorite k-drama and anime high schoolers.

(New to Split Screen? You have been missing out! Catch up on all the drama here.)

Boys Over Flowers Episode 17 (up to minute 33)

M: This was a sad episode. I wasn’t in the right emotional place for a sad episode today.

E: Our video player was also not in the right place for such an emotional episode.

M: It could only handle ten seconds at a time without sobbing a bit.

E: But yeah, this episode was very focused on how Jan-di is killing herself slowly through stress.

M: In the immortal words of Smashmouth *Clickbait Boyfriend has a laughing fit in the background* “the hits start coming and they don’t stop coming”

E: Honestly the laughing fit in the background there is funnier than that quote is by itself.

M: Hey now.

E: But she’s really taking everything on herself as she takes over her parents’ jobs, attempts to study to get into medical school, and also deals with all the romantic drama for this episode. And previous ones.

M: She’s also nursing a chronic shoulder injury, which I had completely forgotten about during the Macau arc.

E: I’m actually surprised the show remembered! I was sort of just thinking they were using it as a way to stop filming swimming and that’d be it.

M: It was a nice way to explain why Jan-di seemed like she had never cleaned before, because obviously her parents aren’t the ones keeping their house clean.

E: Meanwhile Ji-hoo is, of course, the master of window cleaning since his house is entirely made up of windows and weird cage-like grate things.

M: Doesn’t it explain a lot about Ji-hoo that he sleeps in a cage room?

E: You know, it really does. I’m not as sure about the complete lack of privacy in his bedroom which seems somewhat out of character for him, but you know.

M: More importantly, the fact that he leaves his door unlocked is an issue.

E: Yeah, lock your door man! I guess he had just let the doctor out, and then went to check on unconscious Jan-di, so maybe he just hadn’t gotten the chance to lock it yet.

M: Doesn’t everyone have it in their muscle memory? I lock my door without even thinking about it, even when I purposefully intend to leave it unlocked!

E: But I mean, he didn’t see the doctor to the door, the doctor just left. And I’m assuming the doctor does not have a key to the house.

M: Fair enough. Jun-pyo could easily have a key to Ji-hoo’s place, so it doesn’t really matter.

E: Speaking of that, I’m not a fan of the “person in exact wrong place at wrong time” trope that they picked up so enthusiastically this episode.

M: Yeah, that hasn’t been a major element of the show up to this point, to its credit. It turned out for the best in only one situation: when Ji-hoo walked into the ladies room, again, and found Jan-di in mortal peril.

E: Okay, at least he tried calling first.

M: He definitely learned from the first time. He’s growing. I’m impressed.

E: The other two times it happens is when Ji-hoo is giving a slightly weirdly long kiss to Jan-di’s hand and Jun-pyo walks in and then leaves without saying anything and when Jun-pyo kisses his fiancee in an attempt to make her leave him alone and Jan-di sees.

M: This episode was so painful, man.

E: I’m a little concerned that it feels like it’s spinning its wheels here in some ways. Like it’s stuck in this holding pattern where Jae-kyung doesn’t know about the drama whatsoever and neither Jun-pyo or Jan-di is really in a place to reach out to each other.

M: It’s going to break open when Jae-kyung finds out. I hope you’re right that it happens in the second half of this episode. I can’t believe she didn’t see the love graffiti on that same apparently mandatory sky-view first date.

E: Nobody else has either because it’s lived there without getting wiped up for more than a year now, so fair play.

M: Poor Jan-di is not going to survive medical school. If she’s already at the point where she’s passing out from stress and getting nosebleeds, residency is going to be a rude awakening.

E: If all she had to worry about in medical school was medical school, I think she could do it and be fine. Right now she has like fifty worries at once, which is probably contributing to her health problems.

M: So, can we talk about how Jae-kyung is the worst?

E: I just feel bad for her. I’m not annoyed by her, I think she’s a very sheltered person who is trying to make something happy out of a very unhappy Jun-pyo because she wants her permanent future relationship to be one that’s loving and not just for business. It’s not her fault that that can’t happen here.

M: I just want her to have some self-respect. I get that she’s trying to make the best of a weird situation, but it’s so obvious that he is not interested. Even the kiss, for example. She had to tell him that she’ll leave him alone from now on in order to get even a pathetic, robotic peck from him, and she still chases after him like a spaniel. It’s so sad.

E: Exactly. It’s sad. But for what’s under her own control, she’s trying to get on the good side of someone she’s being forced to live the rest of her life with. Because she can’t end that relationship, so she’s really trying to make it a good one.

M: Here’s the thing though: I don’t think her parents would make her go through with it if she really didn’t want to.

E: We know nothing about her parents, honestly. So that’s a presumptuous statement to make.

M: They’ve let her get away with everything her entire life. I think this is going to come back as an exit strategy.

E: Well, what if they say: “hey daughter, we’ve let you get away with everything your whole life, so you have to marry this guy.”

M: I get that, but the scene with the Gu family convinced me that Shinhwa needs this marriage much more desperately than the JK Group does.

E: I only think they would end it if Jun-pyo did something embarrassing though.

M: I think it’s a slim chance, but it hadn’t occurred to me before that her parents might be loving.

E: I think it’s more likely that Jun-pyo does something drastic (ideally with her knowledge beforehand) in order to make himself undesirable. I think that’s how it gets dissolved.

M: Alternately, maybe Gu unnie can do something crazy that makes the family undesirable, but doesn’t sully Jun-pyo or ruin the business.

E: She threw down with her mother, so she could do anything.

M: I’m excited for her to come into her own as a bad-ass supporting character.

E: Besides the romantic stuff, we also got a bit of background on Ji-hoo’s grandfather which didn’t really answer any questions about their situation, but was cute!

M: I loved the home movie. I wish we could hear more about why Grandpa thinks he’s responsible for his son’s death, but hopefully that’s coming soon.

E: We seem to have some Jan-di and Ji-hoo adventures coming up in the next part of the episode, so I would be surprised if they don’t go more into that.

M: A few other favorite tidbits: still as psyched as ever that F3 is strongly #TeamJandi. They were stone cold to Jae-kyung. Ji-hoo couldn’t even wave.

E: Ji-hoo literally said nothing during that entirely exchange. Woo-bin said “hi” and Yi-jung said like “yes” or something, but Ji-hoo just stared them down with his arms crossed.

M: Keep it up boys. Last but not least: Jan-di is an otter.

E: What a weird animal to pick.

M: I get it, but it’s a weird thing to say to someone..

E: So very in-character.

M: Hit me with your Romance Tracker thoughts.

E: Like you mentioned, I think that the Jan-di/Jun-pyo relationship will come to light for Jae-kyung by the end of the episode but that we won’t see what impact this has until episode 18.

M: My prediction is a little off the wall, but Ji-hoo named dropped Seo-hyun again. The fact that she’s getting mentioned by name indicates to me that we haven’t seen the last of her. I don’t know whether she ends up as Ji-hoo’s final love interest. I doubt it, but I do think she’ll be back.

E: I really hope not, because there were some creepy implications in that relationship.

M: Agreed, but hopefully she’ll help him come to a moment of clarity or something.

E: My non-romantic prediction was that we’d hear more about granddaddy Ji-hoo, and that he probably feels responsible because he like sent them on a business trip or something.

M: That seems plausible. I think Jan-di is going to need to turn to someone unexpected for help getting into medical school. Not sure who yet. Maybe granddaddy, if he’s licensed?

E: Woo-bin, the crime lord.

M: I was going to say Woo-bin, but I thought that would be too much.

E: I just want Woo-bin to be important.

My Hero Academia S2E21: Gear Up for Final Exams

M: Where were all the funnies in the internship episode? Why did they save them for here?

E: The funnies?

M: This episode and the last one were so much more amusing than the original intern one that was basically meant to be filler.

E: Yeah, I really like the parts where the kids are just in school doing school things, I don’t think there’s enough of it in the series.

M: It’s literally titled My Hero Academia, false advertising.

E: Well, I mean in comparison to like their hero training and their final exams (technically still “academia” since it’s their school life), I like the part where they’re just chilling in their classroom. So it’s not that they don’t learn enough, I just don’t think there’s enough kids being kids time.

M: I second that. All of them stressing about exams told me more about the characters than practically the whole rest of the season.

E: We got to know all their midterm ranks. Juicy gossip.

M: Mineta, and it pains me to say this, is the Champ McDude of his class. No one ever expects him to do well, and he does.

E: He’s also all about the women and a bit more confident than he probably should be. So it really works.

M: He’s a witty guy, what can I say? I’m also obsessed with Momo’s high tea study group. Where was that when I was in high school?

E: You weren’t friends with enough intensely rich people apparently.

M: I could have been too, that’s the thing. Missed opportunity.

E: That whole excursion to the Yaoyorozu estate was a fun little adventure.

M: All of them studying was so character specific. Bakugo yelling in a diner. Iida frickin’ power walking while he studies. Very real.

E: Deku was also doing those grip strength training things whilst studying which seemed right to me.

M: That was always my thing in school. Treadmill and memorize. I can sympathize with Deku’s plan.

E: Madelyn knows that these are very real because she also makes her student power walk to diners where she yells at them while training her grip strength.

M: If I could get away with that, you know I would.

E: But the written exam is just one part of the finals, and you’ve got to get a good enough score across the written and practical in order to avoid summer school and get to go to the fun training camp instead.

M: Can the written portion save you from a terrible practical? If I ace the written half, is there any possibility that I fail overall? How is this weighted?

E: I guess it’s probably half and half and so like if you got a 0 on the practical but a 100 on the written, you’d still fail at least by American standards.

M: It’s impossible to get a zero on this practical. You’d have to faint and die before taking a step.

E: Well, at least Kirishima is in some danger because he has failed the practical and was previously 15th in the class based on midterms. So, it all comes down to how effective the Bakugo brand of tutoring is.

M: Do you think he got less than a 50% on the practical though?

E: I don’t know, but he definitely failed- whatever that percentage is. They didn’t really even put up a particularly good effort. They just continued to do the same thing that wasn’t working through the whole test.

M: Yeah, but for a pretty long time, relative to their weaknesses. I’m just saying, if he could manage a 50% on the practical, he would only have to do a decent job on the written exam to break 60% or so.

E: I just said he’s in a precarious spot not that he’s definitely failed.

M: I know, I’m just intrigued by how the grading works.

E: Madelyn was insistent that there was no way they were learning math.

M: When have they had time? More importantly, which of these heroes is qualified to teach math?

E: Somebody is! We also had the weird localization thing where somebody said they were struggling in like traditional Japanese. When they speak English!

M: Oh, that didn’t even cross my mind. Champ was having trouble with Japanese on his finals too.

E: It’s not as bad as when people are like “Man, wish I could speak English better,” but still a little funny.

M: That guy from Class 1-B…what is wrong with him?

E: I don’t know. He had a bit of a point this episode though, in saying: “man, your class really causes trouble, what happens when you cause trouble for people outside your class?” Which if I was a student at that school, I’d be constantly concerned about hearing the exploits of class 1-A and hoping they don’t come near me with their hand crushing curses or whatever.

M: I get it. I had to retake the college alcohol course because someone in the theatre department jumped off a roof at a party I did not even attend. I get the concern about other classes impacting your life. But taking your finals stress out on other people with unnecessarily cruelty is not very heroic.

E: That’s just his aesthetic. He’s crafted his image now.

M: Thank goodness Misty’s there to keep him in line.

E: Even if she was woefully misinformed about the contents of the practical exam. It was not robots again, much to the disappointment of Pikachu and Acid Girl.

M: Ekans?

E: Sure, why not? But they’re working in pairs against their teachers! Dun dun dun!

M: I was so disappointed that the final wasn’t purely Aizawa spying on the class to see how they were preparing for the final.

E: It does sort of factor in there, because he was spying in order to craft the final to be the most difficult and useful for the students.

M: I know, but I wish he just called them all together and said “You get an A! Good flashcards!”

E: That’s how All-Might would have done a final.

M: Too real. Speaking of which, I don’t know who allowed All-Might to be paired with Deku. He’s shown time and again that he can’t be unbiased.

E: It’s a balancing act I guess. You get All-Might who likes Deku to fight him, but you also pair him with Bakugo who hates Deku so you balance out to something approaching impartial.

M: I guess. I’m interested to see how these pairs go down, even if I couldn’t really see who was paired with whom #bufferingproblems

E: Well, as we sort of discussed, this episode we got Sugar Man and Kirishima vs Cementos. And then the beginning of Froppy and Tokoyami versus the guy Madelyn thinks is scary: Ectoplasm. I can’t remember the rest off the top of my head, but I guess it’ll just be fun surprises for you.

M: Ectoplasm’s whole power is that he’s scary, so don’t shade me.

E: No, he can make clones…with his ectoplasm I guess. What is ectoplasm?

M: Twenty times more effective because he’s scary looking.

E: Anything else stick out to you this episode?

M: I think everyone is going to fail.

E: We’re not to predictions yet. I thought the weird little news broadcast with Mt. Lady and Midnight was a weird little bit of world building.

M: I loved that Midnight was trying to be a feminist about her costume, and Mt. Lady was just like “you’re a whore.”

E: Yeah, that’s basically how the convo went down.

M: Rejoice, Mineta.

E: Okay then, since you’re raring to go, are you ready for the next episode title?

M: I mean, I think I know what it’s going to be about, but go for it.

E: Okay, the title is “Yaoyorozu: Rising”

M: Oh weird, that’s like a Zuko Alone thing.

E: Yaoyorozu is rich tea girl by the way, in case you don’t know.

M: I know that! I do know like half of their names, seventy-five percent of the time.

E: Just checking! Had to be fair to you.

M: I was not expecting such a solo-focused title.

E: Throws your prediction game off.

M: Who is she paired with again?

E: She and Todoroki are fighting Eraser Head.

M: Well, we all know that Eraser Head sucks, so they’ve got an easy final.

E:

M: Just kidding, he just can’t handle groups, so it’ll be a little more balanced.

E:

M: I guess that was part of prediction one. They’re obviously going to kick his ass. More specifically, Todoroki will do “okay,” but have some kind of zen mental breakdown in the middle. Momo is gonna save the day. Honestly, she’ll probably be the only one who goes to training camp.

E:

M: How many predictions was that?

E: Like seven.

M: Cool, prediction two: Mineta and Tape Man do weirdly well against Midnight. Mineta has studied up on her powers, in great detail.

E: ლ(▀̿̿Ĺ̯̿̿▀̿ლ)

M: He’s ready to brawl. Prediction three: Deku roasts everybody from the control room but then All-Might accidentally breaks his face. Who’s laughing now?

E: That’s why Recovery Girl said she had her work cut out for her, because she would be treating so many Deku-inflicted burns.

M: Just hit me with an emoji. Do your job.

E:

M: Perfect. Prediction four: having all of the teachers in engaged in final exams at the same time leaves the school weirdly vulnerable to villain attack. Just saying.

E:

M: I don’t really think it’ll happen, but it could, and they really need to beef up security. Prediction five: I dunno, Deku and Uraraka are probably gonna smooch now that Recovery Girl is gone.

E:

M: That’s how Deku will learn that love neutralizes his powers!

E:

–

Hey everybody, Emma here! As always, thanks for following along on Split Screen. We are approaching the endgame of Boys Over Flowers and season 3 of My Hero Academia and I’m extremely hyped for both these things. If you want to jump in, we’re doing Boys Over Flowers on Netflix and My Hero Academia on Hulu (dubbed).

Next time! We introduce a ton of new plot threads on Boys Over Flowers and Momo and Todoroki fight the patriarchy together.