"Bride of the Water God 2017" Episode 8 recap

So it turns out that Ha-baek's assertion that Hoo-ye is more than he seems wasn't just random jealousy apropos of nothing. The entire opening section of episode eight goes into deep backstory, wherein Ha-baek recalls an old conversation that had several important clues now relevant to the current situation. Personally, though, the millenia old flashback kind of makes me wonder- when was the last time anyone went to the human world to collect the artifacts?
Think about it. If the gods are this old, then the last emperor must have collected the artifacts several thousand years ago, at which point whatever human civilization existed in Korea doesn't even have a record or a name. And the time before that would be even worse, with the only humans being straight-up hunter-gatherers. That's assuming they'd even managed to get out of Africa by then.
The age issue is all the more puzzling because Ha-baek even explicitly states how he is really, really old, which creates some pretty creepy implications for any possible romance with So-ah. I mean yeah, this has also been mentioned before as a kind of joke, but why keep bringing it up? Age mismatch is only an issue insofar as we acknowledge it. I kind of have to discuss age when it keeps popping up as an explicit plot point, even if I'd rather be discussing something else.
...Well, all right. In all fairness there really isn't that much else to discuss anyway because "Bride of the Water God 2017" is doing its usual trick of having the main characters constantly talk about nothing. Even though this episode starts out with Hoo-ye being exposed as having a supernatural background, no one really confronts him until the episode is almost over. So what we're left with in-between is a bunch of filler that never goes anywhere.
Oh, one other fact caught my notice- as if to emphasize how useless So-ah is to the entire operation, in the initial meeting wherein the main characters discuss Hoo-ye, So-ah is curiously absent. This, even though So-ah is by far the character in the most potential danger given Hoo-ye's unknown motives. Admittedly, So-ah is kind of dumb. It's remarkable, really, how So-ah's sidekick Sang-yoo is consistently shown to be much smarter and perceptive than So-ah is. And of course, So-ah, being the idiot she is, can't even take advantage of being friends with a smart person.
Review by William Schwartz
"Bride of the Water God 2017" is directed by Kim Byeong-soo, written by Jeong Yoon-jeong and features Nam Joo-hyuk, Shin Se-kyung, Lim Ju-hwan, Krystal, Gong Myung and Lee Kyeong-yeong.

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