Thanks @pkml3! Glad to see you back! Holy Easter!!
Viva
Last episode tonight! I am looking forward to it!
It took us 9 episodes to know/confirm Kim Ma Nok is related to the Ghost and SB. They really only have one main question throughout the show – the relationship between the Ghost and the murderer. I noted that KMN is adopted. It is unlikely that KMN and SB are suddenly married to have the Ghost as granddaughter, so maybe someone we know is related to KMN too?
Sae Ha asked how much time he has left. Is he going to die in or will there be a plot twist?
It was crazy, I was expecting 10% of answers. I was so wrong!!!
Just add +50% of new unexplained things instead! ahahaha 🙂
Damn, I feel the King Eternal Monarch was pretty solid now…
Season2, really?
Give me Vagabond one first. ^^
Cleopatra
Kalispera Everyone!
I am going to watch this and see how it will go…
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
Gosh! Anyone care to hazard a guess about what we just watched in Ep 10?
@WE, no actual answers at all!
Maybe Sae Ha had to die in one time to become a time traveler himself?
No clue about how that baby or any baby is going to be related Kim Manok.
How many time travelers might there be, and are they working at cross purposes instead of helping each other?
While we are watching what we think is the only main timeline, another one was playing out separately, where Saebyeok also time traveled or Song Eojin did, and he can recall that time, when a different(?) Saebyeok told him to save her in the past?
How many versions of Ghost are there? And her antecedents.
I’m going to sleep but I don’t think I’ll wake up with any answers!
Cleopatra
This episode means that season 2 is happening?
The end was not realistic at all. 🤯 It actually fried my brain.
That means the Kwon SaeHa and the Ghost we saw in the end are from which timeline exactly?
I hope you all brought a gun, so we enjoy a collective murder of this drama here.
🙂 🙂 🙂
wapz
Commenting here after a long while. Though, I’ve never been regular so hello everyone!
What did we just see? What was it even trying to tell us? I don’t even want answers honestly. I’m so done with this show. Korea has a long way to go when it comes to sci fi.
@wapz, we have seen a writer who can’t stand Soju.
Most of korean screenwriters can, but not this one. 🙂
wapz
@WEnchanteur I guess I’m missing the reference here. Though I agree with your previous comment, KES did better with the king than LSY did with Grid(Though I think The king was excessively ambitious too amd didn’t pull all of it well). She bit more than she can chew plus maybe hoped for a second season but Disney plus is not there yet.
Viva
My quick interpretation:
1. The Ghost, Seha, SB and EJ will take their turns to die. They won’t give up on saving each other so they keep creating a new timeline and erase the previous one.
2. However, some of them will always remember some details. In the timeline we saw, we see Seha remembers details as he is the one turnback on time. The person who dies or damaged/hurt won’t know the erased time line, but the person who life hasn’t changed would remember some details. E.g. SB remembers EJ died but EJ didn’t know himself. The saved person has a new “life” so they won’t remember previous details as the old live became “never happened”. People who have no new life had some memory of the old version like SB.
3. Seha can’t travel further to the future because he has died. However, we don’t know how many more cycles they have go through in that year. My interpretation is that the ghost would always want to try to save Seha.
4. There are variables of each cycles because human aren’t entirely predictable. Therefore each time, someone made a new decision and alter the details a little much.
5. I assume the Ghost finally managed to save Seha at least up to the point we saw SB with a child. I assume she died in the last timeline that’s why she has no previous memory. In the previous erased timeline, she at least met EJ long enough to tell him her daughter’s name.
6. I assumed KMN is related to EJ somewhat. He was adopted after all and we can assume EJ is related to his birth family.
7. I assume the ghost is SB’s granddaughter.
8. I think Ghost 2 is trying to erease what Ghost trying to do, but who knows if he success. As long as there is a time machine, Ghost will always go back in time to correct the timeline and erased the previous one in an never ending cycle.
9. As said above, I assume the Ghost, SH, SB and EJ will never give up saving each other so it will go on and on and on.
@Viva, I would need to rewatch the episode to check some points. But I lose any motivation. If I was aware it was a season 1, it would have been nice. But don’t erase all the issues. It wasn’t a good ending episode, even for a season 1.
First part was ok with some action. Then it don’t answer enough, and we have new mysteries. With more closure and answers, it was ok to get some cliffhanger from future and the new ghost, but not when the other obscure points cover so many episodes since then + the ones added in this episode (except the new ghost). With a season 2, we will remember nothing of all the unanswered confusing mess. We will probably remember nothing of the answered confusing mess as well. At least not what we had to guess by ourselves.
I’ve read the writer interview, she said “Above all, though, I wanted to keep viewers entertained”. She’s still far from that with the first part.
She said : “Stranger Season 2. I was thirsty to write something different from my previous projects as well. Writing about real-life social issues required multiple lines of exposition on the background information. When I watched those scenes later on, I realized just how irritating they could be, especially for the actors. I wanted to take a jab at writing a series with less dialogue, and chose this particular topic because it could be conveyed without much background information.”
Then she fail in the opposite direction.
During all the show I had the feeling the grid was disconnected from the plot and time travel. Looks like it’s really that because she said also it could be that or another thing. It wasn’t even there when she was planning the ghost story saving a criminal.
Viva
Yes @WE, it is an empty show after all and requires a lot of assumptions. Less dialogue? A lot is unsaid so we can only assume the answers. Without background? That means we will never find out the technology of the Grid and the logic of time travel. To me, the Grid and the solar blasts turned out to be just the plot devices for some pretty CGI visuals and left me an unfulfilled expectation for a new time travel concept.
If I need to squeeze a meaning out of the show:
1. Going back in time to change things requires a lot of repetitive effort, emotional heartbreaks, and disappointments.
2. People are unpredictable and you can’t calculate every move even you have a chance to go back in time. You save someone, someone else die. Who do you save at the end?
3. If my assumptions/theory is what the writer wants to say, then the character are living in some never ending cycles of changing fates by very little margin in each cycle. They are still hanging on the hope they can do better next round.
Let’s hope our next time travel show Reset is better.
@Viva. Reset is so much clearer. No confusion. But the drawback: there is not thrilling scenes like there are in Grid. The twists don’t hit hard, could be because there is not the way of directing this, or because the whole plot makes the twists lower. We feel all this is too long and repeatitive at one point. I enjoyed Reset on first watching, but it’s not the kind of drama I would enjoy to rewatch.
Cleopatra
Kalimera @WE and @Viva,
I have to say that two things stand out for me from last night’s episode.
1. The conversation The Ghost and Kwon SaeHa had in 1997 and it was shown to us: The Ghost is fond of the people in the past. So, the time loop hypothesis I have written at one point is valid, like in Sisyphus.
2. The kettle in the end that reminded me of the movie “Inception”.
Some thoughts (and I don’t know if I want to watch again the last episode for more intel)
When the Ghost and the unknown man came back to SaeHa’s being killed we didn’t see Saeha in the scene, only Sae Byeong who asked the Ghost to save him.
So, was SaeHa really killed in that scene? Or everyone thought so?
@Viva,
Regarding EJ and KMN. Kim Ma Nok was the paternal grandfather, meaning his son was the Ghost’s father or grandfather.
Sae Byeok is her maternal grandmother, that means her daughter is the Ghost’s grandmother or mother.
@Everyone,
Regarding the ending, when we are being introduced to new characters 20 minutes before the ending then that means we are entering a possible season 2. I mean the Ghost had a red traveling machine and the man a blue one.
wapz
@Viva I feel your theory makes a lot of sense. The only issue is that its an assumption because the writer didn’t show us anything. I mean, if she wanted to go with less dialogue then what is show don’t tell for? Use that! Also Reset is very good. I enjoyed it a lot but as WEnchanteur said it isn’t as thrilling. However, I would much more prefer a time travelling satisfactorily done than one done to only give us vague thrills. My recent favorite time travel was Netflix Turkey’s Midinight at the pera palace. A very charming show with time travel hijinks explained well enough.
@WEnchanteur can I have a link to her interview? I’d like to read her thought process behind it.
And also regarding the second season, I think the writer wrote the story keeping in mind that there will be a second season. However, Disney plus is not there yet. I don’t think they have any plans of renewing it for the second season nor do I think Grid was popular enough to get it. So she may had hoped that there will be a second season but I think by the end she tried to tie as much loose ends as she could. Because she knew too well that there are way too many plot holes and loose ends that she cannot tie them well at this point. In that case I see the foreshadowing of the second season a faux pass even if they never intended to go beyond the first season.
@Cleo… pretty much nothing reminds me of Inception in there. A dazzlingly clear movie despite a complicated high-concept, which was made clear not only for mind-blowing movie fans but anyone else as well.
I don’t remember your theory. But here time travel stacks the timelines. When someone changes something, it creates a new timeline, the official one. But according to the conversation of the two guys at the end, they have access to the knowledge of previous OR alternative timelines (layers). So they can say that the Grid doesn’t exist anywhere anymore.
One could assume that for this reason the ghost can come back in 1997 several times without ever meeting herself, because she uses the original timeline and creates a new one as soon as she arrives. Of course, this contradicts the layered timeline theory, if it is enough to travel and change something to create a new one. Certainly another contradiction that will add to the previous ones…
Ghost 2: fights to the death with Ghost first. Then for some reason they become allies, at least to save SaeHa. There is a line from Ghost 2 like “it’s not me”. So we assume it’s a Ghost 3, and not the Ghost 2. Another confusing and unreadable thing. It would have been easier if Ghost 3 and Ghost 2 had different outfits. But in fact, maybe it’s the same person… except that they are two different versions coming from the future for different reasons. In short, more mess…
We see that to do this: they apply a local time field on SaeHa. Only his body goes back in time, not the rest of the world. The blood that was flowing goes back. A new property of the device.
We can assume a kind of conflict between two factions in the future, one that wants the Grid to save lives, the other that thinks it’s useless because the Grid won’t last long and it’s better to adapt than to suffer the shock of the Grid’s disappearance. We can also assume that the Ghost is sent to the past but has disobeyed orders. Finally, we can assume everything by cross-checking with other information in the drama, but it will remain only assumptions…
The Ghost had said that SaeHa was supposed to die (why? to keep the grid in place?) but instead he is saved but hidden, supposedly dead. Either to hide him from the Bureau, or to hide him from the people of the future? No idea.
We don’t know what happens to Manok, left for dead. Whereas until now, he was supposed to survive to give life to the Ghost’s lineage… So either he has already given birth to someone, or we wonder why the Ghost insists so much on saving him for so long…
I thought the scene with SB and his daughter was from a new timeline, but it’s not. She had a daughter, we suppose with her former husband (after the kissing scene hidden behind a wall, wow, incredible as a kissing scene, we don’t see anything!) Then she abandoned her husband again after the sex party…
On the other hand the office administration is demolished during this timeline. By whom? We can assume the other faction of the future (blue device). We just see that they are death rays coming from the sky… that are blue. It also destroys the grid.
So I suppose that when the people from the future say “the grid doesn’t exist in any layer anymore”, they mean that they destroyed it in 2021 in this scene. And that it was done in other timelines at the same time. Or this “layer” thing means something else. Knowing that the notion “time don’t flow” also meant something else. Not related to a mechanism of the concept, but just a philosophical generality (I had to read the screenwriter’s interview to know that). In fact, it’s not wise to place this line in the drama. It misslead. It’s just what the writer has to say, not the characters… If I had a character saying that, it would be because behind it, I have a high-concept capable of producing that.
Cleopatra
@WE,
We were talking with @Viva about it. Is the Grid similar to TKEM in multiple dimensions or with Sisyphus and a gigantic time loop. I was saying that we don’t see multiple dimensions in Grid but it could be a gigantic time loop.
When I said about the Inception I am not talking about the logic of the movie that is excellent. I am talking about what we see in the end is like a dream within a dream or to translate it in Grid’s laws is it a timeloop within a bigger timeloop?
Sae Byeong took a decision based on what she realized in that moment, but it was not communicated to the audience.
I haven’t read what the writernim said. So far we were trying to decipher this dramaverse based on the laws of Physics.
As for the man in blue that said “it is not me”. That means at one point some don’t want Humanity to be saved. So, we have those who do and those who don’t…I realized it when Kim Ma Nok’s tracker was taken off by the man the first time around he killed SaeHa with the crowbar.
If we find the Script lacking for its ending, the same thing should apply to Disney+ who accepted the script as it is.
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
Hello my Grid friends, @Cleo, @WE, @Viva, @wapz
I’ve finally managed to read while my mind is still a bit in turmoil.
@Cleo yes, it looks like while we think we are watching a main timeline, other timelines have also taken place and merge with the one we are watching. So the big controversy of whether we have a timeline that replaces the next as long as the Ghost travels seems to be ‘wrong’.
Add to that, the complication of there being SUDDENLY more than one time traveler who can keep going back to let new events happen.
What you say @Cleo about the Ghost being fond of people in the past. She was particularly concerned about her own ancestors, of course. But it’s true that compared to her. The other Ghosts don’t care about what happens to the world in all the timelines. Surely having the Solar Storms would affect them too, though.
SH looks to have been killed… he was even cremated! Unless you’re suggesting the Ghost(s) did a switcheroo with the body. As usual, no evidence one way or another.
@WE, what do you mean when you said “we have seen a writer who can’t stand Soju. Most of korean screenwriters can, but not this one. 🙂”
@Viva, your interpretation of what was going on is as good as any, since we cannot get any confirmation. It sounds plausible.
My only contention is what I said above to @Cleo. if the previous timelines keep getting erased, then how is it possible for SH to be dead in the current timeline and then be seen alive later in that same timeline.
@wapz Yes I think I prefer Reset (what little I’ve seen of it) to Grid. As I said to @WE, Reset was compelling from the beginning, but Grid feels like more work.
When we started off watching this show, we were all interested in getting the logic of the time travel… whether it involved parallel universes, whether one would meet oneself and end up annihilating one’s future by messing with one’s past, whether there would be retention of memory… whether the problems of the current time would be solved.
Well… no, yes, yes and no. But it never had it’s logic down right. It contradicted itself ever since Sae Ha could meet his young self or even before that. Then suddenly as @WE says, we get layers of time that 2 Ghosts can access. So is it timeline replacement or timeline addition? Neither and both.
The big 3 Aims of the AB in pursuing the Ghost was to find out about the future, to know how to make the Grid themselves and to maintain it, to find out how to time travel… all came to a big fat 0. And they continue fruitlessly expanding the department to continue.
Similarly the Grid – I agree – was nothing more than a plot device to bring the characters together. Granted that without it, SB and countless others would have been ‘fried’ and this was the catalyst to get SH to return the past to where the Ghost survived to make the Grid. Other than that, using ‘Grid’ as the title cannot be justified.
Manager Choi’s character that had elements of being sympathetic before, seems to have changed to become hard, cold, merely business-like and unlikable. Perhaps if they’d kept the timeline where she’d died, SH would have remained alive. The question remains about why in the first timeline, SH was already spying on her.
Eojin’s character became a bit warmer and more vulnerable, and changed from being rigid, to breaking the rules for SB. One reason for the loop where Ghost allowed herself to be caught was likely so that SB would witness EJ’s death and in the new timeline, would be more concerned and nicer towards him. That was essential so that SB would have her daughter, fathered by EJ, who would be the ancestor of Ghost.
In the end the whole hoo-hah/aim of the Show was a convoluted tale about Ghost ensuring that she set up the Grid, by ensuring that her antecedents didn’t die. But that gets totally turned around in the last few minutes when all along there are other Ghosts who oppose her. No matter what she went through to get herself to 2021, those chappies in Ghostland could just undo her work. Seems pretty meaningless in the end.
I noticed that my husband watched Grid as well. I wonder if he has any thoughts on it. 😉
Viva
The thing is, like you @WE and perhaps @Cleo too, I have very little motivation to go back to check the facts. They didn’t build the emotions of characters like the K dramas are usually good at so I am not too attached to them. I also felt the logic sprung out from here and there, it is too unsystematic for catching a reliable pattern. I then lost the will to try.
May be when Saeha said to young Saeha the pedestrian light is blue (as oppose to green), it shows he is from a different layer who runs a different system. As @wapz pointed out though, the issue is it is just another assumption with little other pattern to back it. Sisyphus makes a lot more sense to me, and I didn’t watch TKEM with BOD but still comparatively “easier” than the Grid. At least TKEM showed and confirmed that there is multiverse. I am not sure the Grid showed us that other than the line at the end about layers.
@WE ahh the local time field could be a good explanation. I was thinking Saeha needed to die so SB and EJ would feel upset enough to reunited for that night to give Ghost a parent. I couldn’t quite work out how the Ghost and Saeha can both exist but the local time field seems like a good explanation.
There is one other way I can think of to explain Saeha’s survival. You know Doctor Strange from Infinity Game? He can foresee the many scenarios to find out the one possible way. Instead of seeing it like Doctor Strange, the Ghost has to work out the 10,000 + scenarios and eventually work out a way to save Saeha.
By the way, have you watched Edge of Tomorrow? If the writer goes for entertainment value, Edge of Tomorrow does better than that.
@GB, @wapz… That was a joke. The screenwriter of Mouse said she drinks Soju sometimes. I guess other screenwriters do. So my joke was that Grid’s writer does too, except she can’t stay lucid after that. 😉
About the concept of a single timeline. I don’t see how can it work, and we still need logic about what we have and how cause and effect react after time changes. Also, the last line of the future guys imply it’s not really that when they talk about “timelines and layer”. So, instead of rely on a concept written somewhere on internet, I just stick with what we get and see in the drama.
@Edge of tomorrow, yes. On the whole, blockbuster screenwriters are much more solid about clarity. It’s normal, it’s an industry where they want to have the maximum audience. You can criticize these kinds of movies for a lot of things, but they have a certain respect for the audience, in the sense that they care that the audience understands what’s going on. And they know that when they don’t, it drives people away.
Hence the example of Inception, or any other film with a complex concept they can make very clear. Studying this kind of screenplay is instructive. You realize, for example, that the first 40 minutes of Inception are actually exposition. But exposition hidden in a set of scenes that are so exciting, that it gives the impression that things have already begun. And by the way, the characters’ mission is also mentioned first, since these exposition scenes serve to teach the recruit for that mission.
In Back to the Future, everything is done to facilitate understanding. Yet, especially in Opus 2 (some of whose scenes I analyzed in this regard), this could be complicated without explanations. But here, even children have to understand the movie. A person with no interest in science fiction or complicated things should be able to understand it too.
In any case, has reducing the confusion made these films less interesting?
No, because work was done to make the story exciting in parallel.
In the case of Grid, if you remove all the artificial effects of concealment, confusion, is it that so interesting? Unfortunately not. We come up with complicated stuff just for the sake of being complicated. And lack of logic. Maybe the writer was good at that for detective story, but here, it’s like she think sci-fi is a licence of wild freedom. When Sci-fi in real need even more logic, as it need to make believe something that don’t exist yet.
The strong emotion? Other than the excitement of the action or fast-paced scenes, no. The characters all tend to be cold and dull. Except for the young woman who does literature. Sure, the ML suffers but it’s hard to share his emotion. It’s easier when he travels through time and makes discoveries. We can at least stick with his expression “wow! what’s going on, I wonder”. The drama show quite sad characters we can understand a bit, but not feel. We don’t cry for them or with them. In the same way we don’t react to emotions in a western serie.
This screenwriter had the same flaw in Stranger. An emotionless main character (which is normal, it’s the theme of this protagonist), but also other characters of the same kind. Like the female protagonist! So it’s a complex plot where cases are solved, but with no emotional or affective involvement (except for the very good death scene that involves a secondary character). The drama is saved by a secondary character in terms of emotional involvement. And why not make FL a character that really contrasts with the ML? Like we have in a buddy movie? For some reason, this drama was very “hype” in strange proportions. Certainly, the director was good. The lead actor too (well, without showing much). But he couldn’t really evolve. I never felt he was progressing and maybe healing a bit. I don’t know if this was done in season 2, I didn’t watch it. Every time I made a few criticisms on these points anyway, everyone fell all over me, lol!
“Inception” was made by THE Christopher Nolan. “Grid” was made by whatshernameagain? No. I don’t want to clutter my head with junk.
Although I give Hollywood an F rating for a lot of things when it comes to storytelling, world-building, and insights into the human psyche, I’ve to admit that Christopher Nolan is in a class all by himself. He’s a CEREBRAL auteur.
It’s hardly surprising that this writer for “Grid” only has a whit of CN’s genius when even by Hollywood standards, he stands alone.
I think the one Korean screenwriter who can *approximate* CN’s craft is Song JaeJung of “W: Two Worlds” and “Memories of the Alhambra.” The sad part though is that she’s forced to incorporate romance into her scripts since it’s a staple in kdramas, but it’s not her forte. She definitely has a knack for finding new and unheard of storyline, and she has a vision of the inner workings of her fantastical world. She just needs to tweak the execution a bit more.
It would be interesting if she just wrote straight up sci-fi.
wapz
@WEnchanteur totally agree with you. My biggest issue with the show all along was that I didn’t care. Neither Sae Ha nor Sae Byuk, the rest of the AB or Ghost had enough bckground or emotions for us to care for them. That little background on how witnessing that incident would’ve turned Man ok towards delinquency made me root for him a little that he may have a better future sometime. But I guess that wasn’t possible. I have only watched Life from the writer’s work and she did a fair job bringing some emotions there. Lee Kyu Hyung’s character was especially nice. But what stood out for me in Life and what I expected Grid to deliver too, was the greyness of human nature. I haven’t seen Stranger but I guess there were grey characters in even that one. However, in Grid all characters were rather black and white. And without any strong emotional connection with the audience.
@packmule Song Jae Jung recently adapted Yumi Cells which is a wonderful slice of life romance. But since she’s one of the many writers on the team I’m not sure how much she contributed to the story with an existing content. I feel SJJ’s story premises and first halves are really strong but she falters in the second half and isn’t sure how to conclude the story. But that is solely for W and MOA. I haven’t seen her more acclaimed shows, Queen In hyun’s Man, Nine and The three musketeers.
@wapz, I don’t consider Yuma’s Cells as Song Jae Jung’s work because the kdrama was based on a completed webtoon by Lee DongGun. I read somewhere that the drama closely followed LDG’s webtoon.
The premise behind “Queen InHyun’s Man” was alright. I just couldn’t stand the lead actress so I couldn’t finish it. Her airy, baby, breathy speaking voice tortures like the sound of nails on blackboard.
Same with “Nine.” It has a good premise, too.
SJJ has the most novel world-building, and there’s nothing wrong with her worldview (life philosophy). But she just has to finesse the execution, as I said. Perhaps she should start with a specific ending in mind, then work her back way back to the beginning, because what she’s doing isn’t working very well with the audience.
I understood MOA. There was no flaw in her logic. Even before the postscript/afterword was added in the closing scene, I knew she was going to say that it’s faith that can change the world. (Hence, we were shown the shadowy figure of Jinwoo in the end, and not the actual person. Kinda like the ending of “Inception,” it’s subject to discussion.)
But her theme is too profound for regular viewers who were just looking for the typical garden variety happy ending. It went over the heads of audience wanting a regular romantic-slash-adventure-slash-science-fiction drama.
I think “W: Two Worlds” is good, too. They’re doing a rewatch here. I’m just sitting on the sidelines for that one.
wapz
Interesting view on SJJ @packmule. You’re actually the first person I’ve met who has similar opinions to Yoo Inna as I do lol. I couldn’t stand her for a long time specially b3cause of her voice. Though she was really good in The Spies who loved me and I felt the show was a good addictive watch too with a very smart but realistic female lead. So I warked up to her after that.
Regarding Moa, I felt it reached its peak at the 3rd and 7th episode(if I’m remembering correctly). I honestly was very annoyed at PSH’s character’s constant crying scenes that I don’t exactly remember where I dropped it. For W, I still believe the first half was really strong, better than many kdramas. But she couldn’t continue the same thrill for the last half of the drama.
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
@pkml3, thank you for your take on Christopher Nolan and Song Jae Jung. Having lived in a limited drama bubble for over a decade, I didn’t know what I was missing (or didn’t really care to know). This makes me feel like I ought to look up Mr Nolan’s works.
@wapz, although I’m OK with Yoo Inna, and generally OK with Park Shin Hye, I too could not complete W or MOA. I now rewatch W in the attempt to figure out what I missed. I’m glad to have companions here, who can point those out to me!
Here’s a toast to hopes for a better kdrama time travel/teleportation show! 🥂 😁
Viva
You see I like both W and MOA. In fact, I like W a little more because I like the romance in W better. There is usually enough pattern to work out the logic. Plus the characters recap and spell out the logic for us a lot in W. I felt the first half is to show Kang Chul has a lot more resources. The second half is to show Kang Chul has little resources, lost the initial memory but still choose to fall in love all over again with the same person. I would love to watch W again if I have the time. I watched it last year and I can still recall the major principles I had in mind. It’s not that I have a good memory, to me, that shows the writer has a clear logic and reiterate that concept enough for me as a viewer to remember! My quick recollection: 1. If the lead character thinks about you, you will join his world. 2. If you served your purpose in the story, you are not needed in the story anymore 3. If you complete the mission, you can leave that side of the world.
Yes @GB, Reset next week! Literally a reset too! Let’s forget the Grid and start new. haha.
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
Ah @Viva, that was my simple understanding of ‘W’ too. However there were some nitty-gritty bits that got me going ????
Yes, after being in a grid-lock with Grid, we need a refresh, re-do, re-start with Reset!!! Something simple and easy to chat about without frying our brains or disappointing us. I need to do a whole bunch of thinking (extra, extra LOL) between the last 2 weeks and end June… so my brains are partially fried anyway. 😆 😅 🤣
I hope to see you on BP Ep 10 Rewatch today/tonight!
@Pm3, I didn’t know you liked C. Nolan! I’ve rarely been disappointed by his films. In recent times, he is the best at bridging the gap between compelling, mind-blowing stories and mainstream access. His time is divided because he is a director, but also writes the scripts. At least there’s no risk of going wrong from script to camera.
For writing, good kdrama scriptwriters have more experience. For example, Song Jae-Jong: a dozen dramas, hundreds of sitcom episodes. I know she taught dramaturgy at the university (but I don’t know how long or if she still does it). And many other kdrama writers whose careers are impressive, and it would take too long to list them.
I mention this to indicate the differences between movie writers and kdrama writers:
– A 2-hour movie script can be reworked a lot of times. Ten times if necessary. The process of successive drafts. Some even rewrite it entirely. The structure implies a controllable duration. However difficult to master as J. Cameron indicated in an interview. He needs to isolate himself for days for that. A film writer can have a dozen films, or much more for the very productive ones of another era, like Billy Wilder. As an additional experience, there are “spec scripts”, written by screenwriters waiting to be produced one day (this can go up to a dozen movies).
– A kdrama script is 16h or more. The equivalent of a dozen movies! It is obvious that there is less time to rework the whole. It is better to be good as soon as possible. Impossible to rewrite entirely. Structure involves uncontrollable length. Structuring the whole is really very difficult. Especially since, unlike series with seasons (or procedural), there is a beginning and an end. The need to structure everything sufficiently. The writers have additional experience (years of being assistants and writing their own projects during this time).
– And a well-known kdrama writer has as many 16 hour dramas on their bio, as a movie writer has 2 hour movies!
We simply notice that in volume produced, of writing, they have more experience. In particular that of organizing very long stories. But, on the other hand, they have less time to “polish” what they do. To make it perfect, to check all the flaws. Both categories certainly work just as hard, but in different ways on some points.
Is the worry really about romance?
I’ve written a long essay to show that it doesn’t. But I’ll give up for now, because it’s too long. My short answer is no. The romance is not the issue. It even has a positive impact. Kdramas should play on their advantages, romance and emotional involvement of the audience. Most of the biggest scenes of SJJ dramas needed a romance (W police station or last episode bus station, MOTA parking lot, 9 time travel phone booth). Still note that the MOTA catacomb scene needed friendship. Others dramas: Iris (lovers separated in the spying world). etc.
The problem is mainly to balance the romance with a more cerebral content. The balance of time between emotions and plot twists.
Just for fun, I’ll say it: in QIHM, I loved the actress! This played a lot in my addiction to the drama. I didn’t pay attention to those breath sounds, but maybe her sexy voice also played a role, in addition to her pretty face and her aygeo expressions.
The worry comes more from this propensity to be vague and confusing, not explaining more clearly when it is necessary. Even Song Jae-Jung has flaws in this. This didn’t bother me for W, I understood the artwork quite quickly, I trust the logic already demonstrated and I love the drama. Even during the first Watching, I immediately have the conviction that I have found my favorite work. Anything I don’t understand, I put aside for later and continue to enjoy the story until the end. I can revisit it as much as I want, understand more, because I am already passionate about it. But this is not necessarily the case for other spectators, if they were less sensitive to certain subjects or did not perceive what I found there. I am obliged to note that some other spectators were lost. This is a great pity. I use GB as an example. And SJJ herself admits in the interview that she was barely able to write for the general public. When she might have liked to. As pm3 says, she digs deep. The level of confusion she generates is lower than many other writers but still damaging.
Grid’s writer has 10 times less experience than SJJ, and none in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy field. And even before that, she’s unaware of certain topics when she writes: https://k-popped.com/2022/04/66298/
On Stranger, she admits in hindsight that she doesn’t use “show don’t tell” enough. Too much resolution through dialogue (but HP is much worse), and various other pacing issues. On Grid, she makes an effort on that. It is commendable, she questions herself and ponders her work. But it still becomes unstable. If we add this to the other concerns already mentioned, unbalanced structure, confusion, similarity of characters (cold, sad and dull), lack of emotion. This is very obvious to me. She is far behind a lot of other kdrama writers. It doesn’t mean she’s a bad one, she did a good job on Grid about some aspects, like she did on Stranger about some other aspects. But as a complete overview of all aspect, it’s not yet that.
She makes up for some of the lag in the audience’s understanding with a dialogue scene (pure “tell”) that can be described as “info dump”. But better that than nothing, considering the accumulated mess. (beginning of episode 9).
As a blockbuster director, C. Nolan knows perfectly well the importance of clarity, to make the story more universal. Although they write less, movie writers have more time to think and question a script. For balancing, dialogue, etc. Writers are much more aware of everything, but still can’t get it right. You can think for a long time, but the best thing is feedback after writing. Practice is by far the best way to learn, and then do the self-analysis.
Almost all kdrama writers have a clarity problem when writing complex, conceptually based, logic-intensive fantasy/sci-fi stories.
With the difficulty of structure and the limited time for proofreading/correction, I have given two possible reasons for this.
There may be other reasons that I don’t know about! I even suspect it.
The writer of Grid doesn’t think enough about the logic and feedback to give to a situation. Like people replacing themselves, then “hop”, forget about it, put it under the carpet. If I take a situation from W, such as “the nurse tries to kill Kang Chul”, just a detail, but yet, there is a bounce to it. It’s taken into serious consideration in the rest of the story when Kang Chul questions it. This is one example among dozens. Everything is like that in her script. Nothing is lost in the void. It is very pleasant for the spectator. Because often, by dint of rough writing, when you come across something, you often think: Okay, the writer won’t talk about it anymore and will pretend it never happened. But when the writer does, it’s obvious. And you think, “wow, this was taken seriously, this has logic, this isn’t just random stuff that happens and you forget about it”. Whatever the genre, the writers who do that are fascinating. It’s kind of the root of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The reader has all the clues in hand and doesn’t understand the solution to the problem. And Sherlock Holmes explains everything at the end. We understand every decision he made and no clues or odd things were lost. The writer never created confusion. He gave everything away but was one step ahead of the reader.
Until the end, Grid keeps showing contradictory things. Just one example. I read a relevant analysis of someone on the drama, who thinks that SH is indeed dead in the last episode. And so the one we see at the end is another SH, time traveler or whatever. Why not? At least, it is logical with the rest of his explanation. However, this contradicts the scene where we see SH being “healed” by the two ghosts! I am not trying to say who is wrong or right. Just that we have clues that allow us to explain in a different way. Wherever we look, we will have inconsistencies.
The main problem being confusion, I have identified some texts here and there. Sometimes from sites giving “tips”. I don’t trust a lot of people on screenwriting because it is often a jungle. People who give advice but write little. People who hope to make money by offering various trainings, etc. I have found while watching VoDs that I disagree with some of the advice. I’ve also been misled by some advice. So I mostly trust what I already know, after verification by experience. Or for the rest, the tips that are obvious and to keep in mind. Of course, I trust interviews with recognized screenwriters more.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. A few years ago when I was posting here, I was wondering about this subject. My conclusion today is that the confusion have to be avoided.
See it from an audience’s point of view. Don’t signpost for an audience, but don’t give them two fingers, either. Your job is to present a piece of drama for an audience to appreciate, on whatever level they choose to do so. You job is not to confuse them, or show off, or be deliberately obtuse. Which is why, as you rewrite and rewrite your script, and recut and recut your film, you must always consider the audience. What do they know, at this point? What do they want to know? What do they care about? Where do they want this to go and how will I take them where I want them to go? You have a responsibility to your audience, and it is the worst form of creative arrogance to forget that.
From book : Basics Film-Making 02 Screenwriting (Robert Edgar, John Marland, James Richards).
A screenplay creates a world. It may be identical to the real world (except that is contains fictional characters) or it may be wildly different. Whatever world is being created, it must be internally consistent. It must have rules and those rules must be adhered to, otherwise the story will lack logic and the audience will become confused. Consused audiences usually stop watching.
The structure is confusing: If the story and the structure feels confusing for the reader/audience, that might signify that too much is happening in your screenplay. Too much that your audience cannot follow and get lost! That is a huge problem and you have to clear things out. Simplify your set-up and avoid introducing too many characters within the first act. When the audience first start watching the film, if they don’t focus on 1 or 2 characters and instead, if they try to remember 5-10 characters, who they are, what they do, what their goals are, they’ll get lost very fast.
(Here, I still think a fast-paced story is ok, but it needs to be done clear)
Sometimes writers err on the other side — in order to avoid wooden dialogue, they don’t explain anything to the audience. But that can create an even bigger problem: confusion. Nothing makes readers or audiences angrier than not understanding what is going on, and feeling like an outsider who lacks the facts necessary to be able to process and get inside what’s happening.
AARON SORKIN ON AUDIENCE
1. The audience doesn’t want to be a casual observer of the movie.
2. The audience wants to participate.
3. The audience wants to be given the same clues as everyone in your film and to be putting things together in their head.
4. If you’re able to surprise them with a reversal they didn’t see coming, you’ve given them a very satisfying experience.
5. Treat your audience as intelligent and don’t lose them by writing something that may seem unbelievable.
6. You can also lose an audience, if you confuse them, even the smallest confusion can ruin the experience.
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
@WE I loved your essay!!! Yes and yes and yes!!! So interesting about what can be done when dealing with movies as opposed to shows of 16+ hours. You explained clearly and I understand what you mean. So satisfying, LOL. This makes your point, no?
I agree also with all the quotations about writing for the viewer/audience and avoiding confusion. A frustrated viewer is likely a viewer lost to the show/writer. And even now, (I hate to admit it) because of the frustration before, I still find it not so easy to watch ‘W’. Even with all of you wonderful Bitches explaining away, the initial negative feeling that the show brought out in me, does not entirely disappear. I guess I’m a simplistic watcher, or otherwise at times, I’m a hard one to please. 🙂
@GB, I had had information about the confusion in the past, but couldn’t find the links. I forgot who, where and when. I’ve been researching it again as a result. But anyway, it’s a pretty obvious thing. You don’t need someone to explain it when it’s what comes out of the audience’s experience.
Of course, someone can say: it’s the audience’s fault for being stupid and not understanding. Blame the audience? No really, it’s impossible to do that! That’s the reflex of someone who is too much of a fan of something and becomes blind. It’s better to dig and put things down. Especially in my case, when I’m writing a story and I’d like it to be accessible. I’m determined to avoid confusion and avoid spoiling the fun. But I have no certainty about the success of the process. What if I have unknowingly created confusion too?
The last quote is from Sorkin, a very well known screenwriter. The very last point “You can also lose an audience, if you confuse them, even the smallest confusion can ruin the experience”. Ruin the experience now, and even on the long run, when revisiting.
The experience the audience is looking for is at first watching. Not after several rewatches until they understand everything. You have to be able to provide something that is sufficiently understandable the first time. I exclude the case of really distracted spectators who are doing something else at the same time (there it is normal that they don’t understand anything). Someone who is normally focused and wants to enjoy the drama. The audience is always sincere about that.
If the confusion prevents them from doing so at the first watching, they are left with a bitter taste. And it’s very difficult to enjoy it afterwards, as you point out. This happened to me before, but after a while. Or because the movie had content that I otherwise liked so I went back to it. It’s sad, but often it’s too late, the damage has been done! Giving explanations doesn’t help to find the taste for something. It’s better to let yourself be carried by the content and the quality of the scenes for what they are. Nothing guarranted, can’t be forced.
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
LOL @WE the memes were funny. You put in so much effort to express your frustration with TK:EM!!! I liked how the words covered Eun Sup or was it Jo Yeong’s face. Yes I came across similar commenters before. I wondered if they had been ‘paid’ by the production to defend the show’s plotholes and bad points at all costs. There was one person who replied to every single comment that didn’t agree with hers and explained every darn thing to suit her, and she had a few ‘yay sayers’ approving all that she wrote. That’s when I heard of something/people who might be astroturfers.
“Astroturf is also a slang term meaning to fake the appearance of popular support for something, such as a cause or product. The practice of doing so is called astroturfing and a person who does this can be called an astroturfer.” From dictionary.com
“Astrosurf”.. It’s done on news website. Psy operation to consolide the prop. Or other social medias about these subjects. In my country, there is a team from the political party to do that, the scam has been discovered when someone got infiltrated on their discord channel.
About just kdramas, I don’t know. It looks much, but as it’s a drama broadcast with a company like netflix… hard to say. It needs to check the profils, if it’s new people, or if it looks coherent about their profil, if they give comments elsewhere and makes reviews. Well, to verify if they looks like ghosts. 🙂
Thanks @pkml3! Glad to see you back! Holy Easter!!
Last episode tonight! I am looking forward to it!
It took us 9 episodes to know/confirm Kim Ma Nok is related to the Ghost and SB. They really only have one main question throughout the show – the relationship between the Ghost and the murderer. I noted that KMN is adopted. It is unlikely that KMN and SB are suddenly married to have the Ghost as granddaughter, so maybe someone we know is related to KMN too?
Sae Ha asked how much time he has left. Is he going to die in or will there be a plot twist?
It was crazy, I was expecting 10% of answers. I was so wrong!!!
Just add +50% of new unexplained things instead! ahahaha 🙂
Damn, I feel the King Eternal Monarch was pretty solid now…
Season2, really?
Give me Vagabond one first. ^^
Kalispera Everyone!
I am going to watch this and see how it will go…
Gosh! Anyone care to hazard a guess about what we just watched in Ep 10?
@WE, no actual answers at all!
Maybe Sae Ha had to die in one time to become a time traveler himself?
No clue about how that baby or any baby is going to be related Kim Manok.
How many time travelers might there be, and are they working at cross purposes instead of helping each other?
While we are watching what we think is the only main timeline, another one was playing out separately, where Saebyeok also time traveled or Song Eojin did, and he can recall that time, when a different(?) Saebyeok told him to save her in the past?
How many versions of Ghost are there? And her antecedents.
I’m going to sleep but I don’t think I’ll wake up with any answers!
This episode means that season 2 is happening?
The end was not realistic at all. 🤯 It actually fried my brain.
That means the Kwon SaeHa and the Ghost we saw in the end are from which timeline exactly?
I hope you all brought a gun, so we enjoy a collective murder of this drama here.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Commenting here after a long while. Though, I’ve never been regular so hello everyone!
What did we just see? What was it even trying to tell us? I don’t even want answers honestly. I’m so done with this show. Korea has a long way to go when it comes to sci fi.
@wapz, we have seen a writer who can’t stand Soju.
Most of korean screenwriters can, but not this one. 🙂
@WEnchanteur I guess I’m missing the reference here. Though I agree with your previous comment, KES did better with the king than LSY did with Grid(Though I think The king was excessively ambitious too amd didn’t pull all of it well). She bit more than she can chew plus maybe hoped for a second season but Disney plus is not there yet.
My quick interpretation:
1. The Ghost, Seha, SB and EJ will take their turns to die. They won’t give up on saving each other so they keep creating a new timeline and erase the previous one.
2. However, some of them will always remember some details. In the timeline we saw, we see Seha remembers details as he is the one turnback on time. The person who dies or damaged/hurt won’t know the erased time line, but the person who life hasn’t changed would remember some details. E.g. SB remembers EJ died but EJ didn’t know himself. The saved person has a new “life” so they won’t remember previous details as the old live became “never happened”. People who have no new life had some memory of the old version like SB.
3. Seha can’t travel further to the future because he has died. However, we don’t know how many more cycles they have go through in that year. My interpretation is that the ghost would always want to try to save Seha.
4. There are variables of each cycles because human aren’t entirely predictable. Therefore each time, someone made a new decision and alter the details a little much.
5. I assume the Ghost finally managed to save Seha at least up to the point we saw SB with a child. I assume she died in the last timeline that’s why she has no previous memory. In the previous erased timeline, she at least met EJ long enough to tell him her daughter’s name.
6. I assumed KMN is related to EJ somewhat. He was adopted after all and we can assume EJ is related to his birth family.
7. I assume the ghost is SB’s granddaughter.
8. I think Ghost 2 is trying to erease what Ghost trying to do, but who knows if he success. As long as there is a time machine, Ghost will always go back in time to correct the timeline and erased the previous one in an never ending cycle.
9. As said above, I assume the Ghost, SH, SB and EJ will never give up saving each other so it will go on and on and on.
That’s what I think currently. What do you think?
@Viva, I would need to rewatch the episode to check some points. But I lose any motivation. If I was aware it was a season 1, it would have been nice. But don’t erase all the issues. It wasn’t a good ending episode, even for a season 1.
First part was ok with some action. Then it don’t answer enough, and we have new mysteries. With more closure and answers, it was ok to get some cliffhanger from future and the new ghost, but not when the other obscure points cover so many episodes since then + the ones added in this episode (except the new ghost). With a season 2, we will remember nothing of all the unanswered confusing mess. We will probably remember nothing of the answered confusing mess as well. At least not what we had to guess by ourselves.
I’ve read the writer interview, she said “Above all, though, I wanted to keep viewers entertained”. She’s still far from that with the first part.
She said : “Stranger Season 2. I was thirsty to write something different from my previous projects as well. Writing about real-life social issues required multiple lines of exposition on the background information. When I watched those scenes later on, I realized just how irritating they could be, especially for the actors. I wanted to take a jab at writing a series with less dialogue, and chose this particular topic because it could be conveyed without much background information.”
Then she fail in the opposite direction.
During all the show I had the feeling the grid was disconnected from the plot and time travel. Looks like it’s really that because she said also it could be that or another thing. It wasn’t even there when she was planning the ghost story saving a criminal.
Yes @WE, it is an empty show after all and requires a lot of assumptions. Less dialogue? A lot is unsaid so we can only assume the answers. Without background? That means we will never find out the technology of the Grid and the logic of time travel. To me, the Grid and the solar blasts turned out to be just the plot devices for some pretty CGI visuals and left me an unfulfilled expectation for a new time travel concept.
If I need to squeeze a meaning out of the show:
1. Going back in time to change things requires a lot of repetitive effort, emotional heartbreaks, and disappointments.
2. People are unpredictable and you can’t calculate every move even you have a chance to go back in time. You save someone, someone else die. Who do you save at the end?
3. If my assumptions/theory is what the writer wants to say, then the character are living in some never ending cycles of changing fates by very little margin in each cycle. They are still hanging on the hope they can do better next round.
Let’s hope our next time travel show Reset is better.
@Viva. Reset is so much clearer. No confusion. But the drawback: there is not thrilling scenes like there are in Grid. The twists don’t hit hard, could be because there is not the way of directing this, or because the whole plot makes the twists lower. We feel all this is too long and repeatitive at one point. I enjoyed Reset on first watching, but it’s not the kind of drama I would enjoy to rewatch.
Kalimera @WE and @Viva,
I have to say that two things stand out for me from last night’s episode.
1. The conversation The Ghost and Kwon SaeHa had in 1997 and it was shown to us: The Ghost is fond of the people in the past. So, the time loop hypothesis I have written at one point is valid, like in Sisyphus.
2. The kettle in the end that reminded me of the movie “Inception”.
Some thoughts (and I don’t know if I want to watch again the last episode for more intel)
When the Ghost and the unknown man came back to SaeHa’s being killed we didn’t see Saeha in the scene, only Sae Byeong who asked the Ghost to save him.
So, was SaeHa really killed in that scene? Or everyone thought so?
@Viva,
Regarding EJ and KMN. Kim Ma Nok was the paternal grandfather, meaning his son was the Ghost’s father or grandfather.
Sae Byeok is her maternal grandmother, that means her daughter is the Ghost’s grandmother or mother.
@Everyone,
Regarding the ending, when we are being introduced to new characters 20 minutes before the ending then that means we are entering a possible season 2. I mean the Ghost had a red traveling machine and the man a blue one.
@Viva I feel your theory makes a lot of sense. The only issue is that its an assumption because the writer didn’t show us anything. I mean, if she wanted to go with less dialogue then what is show don’t tell for? Use that! Also Reset is very good. I enjoyed it a lot but as WEnchanteur said it isn’t as thrilling. However, I would much more prefer a time travelling satisfactorily done than one done to only give us vague thrills. My recent favorite time travel was Netflix Turkey’s Midinight at the pera palace. A very charming show with time travel hijinks explained well enough.
@WEnchanteur can I have a link to her interview? I’d like to read her thought process behind it.
And also regarding the second season, I think the writer wrote the story keeping in mind that there will be a second season. However, Disney plus is not there yet. I don’t think they have any plans of renewing it for the second season nor do I think Grid was popular enough to get it. So she may had hoped that there will be a second season but I think by the end she tried to tie as much loose ends as she could. Because she knew too well that there are way too many plot holes and loose ends that she cannot tie them well at this point. In that case I see the foreshadowing of the second season a faux pass even if they never intended to go beyond the first season.
@Cleo… pretty much nothing reminds me of Inception in there. A dazzlingly clear movie despite a complicated high-concept, which was made clear not only for mind-blowing movie fans but anyone else as well.
I don’t remember your theory. But here time travel stacks the timelines. When someone changes something, it creates a new timeline, the official one. But according to the conversation of the two guys at the end, they have access to the knowledge of previous OR alternative timelines (layers). So they can say that the Grid doesn’t exist anywhere anymore.
One could assume that for this reason the ghost can come back in 1997 several times without ever meeting herself, because she uses the original timeline and creates a new one as soon as she arrives. Of course, this contradicts the layered timeline theory, if it is enough to travel and change something to create a new one. Certainly another contradiction that will add to the previous ones…
Ghost 2: fights to the death with Ghost first. Then for some reason they become allies, at least to save SaeHa. There is a line from Ghost 2 like “it’s not me”. So we assume it’s a Ghost 3, and not the Ghost 2. Another confusing and unreadable thing. It would have been easier if Ghost 3 and Ghost 2 had different outfits. But in fact, maybe it’s the same person… except that they are two different versions coming from the future for different reasons. In short, more mess…
We see that to do this: they apply a local time field on SaeHa. Only his body goes back in time, not the rest of the world. The blood that was flowing goes back. A new property of the device.
We can assume a kind of conflict between two factions in the future, one that wants the Grid to save lives, the other that thinks it’s useless because the Grid won’t last long and it’s better to adapt than to suffer the shock of the Grid’s disappearance. We can also assume that the Ghost is sent to the past but has disobeyed orders. Finally, we can assume everything by cross-checking with other information in the drama, but it will remain only assumptions…
The Ghost had said that SaeHa was supposed to die (why? to keep the grid in place?) but instead he is saved but hidden, supposedly dead. Either to hide him from the Bureau, or to hide him from the people of the future? No idea.
We don’t know what happens to Manok, left for dead. Whereas until now, he was supposed to survive to give life to the Ghost’s lineage… So either he has already given birth to someone, or we wonder why the Ghost insists so much on saving him for so long…
I thought the scene with SB and his daughter was from a new timeline, but it’s not. She had a daughter, we suppose with her former husband (after the kissing scene hidden behind a wall, wow, incredible as a kissing scene, we don’t see anything!) Then she abandoned her husband again after the sex party…
On the other hand the office administration is demolished during this timeline. By whom? We can assume the other faction of the future (blue device). We just see that they are death rays coming from the sky… that are blue. It also destroys the grid.
So I suppose that when the people from the future say “the grid doesn’t exist in any layer anymore”, they mean that they destroyed it in 2021 in this scene. And that it was done in other timelines at the same time. Or this “layer” thing means something else. Knowing that the notion “time don’t flow” also meant something else. Not related to a mechanism of the concept, but just a philosophical generality (I had to read the screenwriter’s interview to know that). In fact, it’s not wise to place this line in the drama. It misslead. It’s just what the writer has to say, not the characters… If I had a character saying that, it would be because behind it, I have a high-concept capable of producing that.
@WE,
We were talking with @Viva about it. Is the Grid similar to TKEM in multiple dimensions or with Sisyphus and a gigantic time loop. I was saying that we don’t see multiple dimensions in Grid but it could be a gigantic time loop.
When I said about the Inception I am not talking about the logic of the movie that is excellent. I am talking about what we see in the end is like a dream within a dream or to translate it in Grid’s laws is it a timeloop within a bigger timeloop?
Sae Byeong took a decision based on what she realized in that moment, but it was not communicated to the audience.
I haven’t read what the writernim said. So far we were trying to decipher this dramaverse based on the laws of Physics.
As for the man in blue that said “it is not me”. That means at one point some don’t want Humanity to be saved. So, we have those who do and those who don’t…I realized it when Kim Ma Nok’s tracker was taken off by the man the first time around he killed SaeHa with the crowbar.
If we find the Script lacking for its ending, the same thing should apply to Disney+ who accepted the script as it is.
Hello my Grid friends, @Cleo, @WE, @Viva, @wapz
I’ve finally managed to read while my mind is still a bit in turmoil.
@Cleo yes, it looks like while we think we are watching a main timeline, other timelines have also taken place and merge with the one we are watching. So the big controversy of whether we have a timeline that replaces the next as long as the Ghost travels seems to be ‘wrong’.
Add to that, the complication of there being SUDDENLY more than one time traveler who can keep going back to let new events happen.
What you say @Cleo about the Ghost being fond of people in the past. She was particularly concerned about her own ancestors, of course. But it’s true that compared to her. The other Ghosts don’t care about what happens to the world in all the timelines. Surely having the Solar Storms would affect them too, though.
SH looks to have been killed… he was even cremated! Unless you’re suggesting the Ghost(s) did a switcheroo with the body. As usual, no evidence one way or another.
@WE, what do you mean when you said “we have seen a writer who can’t stand Soju. Most of korean screenwriters can, but not this one. 🙂”
@Viva, your interpretation of what was going on is as good as any, since we cannot get any confirmation. It sounds plausible.
My only contention is what I said above to @Cleo. if the previous timelines keep getting erased, then how is it possible for SH to be dead in the current timeline and then be seen alive later in that same timeline.
@wapz Yes I think I prefer Reset (what little I’ve seen of it) to Grid. As I said to @WE, Reset was compelling from the beginning, but Grid feels like more work.
When we started off watching this show, we were all interested in getting the logic of the time travel… whether it involved parallel universes, whether one would meet oneself and end up annihilating one’s future by messing with one’s past, whether there would be retention of memory… whether the problems of the current time would be solved.
Well… no, yes, yes and no. But it never had it’s logic down right. It contradicted itself ever since Sae Ha could meet his young self or even before that. Then suddenly as @WE says, we get layers of time that 2 Ghosts can access. So is it timeline replacement or timeline addition? Neither and both.
The big 3 Aims of the AB in pursuing the Ghost was to find out about the future, to know how to make the Grid themselves and to maintain it, to find out how to time travel… all came to a big fat 0. And they continue fruitlessly expanding the department to continue.
Similarly the Grid – I agree – was nothing more than a plot device to bring the characters together. Granted that without it, SB and countless others would have been ‘fried’ and this was the catalyst to get SH to return the past to where the Ghost survived to make the Grid. Other than that, using ‘Grid’ as the title cannot be justified.
Manager Choi’s character that had elements of being sympathetic before, seems to have changed to become hard, cold, merely business-like and unlikable. Perhaps if they’d kept the timeline where she’d died, SH would have remained alive. The question remains about why in the first timeline, SH was already spying on her.
Eojin’s character became a bit warmer and more vulnerable, and changed from being rigid, to breaking the rules for SB. One reason for the loop where Ghost allowed herself to be caught was likely so that SB would witness EJ’s death and in the new timeline, would be more concerned and nicer towards him. That was essential so that SB would have her daughter, fathered by EJ, who would be the ancestor of Ghost.
In the end the whole hoo-hah/aim of the Show was a convoluted tale about Ghost ensuring that she set up the Grid, by ensuring that her antecedents didn’t die. But that gets totally turned around in the last few minutes when all along there are other Ghosts who oppose her. No matter what she went through to get herself to 2021, those chappies in Ghostland could just undo her work. Seems pretty meaningless in the end.
I noticed that my husband watched Grid as well. I wonder if he has any thoughts on it. 😉
The thing is, like you @WE and perhaps @Cleo too, I have very little motivation to go back to check the facts. They didn’t build the emotions of characters like the K dramas are usually good at so I am not too attached to them. I also felt the logic sprung out from here and there, it is too unsystematic for catching a reliable pattern. I then lost the will to try.
May be when Saeha said to young Saeha the pedestrian light is blue (as oppose to green), it shows he is from a different layer who runs a different system. As @wapz pointed out though, the issue is it is just another assumption with little other pattern to back it. Sisyphus makes a lot more sense to me, and I didn’t watch TKEM with BOD but still comparatively “easier” than the Grid. At least TKEM showed and confirmed that there is multiverse. I am not sure the Grid showed us that other than the line at the end about layers.
@WE ahh the local time field could be a good explanation. I was thinking Saeha needed to die so SB and EJ would feel upset enough to reunited for that night to give Ghost a parent. I couldn’t quite work out how the Ghost and Saeha can both exist but the local time field seems like a good explanation.
There is one other way I can think of to explain Saeha’s survival. You know Doctor Strange from Infinity Game? He can foresee the many scenarios to find out the one possible way. Instead of seeing it like Doctor Strange, the Ghost has to work out the 10,000 + scenarios and eventually work out a way to save Saeha.
By the way, have you watched Edge of Tomorrow? If the writer goes for entertainment value, Edge of Tomorrow does better than that.
@GB, @wapz… That was a joke. The screenwriter of Mouse said she drinks Soju sometimes. I guess other screenwriters do. So my joke was that Grid’s writer does too, except she can’t stay lucid after that. 😉
About the concept of a single timeline. I don’t see how can it work, and we still need logic about what we have and how cause and effect react after time changes. Also, the last line of the future guys imply it’s not really that when they talk about “timelines and layer”. So, instead of rely on a concept written somewhere on internet, I just stick with what we get and see in the drama.
@Edge of tomorrow, yes. On the whole, blockbuster screenwriters are much more solid about clarity. It’s normal, it’s an industry where they want to have the maximum audience. You can criticize these kinds of movies for a lot of things, but they have a certain respect for the audience, in the sense that they care that the audience understands what’s going on. And they know that when they don’t, it drives people away.
Hence the example of Inception, or any other film with a complex concept they can make very clear. Studying this kind of screenplay is instructive. You realize, for example, that the first 40 minutes of Inception are actually exposition. But exposition hidden in a set of scenes that are so exciting, that it gives the impression that things have already begun. And by the way, the characters’ mission is also mentioned first, since these exposition scenes serve to teach the recruit for that mission.
In Back to the Future, everything is done to facilitate understanding. Yet, especially in Opus 2 (some of whose scenes I analyzed in this regard), this could be complicated without explanations. But here, even children have to understand the movie. A person with no interest in science fiction or complicated things should be able to understand it too.
In any case, has reducing the confusion made these films less interesting?
No, because work was done to make the story exciting in parallel.
In the case of Grid, if you remove all the artificial effects of concealment, confusion, is it that so interesting? Unfortunately not. We come up with complicated stuff just for the sake of being complicated. And lack of logic. Maybe the writer was good at that for detective story, but here, it’s like she think sci-fi is a licence of wild freedom. When Sci-fi in real need even more logic, as it need to make believe something that don’t exist yet.
The strong emotion? Other than the excitement of the action or fast-paced scenes, no. The characters all tend to be cold and dull. Except for the young woman who does literature. Sure, the ML suffers but it’s hard to share his emotion. It’s easier when he travels through time and makes discoveries. We can at least stick with his expression “wow! what’s going on, I wonder”. The drama show quite sad characters we can understand a bit, but not feel. We don’t cry for them or with them. In the same way we don’t react to emotions in a western serie.
This screenwriter had the same flaw in Stranger. An emotionless main character (which is normal, it’s the theme of this protagonist), but also other characters of the same kind. Like the female protagonist! So it’s a complex plot where cases are solved, but with no emotional or affective involvement (except for the very good death scene that involves a secondary character). The drama is saved by a secondary character in terms of emotional involvement. And why not make FL a character that really contrasts with the ML? Like we have in a buddy movie? For some reason, this drama was very “hype” in strange proportions. Certainly, the director was good. The lead actor too (well, without showing much). But he couldn’t really evolve. I never felt he was progressing and maybe healing a bit. I don’t know if this was done in season 2, I didn’t watch it. Every time I made a few criticisms on these points anyway, everyone fell all over me, lol!
🙂 @WEnchanteur,
“Inception” was made by THE Christopher Nolan. “Grid” was made by whatshernameagain? No. I don’t want to clutter my head with junk.
Although I give Hollywood an F rating for a lot of things when it comes to storytelling, world-building, and insights into the human psyche, I’ve to admit that Christopher Nolan is in a class all by himself. He’s a CEREBRAL auteur.
It’s hardly surprising that this writer for “Grid” only has a whit of CN’s genius when even by Hollywood standards, he stands alone.
I think the one Korean screenwriter who can *approximate* CN’s craft is Song JaeJung of “W: Two Worlds” and “Memories of the Alhambra.” The sad part though is that she’s forced to incorporate romance into her scripts since it’s a staple in kdramas, but it’s not her forte. She definitely has a knack for finding new and unheard of storyline, and she has a vision of the inner workings of her fantastical world. She just needs to tweak the execution a bit more.
It would be interesting if she just wrote straight up sci-fi.
@WEnchanteur totally agree with you. My biggest issue with the show all along was that I didn’t care. Neither Sae Ha nor Sae Byuk, the rest of the AB or Ghost had enough bckground or emotions for us to care for them. That little background on how witnessing that incident would’ve turned Man ok towards delinquency made me root for him a little that he may have a better future sometime. But I guess that wasn’t possible. I have only watched Life from the writer’s work and she did a fair job bringing some emotions there. Lee Kyu Hyung’s character was especially nice. But what stood out for me in Life and what I expected Grid to deliver too, was the greyness of human nature. I haven’t seen Stranger but I guess there were grey characters in even that one. However, in Grid all characters were rather black and white. And without any strong emotional connection with the audience.
@packmule Song Jae Jung recently adapted Yumi Cells which is a wonderful slice of life romance. But since she’s one of the many writers on the team I’m not sure how much she contributed to the story with an existing content. I feel SJJ’s story premises and first halves are really strong but she falters in the second half and isn’t sure how to conclude the story. But that is solely for W and MOA. I haven’t seen her more acclaimed shows, Queen In hyun’s Man, Nine and The three musketeers.
@wapz, I don’t consider Yuma’s Cells as Song Jae Jung’s work because the kdrama was based on a completed webtoon by Lee DongGun. I read somewhere that the drama closely followed LDG’s webtoon.
The premise behind “Queen InHyun’s Man” was alright. I just couldn’t stand the lead actress so I couldn’t finish it. Her airy, baby, breathy speaking voice tortures like the sound of nails on blackboard.
Same with “Nine.” It has a good premise, too.
SJJ has the most novel world-building, and there’s nothing wrong with her worldview (life philosophy). But she just has to finesse the execution, as I said. Perhaps she should start with a specific ending in mind, then work her back way back to the beginning, because what she’s doing isn’t working very well with the audience.
I understood MOA. There was no flaw in her logic. Even before the postscript/afterword was added in the closing scene, I knew she was going to say that it’s faith that can change the world. (Hence, we were shown the shadowy figure of Jinwoo in the end, and not the actual person. Kinda like the ending of “Inception,” it’s subject to discussion.)
But her theme is too profound for regular viewers who were just looking for the typical garden variety happy ending. It went over the heads of audience wanting a regular romantic-slash-adventure-slash-science-fiction drama.
I think “W: Two Worlds” is good, too. They’re doing a rewatch here. I’m just sitting on the sidelines for that one.
Interesting view on SJJ @packmule. You’re actually the first person I’ve met who has similar opinions to Yoo Inna as I do lol. I couldn’t stand her for a long time specially b3cause of her voice. Though she was really good in The Spies who loved me and I felt the show was a good addictive watch too with a very smart but realistic female lead. So I warked up to her after that.
Regarding Moa, I felt it reached its peak at the 3rd and 7th episode(if I’m remembering correctly). I honestly was very annoyed at PSH’s character’s constant crying scenes that I don’t exactly remember where I dropped it. For W, I still believe the first half was really strong, better than many kdramas. But she couldn’t continue the same thrill for the last half of the drama.
@pkml3, thank you for your take on Christopher Nolan and Song Jae Jung. Having lived in a limited drama bubble for over a decade, I didn’t know what I was missing (or didn’t really care to know). This makes me feel like I ought to look up Mr Nolan’s works.
@wapz, although I’m OK with Yoo Inna, and generally OK with Park Shin Hye, I too could not complete W or MOA. I now rewatch W in the attempt to figure out what I missed. I’m glad to have companions here, who can point those out to me!
Here’s a toast to hopes for a better kdrama time travel/teleportation show! 🥂 😁
You see I like both W and MOA. In fact, I like W a little more because I like the romance in W better. There is usually enough pattern to work out the logic. Plus the characters recap and spell out the logic for us a lot in W. I felt the first half is to show Kang Chul has a lot more resources. The second half is to show Kang Chul has little resources, lost the initial memory but still choose to fall in love all over again with the same person. I would love to watch W again if I have the time. I watched it last year and I can still recall the major principles I had in mind. It’s not that I have a good memory, to me, that shows the writer has a clear logic and reiterate that concept enough for me as a viewer to remember! My quick recollection: 1. If the lead character thinks about you, you will join his world. 2. If you served your purpose in the story, you are not needed in the story anymore 3. If you complete the mission, you can leave that side of the world.
Yes @GB, Reset next week! Literally a reset too! Let’s forget the Grid and start new. haha.
Ah @Viva, that was my simple understanding of ‘W’ too. However there were some nitty-gritty bits that got me going ????
Yes, after being in a grid-lock with Grid, we need a refresh, re-do, re-start with Reset!!! Something simple and easy to chat about without frying our brains or disappointing us. I need to do a whole bunch of thinking (extra, extra LOL) between the last 2 weeks and end June… so my brains are partially fried anyway. 😆 😅 🤣
I hope to see you on BP Ep 10 Rewatch today/tonight!
@Pm3, I didn’t know you liked C. Nolan! I’ve rarely been disappointed by his films. In recent times, he is the best at bridging the gap between compelling, mind-blowing stories and mainstream access. His time is divided because he is a director, but also writes the scripts. At least there’s no risk of going wrong from script to camera.
For writing, good kdrama scriptwriters have more experience. For example, Song Jae-Jong: a dozen dramas, hundreds of sitcom episodes. I know she taught dramaturgy at the university (but I don’t know how long or if she still does it). And many other kdrama writers whose careers are impressive, and it would take too long to list them.
I mention this to indicate the differences between movie writers and kdrama writers:
– A 2-hour movie script can be reworked a lot of times. Ten times if necessary. The process of successive drafts. Some even rewrite it entirely. The structure implies a controllable duration. However difficult to master as J. Cameron indicated in an interview. He needs to isolate himself for days for that. A film writer can have a dozen films, or much more for the very productive ones of another era, like Billy Wilder. As an additional experience, there are “spec scripts”, written by screenwriters waiting to be produced one day (this can go up to a dozen movies).
– A kdrama script is 16h or more. The equivalent of a dozen movies! It is obvious that there is less time to rework the whole. It is better to be good as soon as possible. Impossible to rewrite entirely. Structure involves uncontrollable length. Structuring the whole is really very difficult. Especially since, unlike series with seasons (or procedural), there is a beginning and an end. The need to structure everything sufficiently. The writers have additional experience (years of being assistants and writing their own projects during this time).
– And a well-known kdrama writer has as many 16 hour dramas on their bio, as a movie writer has 2 hour movies!
We simply notice that in volume produced, of writing, they have more experience. In particular that of organizing very long stories. But, on the other hand, they have less time to “polish” what they do. To make it perfect, to check all the flaws. Both categories certainly work just as hard, but in different ways on some points.
Is the worry really about romance?
I’ve written a long essay to show that it doesn’t. But I’ll give up for now, because it’s too long. My short answer is no. The romance is not the issue. It even has a positive impact. Kdramas should play on their advantages, romance and emotional involvement of the audience. Most of the biggest scenes of SJJ dramas needed a romance (W police station or last episode bus station, MOTA parking lot, 9 time travel phone booth). Still note that the MOTA catacomb scene needed friendship. Others dramas: Iris (lovers separated in the spying world). etc.
The problem is mainly to balance the romance with a more cerebral content. The balance of time between emotions and plot twists.
Just for fun, I’ll say it: in QIHM, I loved the actress! This played a lot in my addiction to the drama. I didn’t pay attention to those breath sounds, but maybe her sexy voice also played a role, in addition to her pretty face and her aygeo expressions.
The worry comes more from this propensity to be vague and confusing, not explaining more clearly when it is necessary. Even Song Jae-Jung has flaws in this. This didn’t bother me for W, I understood the artwork quite quickly, I trust the logic already demonstrated and I love the drama. Even during the first Watching, I immediately have the conviction that I have found my favorite work. Anything I don’t understand, I put aside for later and continue to enjoy the story until the end. I can revisit it as much as I want, understand more, because I am already passionate about it. But this is not necessarily the case for other spectators, if they were less sensitive to certain subjects or did not perceive what I found there. I am obliged to note that some other spectators were lost. This is a great pity. I use GB as an example. And SJJ herself admits in the interview that she was barely able to write for the general public. When she might have liked to. As pm3 says, she digs deep. The level of confusion she generates is lower than many other writers but still damaging.
Grid’s writer has 10 times less experience than SJJ, and none in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy field. And even before that, she’s unaware of certain topics when she writes:
https://k-popped.com/2022/04/66298/
On Stranger, she admits in hindsight that she doesn’t use “show don’t tell” enough. Too much resolution through dialogue (but HP is much worse), and various other pacing issues. On Grid, she makes an effort on that. It is commendable, she questions herself and ponders her work. But it still becomes unstable. If we add this to the other concerns already mentioned, unbalanced structure, confusion, similarity of characters (cold, sad and dull), lack of emotion. This is very obvious to me. She is far behind a lot of other kdrama writers. It doesn’t mean she’s a bad one, she did a good job on Grid about some aspects, like she did on Stranger about some other aspects. But as a complete overview of all aspect, it’s not yet that.
She makes up for some of the lag in the audience’s understanding with a dialogue scene (pure “tell”) that can be described as “info dump”. But better that than nothing, considering the accumulated mess. (beginning of episode 9).
As a blockbuster director, C. Nolan knows perfectly well the importance of clarity, to make the story more universal. Although they write less, movie writers have more time to think and question a script. For balancing, dialogue, etc. Writers are much more aware of everything, but still can’t get it right. You can think for a long time, but the best thing is feedback after writing. Practice is by far the best way to learn, and then do the self-analysis.
Almost all kdrama writers have a clarity problem when writing complex, conceptually based, logic-intensive fantasy/sci-fi stories.
With the difficulty of structure and the limited time for proofreading/correction, I have given two possible reasons for this.
There may be other reasons that I don’t know about! I even suspect it.
The writer of Grid doesn’t think enough about the logic and feedback to give to a situation. Like people replacing themselves, then “hop”, forget about it, put it under the carpet. If I take a situation from W, such as “the nurse tries to kill Kang Chul”, just a detail, but yet, there is a bounce to it. It’s taken into serious consideration in the rest of the story when Kang Chul questions it. This is one example among dozens. Everything is like that in her script. Nothing is lost in the void. It is very pleasant for the spectator. Because often, by dint of rough writing, when you come across something, you often think: Okay, the writer won’t talk about it anymore and will pretend it never happened. But when the writer does, it’s obvious. And you think, “wow, this was taken seriously, this has logic, this isn’t just random stuff that happens and you forget about it”. Whatever the genre, the writers who do that are fascinating. It’s kind of the root of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The reader has all the clues in hand and doesn’t understand the solution to the problem. And Sherlock Holmes explains everything at the end. We understand every decision he made and no clues or odd things were lost. The writer never created confusion. He gave everything away but was one step ahead of the reader.
Until the end, Grid keeps showing contradictory things. Just one example. I read a relevant analysis of someone on the drama, who thinks that SH is indeed dead in the last episode. And so the one we see at the end is another SH, time traveler or whatever. Why not? At least, it is logical with the rest of his explanation. However, this contradicts the scene where we see SH being “healed” by the two ghosts! I am not trying to say who is wrong or right. Just that we have clues that allow us to explain in a different way. Wherever we look, we will have inconsistencies.
The main problem being confusion, I have identified some texts here and there. Sometimes from sites giving “tips”. I don’t trust a lot of people on screenwriting because it is often a jungle. People who give advice but write little. People who hope to make money by offering various trainings, etc. I have found while watching VoDs that I disagree with some of the advice. I’ve also been misled by some advice. So I mostly trust what I already know, after verification by experience. Or for the rest, the tips that are obvious and to keep in mind. Of course, I trust interviews with recognized screenwriters more.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. A few years ago when I was posting here, I was wondering about this subject. My conclusion today is that the confusion have to be avoided.
************************************************
@GB, are you here? This should satisfy you!
https://industrialscripts.com/screenwriting-rules/
See it from an audience’s point of view. Don’t signpost for an audience, but don’t give them two fingers, either. Your job is to present a piece of drama for an audience to appreciate, on whatever level they choose to do so. You job is not to confuse them, or show off, or be deliberately obtuse. Which is why, as you rewrite and rewrite your script, and recut and recut your film, you must always consider the audience. What do they know, at this point? What do they want to know? What do they care about? Where do they want this to go and how will I take them where I want them to go? You have a responsibility to your audience, and it is the worst form of creative arrogance to forget that.
From book : Basics Film-Making 02 Screenwriting (Robert Edgar, John Marland, James Richards).
A screenplay creates a world. It may be identical to the real world (except that is contains fictional characters) or it may be wildly different. Whatever world is being created, it must be internally consistent. It must have rules and those rules must be adhered to, otherwise the story will lack logic and the audience will become confused. Consused audiences usually stop watching.
https://www.scriptonia.com/en/43359/Common-Problems-in-a-Screenplay-Their-Solutions-Screenwriting-I-Scriptonia
The structure is confusing: If the story and the structure feels confusing for the reader/audience, that might signify that too much is happening in your screenplay. Too much that your audience cannot follow and get lost! That is a huge problem and you have to clear things out. Simplify your set-up and avoid introducing too many characters within the first act. When the audience first start watching the film, if they don’t focus on 1 or 2 characters and instead, if they try to remember 5-10 characters, who they are, what they do, what their goals are, they’ll get lost very fast.
(Here, I still think a fast-paced story is ok, but it needs to be done clear)
https://www.flyingwrestler.com/2014/08/show-dont-tell/
Sometimes writers err on the other side — in order to avoid wooden dialogue, they don’t explain anything to the audience. But that can create an even bigger problem: confusion. Nothing makes readers or audiences angrier than not understanding what is going on, and feeling like an outsider who lacks the facts necessary to be able to process and get inside what’s happening.
https://magdaolchawska.com/writers-on-writing-aaron-sorkin/
AARON SORKIN ON AUDIENCE
1. The audience doesn’t want to be a casual observer of the movie.
2. The audience wants to participate.
3. The audience wants to be given the same clues as everyone in your film and to be putting things together in their head.
4. If you’re able to surprise them with a reversal they didn’t see coming, you’ve given them a very satisfying experience.
5. Treat your audience as intelligent and don’t lose them by writing something that may seem unbelievable.
6. You can also lose an audience, if you confuse them, even the smallest confusion can ruin the experience.
@WE I loved your essay!!! Yes and yes and yes!!! So interesting about what can be done when dealing with movies as opposed to shows of 16+ hours. You explained clearly and I understand what you mean. So satisfying, LOL. This makes your point, no?
I agree also with all the quotations about writing for the viewer/audience and avoiding confusion. A frustrated viewer is likely a viewer lost to the show/writer. And even now, (I hate to admit it) because of the frustration before, I still find it not so easy to watch ‘W’. Even with all of you wonderful Bitches explaining away, the initial negative feeling that the show brought out in me, does not entirely disappear. I guess I’m a simplistic watcher, or otherwise at times, I’m a hard one to please. 🙂
Thanks @WE. I enjoyed what your wrote a lot.
@GB, I had had information about the confusion in the past, but couldn’t find the links. I forgot who, where and when. I’ve been researching it again as a result. But anyway, it’s a pretty obvious thing. You don’t need someone to explain it when it’s what comes out of the audience’s experience.
Of course, someone can say: it’s the audience’s fault for being stupid and not understanding. Blame the audience? No really, it’s impossible to do that! That’s the reflex of someone who is too much of a fan of something and becomes blind. It’s better to dig and put things down. Especially in my case, when I’m writing a story and I’d like it to be accessible. I’m determined to avoid confusion and avoid spoiling the fun. But I have no certainty about the success of the process. What if I have unknowingly created confusion too?
There is even worse, arrogance: people who feel they are smarter by thinking they understand what is actually a mess. I remember some commentators like that on MDL during TKEM. I made this meme to laugh at that:
http://w4worlds.eklablog.com/the-king-eternal-monarch-meme-07-artificial-complexity-a187786762
And this one to show how much effort the audience had to put into trying to figure it out:
http://w4worlds.eklablog.com/the-king-eternal-monarch-meme-14-reversal-rule-a187835920
The last quote is from Sorkin, a very well known screenwriter. The very last point “You can also lose an audience, if you confuse them, even the smallest confusion can ruin the experience”. Ruin the experience now, and even on the long run, when revisiting.
The experience the audience is looking for is at first watching. Not after several rewatches until they understand everything. You have to be able to provide something that is sufficiently understandable the first time. I exclude the case of really distracted spectators who are doing something else at the same time (there it is normal that they don’t understand anything). Someone who is normally focused and wants to enjoy the drama. The audience is always sincere about that.
If the confusion prevents them from doing so at the first watching, they are left with a bitter taste. And it’s very difficult to enjoy it afterwards, as you point out. This happened to me before, but after a while. Or because the movie had content that I otherwise liked so I went back to it. It’s sad, but often it’s too late, the damage has been done! Giving explanations doesn’t help to find the taste for something. It’s better to let yourself be carried by the content and the quality of the scenes for what they are. Nothing guarranted, can’t be forced.
LOL @WE the memes were funny. You put in so much effort to express your frustration with TK:EM!!! I liked how the words covered Eun Sup or was it Jo Yeong’s face. Yes I came across similar commenters before. I wondered if they had been ‘paid’ by the production to defend the show’s plotholes and bad points at all costs. There was one person who replied to every single comment that didn’t agree with hers and explained every darn thing to suit her, and she had a few ‘yay sayers’ approving all that she wrote. That’s when I heard of something/people who might be astroturfers.
“Astroturf is also a slang term meaning to fake the appearance of popular support for something, such as a cause or product. The practice of doing so is called astroturfing and a person who does this can be called an astroturfer.” From dictionary.com
“Astrosurf”.. It’s done on news website. Psy operation to consolide the prop. Or other social medias about these subjects. In my country, there is a team from the political party to do that, the scam has been discovered when someone got infiltrated on their discord channel.
About just kdramas, I don’t know. It looks much, but as it’s a drama broadcast with a company like netflix… hard to say. It needs to check the profils, if it’s new people, or if it looks coherent about their profil, if they give comments elsewhere and makes reviews. Well, to verify if they looks like ghosts. 🙂