interregnum

Dramatically, this would be the ideal situation--at least, insofar as Ha-bin is concerned: she needs to be--and I will be very disappointed if she is not--guilty of at least one of these murders.

Worth it for Go Min-si's fantastic performance. Every moment she's on screen is pure electricity.

Everything else was...whatever. A lot of it is slow, a lot of it is contrived, some of it wanders into being pretentious--and I swear a chunk of it is just there to fill the episode quota.

Strip it down to a 2.5-hour movie of just the main plot, and you'd have solid gold.

That’s more what I meant, yeah: that we get this horrible, hyper-inappropriate treatment of her, followed up by acknowledging it was horrible and then...lulz, what can you do, right? Part of it is Hye-yeon as a character pretending that it doesn’t bother her (which is great character stuff), but the show almost seems to think that if she says she’s fine then all’s well a we can just move on. It’s a weird choice.

Yeah, I'm shocked by how frequently Hye-yeon's misfortunes are played for laughs.

I feel like I'm understanding less and less of what this show is supposed to be about with each new episode. Or, rather, it feels like it started as one thing but became (or was meant to be) something else. Whether I misread things or not, I can't yet say--but I'm pretty sure we've got too many things going on with too many people, at the moment; and, as a result, we've got a handful of character stories that could be the main focus competing for time and attention but not being given an adequate amount of either. I'm invested and intrigued, but I never feel quite settled into the story. Perhaps the second half will bring things more into focus.

The last couple of episodes of S1 pulled my enjoyment of the series down a notch or two, so I was considering giving S2 a pass...but I gave it a shot and it turned out to be way more fun than I would have hoped. I had a really good time with this, particularly since it only barely connects back to S1.

...until it gets the band back together in the last couple of episodes and messes it all up. Not completely, but enough to remind me why I was reluctant to watch another season.

All in all, same strengths and weaknesses, even if they are a bit remixed--especially how short shrifted the villains were, yet again.

That said...I'm up for S3. The best character presumably won't be in it, which sucks, but...yeah, why not?

Just finished Ep 15, and...do the writers really expect me to believe that Goon thinks he replaced the real memory of the little girl who saved him with some made up version of little girl Ju-yeon? Seriously? I know it's clearly the real little girl Ju-yeon he's remembering, but why on earth would he think he'd reimagined the little girl's appearance (so she'd look like Ju-yeon) rather than just imprinted the memory of the little girl onto Ju-yeon? How dumb does the production think I am that its trying to hide why the same little girl is playing two supposedly different roles?

Oh, I am excited to see Kim Yoo-jung dig her teeth into this!

😂

It was to keep the other side (possibly the Americans) from knowing how to get or get to the Tyrant. Kim Seon-ho's character is an extreme patriot (we get that scene where Paul is interrogating him and telling him the Koreans should stick to making electronics rather than trying to get into the "nuke" game--and the response he gives is to ask why Korea isn't allowed to do what America (etc) is), and keeping himself and his knowledge away from the side that's going to keep the Tyrant for itself or kill it means Korea will continue to have (well, "have") its super-weapon, which is what he wants most.

It's still not particularly good, but Eps 3 + 4 were way better than 1 + 2, so I'm enjoying it well enough, for now.

The biggest drawback is by far Goon, who feels more like an obligatory character rather than a necessary one...which is odd, because he's the protagonist. And that might be a chunk of the show's problem: its lead is a two-dimensional side character. Meanwhile, second lead Shin has more to do and way better chemistry with Ju-yeon--to the point where I can't understand why he isn't the male lead. Or why it's taking so long to get Sae-yan involved in things--or why she needs to be there at all (aside from b/c I love Yang Hye-ji), especially when Si-on is so fun and pairs so well with Goon. It feels like we've got an ensemble show that's hamstrung by a premise than assumes the standard 1st-leads/2nd-leads structure.

But, again, 3 + 4 were much more amusing and enjoyable, so maybe things will continue picking up.

Song Ji-woo delivered some of the biggest laughs in Doctor Slump and had me rolling literally every moment she was on screen in Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale--but I've been swooning over her since she was just the photo next to Ha-ru's in the student attendance book in Extraordinary You.

It's just a regular K-dating show, but with keeping your zodiac sign secret and doing fortune teller things whenever you think someone has gotten flirter with you.

It's been entertaining through two eps.

Except you first have to convince everyone to do it. And the whole point is that everyone is afraid to try because A) doesn't want to endure the pain of the fight and B) thinks she's going to be alone in trying. The bullies and their powerful families could absolutely be brought down by a unified and determined "underclass," but the risk just in organizing is difficult enough to overcome. The "they can't kill all of us" approach only works if people are cool with the possibility that they might not be part of the "all of us" who make it out of the battle alive.

I just started this weekend and am on Ep 6, right now. I am shocked at how good it is. It's easily becoming one of my favorites of the year.

Thank goodness I chose to watch Hierarchy first, or I'd have been even more unimpressed with that one.

Onanistic nonsense, but utterly bingeable.

The show isn’t saying anything new, but its delivery is equal parts entertaining and missed opportunity, as it’s story is...not a story. There’s no narrative, no arc, no point beyond the moral (or “moral”); the characters don’t learn or grow or change; and the point is so simple and cliche that it just makes the show it’s couched in seen that much more fruitless an endeavor, because it needed to bring something new or fresh to the table to seem worth doing—and, in that sense, it fails.

BUT...the aesthetic and direction and cinematography and performances mostly even things out on the entertainment side.

I can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t dislike it—and I certainly didn’t want to put it down.

Okay, pulling from the past is way cleaner than him jumping into the past--good call, there. Makes way more sense. Thanks!

That said--and forgive me if I'm misinterpreting part of your explanation, making what I'm about to say exactly what you meant--but wouldn't the kid be able to grab his father from 18 years ago regardless of the "he was supposed to be dead" element? As in, the situation wasn't really any kind of exception, right?

Like, the kid got his ball from the past because he lost it--except he didn't lose it, his future self took it. It was just more fixed-timeline stuff.

So, Gwi-ju never came back to the present because his son summoned him from 18 years ago, before he could snap back. Isn't that all it is, more fixed-timeline stuff? That is, Gwi-ju was only "lost" because he was taken?

...which should also mean Gwi-ju is in danger of snapping back to just after the backstage rescue of I-na, since he was technically out of time when he's snatched up by the kid, but...the credits rolled, so let's not worry about that.

Because it didn't happen. He's only able to save Da-hae because he had always saved Da-hae. He'd always shouted to his seonbae, who always glanced back, and always ran in anyway--there wasn't any changing that. The time travel he does only keeps the timeline intact. The timeline is fixed.

Now, if you think the show should have done more in that moment to show us that he was either choosing not to do something (because be realizes it's useless or because he thinks it will prevent him from reaching Da-hae in time) or tries just a bit harder and his seonbae runs off anyway, then I agree. It's not as strong a moment as it should have been.

Heh, yeah, that seems to be what happened. The son can time travel to...specific objects, I guess, somehow knew exactly when to find his dad, and casually pulled him out of an exploding building into the present day. Which seems a lot more elaborate than Gwi-ju just popping back into the theater after things have calmed down and he's no longer in danger of being crushed to death, but...who's to say.

If you really want me to spoil it for you...





...it does.