Alice (2020) Episodes 7-8: Teasing Tropes or Taboos?

To be honest I'm not entirely certain where the show is going with some of the character threads. Admittedly unpredictability is one of the attractions of this highly ambitious drama. One is never quite sure where the show is taking the audience on this rollercoaster ride. I must confess I'm not a fan of the show's flirtations with Oedipal taboos. I use the word "flirtation" because at this point at time that's all it seems to be. It's clear the show is playing monkey with audience expectations with regard to possible lovelines. ("Are they? Aren't they?" The manipulation of camera angles and the emotional OST plus some of Tae-yi's more pointed questions about Jin-gyeom's feelings for her lend weight to this perspective to some degree.

My own view on Jin-gyeom's dynamic with 2020 Tae-yi is due to her striking resemblance to his mother and the perpetual question that preoccupies him as to whether she is his mother. Based on what we've seen so far, I am also of the opinion that she is his mother's younger self because the mechanics of the temporal device here is not thoroughly explained... at least not to my satisfaction... because of the inconsistencies. But then the whole idea of time travel is problematic whichever way one looks at it. Who knows perhaps in some other parallel universes Jin-gyeom's relationship with Tae-yi is not familial. My problem with that proposition of course is that Jin-gyeom is Future Tae-yi's son with Min-hyuk. So if he's in a romantic relationship with some other Tae-yi somewhere out there, who's son is he? I don't know about anyone else but this throws up another layer of complexity that is begging for answers I'm not sure that the show will be offering. But none of us can be certain about much when there are still 8 episodes to go.

The other thing that troubles me is that Mother-Future Tae-yi and younger Tae-yi both co-existed in the same timeline so it seems that they're two separate selves. But then from time to time younger Tae-yi seems to have vestiges of Mother Tae-yi's memories. Are these sorts of inconsistencies going to be explained later on? 

Jin-gyeom... as far as one is able to read him... is largely fascinated with present Tae-yi because of the guilt that weighs on him for failing to protect his mother not once but twice. Whether or not he can ascertain her identity, many odd, inexplicable and even dangerous occurrences have brought them together  His seeming attachment to her, I believe is about that and a long-felt regret for not having been a more attentive son to his mother while she was around. The early sequences of Episode 8 point to that. Do-yeon's timely/untimely intrusion into the safe house suggests that the show teases out the time honored cohabitation trope and then pulls back. It established early on that Jin-gyeom doesn't have strong connections with many people. Mother Tae-yi was one, Do-yeon is another, Ahjussi and his wife make up the rest of this select group. It took years for them to build the bonds they now share. Even now he still has trouble identifying his emotions and yet there's no doubt he cares for these people more than others. So it's a stretch, to my way of thinking, that he would fall for in love with present day immature Tae-yi with all her unique quirks just because she looks like his mum. Even the ambiguity that surrounds his accommodation of her whims and demands seems to be associated with his memories of Mother Tae-yi.

It's not (just) about the ick factor that I object to a possible romance between Jin-gyeom and 2020 Tae-yi but the internal inconsistencies it creates within the storyline. Okay he hugged her and cried like a baby when he first saw present-day Tae-yi but only because she is a dead ringer for his mother -- the only person in his life he ever wept bitterly for.

Then of course there's the problem of Min-hyuk who's been conducting time travel tourism in Jin-gyeom's timeline. The same Jin-gyeom who is a progeny of his beloved Tae-yi. Jin-gyeom is their offspring and they're interacting. If indeed Min-hyuk is supposedly operating in a parallel universe why does the case file for Lee Se-hoon have his mug shot in it. Is this a fixed event that occurs in every universe? How does this work? Then there's Mother Tae-yi's time card which he took back and is now being looked over by the Alice crowd. 

If there's anyone I root for, it's Min-hyuk. He seems to be much better fleshed out character than first meets the eye and then there's Kwak Si-yang's thoughtful performance. For someone who is supposed to be in charge of such a groundbreaking enterprise, he knows so very little. Despite the bluster he still hasn't moved on and he doesn't even know that he's a dad. He cared much more for her than the early episodes indicated. But he soldiered on nonetheless. And really that's it... he is a soldier in a cause who paid the price for it because he believed that what he was doing was a good thing. He hasn't read the forbidden book so he doesn't know that the time travel project that he's a part of is a pandora's box. 

In Train (2020) at least it was clear to me that the universes were two distinct locations with very different outcomes for just about every single character. The point from which the differentiation occurred was at least defined. There was an event that caused the branching-off that leads to different consequences.

Here my problem with the multiverse theory is about returning to the point of origin. How is that achieved? If there are that many alternate/parallel universes out there that results from all the time travelling that goes on, how does anyone get back to the moment that started it all? It's one thing to create an alternate timeline (as posited by Seok O-won) but it's another thing to leave it and then return to it. If there are so many of them, how do the time travellers know which one to go back to? Does the wormhole principle here work like that of the Stargate franchise?

I need explanations!

As I said last week, I'm not seeing parallel universes here in the same ways as it occurred in Train but an accumulation of paradoxes in the form of causal loops. We have future selves meeting past selves; future selves going back to the past and then having progeny in the past.

My mind is undeniably boggled. I do wonder if the multiverse thesis is just a red-herring or a mistaken assumption on the part of some which is why time travel becomes a complete trainwreck and future Tae-yi  co-opts O-won to put a kibosh in the entire project.

Alice (2020) Episodes 5 and 6 : Of Pandora's box and Paradoxes

The biggest surprise to me about this drama is that it really does want us to take the "science" in science fiction rather more seriously than one might expect it to. One some level the name dropping (eg. Schrodinger's Cat, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle etc) might just be window dressing... "Attention! Attention! You are watching a time travel-multiverse story" but the fact that the writer is making the effort, is almost commendable. There's almost enough gobbledegook to rival that of an episode of Star Trek: TNG. It's really rare in my experience to see a K drama go to go to all the trouble of analysing and discussing the moral intricacies of playing peek-o-boo with the past. 

By now we're meant to understand that the Alice project is not all that it's cracked up to be. Good intentions are not always matched by reality and outcomes. While Alice might not be an abject failure (yet), it can't entirely live up to its lofty aims of wanting to better the lives of people or alleviate suffering. It also appears, rather worryingly that the people behind the Alice project aren't entirely cognizant of all things time travel, much less about the competing interests within that space. There's talk about parallel universes and other selves in existence but there's no notion of paradoxes of future selves becoming part of the past and integrating their footprint in a single timeline. If there had been (at least) two separate timelines before, they seem to have now collapsed into one apparently because of Tae-yi's decision to remain in 1992. Seok O-won seems to have some awareness of this having the benefit of hindsight taken from the so-called Book of Prophecy. 

Prophetic utterances and oracles within this universe seem to the ramblings and chronicles of time travellers who have witnessed the future firsthand, recorded key events and left them behind for posterity. How the book found its way into Dr Jang Do-shik originally and Seok O-won's hands eventually at various times are still mysteries that need to be revealed in due time. Playing pass the parcel with the book itself seems to imply that there is one timeline at play rather than multiple ones. Unless of course there are multiple ones circulating in parallel worlds.

The contestability of time travel may prove to be the most fascinating aspect of the drama. It's also a new twist to Kdramaland's increasing macabre fixation with serial murders. A good excuse to raise the body count. It isn't just the tourism murders that call into the question the entire enterprise but there are other murders involving rough looking men with long hair and leather jackets who have a thing about dead cats. Who are they taking their orders from? It seemed initially that Seok O-won might be behind this and yet it is possible that there's a third party calling the shots. The contestability of time travel will undoubtedly turn it into the pandora's box that Seok O-won hints darkly at. It's a double-edged sword depending on who's wielding it.

The time card brings Min-hyuk face to face with the woman he loves and is stopped in his tracks. Is she his Tae-yi? According to Schrodinger's thought experiment... the answer is no... and yes. He knows her but not her as she is now but as she will be. But to add insult to injury he thinks she's another Tae-yi from a parallel universe, out of his reach. Are we all sufficiently discombobulated yet?

Min-hyuk is wrestling with the same issues Jin-gyeom does. Who is this woman? Should he care? As long as she doesn't have memories of him, she can't be his Tae-yi. Just as Jin-gyeom has concluded that the professor can't be his mother. Appearances, habits and personality aren't everything if they have no shared memories. According to the premise laid down here, her identity is not necessarily determined by who she thinks she is or what she does alone BUT by how she is perceived by the people who know her best. Tae-yi from 2050 apart from being a scientist was also someone's lover and then someone's mother.

The time card is the key... not just for accessing the temporal mechanism but the key to all those involved in this relationship web to find out the truth about the past. 1992 and 2010.  Min-hyuk's entry at this point in 2020 Tae-yi's existence suggests that the show might be avoiding an icky Oedipal scenario. Although the constant sparring between father and son might indicate otherwise. Certainly on Jin-gyeom's side, his interest in present-day Tae-yi is purely for the fact she resembles his mother in striking ways. He must also feel some responsibility for drawing her into this dragnet of inexplicable danger that grows even more inexplicable as the web of intrigue expands to include a whole assortment of unsavoury characters that have come from nowhere.

Oh Shi-young is a curious and suspicious figure. One wonders about her role and possible presence on the night of Tae-yi's death in 2010... as signalled by the drone. But the really curious thing is why she's been feeding Min-hyuk porkies about Tae-yi moving on and living the good life and the death of their baby. To help him forget and move on so that he would turn his attention to her? That's a likely explanation. And he is undoubtedly walking eye-candy in a suit.

More than that, she must know that Tae-yi left behind a son. His and her son. Whatever she might be trying to convince herself of regarding parallel universes it doesn't change the fact that Park Jin-gyeom is Min-hyuk's son from that particular timeline.

The reality is that Min-hyuk hasn't moved on despite running around busily with a stoic resolve. Neither has Jin-gyeom despite his innate expression of stoicism. The passage of time apparently doesn't heal all wounds. Perhaps this explains Min-hyuk's quiet sympathy for his murderous clients. He himself is only too aware of his own grief that he keeps well-hidden from public gaze. 

However, the use of the past as a psychotherapeutic playground continues to throw up all kinds of troubling ethical questions. For an oligarchy with all their emotional baggage, not matter how well-intentioned, to adjudicate this life and death process, continues to be disturbing.

There's no denying the well-used tropes making their appearances here. It is still a recognizably K drama after all. However, credit should be given to the showrunners for using them in playful, innovative ways as it pertains to the time travel multiverse madness. It may be true that underneath all the other worldly elements beats the heart of a good old fashion K melodrama.

Alice (2020) Episode 4 -- A Cursory Analysis of the Big Ideas *Spoilers*

I was amused and somewhat gratified to read Choi Won-young's latest character mouth the very same lines that I had written in my previous post. All the predictably good stuff about "just because you can doesn't mean you should", "this is an intrusion into the realm of the gods" etc etc. It's clear that the show is presenting him as an antagonist to the prevailing Alice narrative although it's unclear how much of that hostility plays out in actual violence. Seok O-won, the head of the Kuiper Institute of Advanced Sciences, believes that time travel is possible. A charismatic man of science to boot. He is the first one from 2020 to state that unequivocally but he also styles himself as a critic of it. It's a dangerous proposition and it's not hard to see from recent events that he has a point or two. Science is a tool, neither good or evil in and of itself but in the wrong hands, it can go very very badly not just for the person who uses it but for others around them. 

My fascination with Alice lies mainly with its philosophical underpinnings and explorations. The big ideas of life, that sort of thing. I don't think it does anything spectacularly different from a lot of sci-fi and perhaps visually some aspects of it might seem a bit cheesy. But the storytelling is very good and what it tries to do, it does well. Besides I'm always a sucker for a decent police procedural even if it takes a back seat to mind-bending sci-fi.

People are getting murdered and not all of them are mysteries.  The audience is privy to the ins and outs behind the bloodlust. The ones that remain unsolved up to this point and the ones whose motives are known. Both feed into the overarching moral dilemmas related to using time travel supposedly in the betterment of humanity's lot. The debate is this: Just because we can use time travel to do good (in varying degrees) there are costs... and trade-offs. Do the gains outweigh the losses? Are the gains offset by the losses? It's a crucial principle that should inform all manner of public policy on all levels. This is a point well-made during this season of Covid-19. To put it in medical terms, "Is the cure worse than the disease?"

When the head honcho of Alice, Ki Cheol-an says to a defensive Eun-soo's mother that by killing her 2020 self, she has now left her beloved Eun-soo without a mother. The show allows the full weight of that statement to land on the grieving mother. A gentle rebuke of her blind selfishness. Not too many will quibble with the fact that she loved her daughter and she was still grieving in 2050 that her daughter had died at 17 because of a single event. She blames her past self for being lax and complacent and thinks she would do a better job equipped with foreknowledge. But as the scenario plays out, the murder is inevitably discovered because let's face it the lady is hardly a criminal genius. 2050 mother is now on the run from 2020 law enforcement and needs rescuing. On top of that 2020 Eun-soo is now motherless and Dad is wifeles and grief-stricken. The future for them might arguably be bleaker than before. In a fit of emotional rage with no one to hold her back, Eun-soo's mother commits an irreversible crime. 

The incident also highlights the difficulty of prediction. It's almost impossible for us mere mortals to know what will happen. It is possible to look at history and make a few good, educated guesses about the big picture of where the world is headed. That's certainly not beyond the pale. But on an individual level, it's much harder. How many times have we said... or heard people say, "Never in my dreams did I imagine I would be doing XYZ" or "If you had told me when I was 20 that I would be in this position now blah blah blah"? If only I had $10 for every time I've heard it. Whether the outcomes are net positive or negative one can't be sure that while one is in a middle of living life if one's life is a tragedy.

With regards to Eun-soo's mother she was so fixated with the one event... the death of her daughter... that she forgot about the good times that they shared. In 2050 she was trapped in the past that was 2030. Revisiting the past could have been helpful in the grieving process but it was more about course correction which led to the overreach and then murder. In the end she swapped one form of grief for another.

The other so-called related moral lesson for all concerned is about how humans deal with suffering and grief. Again, universally and perennially topical. Again, this has long been the subject of science fiction. The film Equilibrium, a favourite after the manner of Fahrenheit 451 springs to mind. A stoic utopia "no place"... or more appropriately dystopia created with the underlying assumption that eliminating emotions is the only way to control human beings and gain a peaceful society. In Serenity, a similar project was also undertaken by the government to turn everyone docile except for the fact that it led to serious, deadly side effects to creating that brave new world.

To me history proves that our world is a fallen one filled with flawed, broken human beings. Death is a reality. History is replete with examples of how human beings make the same mistakes over and over again. Much suffering is tied to that. In some ways progress has been made over time but it doesn't take much for regression to barbarism to emerge. Lord of the Flies is a sober reminder that without constraints... legal, social and personal... things fall apart fast. Good intentions can end horribly badly.  Once again, I refer to Eun-soo's mother. She's the anthropomorphic metaphor here of those who grieve and can't move on. Perhaps there is even a certain perceived nobility in that... remembering, never forgetting. Like what Jin-gyeom says to his adoptive father and mentor, Go Hyeon-seok. You don't forget family. I doubt it's a statement that anyone who has lost family would ever disagree. But there comes a time of moving on which is not the same as forgetting. It means concentrating on living out the rest of one's life without the one that is lost. Overcoming it is a part of life. We all do it in different ways. At my mother's funeral we talked about her, we cried, we laughed and we hugged each other. It was very hard the first year but I credit my children for "compelling" me to focus on the moment, focus on what I had  rather than what I didn't. The belief in the afterlife, the hope that she was no longer suffering and that we'll meet again one day... all of that helped me to "move on" as well.

It's crucial to learn the right lessons from grief and loss. That was also the message of It's Okay Not to be Okay. Suffering can make or break a person. When someone grows stronger from it, resilience is the fruit.

Time travel seems especially important for people who have no hope of an afterlife reunion. I think the talk of church, religion and gods in this episode is suggestive. Those who pin all their hopes on science might believe that science has the potential to address all of humanity's problems. No one denies that the application of science across the board has brought a myriad of benefits.  But humans are more than bodies and science is limited in what it can do for the longings of the heart.

It's certainly not a new idea of science alleviating suffering or removing it altogether. I imagine that's why the pharmaceutical industry does as well as it does despite all the cynicism concerning its activities and the power that it wields. But what is the trade off of that? An unhealthy, hubristic vision of our ability to deal with things that are beyond our control? Pinning our hopes on something that can never satisfy? Or a risk averse culture that coddles the young?

Seok O-won's view of time travel is worth chewing over. From what I understand he doesn't believe that changing the past can change the present/future. What it does is create an alternate one. Essentially the past cannot be changed, only the future. So he seems to subscribe to not just the multiverse theory but also alternate timelines. The original timeline that the traveller comes from remains largely unchanged but at a certain point it branches off in a different direction due to the (inter)actions of the traveller. Like Star Trek 2009. So it seems there are no father paradoxes in the Terminator sense, just alternate selves living and making different choices due to different levels of knowledge. This could well be the underlying principle of Alice. 

That of course opens up other serious moral and ethical issues. It isn't just a case of going back and committing murder to change things. There is the issue of "rights" and authority. What are the implications for others when we do this? Who arbitrates this universe hopping? This is my problem with the Alice management. They've made themselves the Lords of the universe when they have no omniscience. This is exactly Seok O-won's point. It's a power that human beings can't handle. This is more dangerous than a ghost story where people complete unfinished business before going to the afterlife like in Mystic Pop-up Bar. 

All good stories are ultimately about family in some form. Families are essential, a headache and often a lifelong grief. Interpret that how you may. But they're a human impulse because it's a place of belonging. No one should be alone. Both Tae-yi and Jin-gyeom end up being orphaned at some point and are adopted by kindly souls along the way. Go Hyeon-seok and his wife lost their own son and they did what they could to make sure that he had a home after his mother death. Eun-soo will now be motherless. Min-hyuk who is picture of stoicism to his colleagues is adamant that despite being the poster boy of professionalism he is capable of grief. He grieved and is probably still grieving for the family he lost. Or more accurately, the family he doesn't know he has. Jin-gyeom was fatherless... and then he was fatherless and motherless before moving in with the Gos. The little girl at the beginning of the show Dr Jang's daughter was motherless apparently and then she was fatherless. She may or may not be the little girl who becomes the Tae-yi who grew up in the orphanage.

Min-hyuk finding out Jin-gyeom is his son is high on my list of things I anticipate. Especially when all they've been doing is facing off each other. Will it be anything like Tunnel? It's not clear at this stage why he believes that their baby died and who has been feeding him porkies in that regard but I wonder about Ms Controller in the operations room who is watching him with her big colour tv.

Alice (2020) Episode 3 *Spoilers*

This is my favourite thing on K telly right now. It has the potential to be a great show, one of the year's best. Will it be another Life on Mars? It's too early to say. I certainly hope so because good sci-fi is always hard to do but this one seems to have a better decent script guiding it. Let's hope and pray that it can be sustained right to the end. 

My favourite sci-fi... the best ones are thoughtful and inevitably philosophical. Whatever the tech and the context, preoccupations with the human condition are front and centre.

It's clear that Yoon Tae-yi's re-appearance in his life knocks Jin-gyeom off his general equanimity. As he wrestles with not just with her uncanny resemblance to his long deceased mother, spars with his birth father and grapples with the unfathomable possibility of time travel, his confusion about this new reality is exacerbated by inexplicable murders. Last week we had a future self travelling back to the past to kill someone who had wronged and embittered them. This week a mother kills her past self for not doing enough to protect her daughter and makes a failed bid to be a substitute. It goes beyond irony and paradoxes. She punishes and kills her past self for being inadequate as a mother in the belief that she, the future self, can do better because of hindsight and foreknowledge. Seems extreme. However, future Mum has brought something potentially life-threatening with her to the past. It does beg the question as to whether it is a result of the time travel or the collision of past and present or some new pestilence hitch-hiked from the past.

Of course there are consequences and the lesson seems to be... "just because you can doesn't mean you should." It's one of those things one learns as a child from the adults around us as a caution about leaping into places where even angels fear to tread. A cautionary advice against hubris and the breaking of fundamental moral principles. It's often been used against genetic modification of foods. It's a warning against playing God. It's the age old question of whether humans can really control nature without it coming back to bite them.

I don't want to be a wet blanket. Time travel sounds like fun. As someone who enjoys learning history, I've fantasized about going back to certain key moments in the past like in the drama to witness of events unfolding. But I've watched my Doctor Who and my Star Trek so I know that it is a bad thing to change the past no matter how well-intentioned. One doesn't know what happens to the thing called the space-time continuum.

I gather from the first episode that people have been time travelling for a bit with relative success. So why the anomalies of the last few episodes? I imagine that the show will provide the answers to that. Hot Dad aka Min-hyuk attributes it to a particular psychological profile. It may well be that. Or there could be much more to it.

For a project/ endeavour the Alice crew are a noisy lot bringing a lot of attention to themselves. Take the big gunfight in the library for instance. Some of it was having to clean up after somebody else's mess but maybe they're counting on the fact that no one finds the entire idea of time travel possible in 2020. I suppose they're setting up these confrontations between father and son in anticipation of some kind of reunion. Since this is still a K drama, I'm not expecting an Oedipus Rex scenario. 

With the time card now in Tae-yi's hands, I wonder if Jin-gyeom has created a time loop in the manner of the "hasta la vista baby" Terminator franchise. The quote at the start of the episode, "There is no coincidence in fate. A man makes fate itself before he meets it" sounds similar to Kyle Reese's "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."