Saturday, September 11, 2010

My Girlfriend is a Nine-Tailed Fox: Episode 1

My Girlfriend is a Nine-Tailed Fox > Episode 1 [Watch it]
The first episode of the show shows Mi-ho waiting patiently for Cha Dae-woong outside the school campus, looking lovely and chipper. The moment she spots Dae-woong, she waves enthusiastically and calls out to him. Instead of being glad to see her, he immediately whirls around and starts walking the other way.

Mi-ho comes at him with supernatural speed from the opposite direction. When she catches up with him, he gives the excuse of not having seen her. Despite her sunny innocence with which she accepts his excuse, she adds with complete earnestness, “Well I’m sure if you didn’t want to die, you wouldn’t have lied and pretended to not hear me, right?” Which goes to show she's not that naive.

Immediately after accepting his excuse, Mi-ho grabs Dae-woong’s hand and leads him to her “very special discovery”. On route to her special discovery, every man who see her on campus goes gaga - beauty being a typical characteristic of the gumiho, having an especially alluring aura that captivates men. Therefore, Dae-woong is the envy of every guy on campus… only he would beg to differ.

Soon they arrive at the "special discovery": a restaurant has just killed a cow and is serving the freshly killed cow, and she’s just dying to eat some. This is a common routine for them, however today Dae-woong decides to put a stop to her demands, claiming that he can’t afford beef!

At his outright refusal, Mi-ho raises her eyebrows skeptically, and leans in close to whisper, “Then I’ll want to eat you.” That instantly makes Dae-woong cower. Mi-ho than starts to sing a little ditty, “Fox, fox, what’s up? I’m eating rice. What are you eating it with? Some Dae-woong side dishes! Did he die? Did he live?” Dae-woong gulps fearfully, and she declares, “He lived!”, running off exuberantly to eat some beef.

Then there is a flashback of what happened previously of how Dae-woong ended up in this predicament.

The scene cuts to the action school where Dae-woong is recording an action sequence with the aid of his buddies. Unlike his timidity in the opening scene, he displays a strong, masculine energy as he swoops across the gym on wires, brandishing a sword menacingly while his buddies hold on to the wires. He wants the recording to become a success story when he posts it online.

He uses his status and acts like a leader. After the shooting, he buys everyone ice cream just like he’s the star of a drama treating the staff. He also brags about the movie role he has almost got — he’s a finalist and his last audition is coming up.

In a bid to look good for his last audition, he goes to his grandfather’s hair salon, bringing along his buddies Sun-nyeo and Byung-soo, promising them free perms as well. Just as he gets his own hair set in anticipation of his audition, the Grandpa arrives (manager of the hair salon called in Grandpa), who berates Dae-woong abusing his status as the owner’s grandson once again.

Just as Grandpa is berating him, Dae-woong hastily pretends he’s going to pay this time... Only to speed away on his flashy new motorcycle, which was paid for with the tuition money given by Grandpa. Not to be outwitted, Grandpa reported the bike as stolen. As a result, Dae-woong is soon pulled over by a cop and ends up in jail. At this point in time however, all he can worry about is whether his hair will be over-permed.

Being more lenient than her father, Aunt Min-sook bails him out and sides with Dae-woong. But Grandpa is determined to straighten Dae-woong out, and announces that he’s sending him off to a rigorous academy to get some education.

Despite Dae-woong protests, Grandpa is unmoved, saying that until Dae-woong becomes a person (meaning, a mature adult), he’s grounded. Dae-woong offers one shoe as assurance that he won’t run away. This action buys him a little space when they drop by a rest station. On the pretext of going to the toilet, Dae-woong hides himself in an empty garbage bag. When Grandpa cannot find him, he assumes Dae-woong fled out the window. Grandpa yells in frustration, and Dae-woong escapes by sneaking onto the back of a grocery delivery truck.

The ride in the truck lands Dae-woong somewhere along a mountain road. By this time the weather has turned dark and rain, so he attempts to hitch-hike. A car stops, the driver is a monk, who brings him along to the temple (where Mi-ho is trapped in the painting) and puts him up for the night at the temple.

Wanting to contact his is aunt Min-sook, Dae-woong borrows the monk's cell phone and tries to guess her phone number. As the phone reception is weak, he holds up the phone and wanders into the woods in search of a stronger signal.

His quest for a stronger phone signal takes him to the isolated temple that houses the painted scroll in which Mi-ho is trapped. He finally finds reception just outside the building but gets a wrong number, the recipient (which happens to be Mi-ho) asks him not to hang up. As she the comment that he looks better with his hat off, Dae-woong looks at his phone with growing dread; the phone’s battery has died, but the voice is coming from it.

Spooked, he starts to edge away from the entrance of the isolated temple, but Mi-ho warns him that if he runs, there will be consequences and he would not want that to happen. Mi-ho invites him inside and directs him to the scroll, telling him to draw nine tails on the fox. He futilely attempts to refuse, but she orders him to hurry, so with a lot of misgivings, he starts to draw the tails. As he draws, the skies start to thunder and the watchdog barks furiously. Realizing that something is wrong, the monks hurry to the gumiho’s temple.

Finally, Dae-woong finishes drawing, and Mi-ho is free. The ongoing storm freaks Dae-woong out, so he runs out of the temple, only to end up falling down a rocky hillside; knocked unconscious.

Mi-ho finds him decides to save him. She reasons that since he drew the tails for her, he could become useful, so she she may as well save him. So she leans over and breathes a mystical energy into Dae-woong, her “fox bead”, her nine tails gleaming in the moonlight.

It is morning and Dae-woong finds himself in an odd position: hanging on a high tree branch, only remembering he fell down the mountainside. He doesn’t recognize Mi-ho as she approaches. However, a few key phrases trigger Dae-woong’s memory, he realizes she was the girl on the phone. Thinking that she is a ghost, he freaks out, but confirms she is human when he touches her cheek.

Believing that she was playing a prank on him the night before, he attempts to leadsher back to the temple to confess about the scroll, thinking that it was mere vandalism.As Mi-ho tells her story, Dae-woong interprets her being locked up by her grandmother (in the painting) and not wanted to go back as she’s a troublemaker who is serving punishment.

When she introduces herself as a gumiho, Dae-woong concludes that she is crazy. He retorts that she should have nine tails, and she answers that they’re only visible in moonlight. She also mentions that she helped him too, how her "fox bead" she gave him is healing him and the reason why he is no in pain. She reaches under his shirt to point it out, but he quickly pushes her aside, convinced she’s literally insane.

Fed-up Dae-woong heads off on his own leaving Mi-ho, and ends up encountering a ferocious pig. However, despite Dae-woong’s wish to be rid of the crazy girl, he can’t just leave her to the pig’s mercies and he comes back to get her. Although she’s not scared of it, he grabs her hand and starts running.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Dong-joo, who apparently is a Gumiho Hunter, makes his appearance at the temple...

They manage to go to a nearby town, where Dae-woong separates from Mi-ho and sells a necklace for some cash. He concludes that if Grandpa pays his school tuition, he is safe to return home. So he calls his school and gets confirmation that the tuition has been paid, signifying he is free to return to Seoul. Nearby, Mi-ho's keen ears pick up the details of his phone call, and starts to follow him.

Assuming that he can ditch her easily as she doesn’t know anything about him, he is shocked when she calls out his name. She then goes on to recite a list of his personal details, asking him to buy her lunch. He takes her to a nearby grill restaurant, where she eagerly anticipates her first taste of meat in 500 years. She almost takes a bite of raw meat, but controls herself to appear human.

He excuses himself to go to the bathroom, but slips away, rationalizing that he repaid her by buying her lunch. When he doesn’t return, Mi-ho goes off in search of him in the bathroom,. In the bathroom, she marvels at all the chairs in the bathroom, opening the lid of one "porcelain throne", she decides that it’s a well! And she happens to be thirsty…

Thankfully, she decides that although the well is pretty, it is not very clean. At this juncture, the meat she was eating drops into the bowl. In her desperate attempt to retrieve her meat, she ends up accidentally flushing it away. Just as she is about to reach into the bowl to retrieve it, she catches the scent of her pursuers in the air (the monk, Dong-joo, and policemen) and hurries away.

There’s a silly scene involving Aunt Min-sook: she farts in an empty shopping mall elevator and panics because the smell remains the unventilated elevator. The doors open to let in another mysterious man, who pretends not to notice the smell. Soon the door opens at another floor, and two ladies get on the elevator. They start to gag, and the mysterious takes the blame for Aunt Min-sook. Aunt Min-sook is very touched at the gesture, and nods a thank-you in his direction.

Now back to Dae-woong, who is eager to take the next bus back to Seoul. He thinks Mi-ho was stalking him and does not believe her explanation that she followed his scent. He sneers at her story and mocks her explanation of being a gumiho, his meanness hurting her feelings in the process. In a hardened tone, Mi-ho vows to get him to believe her, and when she finds him, he's dead.

He takes the bus back to Seoul and heads to the action school, but he’s filled with paranoia, imagining Mi-ho lurking around every corner waiting to pounce on him. He meets up with his friends Sun-nyeo and Byung-soo with relief when he see no sign of Mi-ho. The former, eager to please her crush, gives Dae-woong keys to the building so he can spend the night there.

It’s only now that Dae-woong sees the injury to his back,recalling Mi-ho’s explanation of her fox bead’s power. Dae-woong starts to confide his strange experience to Byung-soo, hat he met a crazy girl who called herself a gumiho, then recalls that she made him promise not to tell. Byung-soo warns him (half-jokingly, of course) that if a gumiho tells you not to tell, you’d better not tell or risk death.

Troubled by what Byung-soo said, Dae-woong tries to calm don by shooting some hoops. But just as the ball rolls away from him, it rolls back.... and many more balls start rolling toward him, of their own accord. From the shadows emerges Mi-ho, who has tracked him.

She reminds him that she said she’s a gumiho, and looks up at the sky . She announces that the moon is about to come out. She steps into the moonbeam as the moon us revealed when the clouds part, when she faces him, there are nine mystical tails floating in the air behind her. Stunned, Dae-woong gapes. Mi-ho tells him, “I am a gumiho. Give me back my fox bead.” With that, she approaches him and leans in to retrieve it… [Watch it]

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