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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9848412" data-attributes="member: 78087">Time for a drama with supernatural content. And it’s a great example.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Pop-up_Bar" target="_blank">Mystic Pop Up Bar</a> (Netflix, 2020)This is another drama with an understandably mistranslated title. The original is Ssang-gap Pocha, which means something like Twin Souls Bar, but a pocha (short for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pojangmacha" target="_blank">pojangmacha</a>) isn't really a bar, it's more like a temporary tent or marquee where people sell alcohol and bar food (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anju_(food)" target="_blank">anju</a>, Korean food that's good with alcohol such as tteokbokki (spicy rice cake), various pancakes such as bindaetteok (mung bean flour pancakes), barbecued meats, dumplings, and various noodle dishes). So pop-up bar isn't a bad translation. However, I can see Twin Souls Bar is a bit of a confusing name, so this translation is perfectly adequate.<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Mystic_Pop-up_Bar.jpg" alt="en.wikipedia.org" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Our point-of-view protagonist is Han Kang-Bae, a nice chap who's never been able to get close to anyone, because everyone he touches immediately wants to tell him about their problems. This is a weird magical curse to have but terribly convenient for our other two protagonists, Weol-Ju and Chef Gwi, who run the eponymous pocha and who have a spiritual mission to help 10 000 people with their problems.The reason for this is revealed in the first scene and after - Weol-Ju originally lived and died in the 16th century. A fortuneteller's daughter who fell in love with a prince, Weol-Ju hanged herself on a sacred tree when everything in her life went wrong, and in doing so cursed the tree and blighted 10 000 lives. So if she doesn't atone by helping 10 000 people in 500 years, she's hellfire toast.There's a lot of fun stuff about Korean folklore and the afterlife in the series, modernised and used cleverly. There are several characters such as Samsin (the triple goddess of childbirth and Weol-Ju's best friend) and Yeomradaewang* (the goddess of death and Weol-Ju's boss). It seems likely that these names are titles or jobs rather than personal names - they aren't the first people to hold them - which might explain why Yeomra (AKA Yama) is a woman rather than male as is traditional.*This literally means "Great King Yeomra", as in Yama, King of the Underworld.A fun reference to watch out for is when our three protagonists are discussing revising for exams and Chef Gwi acts like Coach Kim from Sky Castle while We All Lie plays in the background. The actor who plays Gwi (Choi Won-Young) played Dr Hwang in Sky Castle, you see. He and the actor who plays Kang-Bae (Yook Sung-Jae) then go on to play father and son (of a sort) in Golden Spoon, which is sort of appropriate since they develop a father-son relationship in this series.(Another Sky Castle alumnus who appears is Song Geon-Hee, who plays the prince in flashbacks and played Young-Jae, the boy who kicks the plot off in Sky Castle.)(If you watch a lot of dramas you'll spot several recurring actors. An obvious example is Kim Sun-Young, who plays minor but quite memorable parts in Crash Course in Romance, Crash Landing on You, Because This is My First Life, and Queenmaker.)</blockquote>

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