D.I.D. 12

I really want to like this drama

Man… I really wanted to like this drama because it has some really great actors in it. We have Bowie Lam who has returned to showbiz, we got Monica Chan, we got Owen Cheung, this should have been amazing, instead we got some of the dumbest plot-points I have seen in a while.

Bowie Lam is a cop. He had a terrible childhood getting bullied but he is now a superintendent. That’s pretty impressive. He has a crush on his neighbor played by Yoyo Chen, who is a single mom to a 10-year-old daughter and occasionally gets visits from her loser ex-husband. Owen Cheung is - gasp - also a cop with the position of inspector, but the twist is that he has multiple personalities due to his past of being abused by his father. While investigating separate cases, their routes lead to each other and Owen starts to work temporarily under Bowie to investigate the new 7 deadly sins murders.

The new 7 deadly sins murders sounds pretty cliched but it could work if it was done right. Sadly, here, it wasn’t. They are called the new 7 deadly sins because it doesn’t cover the classics like lust or greed, instead it covers more modern problems… like pollution. Yes, pollution. These social justice warriors go out to find these sinners and outright murders them for their crimes.

It sounds okay as I describe it here, but let me explain why I think it is so stupid. So we have this socially awkward girl played by Joey Thye, who was drugged and taken to a really messed up place by this pervert to get sexually molested. This caused Joey to suffer PTSD, so she started an online untraceable forum called Saturn1115 that requires users to decipher various riddles before they could enter it, 7 riddles, in fact, because… yes… 7 sins and so on. People who can log in can share their anger at the world and the injustices in them. Soon, a group of people who managed to login and chat to Joey started a group to find sinners of the injustices discussed and decided to call it the new 7 deadly sins. Yes, that is right, the whole thing was started because Joey - instead of going to the cops for what she suffered - thought she would instead create an online forum for like-minded individuals to share their anger, and from it this group of murderers was formed. What the actual f? The best part is later Joey even tells one of their group that she didn’t want the murders to happen, she only wanted a place for people to share their distaste of the injustices. What was Joey exactly thinking was gonna happen when she made that untraceable forum?

Now, this group of murderers that go around dealing out death to the sinners do so in methods that make me go wtf. In the daytime, in full sunlight, these guys dress in full black, top to bottom, with sunglasses and black facemasks, and walk out in the open - in full view of the public - and yet nobody pays them any attention. They are so conspicuous you would have to be blind to not notice these guys looking suspicious. And what I love most of all is how they chase their targets. They don’t run, oh no. They walk slowly ala Michael Myers while the targets run for their lives, and yet somehow always manage to catch up to their target and finish them off. Also, they can enter buildings without being noticed, every single time! They show in the drama that CCTV can be blocked using this keyfob they have, but are you telling me the security guards there in the building failed to see them enter the building?

And man, the cops here are so useless. Bowie Lam and Owen Cheung are the best cops here and they do some really great detective work that I found very convincing, but everyone else was completely useless. Like Bowie’s superior is useless, and Bowie’s competition - this pretty boy Matthew Ko - was also useless. Every time they appeared onscreen and spoke I wanted to throw my chair at them.

I am doing my best to try and like this drama but all the shortcomings are just hurting me. I have left out a lot of detail and will bring them up when I finish the drama, in hopes that it improves but for now… why is it the way it is? I am at episode 13 right now so there are still many episodes left. The biggest question for me still is: why is this drama called D.I.D 12? I’m guessing D.I.D stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder, but the 12 next to it… is it saying Owen Cheung has 12 personalities? So far we’ve only seen 3, but having 12 would be pretty nuts.

Up to episode 16: oh man this episode brought a huge twist I didn’t see. I suspected but I thought I was overthinking it, but dang the reveal had me shook. So Bowie Lam’s sister, played by Monica Chan, returned to Hong Kong and started interfering with Bowie’s life. He decided to confront her at his home to ask her why she was doing this to him. At the same time, the cops find the skeletal remains of a girl and have finally identified the victim using skull reconstruction and hair samples. Just as the confrontation between Bowie and Monica reach a breaking point, Owen calls Bowie and tells him the victim is his sister. Bowie exclaims this was impossible and the camera swings around to reveal Monica was a hallucination. Basically, not only does Owen have multiple personalities to deal with, but also Bowie has as well. Does this mean the group of vigilantes are also his personalities? What on earth is going on? This immediately made the drama more interesting, and about time!

Up to episode 23: man it got interesting for a while and then it just dropped off. After Bowie finds out his personalities were the one committing the murders, he decided to kill himself to stop them but instead is locked up in his own mind by Monica, who takes full control of his body. This leads to a showdown in - yes - a warehouse where Monica attempts to force Owen Cheung to release his 3rd personality, the dark side one. This succeeds, but the ensuing fight somehow leads to both Bowie and Owen’s host personalities taking back control and deescalating the situation. Bowie hands himself over to the cops in the aftermath.

Man, I still can’t stand Matthew Ko’s character in this, which means he did a good acting job. He is a terrible cop and only got lucky in one operation, but he refuses to believe Bowie has multiple personalities so keeps shouting at Bowie. The drama even has Owen bring up how incompetent Matt is and another officer not disagreeing. Bowie gets put into a jail for the mentally challenged and undergoes analysis from a terrible psychiatrist who refuses to believe he has multiple personalities. The drama trues to drum up some extra drama here as Bowie’s other personalities influences the other inmates to help him as they get released to continue the murders. This was so predictable that I was surprised they didn’t all worship Bowie as a God at the same time.

While this is happening, Owen is busy fusing with his personalities, managing to combine with his light and dark sides. I mean it is a little too late now, but at least they resolve Owen’s issue. They think they can do the same for Bowie but man, have you seen how many people are in his mind? Good luck with that!

And man, the Saturn1115 forum is still active. Why is it still active? They all know Joey Thye set it up, they had her in custody, they know where she lives, Owen and crew visit her, and yet nobody in the police department has told her to shut it down since the entire new 7 deadly sins was started because of it. There is no logic to this at all! People are still on there and seeing a copycat killer uploading videos of their victims last words of confession before the cops find them dead later. Again, it all lead back to that cursed online place.

And talking about the cops, that leads me to the next thing. The one thing that still keeps this from getting a higher score was how it made the Hong Kong police look so useless, and somehow the members of the police who have mental issues are the better detectives. You even get a scene where the madam boss says “a crazy person investigating a crazy person is perfect” as she wanted Owen back in action. It just makes the cops look so lame. And what are the odds that both the best cops have the same multiple personality disorder? All we need now is for Raymond Cho to be the next guy to have the same affliction and we’ll gave a full house.

Completed: okay so the drama is finished and I took a few days after completing it to finish going “wtf”. We discover Bowie and Raymond Cho were secretly working together to complete the last sin cleansing from the new 7 deadly sins because Raymond wanted to repent for his crime. What did he do? He was the one who killed Bowie’s real older sister in the past, but he felt really bad about it so decided to help. Bowie, later, escapes from prison in typical TVB trope fashion, then it all leads to a final showdown at a building where all the sinners are put together to be burned alive by Bowie under the control of his elder sister. At the same time, one of the personalities played by Deon Cheung goes apeshit and start killing off the other personalities because he suddenly decided to have control of Bowie’s body all to himself. We see the personalities each die one-by-one and the drama tries to play this off as really sad but come on, we didn’t care because these are just personalities. In any case, the main crew rush over to stop the killings, and despite Owen HOLDING A GUN, Bowie still manages to burn them all with his lighter. Meanwhile, almost all personalities are dead now and it goes down to just Bowie and Deon facing off with Monica still in control of the body. Just then, the floor gives way and Bowie falls to the floor below with Yoyo Chen, his love interest. Yoyo woke up first and noticed the ceiling was falling, so she climbed over Bowie and took a huge piece of concrete rubble for Bowie, getting impaled by a piece of rebar protruding from it and died. The camera later zoomed out to show us how big the piece was and it was massive, easily over a ton of concrete, so it would have easily had killed the both of them on impact, but here we have Yoyo somehow holding it off and saving Bowie. It is also here we find out all the personalities are gone from Bowie.

Flash forward 6 months and we find Owen looking for Bowie and Raymond. It seemed that after the fire, they somehow went missing but nobody knows where they’ve gone. It took 6 months for Owen to Google Raymond’s name to find he taught at a university in Germany so he decided “Yes, they are in Germany.” He travelled to Germany, asked around a little bit, and managed to meet the ONLY cantonese speaker there who luckily saw Raymond, and then tracked them down to a villa. For the past 6 months, Raymond had brainwashed Bowie into thinking he was Raymond’s younger brother and that he was marrying Yoyo, when it was actually an emancipated Kelly Fu. Owen went in, knocked out Raymond, then talked Bowie down to realising he was being manipulated. Then they all go back to Hong Kong. How they managed to get to Germany without anybody noticing after a huge fire was not revealed, so we have to imagine Raymond had a load of money and threw it at some smugglers or something.

Back in Hong Kong, Bowie went back to being locked up in a prison for the criminally insane to stop himself doing more crazy stuff, while Owen and Kelly become a couple. Near the end we see Bowie meet his final personality that was hiding the entire time and - apparently - had been with him since the beginning. Calling herself “the protector” and played by Flora Chan, she appeared after Bowie saw a huge image of a baby babbling, indicating that she had been with him since he was born. So what was she saying? That Bowie had mental issues the day he was born? That he already had multiple personality disorder upon birth? In any case, I think this scene was stupid because if she had been there since the beginning and was called “the protector”, where was she when Bowie went through all the trauma in his life? She didn’t “protect” him then. This had me go “wtf”, why add this at the end?

But we at least know why it is called D.I.D 12 now. 3 from Owen and 9 from Bowie. This drama could have been great, instead it is just mediocre at best. Bowie’s acting was outstanding as always and the camera angles to show how a personality was in control was done rather well, but the plot and various issues with pacing and a terrible ending ruined this. Bowie must have an aching back because he carried this drama, but even then it wasn’t enough.

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Started slow but ended off really strong

Watched all 25 episodes on the website, so here's my review on it. I was about to drop this drama since the first 8 episodes were quite slow. We start off with this really interesting case about bullying and monopolization, but as soon as they introduced the Saturn1115 forums, then when it started to get boring.

Bowie Lam throughout this drama has been great as the chief inspector of the OCTB, it was awesome to see him return and after finishing this, made sense why he would return for this drama, will spoil it later in the review. Owen Cheung was also really great here as the chief inspector in the police officer but the twist is that he has D.I.D. and no one knows (which I found it dumb because there's no way they wouldn't suspect something's off) but Owen manages to control it and sees his second personality, played by James Ng, as a companion. He also has a much more darker personality, played by Ronny Lay. He has a great evil smile but whenever Owen tries to mimic it, I'm sorry but it was hard to take it seriously. Kelly Fu has HEAVILY improved for this performance. Her role here is much more memorable than No Room for Crime and Forensic Heroes 6.

Like I mentioned earlier, the first case was about bullying, but this shouldn't be classified as bullying. Wanna know why? Because it's about a grandson of a rich and wealthy family, Adrien Yau, kidnapping several people holding them as his own 'pets'. Why? Because they were actually part of a human trafficking ring that was about to be shipped, but he decided to keep them. Since his grandfather, Pat Poon, has a business that isn't so legit. However, after he was caught, he became a victim of the new seven deadly sins and the vigilantes killed him eventually. Same goes for the two victims of monopoly, animal abuse, 'pollution'. It's all ridiculous and felt like an after thought. Because the main plot that happens after Episode 14 felt like that was supposed to be the main focus and the seven deadly sins were just something they thought of to hide that twist.

Man, it felt like they did a complete 360. There was a track record in No Room for Crime and Darkside of the Moon where it starts off strong - incredibly mid in the middle - and then ends off extremely strong as well. But this time it starts off mid and doesn't hold back after it gets to that certain point. You're wondering, how did big stars like Bowie Lam, Monica Chan and Deon Cheung agreed to star in what it seemed to be a simple crime drama about a cult killing people for justice. Well, the twist is that there wasn't a cult, all of the people involved with the killings which was Monica Chan (Bowie's older sister that supposedly returned from the US in episode 4 who was revealed to be a hallucination in ep16), Deon Cheung, Bond Chan, Lucas Yiu, Amber Chan, Vincent Lam and John Chan, who were all revealed to be Bowie's personalities as he was suffering from D.I.D. as well. That is one hell of a twist that I'm surprised TVB managed to do well, especially after the abysmal twists they showed in Call of Destiny and Anonymous Signal. Ever since the twist was revealed after Episode 17, the show immediately hooks you up, every scene filled with tension. I was wondering in Episode 10 and 13, why they killed off Bowie and Owen's most trusted colleagues so early? Well, now it made sense that they wanted to make room for the development between Bowie's personalities. It was revealed later on that they were actually being manipulated by Deon Cheong, the most brutal personality of Bowie's who believed in justice over twisted values to kill the supposed sinners. So near the end, they helped Bowie stop Deon from killing more.

There is another twist though, originally, Deon was a personality created to resemble the person who killed his sister during the fire. The person who actually killed his sister was Raymond Cho's character. The fire was also instructed by Pat Poon. Originally I was wondering why were they even part of the show as they could've easily been removed after Adrien died. I feel like the most underutilized character was Jack Wu, the father of Adrien, who died from suicide. He didn't really do anything to progress the plot other than to be drunk every single time he appeared on screen after his son died.

So the final big battle was a wild one where Raymond and Bowie (controlled by Monica) was trying to set six people on fire in an abandoned building (forgot who they actually are sorry about that), among those four people includes Pat. After the fire started, the whole building collapsed. I'm ngl, the fire CGI wasn't the greatest but can we even expect great CGI from TVB nowadays? Among the people who were in the building includes Kelly, Owen, Bowie, Raymond and Yoyo Chen, Bowie's neighbor who he had a crush on. The final few scenes were actually really creepy and really diminishes Raymond as a twisted villain. They all managed to survive the building collapse except for Yoyo, where she gets stabbed by a piece of sharp concrete when trying to save Bowie. However, Raymond got up and took Bowie and Kelly to Germany, where Raymond hypnotized him into thinking he's his brother and that he was gonna get married to Yoyo, when in reality it was Kelly who appeared to be malnourished and unable to speak properly. That was such a fucked up twist and really establishes Raymond as an actual psycho. Owen managed to find their location, stop the wedding and finally convinced Bowie that Kelly was not Yoyo. I really love Bowie's acting in this drama, his emotional scenes actually felt genuine. Same goes for Owen when James was finally going to leave him in episode 22. Special mention to Gabriel Harrison who played a prisoner in this drama. Damn he lost a lot of weight for this role. Along with Benjamin Yuen who returned as his character from No Room For Crime who was actually the first victim of this seven deadly sins massacre. I felt that this connection was unnecessary but hey, at least we don't have to see a season 2 for that post credit scene to get clarified.

Overall, an actual enjoyable drama. Surprisingly more better than Anonymous Signal and No Room for Crime. If it weren't for the Saturn1115 storyline with Joey Thye as a victim of PTSD from being sexually molested who created the forums in the first place, I probably would've liked this drama more. That's probably the bad part that made this not that good. The ending was also a bit rushed. Despite the big fire scene, they suddenly transition to Raymond seemingly go undetected to Germany with two kidnapped victims. Ig that's just the perk of being super rich. Also we never get to see what happens to Raymond afterwards, even Owen. They did a time gap to show that in classic TVB fashion, Kelly doesn't experience PTSD. Bowie ended up in a mental institution to not further hurt anyone else, but Owen is nowhere to be seen at all. I was expecting some post credit scene that can hopefully clear up the emptiness with Owen and even Raymond, but nope, it just ends like that which is strange. But I still like it for trying something new with D.I.D., still strange that both Bowie and Owen, victims of D.I.D. can somehow be one of the highest ranks in their respective divisions in the police force. Also for the title, I've always been wondering about the 12 in it, although Owen had 3 personalities, and Bowie had 8, that would've made it 11 personalities in total. But the final scene in the finale revealed Bowie has another personality. A wonderful cameo made by Flora Chan who is supposedly Bowie's guardian. Even if it wasn't explained much, she said she had been with him the longest, so she was probably the one who kept Bowie from knowing that he had multiple other personalities. It was nice to see her again since her last drama was in 2018's Watch Out Boss. With the track record lately, I thought that Kenneth Ma would make another cameo appearance. That would've been wild but thankfully that wasn't the case.

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