“Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter” is TvN’s newest Monday-Tuesday drama premiered right after the finale of a “100 Days My Prince“. this drama takes on a familiar Korean folklore story… with a twist!
Synopsis
The drama tells the story of a fairy named Sun Ok Nam, who came down from heaven to bathe in the Gyeryong waterfall with her sisters. While taking a bath a woodcutter took her fairy clothes and hid them, so now it is impossible for Sun Ok Nam to return to heaven. She then married the woodcutter but he died when he fell off a cliff, when her husband died Sun Ok Nam tries to find her clothes to return to heaven, but can not find them, so her only hope is to wait for her husband to reincarnate.
Today, Sun Ok Nam is the humble owner of a cafe in the Gyeryong Mountain, after 699 years of waiting she receives two men in her cafe and immediately has the feeling that one of them is her reincarnated husband.
Casting
Moon Chae Won and Go Doo Shim as Sun Ok Nam
She is the owner of the Gyeryong mountain coffee, she has waited 699 years for the reincarnation of her husband, Sun Ok Nam has the appearance of an old woman to most people, but some individuals are able to see her true appearance as a beautiful woman, she has a great connection with nature for being a fairy and two children she had with the woodcutter, a young girl who reincarnated as a tiger in her actual life and an unborn egg, Ok Nam misses her husband dearly so when she notices traits from her husband in one of the clients of her coffee shop, she follows them all the way to Seul.
Yoon Hyun Min as Jung Yi Hyun
A professor at Lee Won University, he has an obsession with cleanliness, so he can’t stand to be touched or his belongings by other people, especially not animals or bugs. After having the strange encounter with Sun Ok Nam at the Gyeryong mountain waterfall, Jung Yi Hyun is convinced that the owner of the mountain coffee shop is actually a Gumiho (a nine tail fox). He is an eccentric and demanding man but shows appreciation for his student and assistant Kim Geum to the point of accompanying him to visit his mother at the Gyeryong village.
Seo Ji Hoon as Kim Geum
Student and teacher’s assistant of Jung Yi Hyun, a naive but applied young man, the pride of his mother and his village, he is very attentive and open-minded to the supernatural, after having the encounter with the fairy in the waterfall of the mountain of Gyeryong, he can not help but think of the beautiful woman he saw, and believes that it is a gumiho, not long after that he encounters again Sun Ok Nam in Seoul where she herself clarifies that she is, in fact, a fairy and not a gumiho.
Kang Mi Na as Jeom Soon Yi
Sun Ok Nam’s eldest daughter, she reincarnated as a tiger in her present life, although she is mostly seen as a cat, but she can hide her shape as that of a pretty young girl, she usually writes rather passionate stories in her laptop, so when she has lewd thoughts her shape gets out of control showing the appearance of a girl with tiger-like characteristics such as tail and whiskers. Like the child she is, she is very excited to meet her father, so she accompanies her mother on her journey to Seoul in the search of her father.
First impression
Firstly, let us know the original tale a bit…
A woodcutter was doing his chores in the forest, when a deer appeared to him and asked the woodcutter to save him because the hunters wanted to kill him, the woodcutter agreed to protect the deer, once safe, the deer reveals to be a spirit of the forest and offers the woodcutter a reward for saving his life, in response the woodcutter tells him that he wants to marry but have not found a wife.
As a solution to his problem, the deer take the woodcutter to a certain lake, where once a month the fairies come down to bathe, to marry one of them, the woodcutter stole one of the tunics that would allow the fairy to fly and return to heaven. The fairy when seeing that her other sisters return home and she remains alone because she can not finding her tunic, she cries and the woodcutter tells her he will return the tunic if she marries him and gives him three children to which she agrees. Eventually, the fairy sees her sisters again and begs the woodcutter to return her tunic to her so that she can go back to heaven with her sisters, he agrees and allows her to go with her two children.
The tale is a bit longer than that, but I think that is all we need to know, clearly the drama decided to take a somewhat different course from the original story, in the original that marriage seemed forced and cruel for the fairy (in my opinion), also, the fairy gets her tunics back and returns to heaven, while in this version the fairy is still on earth because her husband dies before he can (or wants to) tell her where her tunic is, leaving her alone with her two children, one not yet born and a young girl who accompanies her wherever she goes. On the other hand, in the drama, the reason why the fairy loses her tunic may not be the same as in the original story, and the drama will reveal the secret hidden behind the waterfall in which the fairies bathe.
The premise of the drama sells us a romantic triangle but the flashback of the story already indicates who between the two men is the woodcutter, and although I want to be correct in my deductions about the husband (I have a favorite one ;)), for the effects of the drama I want to see a real love triangle, that type where not even the audience can pick a man because they’re both amazing. On the other hand in the first episode we can see that Sun Ok Nam is not the only celestial being on earth and knows at least two, the eccentric owner of the small university coffee stand, and Professor Goo, so maybe we will have some drama complications in the future with celestial beings which would be very interesting to see.
Additionally, did you saw this girl?…
Adorable! I knew the cat was human when it appeared (or the human is actually a tiger?), but when she transformed into a girl a couldn’t help but to chuckle, she is so cute, her personality mixes so well with that of a cat, I’m sure Kang Mi Na will be the source of many funny moments in the drama. About the male leads, Yoon Hyun Min and Seo Ji Hoon, they’re both handsome men, but they have seen the fairy or interact with her so little that I’m not sure about their chemistry yet, naturally, is still too early to say anything but, I hope this drama to be decent so far, not amazing but decent. What do you think? give us your thoughts of the first two episodes for TvN new drama “Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter“.