interregnum

At the moment, we are absolutely headed towards a Goblin-style ending, if the homeless lady (God) is to be taken at her word. And given the likely reason for the tattoo transfer, a bittersweet ending (that would require a time jump to be happy) seems inevitable.

Great catch on the two sword dancers in the painting. And, as such, I think we can say their standoff in front of it will probably end up being more than just an amusing moment between blunted swords and an uncharged stun gun.

As far as the connections to the past go...we still don’t know how Gu-won became a demon—or, perhaps, who tempted him (or otherwise made him want/need) to make the deal to become one.

I’m just sayin’: maybe that tattoo jumping to Do-hee is less unexplainable than it is, y’know, going back where it came from.

And then we’ll find out Madame Ju made a deal with a demon that killed Do-hee’s parents and that the friendly nephew is the one who killed Madame Ju and that, in the end, the jerkface son she swiped the chairmanship from was secretly trying to keep Do-hee safe from herself. There’s all kinds of twists coming! Who knows?

Oh, absolutely. I'm half-convinced she's the sword dancer for his past and Do-hee's past life did something to come between them, rather than the much more obvious option of Do-hee being the girl from his memory.

THAT SAID...this show is very deliberately using a black/white color scheme for just about everything (outifts, cars...a third example I can't think of), and though I can't quite figure out a pattern to when it's used (assuming there is one) or for what symbolic purpose (assuming there is one), I will point out this: the sword dancer in the past is in white, and our Beyonce of Traditional Korean Dance is always in black.

...which, again, who knows what that means, since Do-hee seems to alternate between black and white outfits.

I was a little ambivalent about this show, at first, but it's really grown on me. I think it's only gotten better with each new episode, and it has become the series I find myself looking forward to most each week. It's a funnier, sweeter, and sharper whole than any of its individual parts would have you think.

Fully agree. I tuned in to see my remaining faves on the next stage of their survival adventure, and what I got was an incomplete pilot for two spinoff series stapled together and spread over 8 episodes. I liked a lot of the new folks--but not to the point where I wanted to sacrifice the old ones. This season made all the mistakes I'd hoped it wouldn't, and then it made a bunch more I'd never imagined. Weird choices. They weren't all bad (or not entirely bad), but they were certainly weird.

Honestly, I missed the Imagine Dragons song--not because I missed the song, but because having it pop up at silly intervals in S1 was a better decision than most of the writing choices in S2. In hindsight, it almost feels quaint.

Totally agree. The script is clunky and amateurish, and there's too much going on--just like in Valentine's Day or New Year's Eve--for any of the stories to really take hold. And, yes, the man who wanted to kill himself was easily the strongest part of the story, to the point where it feels like it should have been the whole movie (minus the silly antics the staff tries to pull to steer him away from it). It's a great cast, but there's nothing they can do with a script that has no depth to it.

I think the confusion (if that’s the right word for it) comes from the pacing of the last two or three episodes. It goes from steadily showing us development to a sudden series of progressively more truncated scenes that jump forward unspecified amounts of time and increasingly rely on storytelling by implication, which it just assumes you’ve been readying yourself to read into. I feel like anything shy of being fully bought in on the show by the time Episode 9 rolls around, the ending is less poignant or clever than it is clunky and unsatisfying.

Mostly, yes. It is a fairly quick watch, and the first half is, I think, very easy to enjoy. The second half (starting somewhere around episode 5 or 6) is presumably where opinions are divided. You'll see a lot of "the ending!!!" talk, but the issues start well before that, with a tripling of the storytelling pace. There's a lot left unsaid as things progress, but in a way that makes development feel left out rather than poignant or full of subtext. So, I say go for it, if you're at all interested. Just brace yourself for the second half. (Or, hey, maybe you'll love the second half. What do I know?)

Heh, very good. Regardless, Im glad to know i'm not the only one who noticed.

Am I alone I'm thinking that the happiest ending to this story--that Si-heon gets together with a girl who looks literally EXACTLY like the girl his best friend is (from what we last saw) potentially currently dating--is, like, weird?

I dunno...that last clip of Ju-mi and Ji-won having dinner together after a rough day—I know the show really wants to lean into the “maybe it’s a thing!” aspect, but they sure do seem like they’ve got something special between them. They click like crazy, obviously, and they know it. But where I’d initially thought they were headed towards something like platonic soulmates...if they both want a relationship, and everyone keeps telling them to give each other a shot, the possibility suddenly spends a lot more time in their concious minds—meaning this ship might be easier to get sailing than we realize.

I am as elated watching how adorable Min-kyu and Yi-soo are together as I am furious that this is the kind of thing that must have been kept from us in HS4. Regardless, I'm so glad we're getting this series. I really wasn't ready to part with these folks.

I'd never heard of the original series, but Jeon Yeo-been is my favorite Korean actress--so where she goes, I go. But this show somehow managed to smother all the charisma out of her, which is something I didn't think was possible. And it feels like that sentiment is spread over the whole production. I'm maybe 70% of the way through it, and I just wanted to know I wasn't alone in thinking there's something...soulless about the series. It's just such a slog to get through. But at least now I know I'm not the only one who thinks something is amiss, even beyond the adaptation complaints I've seen many other people make.

Exactly. I spent a lot of the runtime thinking it could have been a decent movie or maybe a three-episode miniseries. It obviously wants to say something, though whether that's some kind of specific message or just a broad meditation on how a tragedy (and I mean that in the Shakespearean, author-of-your-own-sorrow sense) unfolds is beyond me. But you're totally right that forcing the focus down even further would have made getting to the point of the whole thing much more of a necessity.

Doesn't mean it still wouldn't have been an opaque mess, but there'd certainly be a lot less wasted time cluttering up the story progression if it had less space to fill.

Also, maybe have the central character be more active in progressing the story than the nominal antagonist. Just, y'know, off the top of my head.

I think you’re being a little generous by saying there was even a concept to the show, but my snideness aside, I fully agree with your review. Personally, I feel like people are caught up in the show’s self-assuredness rather than considering the details.

And, yes, the close of Ep 2 was as contrived as it was unaddressed (likely because it was contrived).

Thank goodness other people didn't have any idea what the point of this whole thing was. I kind of feel silly for having been excited about it before it came out, now that I've seen it.

I don't fully agree with everything in your review, but I also don't think our points of disagreement would much change the end result: that this season has (through six episodes, at least) been disappointing, lacking many of the things that made the first season click--not the least of which was a plot driven by our protagonists. The personal angle the second season is relying on to ground the story with our heroes is far less natural than the first season death of a team member and the unusual circumstance of his replacement, and, as such, there's far less of an emotional hook to the story. The counters are only invested by proxy in the emotional core of the story, which is itself only a proxy plot for the (actual and legit) supervillains to sorta be involved with kinda maybe a little. There's time to pull it all back and rock the rest of the season, but there's very little that could excuse how slow and disconnected the first half (...good heavens, it's halfway finished? Nothing's even happened yet!) has been.

Much like Ji-min, this week, I found myself wondering where Min-kyu was every second he wasn't on screen. The knife fight for his attention is probably the best romance plot I've seen all year. I am having SUCH a good time with this season.

I'm just happy I wasn't the only one who was picking up those "Um, I'm right here, Ju-mi" vibes from that guy. 😆