ShortCircuit

So, theory no. 1, K is an alter-ego of Su Yeol, who was created because his mind can't cope with doing all the sweeping-under-the-carpet stuff for a promotion and yearns to get some actual justice done or something.

I am not really impressed with K's need to beat SY into the floor/road every time they're on screen together, I hope the alter-ego or whatever he's supposed to be can serve a larger scope and not be there literally to beat the main personality up.

Let's see it after ep 2....

TBH, it was kind of crazy and a little bad. But I have hopes it'll improve. Maybe it served a purpose, stringing the introduction out for a whole episode...

The only one I like so far is the rookie cop (N - you're telling me he's 31?! Yo, Jack Sparrow, here in SK there's that Fountain of Youth you were looking for, come and get it!!) And I hope they find a place for the woman Narcotics cop, she's there for a purpose, right?... Right?...

I didn't know there was a dorama too, for TGWLTT :D I've only seen the movie (an anime, true.) The movie rocks! (And it's a true re-live the time story, not just a feint-switch-time.)

Come to think of it, "your name." is also a time-switch story. If you haven't watch it, please do, I highly recommend it!

Okabe (and everything about the S;G story) is/are great :D

Another movie that deals with re-live (and change) time is 12 Monkeys (the one with Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis). I hear there's a series too, but I only watched the movie, it's dystopian and hopeless enough for me, LOL.

Bai Jing Ting is a cutie, I've seen him in You Are My Hero (I thank Bai Lu for starting that one, LOL), but also in bits and pieces of Irreplaceable Love. I might try his older roles, thanks for the rec!

It's the instrumental OST that does it for me - one such recent example is The Devil Judge, I was ready to watch the whole drama (even if Ji Sung weren't in it) only for the intro (I Am the Abyss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7mYYx-xQ-Y) and/or Enemy of Truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jCDD5vpyNk

Another one that gains greatly from its instrumental OST (random pick) is Tale of the Nine Tailed - Parting at the River of Three Crossings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCXTE3Hqcos kept me hanging on even if I was hoping for more of the drama than I got.

And no other soundtrack impressed me as much as The Untamed's OST (the songs, the character songs and the instrumental score). From the instrumentals, I am still in love with 草木 (Grass/Greenery), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXhKwA9OrJo and can't see myself falling out of love with it any time soon.

I actually quite like dramas who play with the concept of a second (or third) chance at life. And I even get really hooked on reincarnation or isekai webnovels, too (and I would just love to see some of them as dramas, but there's not much hope given the current Chinese ban on certain tropes, including these). Anime, too - thinking about Steins;Gate, for example, which is an amazing time-travel/change the past story. And hey, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time!

It's just that I haven't seen many dramas who take the trouble to have the MCs go and completely change/relive their past lives and/or make so important changes that they and everybody/everything else around them changes. Usually they either change from a certain point going forward or something major happens to them and they come back incognito and do stuff to repair things that went wrong. I did watch a few that include the change of certain elements so that the future is changed (While You Were Sleeping, for example, or even W Two Worlds, too. ) Or they somehow go back in time and minutely change some historical things or just get to be a part of history happening around them (Faith, Moon Lovers, Mr. Queen). Or they also get to communicate or travel to the past and the future, but nothing much changes but the information they bring/take with them, like in Tunnel or Signal.

The re-live the same day, again and again, trope, I've only seen in Groundhog's Day and an episode of Supernatural, LOL. So my experience with it is limited, for drama and/or movies.

So, if Bai Jing Ting is going to be a ML in such a drama, that's a double bonus LOL, because I really like him and if the story is good, that's only going to add more to the experience :)

I haven't seen any of the others, but I'll watch Reset, just for Bai Jing Ting.

Oh wow, this looks gorgeous. And yes I do mean Off is now slick, slim and dangerous. Ahem. Among other things.

Gun is always impressive - he has the coltish, scared, half-trusting White get in and own the story already. And seriously, "Sean"/Off looks amazing.

I really do hope this series delivers. It seems too short already and it's only been an episode.

Episode 10, preview for 11 (we thought at the time), in the last 1-2 minutes.

In the end... Pochi went to heaven. That's hilariously heartbreaking LOL.

So let's talk about the snowball effect.

Say, you've just started a new drama because it has an interesting plot, you like the actors, you've seen the trailer - whatever. You obviously make the mistake of watching it in real-time release (because you're STUPID - YES I'M LOOKING IN A MIRROR RIGHT NOW~! Stay out of it, I've got this.) And then you make the second mistake - you go online to vent, applaud, cheerlead or express what irks you.

And you find the fans. The ones who 100%, no holds barred, no excuses for not fangirling over hot oppa-allowed, will NOT let you have a different opinion. And they say so. Repeatedly. Attacking you in person for your tastes and choices in drama, questioning your level of knowledge about the EFFORT that went on making that drama (that is obviously such a success but you're the only idiot who can't see it). And then you try to explain, as reasonably as white-anger allows you, that you don't give a fig, it's just your opinion, and you're not there to be an anti-fan or drag down the production, you just don't LIKE certain things.

The more you try to be reasonable, the more they attack. Until the end, when you 1. stop commenting/participating in any kind of discussions even if you still follow the drama, and 2. give up and drop it with a VERY bitter after taste. Which is, sadly, not even produced by the drama itself, but by the acid/toxic fans. (And I really do hate saying "toxic" about anything, it's become so overused.)

Communities can get very loud and overzealous in "protecting" their likes. Sadly, it tends to happen in MDL too, which makes me glad the block user button exists, though I only hoped to use that in reddit, where it's the norm.

Now, back to the usual themes: I only got very serious SLS in The Wolf, I dropped Start-up in its first third because it looked to be going in circles and yes, I was also heading towards a SLS stage by then anyway, I HATE it when they announce they'd be extending a well-rated drama with a bunch of new episodes nobody asked for, I also don't like the PPL if it's done badly (at least in Jirisan, for example, they kept using the yoghurts but they were poisoned, LOL, talk about a strange promotion strategy.) People not talking to each other but disclosing all their plans to their enemies, booze (so MUCH booze especially in SK dramas), historical dramas that have no feeling of being lived-in (new everything - new rooms, new furniture, new clothes, new cutely-dirtied bandages, people who are supposed to know each other from ages ago who talk like they've just met, and so on and so forth).

Oh and origin stories that involve falling in love as kids. That makes my blood boil most of the time. Let kids be kids and don't fate-link them forever. (That was one huge selling point for Gu Family Book, at least for the Wol-Ryung storyline. I wanted a separate drama just for him and nevermind the second generation gumiho).

Wrapping up the novel here, LOL.

At least there's the HEA. Though they did trick us out of the scene of HJ opening his eyes.

I have... mixed feelings about it. The end could have explained more about how come YK can now not only stand, but hike again, and how HJ recovered so well, instead of taking us on a stroll along memory lane with Goo Young (who I don't care enough about in the end).

Kim Sol dying by the mountain - so to speak - is also kind of anticlimatic. Why didn't the mountain make him slide sometime along the killing spree?! I guess that's why YK keeps saying the mountain's just a mountain.

I could have skipped the ticket girl becoming a ranger too - didn't she get the ticket? Go be a Gangnam celeb, why don't you?!

Overall, there were good parts and not so good parts but I kind of liked it. I wish there was more on the supernatural aspect but you can't have them all.

We'll see next time :D

And so it ends.

Why would he be in a hospital bed then? I still have hope.

Edit I rewatched the scene too, he's still intubated - no air mask, true. It doesn't look like a past scene. I sure hope it's not a dream sequence or whatnot.

If the dis-incriminating evidence was so easy to follow, this will turn out to be a case of police incompetence. I have to say it, I'm kind of disappointed about how easy it was to dig out the real killer once they even started trying.

The prison subplots are always kind of lackluster - the shocking violence of yesterday's episode seems gratuitous, given KHS will probably be found not guilty eventually. Unless they decide to try him for all the rest of the offenses - stealing the cab, driving without a cab license, DUI, drugs, failing to provide help to the victim, attempting to destroy the scene of the crime, etc. I am not certain how it works in Korea, but any and all of these are much easier to get him a guilty sentence on, so if they're included, they would assure him a prison sentence. In which case, him being cautious and starting to get along with the prison inmate boss might have some value...

And all the interviews SJH did cannot be used in the trial, since the people didn't express their consent to it, and the police still hasn't come around to asking. The CCTV records might be of some help, but only to provide a secondary possible killer, in order to prove that there is reasonable doubt... but not much more.

The very STRONG part of the episode though is the flaying out of everything KHS ever thought about himself. I liked that brutal deconstruction, it's not even completely unwarranted. I just hope they don't destroy the character so completely he won't ever recover. After all, he's just a dumb, scared stupid guy who reacted out of sheer horror. That final scene of her fingers moving really drives it home - but then, nobody can say she would have been saved even if an ambulance did come. She was found pretty fast, and she was not alive at the time. So painting him as sub-human for his fight-or-flight instinct going all the way to 100% flight is taking it a bit too far.

I mean, give the audience a chance to still like him and be happy he doesn't get convicted of a murder he didn't do.

So this turns out to be kind of a see-saw series. The first episode of the week is kind of pale, and then a very strong episode to keep the audience hooked.

Well, at least it bodes well for the finale.

First, not everybody who saw him on the mountain died - example, the old guy they were trying to talk to and wouldn't have it. And now that Kim Sol is revealed, he won't have time to execute any of the rest of the villagers, so there.

Second, there's that preview scene, which if they pretend to FORGET about it, I'm gonna be VERY mad about.

So they'd better present a nicely wrapped HEA. OR ELSE.

I do NOT like how they're stressing out, again and again, what is about to happen to HJ.

Just came back to thank you again for the Young Blood rec - first two episodes are hilarious! I already love the back-and-forth exchanges between the main characters, I really do hope it keeps on til the very end :D

Wei WuXian is a paragon of all cheerful, upright and charming rogues of all wuxia and xianxia world LOL. One can definitely understand why all the rest of them gravitate around him - who can fight being attracted to that flame?! He burns so happily, it's impossible to resist. Just ask Lan WangJi.

Tang Fan is the cutest puppy in the wuxia world - I applaud the efforts of Sui Zhou of keeping him alive (and well fed) and Wang Zhi's efforts of using his inquisitive mind in order to solve mysteries. The drama takes a lot of liberties with the stories in the novel, but I for one am pleased with most of them.

Haven't watched the other three yet, thanks for the Young Blood rec, it looks interesting.

What about Xiao Yu'er in Handsome Siblings? He's the carefree, rogue-ish (well, he's an outright bandit but his heart is in the right place), good-at-martial-arts and cheeky, shameless ML. He doesn't take many things seriously, but when he does, they're important things. I liked him in the latest version of the story.

Also, sorry, noboby will ever call Wen KeXing (Word of Honor) serious and broody, though he has his moments. Maybe crazy would be the closest adjective to what he seems to be LOL. Otherwise, snarky, addicted to poetry (sadly there's no one much around him to also appreciate it :D), obsessed with (a) male beauty, prone to stalking his love interest LOL.

Maybe Ning Que (Ever Night) would come closest to a typical costume c-drama ML... but he's still a rogue, playful character, much given to disrespect toward his elders, colleagues, masters and pretty much everyone else, but well, he has a good calligraphy so it's mostly easily forgiven :D

I'm not too sure about Wang Lu (Once Upon a Time in LingJian Mountain) - but TBH, the FL there took much of the spotlight :D

It's Ji Sung. Nothing can go wrong.