This 2018 drama followed a 20-year-old girl and her middle-aged counterpart. They both have a lot of inner pain that they can't express to the outside world.
So they pretended to be strong and supported each other, pretending to be strong, but needing each other's encouragement more than they thought.
The moral lesson that they both learn by the end of the drama is that you must love yourself before you can love others.
Even though it is years removed from the airways, it remains one of the most remarkable dramas of recent memory.
Instead of following the intricate plots of corporate culture or the typical love story portrayed in countless dramas these days, My Mister sought to tell a unique tale of growth and emotional healing.
It didn't attract a lot of viewers at first and suffered in the ratings as audiences felt confused by the gray and somewhat bleak atmosphere of the drama in comparison to other colorful and upbeat options.
But it has left a legacy behind that still has ardent fans talking about the drama.
Lee Ji-an (played by IU), lives with her handicapped grandmother and his hounded by creditors seeking repayment of her parent's debt.
Dong-hoon (played by Lee Sun-Kyun) works at a construction company wherein his wife is having an affair with his boss. Ji-an takes a temp job at the same construction company.
After seeing Dong-hoon receive a hefty sum of money, Ji-an attempts to steal it in order to pay her debts. She gets caught, and Dong-hoon does not turn her into the police despiter her crime.
What follows is the journey of self-discovery as they try to help each other overcome the hardships that brought them to that point.
A huge pillar of the drama is Dong-hoon's family and the way in which they interact. It is made clear that Dong-hoon treasures his family above all else and lives each day to provide for and nurture them.
He spends his whole life living for his family, for his job, for his wife, for others, and never for himself.
This imbalance in his life leads him to the heavy realization that he is an important link in the chain of relationships among his entire family, but he isn't even the pillar of his own life.
So will others ever really treat him as well as he treats them?
Ji-an is in no better of a situation. She was thrust into a world she never chose for herself as she had to absorb the responsibility of her parent's debt as well as the responsibility of caring for her grandmother.
She never gets the opportunity to live for herself because she never had the choice.
This is why she grows to appreciate Dong-hoon so much as the drama progresses. He helps to lift her from her struggles and earn the freedom to finally begin pursuing her own plan for her life.
The reason that the drama became and remains so popular is its unrelenting portrayal of the power of human emotion and affection.
It is rife with the raw and pure emotions that we all experience in our real lives, so watching the drama feels less like and escape from reality and more like an unflinching appeal to our own humanity.
Outside of the two main characters, the supporting characters are also filled with loneliness and a desire for human compassion.
Dong-hoon's older brother is going through the pain of a painful divorce, so he opens a cleaning business with the youngest brother, who is overcoming the pain of his own failed pursuit to break into the film business.
They also embark on a journey of self-discovery as they learn to overcome their pity.
Dong-hoon's wife is one of the central catalysts for all the pain and drama in the series.
Her motivations to have an affair stem from the fact that she doesn't feel loved by her husband. His love is for everyone, so she doesn't feel special to him in the way that a wife should.
We can see the difference in how Dong-hoon treats Ji-an and how he treats his wife whenever they have conversations about what to eat for dinner.
He is noncommittal to his wife's inquiries but more enthusiastic in his conversations with Ji-an.
There are even more tragic characters in the drama, like Jung-Hee, who owns a tavern, and the man who became a monk to absolve his sins.
Like these and other characters, the entire ensemble of My Mister is made up of people who have a rich and developed history and backstory.
Each character has gone through trouble in their lives which led them to where they are in the moment that we meet them.
Almost all of them go on to find some cure for their loneliness and strife, but not always in the uplifting way that we're taught to expect from dramas.
Ji-an's whole mood and demeanor changes from the moment she finds Dong-hoon.
She goes from wanting to steal money and colluding with others, to finally discovering from the heart that she needs him and has to do everything to protect him.
She gets support at the funeral for her grandma, people to accompany her home, etc. She finds a family.
The drama flows more like a 20 hour movie than an anthology of sporadic events.
The opening episodes are cast in a dark, grey shadow as each character unveils their struggles and we witness the alienation and loneliness each one feels.
By the end, the scenes are filmed with more warmth, less harsh angles, and a renewed sense of closeness and closure.
Especially, we can see in the scene when Ji-an cries in front of her grandmother, prompting the grandma to ask why she is crying.
Ji-an replies that she is just happy to have found that there are still people like Dong-hoon in the world.
We would never see anything like this in the opening episodes, but by the end of the heavy drama, it all feels so cathartic and hopeful.
Both Dong-hoon and Ji-an are able to learn from each other.
They learn that relationships are not as fragile as they once thought as Ji-an gains a whole new family willing to help her and Dong-hoon realizes that his relationships won't fall apart without his constant devotion.
This drama can easily be termed a "tear-jerker" as there are countless scenes that tug at your heartstrings.
The most heart wrenching scene of course is when Ji-an approaches Dong-hoon after being beaten down by another character, and he tells her words of affirmation, like she is kind and a good person.
She cries as though it was the first time in her whole life that someone said that to her.
By the end of the series, we see the complete evolution of Ji-an, who undergoes a complete metamorphosis as a result of her relationship with Dong-hoon.
She smiles and laughs for the first time in the whole series. She even learns to say, "Thank you," which was a rarity in the beginning.
Finally, she even asks Dong-hoon for a hug, like an elder comforting a child.
A few years later, the two meet again in the coffee shop and the two shook hands on an equal footing, like old friends who have been apart for many years.
As Dong-Hoon said at that time, "Even if we meet by chance, I will still greet you with a smile." The two of them have both arrived at the greatest outcome possible for their life.
I think of the first episode of Ji-an asking Dong-hoon to buy food for her to eat. In the last episode, Ji-an finally said to him, "I will invite you to dinner next time."
"Ji-an, have you reached a state of peace and stability?"
"Yes!"
