He’s Psychometric: Questions and Answers

1. On the red candy

@nrllee says:

Yeah I am not sure about the candy… The red I got when LA was stabbed and the candy rolled down into the shoe that LA gave her? But the others I am not sure. It’s featured so often it has to mean something…

All I know is the yellow candies have been segregated by Jaein and placed in a different container because those are her favorite.

But I like the imagery of the red candies falling over the edge of the desk. They look similar to red corpuscles gushing out of a wound.

2. On hammers

@nrllee writes:

I get the feeling Kim GabYoung didn’t kill the women. What LA saw was him bending over after she was already dead. The hammer was what killed him? Stalker killed him with a hammer too. Also stalker got the photo of young SM and his mom from the apartment and then he burns it at a basement type place that looked suspiciously like what LA saw in his vision where the 2 ladies were murdered. Kim GabYoung’s body was found in some construction site the pillars of which look a lot like part of the place where ladies were killed?

Yes, that’s possible that Lee Ahn’s visions are imperfect and he misread the scene where Kim GabYoung killed Kang HeeSook. We’ll know more as the show progresses. 🙂

In the meantime, however, I’m taking Lee Ahn’s word for it.

I checked the two hammers. The two men used different hammers. The one used by Kim Gab Young was a sledgehammer: long handle, used for demolition, and needed two hands to swing it. The hammer used by Killer #1 was an engineer hammer: short handle, needed only one hand to aim it, and had more control than a sledgehammer.

🙂 I guess unlike bad Amuricans, kdrama killers don’t use guns. Hammers — and knives — are their weapons of choice.

Also, they’re different killers. According to Lee Ahn’s vision, Kim GabYoung was part of an organized crime. He was following orders to kill the women. There were other men with him to watch him clobber the woman. There was a hitjob on these women.

Killer #1 on the other hand was about domestic violence. There seems to be some kind of obsession and masculine possessiveness, jealousy and rage that trigger Killer #1 to go berserk. And he was a lone killer.

I don’t know why he brought the suitcases home. I can only speculate. Perhaps it was to intimidate and frighten Sungmo’s mom to submit to him. Perhaps it was his warped and deranged way of showing his desperate love for her. Perhaps the women he killed did something bad against Sungmo’s mom (like insult her or harass her) and he killed them to lay at her feet…like a cat would bring a dead mouse to its owner.

Or perhaps Killer #1 thought his gory kills were his trophies and he wanted to get recognition for them. 🙂

I don’t know what’s in store for our characters and that makes it fun. I can’t predict the ending yet because there are lots of possible scenarios. I’ll just wait and see for now.

3. On plot development

@peachietime says this:

Also I am hoping the writer and director please don’t disappoint me lollllll too many kdramas started out SOOOO good and then starting from 8-12 onwards are terrible lol

I agree. I’m still incensed at the way the writers and directors of “The Ghost Detective” and “A Poem Crap a Day” handled the plot. They’re like drunkards urinating in a dark alley, who suddenly changed direction midstream and pissed on the viewers. For instance, that gutless director, Han San-Jae, of “A Crap a Day” admitted to changing the ending 3/4ths of the way to please fangirls. 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️🙅‍♀️🤦‍♀️ So he’s toast to discerning viewers like me.

I’ve no complaints about Park Jinyoung’s acting. I find his different facial expressions and body language very entertaining. They’re spot on. His role requires him to play both the dunce and a cool kid at the same time, and so far, he’s believable.

Even when he’s played for a fool, his comebacks disprove that he’s a simpleton.

And I like how he’s fallen in love with Jaein. Don’t Lee Ahn and Jaein remind you of the Harry Potter couple, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger?

Image result for he's a psychometric gif

Image result for hermione and ron

4. On idol-actors

@nrllee says:

Cha EunWoo of Gangnam Beauty fame – I just sort of stared at him much of the time admiring his handsome face and that was it 😂. At least with this guy I find his acting and character endearing.

hahaha. I remember Cha EunWoo. You’ve got to be blind not to notice his handsome features. He was way prettier than his leading lady and THAT made the show awkward to watch. The show was pushing the narrative that the heroine was a beauty after her plastic surgery. But she still wasn’t beautiful after the plastic surgery??!! 🧐🤨

All the same, I didn’t feel the need to research the actor and his boy band after that show. He’s like a Duke basketball 🏀 player; he’s “one-and-done”. (It’s Duke vs Michigan State tonight. I’m rooting for Duke.) It’s hard to find a role for him that doesn’t involve being the precious son of chaebol family who’s kind, smart, lovable, trustworthy, hard-working, BUT misunderstood. Being misunderstood is the key point of his characters.

To me, Cha EunWoo is the kind of idol who should be banned from talking. 🤐 Because whatever he says won’t do justice to the beauty of his face.

5. On pills

@magentusrex writes:

Remember the Noradrenaline scene? What if he is taking the pills to keep his levels low. Or possibly they are psych meds to deal with his childhood issues, and have the effect of warding him from Ahn’s ability. Also, while all colors of candies were present, only the red ones fell when he was stabbed.

That’s an interesting theory; I’ll have to keep that in mind.

As of Episode 6, we haven’t been shown by the writer and director that Sungmo took psych meds when he was younger. I doubt that Sungmo would’ve taken unapproved pills because he said himself that he was afraid to do anything bad, lest Lee Ahn would find out about it. Lee Ahn was his “good conscience”.

Sungmo only started taking pills after he took over the (unofficial) investigation of the HanMin nursing home fire and he tried to link it with the YungSung apartment fire. If my theory is correct that he’s hiding his mother’s existence, then his guilty conscience is driving him to try to find a way to get justice for Jaein’s and Lee Ahn’s parents while at the same time, still protecting his mother.

The case has became his own unhealthy obsession, unfortunately.

6. On memory loss

@jasmine b writes:

I was wondering if maybe Lee Ahn’s hyung has some kind of memory loss? I find it odd that he is desperate to have Jae In trying to help Lee Ahn advance his psychometry? Maybe I am overthinking or perhaps I missed something but it is something that came to my mind on episode 6 since Lee Anh is unable to read his mind… he did read a bit of it on episode 2 (?) when he met Jae In for the first time, right? I just wonder why he is so desperate to use Jae In and Lee Ahn since they were younger than him hence making their memory a little less unreliable, no? Anyway, if I am mistaken and sound like an idiot… you can maybe ignore the second half of this comment lol

Yes, since we’re watching kdramas, and kdramas are known to have amnesia plots, it’s totally possible that Hyung Sungmo has some sort of selective amnesia. His selective amnesia can be his way of coping with his childhood trauma.

However, right now, as things stand in Episode 6, there isn’t sufficient information to support a memory loss plot. Perhaps later on. 🙂

There was this scene (I forgot the episode) when the young Sungmo told the young Lee Ahn to stop crying because crying would give his tormentors fun (or something like that). I thought he was speaking from personal experience at that time. That is, young Sungmo learned to mask his emotions so he wouldn’t suffer. As a way of self-preservation, he couldn’t openly show how terrorized or helpless he was. So sad, right? 😕 He learned to grow up quickly and THINK for himself and his mother.

As to why he desperately wants Jaein and Lee Ahn working together, he desires to help them but he’s unable to, because he doesn’t want to expose his mother. His ankle was literally chained when he was young, but now it’s his hands that are figuratively tied. His hands are tied; he can’t do anything. As much as he wants to lend assistance to gain justice for Jaein and Lee Ahn, he simply cannot jeopardize his own mother’s safety. So he’s betting on the kids, Jaein and Lee Ahn, to help him out.

7. On new and delurking posters

Welcome to Bitchesoverdramas where we can bitch about the drama but shun the slavish drivel!

(Ok. I’m posting this now but will have to edit later. My 🤬 iPhone is auto-correcting what I wrote!)

12 Comments On “He’s Psychometric: Questions and Answers”

  1. omg I dunno where I’ve been! I just started watching — but on ep 4 and was like.. man I hope Bitchesoverdramas is covering this and whaddya know, you are! 🙂 Now I have to go backwards lol

    Omg it’s good right now.. I’m def hoping they don’t crap it up haha

  2. I know, right?

    If tvN messes this up like it did with “A Crap a Day” I’m blacklisting their Mon-Tues show lineups. Surviving Monday mornings is already tough enough, but to have to deal with bad kdramas on Monday nights as well?? Who needs that aggravation?

    So let’s see. We usually can tell around the 8th ~ 10th episode which way the wind is blowing.

  3. Good points about the hit on the women. We’ll see what unfolds.

    “To me, Cha EunWoo is the kind of idol who should be banned from talking. 🤐 Because whatever he says won’t do justice to the beauty of his face.”

    🤣. I think he’s signed on to do a Sageuk soon with the rather dubious title of ‘Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryeong’?? He’s playing a Prince… we’ll see how he fares. But seriously I don’t remember a thing he said in Gangnam Beauty…whereas I remember so many lines from 100DMP. You know where my loyalties lie. 😀

  4. He’s playing sageuk? lololololol

    What I want is for Cha Eunwoo to up against that Park Hyungsik idol-actor (the lead guy one who was in Strong Woman Do Bong Soon). The camera will gravitate towards the guy with the “presence” — not necessarily the guy with the most handsome face.

    I’m waiting for Siwan’s new kdrama although @lovebangwon warned me that there’s no romance. I don’t mind….

    I just read another recapper and she feels that Sungmo is an evil monster. Hmmm…. dunno about that. Does Sungmo strike you as evil? I agree that he isn’t emotionally receptive, but I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Jisoo can’t be wrong about him, can she?

  5. I don’t think sungmo is a bad guy. First of all if the director is trying to make you feel like he’s bad (or falling in love with Jaein) the Director is probably just trying to mislead the viewers anyways lolll It’s too early (ep 4-6) to give you the answers – they obviously don’t want to be so predictable. Secondly he seems genuine in the cases and interactions with the other characters although having his own agenda and secrets.

    Also if they make sungmo the bad guy it’s pretty much lazy writing tho lol? How convenient. Please don’t – lol please make this an interesting plot!

  6. No worries. I don’t think Sungmo’s bad. Go back and read my first post about him, I distinctly said I didn’t think he’s a bad guy.

    However, not BEING a bad guy does not necessarily mean he’s NOT going to MAKE bad choices or DO bad things. You have to go deeper with your understanding of good and evil, black and white.

    To be clear here, Sungmo has already done bad things. He knowingly sent another person to jail. FOR LIFE. He gave false testimony that sent the wrong person to jail. He destroyed Jaein’s childhood. Now, if that person, Jaein’s dad, dies too out of despair, that’s on Sungmo’s conscience, too.

    But why do we viewers insist that Sungmo is a good guy then? If he was any other guy, say, somebody who looked despicable, foul and nasty, or somebody who was mean to his younger brother, it would be much easier for the viewers to pass judgment on his complicity in Jaein’s father’s incarceration.

    It’s because we assume that 1) murderers and bad guys have to wear all black outfit to be legit (hahaha. Didn’t you get my joke earlier?) and 2) murderers and killers kick dogs and babies. If he looks handsome and donates to an orphanage, then he can’t be a bad guy.

    See that? It has nothing to do with lazy writing. It’s lazy thinking and lazy assumptions.

    That’s the point of Sungmo’s dialogue with Lee Ahn about the limitations of psychometry. Like Ahn, we see the knife, and we *think* we see the person stabbing with the knife. But we don’t truly see the motive and intents, the rightness or wrongness of the act, and the “big picture” until we’re trained to. He wants Lee Ahn to learn to see the big picture. BEING good is different from DOING good.

    Lol. To me, it would be simply ironic if Sungmo turns out to be the bad guy at the end. If the writer ends up writing a very sympathetic bad guy who can deceive us all, then I say she’s done a great job writing an anti-hero.

  7. “I just read another recapper and she feels that Sungmo is an evil monster. Hmmm…. dunno about that. Does Sungmo strike you as evil? I agree that he isn’t emotionally receptive, but I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Jisoo can’t be wrong about him, can she?”

    Yeah I’m with you. I don’t feel evil in him at all. Conflicted with low EQ but not evil. He’s protecting his Mom.

  8. I think this is when life mirrors art. Or the kdrama. 😂 We’re “psychometric-ing” Sungmo like Lee Ahn. And we cannot get any reading other than he’s a good Hyung, benevolent daddy-long-legs/kindly benefactor to Jaein, and filial son. 🙂

    I’ve seen this writer’s Moorim School and I don’t recall any major plot twist or a morally-ambivalent character. I’m not sure if she’s gotten that good yet at character development.

  9. Oh no totally agreed. He is not all the way bad guy nor a totally good guy. I simply think he has good intentions but is also a selfish one (I mean everyone has priorities) he can’t choose to be all good if he must sacrifice one or another. If it’s his mother to protect then he will sacrifice another person.

    Right now from what the plot has shown us, I am simply saying he is not the “killer” as in the “bad guy” but he for sure has a piece in it regardless the reason. But I would say at least for now, he seems genuinely caring towards the two leads, despite having his own agenda, and they are “useful” to him no matter what reason, he doesn’t want to hurt Ahn and Jaein if he can.

    I honestly don’t mind him being a good/bad person, I just don’t want Ahn to lose anyone anymore 🙁

  10. Also I think when I mentioned lazy writing, I don’t mean all bad guys need to have bad moral or are all bad (like kicking dogs you mentioned hahaha lol, or wearing all black lol I actually told my sister too while watching – honestly like WHO will not pay attention to you when you wear all black, black caps, mask, clothes. Like can you just wear like a navy or brown or beige cap, a normal white mask, and like a fishing guy/outdoor jacket so you look like a normal human being and not trying to catch everyone’s attention LOL)

    What I meant is that, I have seen the bad guys in Kdramas reveals – turning out to be a close one that you feel for them, the loving one that the main leads have developed close relationships with, and that their intentions weren’t bad, and that you can understand why they did what they had to do. But to me, that’s an easier writing than having the actual “bad guy(s)” to be a different person with a different reason (and it better be 100% reasonable) and that the audience will be wowed by the reveal. It’s easy to make the audience understand sungmo if he ends up to be the killer, but I personally feel it’s a very predictable take. It feels like we have seen too many similar plots and there’s less “thinking” needs to go into writing the plot.

    Now of course, it’s not like if sungmo ended up being the killer the story can’t be interesting or if the writer successfully make the audience sympathize with sungmo, that’s still a good writing.

    I guess it’s just me lol My own preference/opinion is that it’s not that hard to make us sympathize with sungmo. We have “known” him since the beginning. I still want to know why he needed to do the “bad things” he did but I want a story to be more complex and I want to be surprised by why this killer(s) (or “bad guys”) did what he/she/they did – even if they are “good people” who did the bad things only with his/her/their own reasons.

    It’s just for me Sungmo is too convenient to be the final bad guy lol Not because I think all murderers need to be an actual bad person. It’s more of the contrast, I feel like I have seen so many killers are the close ones that the audience and the characters get to know, who are good people doing bad things lol

    It would be more fun if the plot has more to reveal other than the dad is being obsessive to the mom and this dad is the final bad guy. Honestly I really really hope the dad is not the final boss too lol A person doing bad things wearing black clothes we have seen since like ep 3-4 turns out to be the actual bad guy? Hmmm lol I probably will feel “that’s it? Lol” by the end if that’s the case Hahahaha

    Hope I am making sense lol I like a more complex plot or a more unpredictable plot for this type of dramas.

  11. O I was mistaken- Cha EunWoo’s new drama is a fictional piece set in 19th Century so not Sageuk?

    https://www.soompi.com/article/1314509wpp/park-ki-woong-to-join-cha-eun-woo-and-shin-se-kyung-in-new-mbc-drama

  12. Uh-oh. Count me out. Shin Se Kyung is on my Do Not Watch List. She has limited range of emotions that she can express with face: sleepy, whiny, happy, shocked, shocked and shocked (Did I mention shocked? That’s her go-to expression: a shocked face.)

    Shin Se Kyun, Shin Hye Sun, Soo Chae Bin, Choi Kang Hee are actress I avoid like the plague.

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