Search (2020) A review and some thoughts

The weekend saw the wrap up of OCN's latest crime offering set in the DMZ (demilitarized zone between North and South Korea). I'd only been following it for three weeks after I'd noticed some chatter about it around the web. All in all, it was a relatively short series (10 episodes) that I found much to enjoy. 

As with most of the network's productions, this one grabbed me almost immediately. I was quickly reminded of 1980s and 90s blockbusters like Predator or Alien although this drama certainly doesn't have the same kind of budget to match. A mysterious and dangerous threat has emerged in the DMZ and a team comprising of military specialists is tasked with finding answers and eliminating the threat with the use of force. If I were asked to give this show a label, I would probably struggle to give a short answer. It is certainly a crime show in the broader sense. A crime was committed. Crimes continue to be committed. Like many K dramas there is also a corruption angle to this... of course. Then there are times especially the earlier episodes, when it has the feel of a schlocky sci-fi horror. When I mentioned  that this had sci-fi elements, to a fellow K drama viewer from Janghaven, she was surprised. I don't want to give too much away obviously because if you have a stomach for things that go bump in the dark, this is quite a fun watch provided you don't think too hard. But yes, I would add sci-fi to the mix because the unknown threat has much more in common with the X-men than with 1917 if we're thinking along military lines.

Jang Dong-yoon plays a cocky military dog handler, Yoon Dong-jin. Expecting to be discharge in a matter of weeks, he is co-opted to be part of the search team because he is the man with the search dog. Complicating things for him is the appearance of a former flame Son Ye-rim (Krystal) who is a member of the military's research arm. Their relationship is fairly typical of two drama exs who didn't go their separate ways in amicable fashion. When the two aren't flashing heavy artillery around large stretches of forest or abandoned buildings, acerbic bickering with indirect references to their checkered past fall from their lips like second nature. Obviously there's really no time for romance in a scenario like this but it's clear that these two still harbour feelings for each other. Romance here is largely relegated to the sidelines.

Helming the team is Capt Song Min-kyu who is an ambitious career officer who eagerly jumps at the chance at redeeming himself and gaining a promotion in this classified mission. His second-in-command is Lt Lee Joon-sung, who is his opposite in almost every way. The two knock heads repeatedly regarding how the mission should be conducted. Joon-sung prioritizes the welfare of the team over successful, speedy completion. However, it should be said as well that Joon-sung also has other reasons for being on this team. Other members include Joo Moon-cheol (the drones and tech guy) and Park Ki-hyung, the sniper.

As if the team hasn't got enough to worry about, political interference rears its ugly head all the way from Seoul in the form of a presidential candidate with his own agenda. Let's face it, it wouldn't be a Korean drama without corrupt politicians with hair-raising secrets. The current mission seems to be tied up with an incident that occurred in the DMZ in 1997 that included a couple of North Korean defectors and their one-year-old daughter. The show opens with a N. Korean scientist seeking asylum in the south. Not long afterwards her pursuers catch up to her and threatens to create a fracas. The leader of the South Korean contingent agrees to let her go for safety's sake. In the heat of the moment, someone pulls the trigger and all hell breaks loose. As the story unfolds it becomes increasingly obvious that this fiasco has long-term reverberations that touch the team members and the neighbouring village.

Meanwhile the doings of the military operation arouses the curiosity of DMZ museum guide and leader of the local community, Kim Da-jung (Moon Jeong-hee). As a former soldier, her keen military senses tells her that there's something afoot and that the so-called mine disposal team is not really looking for mines or wild dogs. Soon, she, her daughter and the rest of the village are inadvertently drawn into the inexplicably odd occurrences around town.

As a whole, I found the show entertaining as well as exciting in parts even if the plot does hinge on some implausibilities. And I don't mean the sci-fi side of things either. When a camcorder that's been exposed to the elements for the last 23 years finally surfaces at just the right moment for an expose... we're not really talking about science but miracles. Or fate. While it's definitely good advertising for the recorder's manufacturer, it might be a stretch of incredulity for some.

I do think that the first half of the drama is the superior half. Not that the second half is bad but it does get weighed down by multiple agendas and emotional arcs. I certainly think that they have their place but the show does rely heavily on the notion of fated encounters and cosmic justice. Moreover, the show seems to have something to say about fathers and sons. There are varying paternal dynamics at play here. Some healthy, some much less so. But the show rejects the notion that all necessarily follow in their father's footsteps even if a father's influence on his son is palpable even from a distance. 

I'm not a particular fan of any of the actors although I recognized Jang Dong-yoon from A Poem a Day and Krystal from Prison Playbook. The acting's not bad for the most part and certainly adequate to the task. The actor who plays Lee Joon-sung (Lee Hyun-wook) caught my eye and I hope to see more of him down the track. While it's not a deal breaker for me, I liked seeing comparable female roles in a rather dominated cast. 

The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion (2020) Initial Impressions

This recent offering from mainland China is the first so-called historical drama since Ancient Detective that I haven't felt the slightest urge to drop after the obligatory first act. It's one that I've been looking forward to probably since the end of last year and 18 episodes on, it's delivering. The production boasts not only the reunion of leads Ju Jingyi and Zhang Zhehan from the Legend of Yunxi (2018) fame but also much of the cast and all of the crew from that surprise hit. It has a good balance of the comedic and the serious. If the show somehow... and even miraculously manages to maintain its momentum right to the end, it will be a better show than its predecessor. Already I feel it's addictive pull... something I haven't experienced for some time now.

Ruyi Pavilion is not a sequel of the Legend of Yunxi and has a completely different storyline. While it has a smattering of wuxia elements, it isn't an outright jianghu story. While it dabbles with premonitions as a plot device, it's not defined by the fantasy tag. There are elements of a palace drama with the usual kinds of power struggles and court intrigue. The story begins with a bump on the head and bad dreams. The female lead Fu Rong on a kite extraction expedition falls to the ground and begins to see visions during her slumber of possible future events. Being the good-hearted and conniving sort, she attempts to find ways and means to prevent various incidents from happening well aware that nobody will ever believe that she has the selective power of foresight. She is also privy to events related to Xu Jin, the emperor's fourth son, Prince Su and if the premonitions are to be believed, it bodes an ill-fated connection. Fu Rong is the second daughter of a local magistrate and is the glib troublemaker of her family. 

Around the time they meet, Xu Jin has just returned to the capital from his military duties at the border. As a child, he allegedly caused an incident among the royals which sealed his reputation as a jinx. He is summoned back to the palace to answer for his actions because he summarily executed the Superintendent of the Imperial Guards for his part in a conspiracy to siphon off military rations. As a result he becomes the target of a series of assassination attempts. To investigate the matter further, the emperor installs him as the latest commander of the Imperial Guards warning him to be circumspect and judicious at all times. 

Much of the early part of the show sees Fu Rong trying to avoid Xu Jin because of their ill-fated connection but hilariously enough as she stumbles into one thing after another they inevitably cross swords... of the verbal kind at least. She's a bit of a busybody but means well and he's an official investigator who takes his job seriously. They were always destined to cross paths. Whether guided by greater cosmic forces or by character all attempts by her to avoid him are rendered futile by her choices and circumstances.

As was the case with Yunxi, this drama features a love polygon of sorts. Unlike Yunxi, the love polygon here is pretty meh because the "other man" is really not the exactly the stuff of dreams. (On the contrary, he seems to be the stuff of nightmares) Xu Ping is Prince An, the emperor's younger brother and he maintains a dual identity as an enigmatic scholar who holds rockstar status in the capital. He's an old childhood buddy of Fu Rong's and he's always liked her. During an arts event organised by him they meet briefly and although he recognises her, she doesn't recognise him at first. Xu Ping initially seems like a suave, leisured scholar but he too is plotting against Xu Jin and the emperor because he has mummy issues. A decade earlier, Xu Jin was sent to the temple to recite sutras and pray only to accidentally kick over a candle and set fire to the place which resulted in the death of Xu Ping's mother. Xu Ping believes, as I do, that there was more to it than meets the eye but the emperor is being tight-lipped about the matter.

I don't think it's that much of a spoiler to say that many of the plots directed towards Xu Jin come from the third prince, Xu Mao who is your run-of-the-mill avaricious, ambitious royal who is aided and abetted by his uncle the Marquis of Xindu. His cousin and the marquis' older son is Wu Baiqi who after a serious falling out with his dad years earlier joined the Imperial Guards. When Xu Ping begins piggybacking on his nephew's schemes, it's when things started to get horribly nasty.

Brokering these various parties, is the legendary Ruyi Pavilion an outfit that deals in intelligence to those who can pay for it. The owner has accumulated secrets over the years and when the time is ripe she sends out what is essentially relevant blackmail material to get things moving.

While the scheming of the show isn't exactly in the calibre of Nirvana in Fire, it does have some semblance of gravity and plausibility. There are genuine stakes and consequences to people committing political mistakes. After Maiden Holmes I've come to realise that I can't watch rom coms masquerading as palace dramas. I don't have the stomach for it. It's fine to have humour and romance but when the male lead who should know better starts making amateurish mistakes or acts like he's living in the 21st century, I can't help feeling that I'm too old to be wasting time on those even if the chemistry is off the charts. Plot is king.

For me Ruyi Pavilion gets it right for the most part. The romance, I have to say, is well done. The humour usually lands well. Of course Ju Jingyi and Zhang Zhehan's natural chemistry has become iconic thanks to Yunxi but thankfully the show doesn't rely on that in its storytelling. Their dynamic for the most part is different from their previous collaboration largely because Zhang Zhehan's character, Xu Jing is cut from a somewhat different cloth. While he may be aloof as it befits a man of his station, he is capable of being companionable and speaking his mind. He also has an unexpectedly boyishly mischievous streak which surfaces mostly when with interacting with Fu Rong. Kudos to Zhang Zhehan for a well-rounded performance which has me grinning from ear to ear.

I'm also enjoying the romance between Fu Rong's sister, Fu Xuan and Wu Baiqi. It's not really a competition as to which is better. Not for me at least. They're both well done and feed into the bigger storyline organically. There's also the added bonus of character development for all concerned driven by the romance. Wu Baiqi needs to pull up his socks and Fu Xuan could loosen her corset a tad.

Both these male leads in my book are very swoony in the sense that they know exactly what they want and go for it. They're generally smart about it and they don't push too hard too soon. But they strike while the iron is hot. They do understand who these women are and may even revel in the challenge so they come across as worthy suitors. On some level I would like Xu Ping to be a better rival for Xu Jin of course but he's a hard character to root for. I never really thought I would suffer pangs of second male lead syndrome to begin with but there's really nothing to see here at all. It's obvious on her side that it's all just chummy. A clever thing the show does early on is to show how very little they have in common. She spends a short stint at his studio running errands and is completely bored out of her mind. She has no scholarly bent whatsoever although under her teacher's tutelage, she is growing as a jewellery designer. There's no doubting though that she's drawn to danger like a moth to a flame because she is an inveterate busybody.

To be honest, I kept my expectations low at the start but the show has done better than I expected and aside from a couple of niggly things, it's giving me hope. At the end of the day, it's a C drama.... one can never be too sure until the big bad croaks. But we're certainly hoping for a happily-ever-after for the leads.

Alice (2020) What was it in the end?

The post consists of spoilers from the entire series. Read at your own risk. :D

Now perhaps that I'm in a calmer state of mind, it's a good time to take stock my feelings about this show.

First of all I should say that despite the nonsensical ending that we got it wasn't a terrible show. It was, at the end of the day, however, a waste of a fascinating concept and a stellar cast. The end result was ambitious mediocrity leading to more questions than answers. Looking back, the first six episodes were really good television... not just good sci-fi. In the early days I had high hopes for it as it seemed like the production team was determined to get it right with its high production values, intriguing storyline and terrific cast of characters. The set-up was genuinely good.

I should have cottoned on to the fact that something was a bit fishy in Denmark when the show's claims that it was dealing with parallel universes turned out to be a mischaracterization. Tae-yi's initial movements suggested that she'd created an alternate timeline. But then the presence of Alice and time travel tourism pointed to a causal loop in operation. However when Jin-gyeom comes face to face with Professor Tae-yi, his mother's doppelganger and their relationship develops ambiguously with romantic overtones... we're told she's not really his mother because we're dealing with parallel universes here. She's just someone who happened to look exactly like his mother from another world with the same birthday, Yoon Tae-yi the creator of time travel. Not long afterwards, Jin-gyeom gets his first taste of time travelling, heading straight for the year that mother died. Despite foreknowledge, he is helpless to stop it. This scenario is later repeated in varying forms which points to time looping. 

Okay let's for argument's sake that we concede that the show is playfully deploying different time travel devices satirically throughout the drama's run. Can't be any harm in that surely? Well, that depends. Are we dealing with an episodic drama with multiple storylines (like Star Trek or Stargate) or one single complete arc. If the show is what I believed it to be then no, it doesn't work... it's inherently problematic. Doing a time travel smorgasbord not only means that there can be no clarity about the actual relationship dynamics. Picking and choosing tropes like taking items off the local convenience store will inevitably see a clash of logic and rule breaking. These tropes don't mesh well together. For example if Professor Tae-yi is from an alternate timeline that Mother Tae-yi created she might be said to be a different person. But it doesn't explain how or why the Alice crew are operating if that's the case. Why are they in that timeline, not in the one that Min-hyuk and Tae-yi came from originally? Are there different Alices in different timelines? This also has implications for the so-called "romance". If we're dealing with a causal loop then Professor Tae-yi is merely Mother Tae-yi's younger self then as the show doles out the rom com cliches when they play house the relationship between Prof Tae-yi and Jin-gyeom has incestutous overtones. If however, they are all operating on a different timeline, the professor might be a different self. Whether that makes a romantic relationship more "acceptable" between them, is up for debate. What compounds the unclarity is the fact that there are people who are travelling back and changing the past in the early days who haven't created new timelines... at least not that we can see. Future selves go back to the past and change the past but they're unaffected seemingly. Hence the show doesn't grapple (like Train does) with the logical complexity of any time travel trope.

There are other reverberations resulting from Jin-gyeom's growing bond with Prof Tae-yi. Even if she's a different soul or self, the oedipal ramifications can't be so easily dismissed. His "attraction" to her is that she looks like mother. So when he plays house with her... and unbeknownst to her as well... he is reenacting his regrets concerning his mother sort of like playing with a doll when you can't have the baby. To the writer's credit, that very point is highlighted later on when she sees a photo of mother. But that is not exactly the best foundation for any romantic relationship. To be liked for you might be not who you actually are. I've said this in an earlier post so I'm sounding like a broken record. I have little doubt that they went for t the alternate timeline approach so that they could have this kind of dynamic between the top billed actors without the ick... except that they never... it seemed to me... resolved the optics of the situation to the satisfaction of most viewers. 

For me personally what went wrong was two-fold. Firstly, the focus on message over messaging. It feels now that despite my early hopes, that they weren't' careful about the time travel side of things. Despite the use of scientific jargon, the show glossed over the implications of using language like parallel universe rather than alternate timeline. For me those are two entirely different mechanisms at play. Then we had Jin-gyeom trying to stop his mother from being murdered which look a bit like causal looping or time looping (Groundhog Day). That was very confusing. And then finally the introduction of Old Jin-gyeom which was intriguing, arbitrary and possibly quite nonsensical. It seemed to be a kind of a deus ex machina to explain the Teacher death cult but his presence at the 11th hour throws up even more questions while sidestepping any answers. For a powerful figure he seemed rather impotent in the end. Their showdown was a non-event. I was led to believe that Jin-gyeom was a one-time only phenomenon because of what Tae-yi did in 1992 so if Old JG was a much more powerful experienced version of young Jin-gyeom, why didn't he act sooner rather  than wait till his younger self become more attuned with his abilities. If there's no grandfather paradox, why not kill off JG or take control of him before he became a cop? If he had to be introduced, it should have been much earlier.

Secondly the need to put Jin-gyeom and Tae-yi front and centre of the storyline railroaded the storyline. I understand that they are the top billed actors but did they have to be in a relationship with romantic overtones? But Hospital Playlist proved that you can have a hugely popular loveline between a main character and a supporting one with a large ensemble cast. In fact many were very supportive of a JG and Do-yeon outcome. Most of us were labouring under the impression that this show was about the ensemble cast. Now, it could be that was always the story they wanted to tell. Mother and son. A woman who looked like mother. The pair are drawn to each other. Perhaps it even bodes romance for them. So why bother with the crime, thriller aspect at the start, setting a particular tone for the rest of the show. Why introduce a cast of characters who barely get used in the second half of the show when they have skill sets that aren't utilized properly to solve the mysteries. To be honest, I didn't find their relationship particularly compelling. It was fraught with too much baggage from the start. My preference would have been to focus on the history of Alice and the crime aspect of the show. It's not to say that Joo-won or Kim Hee-sun aren't great actors because they are but I thought that Kim Hee-sun particularly was badly served once the time travelling started. After a while, her entire arc felt repetitive and she was doing what I thought other people should be doing instead. This is where I think, the writer's inexperience shows.

If there was one thing that the show got right from start to finish, it was the stuff about families.  I just wish it had stuck to the importance of families and kept things tidy in that regard in order to focus more on the crime-time travelling aspects. I loved JG's surrogate families more than TY's family because they were so much better developed and incorporated. It's lamentable how underutilized Do-yeon, Detective Kim and Min-hyuk became in the second half. It's my biggest disappoint with the show and in the hands of a more seasoned writer, I think this would have been better handled. 

What I wrote elsewhere about the ending...

I don't have any objections to happy endings but this is ridiculous. This wasn't a happy ending... this was the show forcibly reminding us who the leads of the drama are at the cost of storytelling. Park Jin-gyeom... someone who apparently shouldn't have existed and with memories of Yoon Tae-yi... is now an architect in 2020 doing restorations of historic homes because apparently he just fell from the sky and inserted himself into the populace behaving like a well-adjusted human being. Where does he come from? Who are his parents? What's he doing in 2020? Why does he have memories of TY? Are they gunning for a second season? If they are, you can be sure, I won't be signing up for it. 

 

So what is the show saying... that this Park Jin-gyeom who fell from the sky and this Prof Yoon Tae-yi have a completely clean slate and they can find their happily-ever-after in each other? There's nothing icky right... except there is. Because he has memories of her. She has memories of him too. He's not a completely different guy. Unless he's suffering quantum entanglement issues too. But he shouldn't right... because the door's been closed on time travel and everything's has been reset. No wonder everybody's confused. It flies in the face of the show's own claims about what's going on.

 

So why was Tae-yi running around the place like a headless chicken demanding to know where Detective Park Jin-gyeom was. That was utterly silly. Shouldn't she have twigged by the time she got to the police station that a reset had occurred? You know, the reset that she and Mother Tae-yi talked about two three episodes ago. Kim Hee-sun is a great actress but I've shaken my head at the things they've made her do as Prof Yoon Tae-yi. They obviously wanted to give her a bigger role when the actual story didn't warrant it. They had a great ensemble cast... and they wasted the talent pool. 

 

It's not hard to see why they wanted Tae-yi to retain her memories prior to the reset... because oh no... we can't have her trying to get time travel up and running again. But the problem with that is the show never tells us what the agency behind everything is. She was very dead the last time we looked. Did God or the universe give her that kind of insight? If the show was going for an esoteric answer then it should have said so much earlier. Rather than have Seok O-won muttering something about the mysteries of the universe. Sheesh... what a cop out. 

 

I keep wondering what went wrong with the show. The bottom line for me is that they went for the message without taking care of the messaging. They consistently broke their own rules. Out of the mouth of one person they talk about alternate universes, then from another it's parallel dimensions... if that wasn't confusing enough... we have Groundhog Day on steroids with no sense of who's who. "You can't stop my death. Mea culpa." Okay lady... we got it the third time. And then when the two JGs squabble over mother's love, she turns the weapon on herself. Why did she run from the drone in the first place?

 

The last episode didn't really tell us anything particularly insightful that we didn't already work out five episodes ago. Time travel is bad. It is corrupting. The past can't be fixed (or shouldn't). Hold on to your memories and move on. Live in the present. Mother's love is the greatest. But the themes shouldn't come at the expense of fundamental things like consistent storytelling.

Can I in all honesty say that the actors saved it for me? I don't know. They all did a good job with what they were given. Joo-won is always a trooper but there was something in the way his arc panned out that dampened my enthusiasm even for the different Jin-gyeoms that made their appearance. Same with Kim Hee-sun. Towards the end it seemed like they were just doing things called for by the script. And don't get me started on what happened to Do-yeon.

If there was any character that I really rooted for all throughout, it would be Min-hyuk. It could have been Kwak Si-yang or it could be the way he was written... or both but he was a character with genuine complexity despite having comparatively little screen time. towards the end. He was not just a presence but someone who had a story that rose above the cliche and stereotype. 

Again, I stress it wasn't the worst K drama ever and I am fully aware that time travel is always a tough nut to crack. But it seems to me that focused simplicity is always best in these instances. The disappointment comes from the fact that there was so much potential unfulfilled. After a while it started to feel like there were two or three dramas trying to find its voice in the cacophony.

Doctor Prisoner (2019) A Review

Na I-jae (Namgoong Min) formerly an emergency specialist and surgeon at Taekang Hospital was falsely accused of  medical malpractice and served out a three-year prison sentence where he cultivated key relationships and began hatching a revenge scheme against those who put him there. Or so it seems. But as the story unfolds, it is not entirely certain that revenge is all he’s after. The “good” doctor apparently has bigger fish to fry. Using his medical skills, mental acuity and a knack for thinking on his feet, Na I-jae sets his sights on being the medical director of one of the largest penitentiaries in Seoul. Why? According to the premise of this drama, the person who runs the medical facility in the prison wields the greatest power. That person has the authority to control the traffic of prisoners in and out of the penitentiary by exploiting his medical expertise. Not long after his release the ethically flexible I-jae uses his seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of medical conditions to enable well-connected inmates to appeal for stays of execution to take advantage of this particular loop hole in the judicial system. Our introduction to how Na I-jae works comes from his interaction with O Jung-hee a wealthy businesswoman who allegedly took out a contract on her ex-husband’s mistress. She escapes a prolonged prison stay when Na I-jae manufactures an illness which provides her with a stay of execution. This lady is happy but completely unaware that this is merely the start to a longwinded transactional relationship between them.

 Early on Na I-jae targets the second son of the Taekang conglomerate, Lee Jae-hwan (Park Eun-seok) who figures in the doctor’s past. The youngster is a no-good wastrel whose drug habit makes him an easy prey for his older half brother. As he heads towards prison, he falls into the clutches of the soon-to-be medical director of Western Seoul penitentiary. This marks the beginings of the crafty doctor’s grand plan to deal with corruption between colluding forces in medicine and Big Business.

 

Na I-jae’s primary adversaries are the former medical director of Western Seoul Prison, Sun Min-sik (Kim Byung-chul)  and the ambitious scion of Taekang Group, Lee Jae-jun (Choi Won-young). All three actors of course are well-regarded veterans of the screen and they are seem to play up the villainous side of their respective characters with no lack of enjoyment. The main trio are pros in the way they negotiate, transact and play off one against the other with inhuman energy and resolve. Most of the show’s best moments involve these men bluffing like seasoned card sharps in a poker game.

Read the rest at JangHaven Forums

Alice (2020) Quantum Entanglements

After my initial disappointment with Episode 13, it occurred to me that a rewatch of the two most recent episodes was needed while jotting down important details along the way. It turned out to be a beneficial exercise and I came away from it with more understanding of all the moving parts. I also did a bit of reading on quantum entanglement as far as a non-science person like myself is capable of getting my head around it. It was an often cited concept in the crime show Numb3rs by the drama's resident physicist to wax philosophical about the mysteries of human relationships.

Here quantum entanglement serves both as a sci-fi explanation for what's going on with Tae-yi and Jin-gyeom with regards to doppelgangers but also as a larger metaphor for the connection between souls across distance. We also saw examples of this in Tae-yi's final audio message to Min-hyuk, as well as Do-yeon's ability to sense things in relationship with Jin-gyeom and connect with him.

I’ve gradually come to conclusion that the biggest obstacle to clarity has been the fact that Mother Tae-yi is a self-styled enigmatic figure and an unreliable source of information. All the time she was running around for her son's sake, spouting cryptic comments, she was a woman with a mission. I should have guessed pretty much from the start that she was all about Jin-gyeom as was clearly shown in Episode 1. She gave up everything for him… including the man she purportedly loved so that her son could live with some degree of normality. The second mistake I made was trying to make sense of the time travel mumbo jumbo without giving more consideration to the traditions and mythological roots that the show was derivative of. Sure there were the obvious nods to Lewis Carroll’s Alice but I should have twigged a lot sooner that the Book of the Prophecy takes its tonal cues from the book of Revelation in the Bible. After mulling over the last page especially of the snake-like creature coiling itself around the Alice figure it finally struck me that the idea was drawn, in all likelihood, from Revelation chapter 12.

She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems… And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne…

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world… (Revelation 12: 2-9)

Tae-yi who birthed Jin-gyeom is possibly the key to making sense of all of this. She is portrayed as the quintessential Mother archetype in the Jungian schema. She protects her child at all costs, nurtures him and clings to the hope that despite the prophetic utterances of doom, he can transcend his birth defect and defy whatever destiny awaits him in the ominous future. As far as I’m to understand her, the reset has never been an option for her because it means that all the effort she gave to bringing JG into the world and raising him would be rendered meaningless. All the memories gone. He, they would be rubbed out of existence. Her maternal instincts revolted against that. As Do-yeon notes succinctly, “she lived for [Jin-gyeom]”. Moreover, both mother and son are figures from the future. Neither should have existed in the past. Mother and son are/were living, breathing paradoxes around family and friends. I would go so far as to say that their presence in the past upset a certain time-space balance as seen in the chaos that has resulted in the worst case scenario of doppelgängers killing doppelgängers, for instance to keep time travel going. I wonder too if that's why Mother Tae-yi has to die because some things have to happen for balance to be restored and she would only be a hindrance.

In a blog post that I read on the Mother archetype, the writer notes that evil symbols of the Mother include witches, dragons, graves among others. The dragon could also be a substitute for serpents or any entwining creature. (Purrington 2020) It leads me to wonder if the writer of Alice isn’t pointing to Mother Tae-yi who started it all, who couldn’t stop it because of her attachment to her child is the one who (as symbolised in the picture by the serpentine creature) is inadvertently destroying the time fabric. That’s why she has to die. That’s why despite everything that JG does to save her life ultimately fails. So far. The ensuing chaos that we’ve been privy to since the start of the drama was caused by her both directly and indirectly. Of course the exploits of the Alice group have exacerbated this fiasco. Whether it’s opening the way for time travel, whether it’s causing rifts in the space-time continuum or the possible merging of timelines. Or just staying behind in 1992 to have her son.

The mysterious hooded figure is a curious beast. What we do know is that he has a biological and psychic connection to Jin-gyeom (an extreme negatively charged quantum entanglement) causing the latter to act as if he’s suffered a psychotic break, descending into schizophrenia and even dissociative personality disorder. It's also a clever way of framing mental health issues in line with time travel. The implication from the DNA test is that he is Jin-gyeom’s doppelgänger. Whoever he is, he is styled as a grim reaper or at least a harbinger of death who has the ability to time hop and mete out his brand of justice. He carries a sword which doubles up as an executioner’s weapon. He may or may not be the creation of Mother Tae-yi, the god-like figure that rules over time and becomes the destroyer described in that final page. What fascinates me though is that while Jin-gyeom was busy trying to kill Detective Kim, the voice of Do-yeon shrieking his name jerked him out of his stupor, causing him to stop in his tracks. This in all probability is Do-yeon’s role. To restrain and to pull him back from being swallowed up by the abyss. She is someone who has a special bond with him. My guess is that she is someone who can prevent him from succumbing to the darkness that threatens to overwhelm him. 

My mind turned to the “evil twin” trope as Jin-gyeom was threatening to throttle his other self before the grim reaper character showed up and proceeded to stab him with a small sword. This took me to consider Zoroastrian dualism — good vs evil in an almighty cosmic battle cutting across time and space. According to the Wikipedia entry I read, the Zurvanite branch of Zoroastrianism simplified that worldview by stating that co-eternal twins born of “zurvan” or time, represent this dualistic dynamic. Zurvanism’s doctrinal underpinnings came from its interpretation of free will. Good and evil are choices made by mortals. This indicates to me that Jin-gyeom will have to play out the contest between good and evil as he fends off the voices in his head to act against his true self as well as deal with the Teacher cult who co-opt him for their cause. The evil twin motif isn’t just about Jin-gyeom. It seems to be a common thread as we see future and past selves battle it out in different ways at different times.

“Only the present matters… the people around you” that was Ahjussi Ko Hyeon-seok’s final words to JG. But JG seems adamant about not taking Ahjussi’s advice. This is why he keeps popping up in 2010 and making a muck of things. He can’t let go of the past. Two times he travels back there but for one reason or another she dies at the same time on the same day. He is his mother’s son undoubtedly. Neither are able to let go of the other despite knowing the dangers that are hand. Furthermore, Jin-gyeom’s fixation with his mother’s murder has resulted in him brushing off the people right in front of him. Like Do-yeon, like Detective Kim and even Min-hyuk. Sure, it’s important to find the culprit and get some resolution and closure from that. But in the meantime life has to be lived with the people within one’s circle.

Undoubtedly this is ultimately a celebration of mother’s love in the extreme. It is extreme because she should have gone for the reset a long time ago perhaps especially because she had an inkling of what’s to come. It’s a double-edged sword. The love of mother transcends all else and she was quite possibly hoping that if she did her best to bring up Jin-gyeom well she could change the future and his fate. That could well still happen although things are so chaotic that I’m more inclined to think that only a reset could stop all the madness and confusion. I could be wrong but the show seems to be pointing to an inevitable zero sum game. Mitigating the effects of time travel won't be enough.

I’m actually quite keen to see what happens with the reset. Would it necessarily be a world without Park Jin-gyeom? He might not be Park Jin-gyeom as we know him but he might be Yoo Jin-gyeom growing up, living his life in the future with his doting mum and dad. Assuming of course that Tae-yi and Min-hyuk would meet somehow even without the Alice connection.

There is an increasing sense that things are not what they should be. Things are topsy turvy somewhat like it is in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That was patently clear especially in that poignant audio message from the past that finally reached Min-hyuk. Which was absolutely the highlight of episode 14 for me. The regret that the two people separated by time and pace were feeling were palpable. The thoughts going through their minds were so beautifully encapsulated in that brief moment of quantum entanglement. They should have been together, they should have done this together. She didn’t have to raise that child on her own. He should have been there for her and their son. They could have fought this battle together as a family. The grief and loss felt by Min-hyuk was wonderfully portrayed by Kwak Si-yang.

The difference between Min-hyuk (and perhaps this accounts for his popularity) and Jin-gyeom seems largely to be a matter of acceptance. Min-hyuk has witnessed first hand and quickly come to the realisation that the past isn’t something to be meddled with regardless of how painful certain events are. I’m sure there are things he’d like to have changed. He has the power to do it. But he realises he can’t just go back in time and “fix” things without ripple effects on unwitting bystanders. Ultimately, there is something selfish about going back to the past and changing it for one’s benefit without having to take responsibility for the consequences of doing so. In all honesty no mere mortal can. For me Min-hyuk is someone who understands his own part in this, the mistakes he made in this entire scenario understands the nub of the problem and comes to the right conclusion on his own. As someone who was part of the system which caused it. He also acknowledges that there's something inherently corrupting about time travel. That kind of absolute power corrupts absolutely. No mere mortal can wield it without losing him/herself in it. At this point between Min-hyuk and Jin-gyeom, it’s obvious who the father is... who is the adult in the room.

My favourite exchange in Lewis Carroll’s Alice is the one between Alice and the Cheshire-Cat. 

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where — “ said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“— so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

The destination does matter in determining the route taken. Does Jin-gyeom want to catch the person who killed his mother? Or does he want to stop her from dying? It seems to me perhaps he might not be allowed to do both. He can no longer grope around in the dark aimlessly lurching from crisis to crisis. It isn't just that his soul is at stake but lives everywhere.

According to the drama time travel is unnatural and not how life should be lived as seen in the way it splits up families and causes confusion in relationship dynamics. The past isn't a tourist destination or a psychodrama to be reenacted. What it is, is lived experience to inform the traveller of how the present and the future can be better lived out. Death, grief and loss are part of the stark realities of life but life has to go on for the ones who remain. Those who remain have people under their noses who need them, who rely on them to move on. Those who are gone will not be forgotten but any regrets about the departed should be a reminder that the same mistakes don't have to repeated and lead to a heavier burden of more regrets by ignoring those right in front of us.

Hot Stove League (2020) A Review

On the surface this winner of the prestigious 2020 BaekSang Arts Award for Best Drama might not appear to have much popular appeal. Beyond the baseball backdrop, however, is a profoundly human story that covers a whole gamut of life experiences in and out of sports. The drama has a tremendous amount to offer in terms of storytelling, performances and strong production values even for someone like me who knows next to nothing about the game. It’s the kind of story that grabs you from the start with its universal themes about perseverance, camaraderie, teamwork and loss. Of course it doesn’t hurt that spearheading the narrative is a master strategist. On an immediate level it is a baseball story as one navigates through the industry jargon, the rules of the sport and be utterly bamboozled while the experts crunch the statistics. But if that was all it was I certainly wouldn’t have binged watched it in two days. On another level baseball is the vehicle through which experiences of ordinary folk are played out as they wrestle through a myriad of challenges and decisions that are familiar with anyone from different walks of life. It is certainly no accident that the team spotlighted here is called Dreams.

“Hot Stove League” refers to the off-season period in which the professional teams work behind the scenes in preparation for the next season. For a baseball ignoramus and a non-follower of spectator sports like myself, it’s a fascinating glimpse at the complexity of managing professional sports. The delightful Namgoong Min is the outsider here, the newly appointed General Manager of Dreams which has been placed at the bottom of the league table for the past 4 years. Baek Seung-su, a newcomer to baseball, is selected by the acting owner (O Jung-se) for his ability (and reputation) to revive sports teams only to see them dissolved after taking them to a championship win. The parent company Jaesong Group desperately wants to disband Dreams after incurring serious losses and failing to sell it off after several attempts. Seung-su’s primary adversary is the acting owner, nephew of the chairman of Jaesong, Kwon Kyung-min. A good proportion of the drama sees the two facing off in a battle of wits. One wants to build something from what’s left of the Dreams but the other wants to dismantle the entire structure.

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Alice (2020) For which I tear my hair out in frustration and take a deep breath

This show fascinates and frustrates me on so many levels. Despite my eagerness to get back to it after the Chuseok break and revelling in the highs in these recent episodes (11 and 12), there are aspects of it that leave me shaking my head going "Why?" As an ahjumma who might or might not be entering pre-menopause I certainly can't afford to lose any more hair. But my need to know how it all plays out means that I will be persevering right to the end... bitter or sweet or both. At this point there's really no sense in abandoning ship when the finale is in sight.

12 episodes on, Jin-gyeom's relationship... out of all the relationships he has with everyone in the drama... with present day Tae-yi is, in my opinion, the least interesting. Taboo teasing aside. While I grudgingly accept that he has to have a relationship with her... or even the nature of his relationship with her, the time spent on it seems disproportionate in its execution. When I consider how clever the show is capable of being with regards to time travel and doppelgangers, it's dismal that this supposedly key relationship sucks the oxygen from the room. It's so blah because they're nervously treading a tightrope that could see their ratings plummet altogether. From the looks of things it's already begun to happen.

*Spoilers Ahead*

For the most part Alice has the makings of a good drama and when it behaves like a  twisted mind boggling sci-fi thriller, it's at the top of its game. But all the overemphasis on Jin-gyeom's ambiguous relationship with 2020 Tae-yi is tedious. Whichever way you look at it. Part of the problem it seems to me is that she's a patchy character written more to serve a function in the script that sees her dashing here, there, everywhere quite uselessly and often putting herself in harm's way. It doesn't help that she is written as a doppelganger, living under the shadow of the "prototype" which is all the more ironic in light of what she says about herself when she confronts the fact that she's Jin-gyeom's mother's parallel self. It strikes her (and us) that she's a mannequin whose importance to the likes of Jin-gyeom and Min-hyuk is imbued by their relationship with the Tae-yi that they have memories of. That acknowledgement /realisation was perhaps the best thing about her so far. Frankly it should never have taken her this long to get there. Sometimes... in my more cynical moments... I toy with the idea that the show doesn't quite know what to do with her except as someone for Jin-gyeom to rescue and angst over. In contrast,  Jin-gyeom's scenes with his beloved Ahjussi roll much better and feel so much more natural. 

It's almost tragic how underutilized second tier/ supporting characters are by comparison. Especially when most of them are potentially more interesting. The juggling act especially in the middle act is lamentable. There's no disputing the need for an ensemble cast for a show like this and I've even defended Do-yeon's characterization elsewhere. But it's increasingly apparent that she's becoming more of a prop that they trot out now and again to remind us that she exists. Where's the feisty journalist? What's the point of giving Tae-yi an adoptive sister who does so little to further the storyline? Jin-gyeom's colleagues? Yeah, what about them? Why is Tae-yi playing detective instead of them? And Min-hyuk... dear Min-hyuk... what a waste of the eye candy and the soothing sonorous vocals. Yes, I'm biased because I'm finding him to be a more interesting character than the leads right now. Rather than putting so much focus on Jin-gyeom's need to use 2020 Tae-yi as a vicarious conduit for living with mother, I'd personally rather have seen Do-yeon and the team members better integrated into the bigger picture. There's so little teamwork. Increasingly they're relegated to the place of comic relief and scenery. I am justifiably concerned... especially with only 4 episodes left in the can.

I don't want to be too unkind. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun. True, the world's not about to end. But it's certainly making a great case for 12 episodes being the new default standard for time travel thrillers. 

Ko Hyeon-seok's (Ahjussi) arc sadly came to an end in the most recent episode. To its credit the show gave him a lovely send off which not only saw some new facts regarding Alice Inc. come to light but also demonstrated Jin-gyeom's growth as a man in his ability to transcend his alexithymia to a much higher degree. Ko Hyeon-seok, while he understandably threw his lot in with the pro-time travelling monomaniacs, was a genuinely kind-hearted, grieving soul. He and others kept Jin-gyeom on the straight and narrow after his mother's death. They are instruments by which he discovers... attains his humanity, grounding him in the importance of relationships... of family. Moreover, Jin-gyeom's acknowledgement of Hyeon-seok's part in his journey as a father-figure he needed at the most crucial moment was deeply moving. I grieve with those who lost him and one gets a growing sense that the trade-offs to time travel are ridiculously high.

Now that Hyeon-seok is out of the picture one can only hope that Min-hyuk can step into that vacated role in some fashion. He can't be what Hyeon-seok was to Jin-gyeom because of timing and circumstances. The need this time will be different. He will, however, be a comrade-in-arms in line with his skill set and out of sheer necessity in the battle that is to come. Whether Jin-gyeom wants Min-hyuk's help or not, he will have it but more importantly, he will need it. Min-hyuk is a warrior in the way Hyeon-seok could never be. Plus he's man who has some chance of dealing with the "invasion from the future".  Now that he's catching on with regards to the ugly side of time travel, he will throw all his resources into doing what he had failed to do previously.

Hyeo-seok's final words to Jin-gyeom come from a man who has travelled back in time and reaped some benefits in doing so. One might even say that he did some good while he lingered on in place of his other self. What he said about taking hold of the present and not having regrets about it is significant in light of that. If the parallel universe thesis applies here it does suggest that even if you have the ability to go back in time and relive moments with your loved ones, it isn't exactly the same. The person from the parallel universe is not a carbon copy of the person you loved. That's the crux of Min-hyuk's comment to 2020 Tae-yi. The parallel universe might be a pleasant way to play out one's fantasies or unfulfilled desires but it's not a place you can necessarily call home. In part because the time traveller has a knowledge of a future that hasn't yet occurred. By going back to the past the time traveller from the future automatically changes the past because of experiences and memories of occurrences that the past is still ignorant about. It's a double-edged sword. Wrongs can be righted but there is still the law of unintended consequences lurking in the background.

According to my perspective, it's in effect a gigantic psychoanalytic laboratory that is doomed for failure if the goal is to change the past to mitigate the effects of suffering. It can't be assumed that change is necessarily for the better (whatever "better" means)... or that the net benefits outweigh the negative trade-offs. 

The moral underpinnings are clear. Time travellers of the future seem drunk with power, amoral and have very little qualms killing their past selves if it means furthering their goals. That point is made loudly and with little doubt. They blithely ignore the moral ramifications because... let's face it... the lure of holding on to that kind of power is irresistible for certain types of individuals. Especially if they zealously believe in harnessing that power for good. Furthermore, we don't fully comprehend the Teacher's agenda. Or even future Tae-yi's thinking on the necessity of shutting it all down. But it's not hard to see at least from an outsider's perspective some of the dangers despite whatever short-term benefits it might lead to. Regardless of what pearls of wisdom are contained in the last page of the Book of Prophecy, irregardless of the benefits, there's something about going back and forth in time that feels ominous.

My own feeling is that even the time travelling enthusiasts don't know everything about how time travel works. I've had this feeling for a while especially because of the Book of Prophecy. Ki Cheol-am's almost dismissive comment about paradoxes seems to highlight that. Of course I don't discount that this could be a writing and conception flaw. Because no matter how people go on and on about the multiverse thesis here, they all seem to conveniently return to the prime line where our Park Jin-gyeom is at the centre of it all with no explanation (so far) of how that works. I can only speculate that the Book of the Prophecy is the reason why the Alice facility was built in 2020 and is the flashpoint for all occurrences.

Since now that we know that the Alice project and Teacher crowd intersect via Ki Cheol-am, the writing is on the wall writ large. One wonders how deep the rot goes within the legitimate face of time travel. The illegitimate death cult run by the Teacher sees itself as the ultimate gatekeepers ensuring that continuation of time travel. What about the lad that is called The Broker? Where does he fit into the overall scheme of things?

I have said on other occasions that time travel has to end at some point because of the inherent danger of the technology falling into the wrong hands or the fact that such power appears to be in the hands of an unknown mysterious oligarchy called "Headquarters". There's another reason which I've already alluded to. Fixing the past is a pipedream if all that's happening is the creation of an alternate timeline. It may have some therapeutic benefit as a type of psychodrama. However, the fixation with the past renders the actor immobile. The second-guessing, the hypothetical "if only I had..." ensures that the individual remains static. I return to Hyeon-seok's dying words. The present and the people around are what's important. Th lesson for Jin-gyeom is this: Life is to be lived to its fullest in the here and the now. We are meant to move on from events -- tragic or otherwise and grow. Happiness is not forever. Painful moments are inevitable. They can make us or break us. That's the choice to be made. To accept the past and to move on from it strengthened and wiser to in readiness for the present and the future.

From the bottom of my heart I really want this show to do well. Indeed I do. Science fiction done well is always delight. But there's a niggling fear that it's suffering from the usual problems of ambitious productions comprising of ensemble casts. It's all in the juggling act.