1. Who’s the new assassin?

Well, he’s a physicist too like Prof Taeyi. He time-travelled to 2020 and bumped his old self.

Because of his expertise and fascination with Schrodinger’s box, he was able to make a replica of one.

That’s how he was able to write the formulae on Prof Taeyi’s wall.

In case, you’re wondering why he looks familiar, he was one of the bad uncle’s guards in “The King: Eternal Monarch.”

2. What’s DoYeon’s contribution to the kdrama?

According to @nrllee (thanks!), the screenwriter has no previous works listed under his (or her) name. Since he’s a newbie, I’m going to scale back my bitchiness by 10% and be more lenient with the plotholes, dei ex machina, inconsistencies, and ~meh~ characters.

His inexperience is probably the reason Do Yeon is written like a caricature. She conveniently pops up like a meerkat from her burrow when there’s a need for a) comic relief, b) a new clue, or c) plot progression.

But I welcome her game of one-upmanship with Prof Taeyi. She serves as a buffer between JG and Prof Taeyi, and anybody who irritates Prof Taeyi gets my approval. I find it reassuring that she has lines and screen-time because it tells me that the writer has yet gone cuckoo and begun forcing a Prof Taeyi-JG romance down our throats.

For now, I can’t decide whether it’s the actress Kim Hee Sun’s DELIVERY of her lines or the writer’s CREATION of Prof Taeyi that repulses me MORE.

Her aegyo is 🤮. (Yah! Kim Hee Sun!! You’re too old to simper. Stop it.)

And that scene when she was flirting with JG was…repellent.

My handy-dandy gif reaction:

Prof Taeyi may be a genius (e.g. graduated high school at 15, finished her PhD at 23), but DoYeon is no bimbo herself. She’s a bigger help to JG’s investigations than the whole police force combined. Why was she the only one to wonder whether a drone was sighted during Eunsoo’s abduction?

She also searched news reports to find information on the husband of Mom Taeyi/Park SunYoung. If it wasn’t a convenient coincidence that her own boss investigated the murder, I’m sure she would have hounded any writer who posted info about Mom Taeyi’s murder.

Note to myself: Mom Taeyi died before October 8, 2010.

I give her A+ for investigative skills.

Because of her research, she discovered that someone had gone to JG’s house in the afternoon of the day his mom died while he was at school (Ep 5 at 54:00). She assured JG that her chief informed his Officer Go about this fact although there was no reference to the prison visit was in the Officer Go’s official report.

JG: Who was the person who came?
DY: I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t your father. A man in their late 20s to early 30s. Oh right! There’s another thing I found out, too. About a month before she was murdered, your mom visited someone in a prison.
JG: My mom? Who?
DY: Wait a minute. (shows him her note. Inmate: Lee See Hoon) Have you heard of the name?
JG: No.
DY: I’m not sure what his relationship was with your mother, but this person is still in prison.

So while Prof Taeyi was secretly copying JG’s timecard, DoYeon was sharing everything she knew about the case with him. She was finding the missing pieces of the puzzle for him.

I also like that she worries about JG.

Prof Taeyi isn’t concerned about his welfare as much as DoYeon. For example, when JG reappeared after disappearing for a week, she told him, “How can you not call even once when people are so worried about you? I normally don’t worry at all about anyone but do you know how worried and NERVOUS (emphasis mine) I was thinking that you got into an accident while talking to me on the phone? Why aren’t you saying anything, after making me feel guilty?”

In other words, she was thinking about herself. If something bad had happened to him, she didn’t want to be involved or be responsible.

Contrast this with DoYeon’s reaction. She asked Officer Go how long is the jail time for murder because when JG came back, she’d kill him. She punched him and said, “Do you know how worried I was thinking that you might be dead?” Then, she was going to sleep in his apartment because she wanted to bring him to the hospital first thing the following morning. She wanted to be certain that he was fine. When he brushed it off, she reasoned, “You were in an accident. Big or small, it’s an accident nonetheless.”

Had she known that he had a nosebleed and he fainted, she would have lost it.

Remember, Prof Taeyi was more curious about his radiation level than the absence of fracture after his accident.

Ha! The difference between the two women is stark as night and day.

DoYeon also acts like JG’s guidance counselor. When Officer Go was stabbed, she reminded him not to have negative thoughts. She downplayed his alexithymia, saying that it was okay not to feel anything. “You’re not strange; don’t feel that way.”

Then, before JG went off to see the inmate, she described the man as around his mother’s age and had begun his sentence in the year he was born. She instructed him, “He could be your father. That might have been the reason your mother didn’t say anything about him. So if you get to meet him, don’t be rude.”

He replied, “I don’t care what kind of person my father is. The only father I have is Mr. Ko.”

She’s his life coach. She identifies the obstacle ahead of him and prepares him for it. Although he dropped her off at the side of the road, she still followed him to the prison and waited for him. It was good thing she was there because she again led him to the Songpa police station which handled his mom’s murder. See that? How could he not have investigated it on his own? Tsk tsk.  😒

DoYeon’s usefulness indicates me that she’s still relevant to the plot. Although I dislike it when her scenes are too pat and contrived, (e.g., when she was the one who recognized MH walking in the campus and alerted JG), I don’t mind her presence in the drama because she serves as a foil to Prof Taeyi.

credit: Maurice Griffin’s slideshow

Hmmm… 🤔 I wonder who would JG rescue FIRST should the Assassin put DoYeon and Prof Taeyi in danger at the same time? It had better be DoYeon because they’re are multiple doppelgängers of Taeyi anyway. Lol.

Anyway, I’m on the lookout for any foreshadowing that DoYeon is one of the four deaths prophesied in the book….

3. What about Officer Ko? Is he a good or bad guy?

He sure is acting suspiciously right now, but I think he’s one of the good guys. You see, of all the characters here, he’s the only one who strictly adheres to Mom Taeyi’s expressed wishes that —

a) JG should feign ignorance when they met again in the future,
b) JG shouldn’t get involved in “this” fight, and
c) JG should move forward with his life.

From Episode 5:

JG: Mom.
TY: My son. You grew up to be handsome.

She wasn’t surprised to see him grown up. My take here is that she was expecting to see him. Of course, if she read the whole book (AND she did), then she must have known that they were going to see each other. And she must have also told Mr Seok about this. That’s why he was shocked to see 2020 JG and ran.

JG: I’m sorry, Mom. I wanted to protect you.
TY: It’s okay. My son. Everything’s okay. Jin Gyeom, the timecard, where is it? Can you give it to me?
JG: Yes.

He handed it to her. Then, she turned it on her, but she picked his hand up and pressed his fingers on the card as if she was leaving his imprint on it.

Two theories:

A. that’s how JG became a time traveler.

B. she made it impossible for him to time travel back to 2010 using that timecard.

TY: You shouldn’t be here.
JG: Mom, what do we do? I can’t leave like this. Who is it? Who did this to you?
TY: You can’t get involved in this fight.
JG: Who is it? Who did this to you?
TY: To see you all grown up like this, Mom is so happy. Don’t ever come back and you have to live happily.
JG: Mom!

If you’ll notice, Mom Taeyi’s advice is the abbreviation version of the quotation written in the beginning of Episode 6. She quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “Do not look mournfully into the past. For it does not come back. Wisely improve the present for it is yours. Go forth to meet the shadowy present without fear.”

To me, Officer Go is steering JG toward the path that his Mom wanted for him. In Episode 3, he was shocked to hear that he was investigating a certain Professor Yoon TaeYi in Episode 3.

He was clearly unhappy that they met although he didn’t say anything. Instead, he invited JG out to a meal and he began drinking heavily. He must have been dismayed that JG and Prof Taeyi met each other.

He asked JG if something was wrong and voiced his regret letting JG move out. If JG was staying at his house, he would have felt more at ease. He confessed that he told JG to move out only because DoYeon pestered him to allow JG to get his own bachelor’s pad. (But DoYeon failed to “capitalize” on JG’s change of residence, and he’s still sleeping by himself. lol)

This scene in Ep 3 tells me that his desire to protect JG is sincere.

But he’s working with somebody (earlier my guess was with Director Seok, but now I think he could be working with another yet-to-seen person) to protect JG from getting involved with Alice and time travel.

In Episode 5, when JG asked him if he learned anything about his father during the investigation of his mom’s murder, his first reaction was to question JG’s curiosity. Instead of answering the question, he was concerned that something had happened to JG which he wasn’t aware of. (Ep 5 at 34:00)

GO: Something’s up with you, right? Don’t you think it’s strange that you were gone for a week and suddenly you show up and want to find your father? Explain what’s going on first.
JG: There’s nothing to explain. I just want to find my father, that’s all.
GO: So why? You’ve never once looked for our father before. You said you hated your father because he abandoned your mom. So why find him?
JG: I’m not looking for him because I’m curious about what kind of person he is. I’m looking for him because he’s the only person who knows about my mom’s past that I don’t know about.
GO: (looking away and sighing) At that time, we also looked into your father, but you know it, too, how many single mothers are out there.

My take here is that he knows more than he’s letting on but he’s shielding JG from learning the truth. It’s possible that he wants JG to remain uninformed of his past, so JG can avoid getting involved in the “fight” – just as Mom Taeyi wished.

Then, in Episode 6, he teased DoYeon. He was stunned again when DoYeon reported to him that JG was cheating on her with Prof Taeyi. (Ep 6 at 29:00)

Go: Who is making my daughter-in-law so angry?
DY: I’m not going to be your daughter-in-law?
Go: Why not?
DY: I think Jin Gyeom’s cheating on me.
Go: Huh! (in disbelief)
DY: I’m being serious!
Go: (laughing) Really? With whom?
DY: Yoon Taeyi!
Go: (his face fell)

Once more, I thought Officer Go was fulfilling Mom Taeyi’s wish for JG. With her last breath, she wanted JG to move on with his life and be happy. To this end, Officer Go was encouraging JG to live happily by encouraging the match between him and DoYeon.

That’s why I’ve given Officer Go a pass although he does look like a suspicious person. I believe he’s actually on of the side of Mom Taeyi and seeks what’s best for JG.

I can’t say the same thing for Director Seok. He’s protecting JG because he needs JG to do an important job for him which is to end the Alice project and time travel.

4. Director Seok? Bad or good guy?

By the end of Episode 5, we discover that Director Seok ordered one of his men to protect JG against attacks from Alice. (51:06)

Seok: Good work.
Man: They will keep targeting Park JIn Gyeom.
Seok: Until he realizes his own fate, we must keep protecting him. You may go. Keep a close watch on him until I instruct you otherwise.

This is part of the prophesy. The child has to choose his own fate.

Man: Yes.
Seok: That day is approaching. Be more careful in the future.

You’d think that Dir Seok would be a good guy if he was willing to protect our hero, right?

However, after watching so many kdramas with blatant anti-Catholic bias, I’ve come to expect Korean writers to portray Catholics in the most unfavorable light. It would be par for the course if Director Seok ends up as the mass murderer in this kdrama.

In the beginning of Episode 6, we learn that he hired Prof Taeyi to do research on wormholes. (at 6:50)

TY: All masses move in the direction in which energy is exerted. But negative energy moves in the direction opposite to applied force. My research was using negative energy to open a wormhole. This was the command program I wrote during that research. (pointing to the program running on her computer) But in the card that you gave me, there was a similar program. (picking up JG’s timecard) Of course, I know this doesn’t make sense and it can’t be explained with logic, but a program similar to the one I was researching is inside this card.

In case this confuses some viewers, let’s remember that everything that’s happening in 2020 is technically ancient history. JG was a baby conceived in 2050, but he was brought back in time when his Mom Taeyi traveled back to 1992 retrieve The Book. If Prof Taeyi is shocked to see her program in the timecard, it’s because she doesn’t know yet (how could she?) that her program will be used to construct Alice by 2050. We already surmised here in Bitchesoverdramas that she was the founder and architect of the Alice program.

JG: Did you research this alone?
TY: No. A team of 5 people researched this together, but Seok Oh Won was the head researcher. At the time, he was a senior researcher.

This is important. Where are the other three people? I don’t think the Schrodinger cat guy/assassin was one of the researchers in 2010 because he’s still a student in 2020.

JG: How did you become part of the team?
TY: Director Seok came to my school and asked me to join his research team.
JG: When?
TY: Do you know that we had a super blood moon back in 2010?
JG: Yes.
TY: We met on that day. At an event.

At this point, JG had a flashback. When he time-traveled to 2020, he chased after Director Seok who was loitering outside their gate that fateful night. Director Seok warned him that his mom was in danger.

Seok: You don’t have time for this. Your mom’s in danger.
JG: What?
Seok: I said your mom’s in danger. Tonight is the night of the blood moon. (TY shrieked)
JG: Mom.
Seok: If you want to save your mom, hurry up and go. Hurry! Go!

How did Director Seok know that Mom Taeyi was in trouble?

I believe that he knew about this because Mom Taeyi revealed it to him. Mom Taeyi confessed to him that she was from 2050. She probably tried to convince him that she was from the future by divulging some prophecies from the book. She might have been warning him of the dangers of time-travel. He couldn’t be convinced until she foretold her own death DURING the night of the blood moon.

Her death was probably the proof Mr. Seok needed that a) time travel would indeed happen in the future, and b) time travel would lead to deaths.

But it seems to me that Director Seok needs JG to stop the time travel himself. When JG searched for him in the church, Director Seok told him that JG he was important to him but he didn’t explain how. (lol. The Catholic Church should be charging these kdramas a hefty fee for location shoots.)

JG: You approached Prof Yoon intentionally, didn’t you? What’s the research you did with her? What does it have to do with my mother’s death?
Seok: My apologies. I cannot tell you yet. You are a very important person to me. But even if I told you now, it’d be difficult for you to believe. I was the same, 10 years ago.
JG: Ten years ago?
Seok: Do you like cats, by chance? Research a case involving Schrodinger’s cat. Then you’ll believe me.

At the end of Episode 6, JG confronted him.

Seok: A researcher I held dear just died.
JG: Then why didn’t you prevent it? If you held her dear, you should have prevented it.
Seok: Had I known, I would have prevented it, of course. But I didn’t know either who was going to die. I’ve been trying to prevent such tragedies since ten years ago. With your mother’s help. Did you see the suspect’s face? That person will kill four more people. I know it’s difficult to believe. I do. Because I also had a hard time believing your mother, at first. At that time, your mother told me about future events. And as I saw these things happen like she said, I began to trust her. Like you now.
JG: So are you saying that you and my mom knew the future and that is why you know that four more people will die? How?
Seok: Because someone’s future is someone else’s past.

Huh??? What the heck did he mean by that? I hate cryptic remarks because they make me feel like singing, “Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.”

I think basically he was saying that for us living in the present, in 2020, all these moments are past events to somebody living in the future, that is, in 2050. His mom knew about the events still to come because she came from the future.

5. What do we know about the Book’s prophesy?

In Ep 4, Director Seok read, “The moment the child becomes a time traveler, the prophesy will start. But the moment of fate has not arrived yet.” (Ep 4, 57:03)

My take here is that Director Seok didn’t send the white truck of doom to crash on JG at the fountain nor at the university gate. He didn’t know WHEN the accidents would happen. He only knew that they WOULD happen.

Meanwhile, back in 2010, JG picked himself up from the ground and noticed his time travel card had scorched his wallet. He didn’t know it yet but he’d been thrown back in time. In a voiceover, JG said, “The moment she reunites with her child. The child will get to command time.” (Ep 4, 58:00)

The book predicted that adult JG (or 2020 JG) would reunite with Mom Taeyi in 2010. But Director Seok had no part in the time wormhole appearing in the sky.

MY THEORY here: A. the Fountain Taeyi had something to do with his rescue from the white truck of doom. B. JG could survive all these accidents without a fracture because of the radiation he received as a baby in the womb (but I told you this already).

Mom Taeyi gave him the ability to time travel when she imprinted his fingers on her timecard along with hers. But I think it will entail Prof Taeyi’s fingerprint as well as JG to activate the time travel. They will probably have to hold the timecard at the same time to trigger it, just like what the dying Mom Taeyi did with JG.

JG has already traveled through time by using the wormhole, so the prophesy has begun. However, Director Seok believes that JG needs to decide on something by himself. That’s the moment of fate that Director Seok is waiting for. My guess is JG will have to decide whether or not to stop time travel.

Remember what I said about the moon in Episode 4? I said it was Fountain Taeyi who looked at the full moon at the observatory, not Professor Taeyi. I now suspect that Fountain Taeyi KNEW in advance that JG would travel back in time to the night of the Blood Moon/lunar eclipse in 2010, and that she would meet him, and ask for her timecard.

I also mentioned that the trucks of doom were deliberate accidents. It’s been confirmed that somebody has been indeed trying to kill him, and it’s not the Alice group (or at least MH).

MH: Who was driving the truck during the accident?
OH: I can’t figure it out. It was a stolen truck, and the driver intentionally avoided all CCTVs while driving so there isn’t a way to find out. I think the police are also investigating, but have no idea too.
MH: How could Park Jin Gyeom travel through time?
OH: We don’t know that either.
MH: Hurry up and find out. Erase all records in the CCTV and dash can footages. Where’s PJG right now?
OH: In the hospital. He must’ve been hurt since he didn’t go through the departure gates.

Three comments.

a. If Manager Oh was keeping an eye on JG, she should have seen that the person who brought JG to the hospital looked like Yoon Taeyi. Is this a plothole by this newbie writer? Or did Manager Oh hide it, like she hid from MH that Taeyi was alive?

b. JG traveled through time through the wormhole. As I said earlier, MH didn’t think it through. The presence of an assassin who was after the Book of Prophecy in 1992 should have alerted him that Alice did NOT have a monopoly on time-travelling. There was another group who could send people (e.g., assassins, brokers, whatever) back in time with using Alice or without Alice’s full knowledge.

Because JG didn’t travel using the normal time portal, he suffered radiation. That’s why he collapsed and had a nosebleed. He was bleeding from radiation sickness. Radiation destroys blood platelets which help in clotting blood.

c. I now suspect that both time anomalies (i.e., the frozen time, and the time travel) were meant to rescue him from the accidents, and they were set in motion by Fountain Taeyi. Of course, Director Seok could have rescued JG, too, since he’s read the Book of Prophecy.

But to me, Fountain Taeyi makes a BETTER choice because she actually comes a different time (or parallel dimension). Since Fountain Taeyi has come from the future, she knows what will happen in the present time. (In Director Seok’s words, “someone’s future is someone else’s past.” lol)

Moreover, being a mom, she would have more at stake than Director Seok.

In comparison, Director Seok is only “book smart.” He can predict what will happen because he’s read what’s written in the book. But he doesn’t know how it will all go down because he’s NOT from the future.

************

I have to end here because I’ve to leave for my office. Will edit and add later if I don’t have migraine. 🙂  Toodles.