May I Help You: Episodes 15-16 (Final)
by Unit
If you were shocked by last week’s reveal, I’m pleased to inform you that you haven’t seen anything yet. Brace yourself to be even more shocked, and perhaps, disappointed, as the drama comes to a rather unsatisfactory and off-putting end.
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP
If I could see the future, I’d definitely have nominated this drama for the “Everything was fine until the last few episodes” category in our Worst of 2022 Beanie Awards, but alas! What is with dramas these days and ruining their perfect stories with absurd additions and diversions? First they turn a beloved character into a villain for no good reason, because aside from the shock value, there was absolutely no reason for Hae-an to be the one behind Joon-ho’s death.
Instead, they made him out to be a straight up psychopath, and almost had him jump off the Rooftop of Doom if not for Tae-hee’s intervention. Only then does Hae-an become remorseful, and turn in the black box footage of the accident which implicates him as the truck driver. Afterwards, he apologizes to Tae-hee and pledges to suffer from the guilt for the rest of his life — or at least for all twelve years of his incarceration.
Watching the agonizing footage from the black box sends Tae-hee into another round of depression, and Dong-joo chooses to give him space. It’s only after Joon-ho (in a dream) tells Tae-hee that the accident wasn’t his fault that Tae-hee eventually finds the strength to move on. And with the closure of the Joon-ho case, all’s well that ends well, right?
It’s supposed to be all sunshine and rainbows going forward for the rest of our characters — from Il-seob and So-ra’s growing romance, to our couple who immediately get Dong-joo’s dad’s approval to date, and finally, to Vincent getting a much welcomed investment to expand his errand service business. (I can’t be the only one who chuckled when Vincent wrote “May I Half You” instead of “May I Help You” in his business proposal lol).
But the expansion of the errand business poses a question for Tae-hee: continue as an errand boy, or return to the medical field? Decisions, decisions. Chung-ha is all for Tae-hee’s return as a doctor as she says her goodbyes to him in preparation to move to the U.S. And while Vincent is ‘happy’ that Tae-hee plans to remain in the errand business, it’s obvious that he’d like nothing better than for his nephew to go back to being a doctor.
In the spirit of decision-making, Dong-joo decides to quit her funeral director job after she fulfills her last ghost request, and actually take up studying for the civil servant exam like her dad wants. And this comes after she trails her dad to his security guard job and gets upset that he’s working so hard to support her when she’s just lying to him.
With the warning bells stemming from Dong-joo’s last ghost request, my pulse sped up when she trailed Dad across the road. Thankfully, all stray trucks were held up in traffic or something, but that didn’t stop the nagging feeling I had that the drama was about to do something stupid. Turns out that I was right because a few scenes later, Dad exited the show as a hero after saving a pregnant tenant from a falling object. *Deep breath*
Honestly, I fail to understand what in the poetic nonsense the drama was trying to achieve by making Dad become Dong-joo’s last ghost. It’s annoying enough that I watched this over breakfast (and lost my appetite immediately), but it’s worse because Dad already quit his job at Dong-joo’s request, and he was just staying on until his replacement arrived. This is basically snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and I don’t think I can forgive the show for killing off Dong-joo’s dad.
Dad’s death adds nothing to the story aside from needless misery, and it’s almost as pointless as the existence of Dong-joo’s other friend who was just there to meet up the required character quota or something. I so hate it when shows kill off characters for trivial reasons, or just because they can. Wake up, you’re a K-drama, not Game of Thrones! Well, I hope the show is happy now after making Dong-joo an orphan — perhaps it might even give itself a pat on the back for giving Dong-joo the ability to see ghosts, since she’s able to see her dad after his passing.
It’s sweet how Tae-hee stands guard outside the room to give Dong-joo more time to spend with Dad, and it’s sweeter that after being the one to groom the deceased people throughout the course of the show, Dad is the one to take care of Dong-joo this time. Fatherly duties don’t end even in death, and I teared up again at the flashbacks of all the father-daughter times they shared together.
As the drama draws to a close, we finally learn the reason Dong-joo was given her ghost-seeing ability. Apparently, her mom was trapped in a fire while pregnant with her, and every single ghost Dong-joo helped on her journey were the people who helped out during the fire. There was the taxi driver who called the emergency services, the ones who alerted the firefighters about the location of the survivors, and Chung-ha’s mom (surprisingly enough) who was the doctor to order the emergency C-section that birthed Dong-joo and prevented her from dying with her mother at the hospital.
Of course, the drama just had to shoo-in the childhood connection trope — or rather, the child and fetus connection trope — because Tae-hee was also in the building at the time of the fire, and he was protected by Dong-joo’s mom. Oh, so that’s how he got the burn scar we saw in the first episode! Anyway, with all 21 ghost requests completed, Dong-joo no longer sees ghosts. The honor now belongs to a rookie at the funeral home, and I’d have found that funny if I weren’t still grieving Dong-joo’s dad.
In the end, life goes on for Dong-joo and Tae-hee, who return to their callings to serve the dead and the living as funeral director and doctor, respectively. And no, we do not get a wedding as a reward for faithfully sticking with the drama for eight weeks plus two weeks of preemptions. Yunno, because the drama was determined to wreck us right to the bitter end, making us mourn for what could have been. And maybe I’m just being emotional, but the drama should just have stuck to the episodic ghost requests rather than pile on this truckload of misery that nobody asked for.
At this point, I’ll just swallow the rest of my very colorful thoughts about the drama’s conclusion. This last set of episodes ruined the entire story for me, and I’m going to slap a “proceed at your own risk” warning on anyone who wants to go ahead to watch the show. May I help you? Pfft. No, you may not! You’ve done more harm than good, and I’d rather watch paint dry than go through this experience again.
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May I Help You: Episodes 15-16 (Final)
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily
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