Caught

Features: Mr. Okhotsk

Blue ← Caught → Drops

Caught is one of the 27 words in Rolypolys no Nanakorobi Yaoki.

Plot

Mr. Okhotsk preparing to chop the lobster.

This is the incident that lost Mr. Okhotsk his show. Curtains open to "Mr. Okhotsk's Cooking Time", where he welcomes the audience and puts a lobster on his cutting board. Then, right before Mr. Okhotsk cuts it, the lobster jumps off the table and his knife goes right through the cutting board, which is met with laughter by an off-screen audience.

Proverb

"To be caught between a rock and a hard place."

The lobster taunts Mr. Okhotsk as he attempts to remove the knife from his cutting board.

Explanation

Literally: To be neither able to pull out nor push in.

Anyone caught in this situation is in a fix, indeed: every option is as bad or worse than the problem itself, and you are just stuck there without any way out. Take Mr. Okhotsk on his popular television cooking show. He went to cut the lobster with a flourish of his prized knives but only succeeded in getting them stuck in the chopping board. He wasn't able either to push them to get at the lobster, or to pull them out to try again. Okhotsk the celebrated chef couldn't even raise his hands in defeat. As bad as it may seem, it's in such situations that a person's true character is revealed. What would you do?