Korean Drama Squee: Healer

In Which We Imagine Future Happiness / The Ideal Season 2

Angela: I don’t need a second season per se, I’m not usually into additional seasons for kdramas. But I kind of want an extra-long holiday special. Just of young shin and jung hoo reporting for moon ho.

Jung hoo’s minion being the new healer for ajumma.

Everyone being a FAMILY at the coffee shop, digging up old pictures and memories, and I ESPECIALLY need them to react to that picture jung hoo’s mom had of jung hoo and young shin draped all over each other sleeping as kids.

Myeung hee doing like young shin’s (adoptive) dad and reporting by day, working in the coffee shop as second hobby, turning it into the cafe you go to for fancy food.

Actual marshmallow Jung Hoo.

Tatiana: That would be absolutely perfect. Healer rocked at drawing out the relationships and making them different but equally believable and important

Angela: They had that minor side story with moon ho’s ex and maybe them reconnecting? And I’d be happy for him if he’s happy, but that’s not really what I wanted the time spent on. Who cares about stilted-but-hopeful conversations with his ex; Moon ho promised to tell Jung hoo and Young Shin more stories about their past over some beers. THAT’S the content I want to see. EVEN MOAR familial reconnecting!

Tatiana: Yesssssss please. A Christmas special should do it, haha, but no more because you wanna go out on a high note.

Angela: Yeah. And it’s a little late now, too. A lot of dramas have special episodes, but they’re usually just like bts stuff. Still, we can dream.

Tatiana: Overall it was a nearly perfect story, so I forgive.

Angela: That would be a perfect place to end this, except for the fact that we haven’t discussed one of the best parts:

In Which We Love On Hacker Ajumma*

*(ajumma meaning this)

Angela: I feel that police officer guy in my soul, in terms of how he is immediately so happy about finding hacker ajumma/his sunbae again and has been carrying this torch for her for like 10 years, b/c i am obsessed with her too.

List of her awesome:
-She’s the one in charge, Jung-hoo is kind of just her goon

-She acts annoyed that Jung-hoo wants to be normal (and fires him because a “normal” person can’t be the healer), but secretly she is happy for him and is totally the show’s biggest jung-hoo/young-shin shipper

-She lives off kimbap

-She basically wears her jammies to work but seriously dresses up to go out

-Everything, really

Tatiana: Awww, she really is my lowkey fave. She’s just so resourceful and also so warm? Like, for a hacker who basically lives in seclusion, she’s actually weirdly personable lol.

And I’m terrible because I can’t remember the assistant’s (and next healer) name, but I LOVE her. What a well-adjusted, precious child.

Ajumma requires all applicants for the position of Healer to leap about on rooftops.

Angela: They barely use her name, Jung hoo just calls her minion most of the time, lol. *has to look up her name* Dae Young.

I agree, ajumma is so personable! She makes an interesting contrast to Jung hoo in that way, because she chose the healer life, whereas he didn’t (and he abandons it the second he gets the chance).

I love ajumma squawking at Dae Young trying to train her. “This is why you’re supposed to parkour over rooftops like Jung hoo, not walk down the street like a normal person!” lol.

Yes, ajumma, Jung hoo did it better, but Jung hoo basically did nothing else all day while he was trained for years by a crazed loner. Basically, he Batman and Robin’d into it.

Tatiana: Lol!!!! Yup.

Angela: We do get that bit of backstory to ajumma as to why she chose to live this way, but her traumatic origin story is basically so horrifying to me that my brain shrivels away from contemplating it.

Tatiana: I don’t want to contemplate Ajumma’s backstory because I only like to think happy things for her.

Angela: me too! so like when i have my analytical pants on i really appreciate that, although without the contrast to jung hoo’s lack of choice i think it would upset me more, just one more “fridged the family for a hero’s tragic origin story” trope.

So let’s think about happier ajumma things! I LOVE how FANCY she dresses when she goes out. Like the scene where she and teacher randomly dress up like they’re at the Kentucky Derby or something and are eating at that dramatically beautiful cafe. It was so especially fantastic for the utter lack of specifics as to WHY they were meeting up at such a posh place, rather than having the conversation over the phone.

Tatiana: No one likes phone conversations in real life anyway, and you can’t do a whole drama through text. May as well go visit some fancy party.

When recluses go out, they go out in style.

Angela: True, true. It just further served to underscore that choice that both ajumma and teacher have made to live apart from society. But jung hoo didn’t have that choice, and young shin almost didn’t. And poor moon ho caught in the middle, going through the motions of a normal life for decades until the past is finally resolved.

Tatiana: Ooh, I hadn’t thought of it like that. Ajumma and Teacher have plenty of opportunities yet choose to do this with their lives, but Jung hoo didn’t feel he had a choice in the matter.

Angela: For many years Jung Hoo literally didn’t have a choice, let alone being raised in such a way to make him believe he didn’t. His mother straight up abandoned him.

Tatiana: Yeah, jung hoo’s mom was… special.

Angela: Later she says that she left him so she could go around trying to clear his father’s name, but then why didn’t she take him back? She must have known when her mother died, known he had nowhere to live, and even then, nothing.

Tatiana: Jung hoo’s story is so sad 😩 thank god he got a happy and satisfying ending, and it didn’t feel rushed or unearned

Angela: Yessss definitely. I wish we’d had a beat at the end with his mom, that she got to meet young shin again or something.

Tatiana: Christmas special we will never see: all about jung hoo’s mom. I guess that’s what fanfic is for… Is Healer fanfic a thing?

Angela: It probably is. Send us all your post-Healer happytimes fanfic, people! And that’s probably a good place for us to end, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwbwmYi0nlo