The 1980s anti-drug campaign can be adapted for this kdrama. Here’s my anti-Alice public service announcement now that this show has ended.
This is your brain.
credit: livescience
It’s unblemished and intact.
This is your brain after watching Alice.
credit: epicurious
Meaning, this drama *scrambles* your brain…but in an unappetizing way.
This is the brain of the executive(s) who green-lighted this project.
credit: lowgif
Birdbrain.
Any questions?
.
I won’t be answering any questions after Episode 12 because I love my brain too much to continue. Please watch this drama at your own mental risk.
Final grade: It’s a goose egg.
Goose egg = zero
Reposting nrllee’s comment here
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Well…I have taken a look at comments elsewhere and it does sound like it’s a train wreck ending. The sort that makes you want your 16 hours of angsty watching back kind of ending 😂. Don’t know. Haven’t watched past Ep7/8 I think?
https://twitter.com/biasmultifandom/status/1320005568132571136?s=21 (is one person’s review). It does sound pretty bad? 🙄
Reposting @Growing_Beautifully’s comment here
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@nrllee and @pkml3, I’ll bite the bullet and FFD to power through only Ep 16. I watched up to Ep 12, and read only parts of some recaps. Yes, the viewers who watched up to Ep 14 already note the train wreck dead ahead.
Reposting @Growing_Beautifully’s spoilers here
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Hi @nrllee, I’m back after watching very quickly Ep 16. Yeah that Tweet you gave a link to more or less gave the spoilers. Briefly show logic did not make sense.
MORE SPOILERS BELOW
There were 3 Jin Gyeoms around, 2 of whom were either trying to kill the mum or each other. This was supposed to close the door of time, by killing the child (JG) who should not have been born. In the end 2020 JG kills future JG and mum kills herself, and time resets, but that does not make sense, because the 3rd Jin Gyeom was still alive.
The original aim was to have been to kill the mum before the child was born or to get her to abort the child so that there would be no JG = no open door to time travel. Why? Show does not explain in Ep 16 and I doubt it does so in Ep 13-15.
So in what logic is killing future JG supposed to stop time travel? And why should mum killing herself make a difference? All it was, was her feeling guilty that so many died and she wanted to be punished for it.
Ending also makes no sense. The 1992 JG grows up to become an architect and he does not remember Tae Yi, then for some reason he does remember TY. And so, what? They are what? Friends? Family? No clue.
*eye roll* *sigh*
Lol @packmule3 This post is so funny🤣🤣🤣 Makes me so glad I didn’t watch this and get my brain scrambled 😅😅😂😂
Weren’t we talking about eggs in our ramen before in DDSSLLS? 😂
Glad you found another use for it. 😂
Alice—is a disappointment. Seriously, even by my standards, which is not high really. N I’m a birdbrain at times lol. Please excuse me though.
The reason I finished this drama was becos I wanna know the ending of TY n JG. I had guessed a tragic ending where Taeyi would sacrifice herself to save Jin Gyeom and though, she did, it did not end there. Jin Gyeom went back in time, killed his other self—also the Teacher, n brought everyone who died back to life. Then everything was reset in a new environment.
The old JG was killed so his murderous ventures could be undone. Mom TY aka Sun Young died so then JG (the future old monster) would not be born in 1992. With monster JG n SY mom gone, the adversities were reversed/changed in that way. Think of it like you are erasing the unpleasant old selves to start a new life, yet there’s this one person you would not forget. That’s my birdbrain interpreting the last scene when JG recognised TY. In Kissasian subs, JG’s final line was ‘I’m sorry… I made you wait so long’
Sigh. Bad script.
In a way, @GB, I understand the moral underpinnings of this drama. It was there from the start. The writer posed this dilemma.
If you know the future, would you kill a baby-in-the-womb who would later cause much destruction?
This moral question is nothing new. I’ve discussed it here in this blog, in another thread, in another drama. (Kdrama writers tend to recycle their themes….) IIRC, I called it the “Kill baby Hitler” dilemma.
I said that the answer is ALWAYS no. It’s immoral, unethical, *illegal,* unconscionable, indefensible, and heinous to kill an innocent baby.
For one, you’re assuming that evil or criminality is a genetic thing.
Meaning, a person is born evil. It’s already written in the genes whether a man becomes a mass murderer at or the savior of the world at age 33. You choose to kill a baby, even before he/she has done anything, based on your BELIEF (remember, it’s not fact since it hasn’t happened) that in the future, this baby is useless, harmful, worthless and inhumane. Your justification for this murder is utilitarian: better kill the baby now before he/she creates a problem later.
Do you see what I mean? You know that this is a ridiculous assumption to make of anybody.
For another, you’re assuming that environment has nothing to do with the formation of a person’s conscience, personality, and moral consciousness. But if everything is predestined from birth, why bother raise good kids, or teach children right from wrong, or mentor a struggling teenager, or defend a minor in a juvenile court instead of an adult criminal court, or rehabilitate delinquents, or model good behavior or give people second chances? What’s the point? Your justification for the murder is futility. There’s no point in life.
But this contradicts reality. We all know (and hope) that a loving and understanding environment can change the trajectory of people’s lives.
In fact, in the drama, MinHyuk had this moment of epiphany when he was dying. If he had reacted differently to TaeYi’s news that she was having a baby, perhaps things would have played out differently. It weighed heavily on him that his instant reaction when he learned that TaeYi was pregnant was horror. Back then, he didn’t want to deal with their baby because he was only focused on completing their mission successfully. Knowing the effects of radiation on the unborn baby, he didn’t want to have a “gruesome” (according to Viki’s subs) child to deal with.
So, in Episode 15, when he was dying, he dreamt that his response was different. In his mind, he knew he should have said instead, “Let’s give birth to the baby here. Here, you and I can live, with the child. I’ll make you two happy.”
So this writer has THAT perspective right, at least. The good mother is the one who chooses life for her child. That’s why TaeYi kept choosing death for herself, over and over again, rather than get JG killed.
🙂
Thanks @pkml3… I wonder if curiosity will get me to scramble my brains… I just wanted to find out if the Fountain TY ever made a reappearance, and how Do Yeon was before JG ‘became non-existent’.
@2uke, that was a valiant attempt to interpret the illogical end. My contention is that killing the old JG does nothing to undo the evil he’s done. Because they are done. We have to get rid of him before he does them. Similarly, TY was still alive and 1992 JG was a kid and alive. So her killing herself does the exact thing that’s to be avoided ie it should create the monster JG who forever tries to go back in time to save her life.
Killing the monster JG as an old man, should have absolutely no bearing on the existence of 2020 JG. Why he should disappear as if he never existed, totally baffles viewers. This would only make sense if he had gone back to before he was born and kill either his unborn self or his pregnant mother. Then, I’d have no issue with the logic at all.
The other bit of nonsense about ‘remembering’ TY and waiting for her, again makes no sense. if time was reset and there was no Alice and so, no one to tell 1992 JG about time travel or that he’d meet his mother in the future, then there’s no reason to wait for TY.
Contradictory logic – since show has plainly explained that people are going into parallel universes, what is the point of the time travel except to look see. Nothing they do in the parallel universe will change in their own timeline.
All those extra characters in Alice, the institute where TY worked and the police department, including poor Do Yeon, ended up doing nothing much and being of little moment to the main plotline. Min Hyuk may have added a drop of pathos as the ‘dad’ but Cheol Am and Oh Si Young seemed to be mostly a waste of time ie to increase the episode length with useless talk and pointless conflict.
The only nifty futuristic stuff was the gun, the time card and the drone, all of which, once again, accounted for nothing since JG and even TY could time travel without the card and the drones disappeared. Only the gun made a reappearance so that TY could shoot herself with it.
*grumble*
Ha! So that’s where the inspiration for the egg came from!!
Well, egg was easier to write about than the lox bagel we were talking about last Thursday.
lol. Maybe I should make another hashtag for this drama. #JusticeforDoyeon
Or even better #JusticeforAliceinWonderland
I wish kdrama writers should stop referring to Alice in Wonderland. lol.
Phoenix, I like my brains the way I like my eggs cooked — always “sunny side up,” please.
Anyway, that’s why Alice = eggbeater. It scrambles your brain.
Seriously @packmule3 What’s with this recent obsession of kdramas with Alice in Wonderland? First TK:EM, now this. Are there more? Is the book a part of Korean school curriculum or something?🤔🤔 Though we have some notable Hollywood movies recently on this, one can say the same of Peter Pan or Narnia too, and those haven’t caught the kdrama writers’ fancy as much. Just onebof those inexplicable trends, I guess🙄
There’s a trend. Remember there was that “Little Prince” trend a while back?
I don’t think Peter Pan would go well, though, with kdrama viewers. We generally don’t a man-child and we want the irresponsible, childish male to grow up. We like the mature hero. Peter Pan refuses to grow up and Wendy ends up growing on her own. IIRC, Wendy becomes the grandmother (or mother?) of the girl Peter Peter will eventually fall in love with.
Yes, that ending of Peter Pan is just weird, I agree.
Off topic, but other than DDSSLLS, any other new kdramas that you would recommend?
I’m only watching ToNT for now. Not sure if I should pick up Startup (because I’m terrified of Suzy repeating her Aegyo from Vagabond too🤣🤣).
I don’t like zombie or demon dramas, so not going to watch School Nurse Files. Not watching Record of Youth too.
Not sure if anything else that looks promising is coming up 🤔
@GB yeah that contradictory logic about the parallel universe got to me. Parallel lines don’t intersect? So nothing that you do in someone else’s parallel universe affects your own timeline? Initially I thought it was more like one timeline and when you go back in time, you birth another one by altering the events of the past. Like the mother with the child in the early episodes. Her child now grows up motherless? But the whole “clones” and Terminator vibes didn’t make sense to me. And in the end poor DoYeon was left bereft of any justice for her character. Relegated to a nobody? 🙄
I thought Kairos looked good on paper but it’s another time travel drama? After Alice I am not sure I can stomach another attempt at a genre that is so often anathema to the logical mind. 😂
Phew! That’s a big save for me brain🤣🤣🤣. And to think I went over the timeline before… ok Alice, case closed!! Begone!
Why is RoWoon picking noona romances?
https://twitter.com/kdrama_news/status/1379258801316974593?s=21
Why is this FL consistently paired with younger men? She’s 43. He’s 24? 🙄
‘Tomorrow’ based on a webtoon with the same name. It is an underworld office fantasy that goes back and forth between reality and afterlife.
And what is Kim Heesun thinking?
Rowoon (1996) is closer in age to her daughter (2009) than he is to her (1977).
Rowoon and her daughter: 13 years
Rowoon and Kim Heesun: 19 years
I remember her reluctance to kiss Lee Minho in “Faith,” because her husband and daughter would watch the drama. I guess back then kissing scenes with a man 10 years younger felt awkward for her.
Refs.
https://www.vingle.net/posts/95317
https://www.soompi.com/article/581911wpp/kim-hee-suns-daughter-became-angry-when-she-saw-her-moms-kiss-scene-with-lee-min-ho-in-faith
But I guess now that she’s an ajumma, kissing a man almost 20 years her junior can be called “edgy.” 🤡
Skipping this and I’m not giving it space here. Not even if you paid me. 😆
@packmule3 maybe there’s no romance? 🤣. But hey in Alice they were supposed to be a mother son duo but their relationship was bordering on incestuous on occasions? 🤮. I will give this Rowoon drama a wide berth too.
No romance? With Rowoon as co-star? 😂
Then why didn’t they just pick the actor who played my favorite NKorean soldier Pyo Chisoo in “Crash Landing on You” (40 years old) as her costar?
Or the actor who played the autistic brother in “Psycho But It’s Okay” (44 years old, same age)?
I can see WHY Rowoon would like to take on this role. He could say that he looked forward to working with his “sunbae” in the industry and learning from her. But what’s HER excuse? She could hardly say that she would LEARN acting skills from Rowoon. 😂
If this was a chess move, she just gave up her Queen for a Rook.
There must be another way for Kim Heesun to become relevant to the younger audience. She cannot keep on doing aegyo or pretend that she’s a teenager forever. It’s so unbecoming.
@packmule3 tsk tsk. It is possible that there is NO romance. Remote…but errr…still possible… maybe 0.01%. But still…possible. 😂
https://www.soompi.com/article/1462812wpp/kim-hee-sun-in-talks-to-star-as-lead-of-webtoon-based-fantasy-drama
See? She’s his boss/leader? No romance 😂. And they are grim reapers. Age has no meaning in their world anyway 😂.
Thank goodness KyungSoo has picked good projects post military. 2 movies – The Moon (chances of romance are zero – he’s stranded on the Moon 😂) and The Secret (I loved the original movie. I hope the Korean remake will be just as good).
Off topic. Btw if you’re after warm and fuzzy, watch Navillera. It’s only 12 eps. So far it’s aired 5. I am really loving it.
That’s why I watched “Alice,” remember? I thought it was a mother-and-son drama. Then we got a bait-and-switch when that writer threw in the incest-y trope. Ugh! that killed my interest. (Just like “Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol” with the runaway high school kid. 🤮)
How hard was it for the writer to insert a confession scene in the beginning? Jiwoon (is that actor’s name?) could have sat KHS down and shown his picture with his mom and that would have ended KHS’ character’s infatuation right there. Her crush would have been dead on arrival.
But noooo, the writer prolonged her crush for far too long and played her character fantasizing that she was his girlfriend,🤢 acting jealous, cooking him a meal, buying him a present, simpering like she was a college student.
These scenes were unnecessary to the plot development. And left us the viewers with a cognitive dissonance.
Kim Heesun needs to get her head checked if she thinks a romance drama with a 24-year old actor will be tolerated by the netizens. She’ll be viewed like a “Mrs Robinson.” 🙃