latteholic

I also loved it when they had Louis Armstrong’s La Vie en Rose playing while the leader kept asking the film director "yes or no?" over and over again, and the director finally said "no" just as the song finished, and at the same time the base commander had just finished his cheeseburger (which is funny since Go Myeong had told him earlier to buy cheeseburgers with the money he won from betting on the lives of the passengers) and was like, "yeah, I’m done with this"

"Yes or No?"

Yeah, that’s what I said in my comment... I get the censorship angle. I just found it refreshing after a string of K-dramas I had watched, kinda like a palate cleanser :)

I really enjoyed this one and honestly cant wait for season 2. I actually took my time with it, savoring each ep over several weeks, and it was such a fun ride! Kian is still Kian, the man radiates questionable hygiene, and even after being desensitized by watching ILA for so long, he still managed to make me flinch and give me secondhand embarrassment lol. But the trio together? Absolutely perfect. I loved watching them try to keep that bizarre B&B running, I lol-ed so many times. The guests were all so fun and genuinely enthusiastic, and somehow the show balanced all that chaos with heartwarming, healing moments that made it such a comfort watch.

Yeah, I think him looking back implies he still has the ability. RAN-1 gave ppl loop awareness but also attacked the body's weakest organ/cells. An Lan made RAN-2 to repair/reactivate damaged organs and to use it on her mom. I think because it can repair the damaged cell, An Lan just assume that it will also "repair" the part of brain that cause the loop awareness and the damage to other organ, but she didnt test it long enough to know if that ability would also disappear.

And yeah, curious abt Han Yufei too. MYZ seemed to strangled him to the point where he passed out rather than died (cmiiw I dont remember his neck being snapped). If he really died, I feel like someone (like Tang Xin) would've said smth, so most likely he was hospitalized which is why we didn't see him at the end.

Another Under the Skin rec? Alright, I'm convinced, thats going first on the list for this week, haha. Thirteen Years of Dust sounds great too, I'm such a sucker for 90s crime vibe. Thanks for the recs!

Ooo... def not saying no to another Bai Jing Ting drama lol. The premise sounds very interesting too... bit of history, bit of crime, totally my thing :)
Under the Skin sounds right up my alley too. Thanks for the recs!

So I havent watched many C-dramas, but I really liked how the police were portrayed here, and in Reset (which I binged right after this and absolutely LOVED). Coming from my recent k-dramas watch, its such a nice change of pace to see law enforcement thats actually competent for once. I get that Chinese media prob has certain rules about how the police are portrayed, but even so, it felt refreshing compared to the incompetency and corruption in K-drama crime shows. lol

I was wondering if anyone got recs for other C-dramas crime/procedural shows with a competent police force like this (doesnt have to be fantasy/sci-fi)? Bonus points if it focuses on methodical investigation and teamwork. Thanks!

I feel the same abt the music... The show never lets scenes breathe organically, there's always something playing, like it doesnt trust silence... but also just minor nitpick from my side...

The looping itself isnt caused by genetics. The drama treats the loop as some unexplained physics anomaly that resets everything for everyone. Most ppl arent aware bc their memories reset when the new loop happens, but due to a genetic anomaly/side effect of RAN, a handful can have their memories stay intact across loops. So the genetic part is more about awareness of the loop rather than the loop's origin, which hasnt been explained or left unexplained.

And yeah, the lab stuff was… questionable. My fave nitpick was how she got results in the morning and by afternoon was already whipping up an injection for her mom. Like, girl. RAN-1 took a week to show side effects on your bestie... maybe wait more than 12 hrs before jumping straight into "mad scientist" mode and running a human trial, esp when it’s your mom’s life on the line? lol.

Yeah, her backstory felt like a weak motive only added to humanize her char. I would already buy shes doing it for power + money off war, so no extra childhood trauma needed. The scene where she cried in Jun Ik's room before Jun Ik was assassinated was enough to humanize her, I can see she loved him but still chose the plan over him. That alone gave her depth, imo.

Tbh I'm still a bit confused about her motivation. Like, is her childhood trauma (mom running off w/ a US soldier, being abandoned near a base) really strong enough to explain why she would escalate all the way into nukes? Or is it more that her Aseom/NK/Idisha pipeline already had her set up for power and profit, and the personal stuff just got layered in to humanize her character? To me it feels less like her backstory is driving her and more like the plot just needed her to be *that* extreme...

lol exactly, I cant unsee it either… its not super noticeable, but every now and then a scene will remind me of it.

yeah I see it as an obfuscation strategy ...

I've noticed it since Windstruck, but I never said it out loud lol. Idk, sometimes I feel like it's bc shes just trying to focus during emotional scenes.

It's a pretty convoluted plan, but I think it still connects back to the first half once you line it all up. Here's how I see it:

1. Why kill Jun Ik and frame him as a spy?
Jun Ik was both a threat and a cover. In the letter he left w/ the flash disk, he wrote that after the mass he was gonna reveal everything abt his mother’s plan. That made him too risky to keep alive. On top of that, there was a call made from the house to NK. Since he lived w/ his mother, it was easy to pin that call on him. Add the Argentina land and shell cos under his name, and he looked like the perfect black sheep. Killing him and framing him as a spy also gave his mother more time to keep the sub plan moving before ppl figured things out.

2. Why frame Mun Ju for murder and espionage?
She was the first to go public saying the sub was fake and that the US was already preparing to attack NK and ppl believed her. So they trashed her rep. Once she’s labeled a spy + murderer, her words would sound like enemy propaganda. Later when she found out the sub was actually real, it was too late. She had already lost face and credibility in public, so even if she tried to speak again, no one would take her seriously.

3. Why bait the US into attacking NK?
The point was to get the US to act on false intel and then embarrass them when it turned out fake. That way they look reckless, allies start doubting them, and next time they hesitate. w/ Mun Ju already discredited, there was no credible voice left to stop the hoax, so the plan had room to play out.

4. Who sent Miller the false intel and arranged the soldier’s murder-suicide?
That was Stella Young. She passed the fake sub intel to Miller and staged the soldier’s murder-suicide to erase witnesses. This is why both Miller and Mun Ju were so sure the sub was fake, and they decided to announce it to the public. That mistake played perfectly into the plan bc it set them up to be discredited and cleared the way to bait the US.

5. Purpose of land purchases in Argentina?
The land was used for money laundering. Kim Jose said he set everything up under Jun Ik’s name, but he never met him in person. Most likely he worked w/ Stella Young, which shows the whole thing was really run by Jun Ik's mother. Using his name as the front made it easy to funnel money into shell cos and move cash to NK for the subs. When those accounts got frozen in ep 9, the money flow stopped and Idisha + NK agreed to cancel the attack.

I thought An Lan also said she couldnt find a pattern? It was random?

Mo Yuan Zhi just happened to be killed by his mentor on a loop day (which is why the method was different: instead of a freak accident, it was a bomb in the wedding cake). But because of that, Ding Qi didn't suspect him until the third/fourth day.

He didnt know. His mentor, Jiang Yu Wen, killed him on the first day, it wasnt part of his/the squid's plan. Luckily for him (and everyone else), that day happened to be a loop day. Since he was killed right away in the first day, Ding Qi never suspected him of being the squid until the third/fourth day.

I actually wonder if they switched the name in post-production after the Iraq backlash. All they had to do was dub it over and tweak the graphic a little.

He did say he would visit w/ his wife, and I Shin told him not to, but he answered that he would anyway. I did tear up a bit at that part... :D

Also I mentioned below but I loved how the ending circled back to the beginning. We first met I Shin in her exclusive cell, espresso in hand, sketching insects. The final scene strips all that away... no privilege, just a crowded cell and a quiet sketch of Su Yeol's family from the photo he gave/sent. What she loses in comfort, she gains in connection. It's simple, almost understated, but it carries the whole weight of the story and lands with the ache of something earned.