The thread is open, @GB.
I’ll catch up soon. AoS2 is ending this week.
gifs from seawherethesunsets’ tumblr
While some actors have dimples as primary feature, this actor Chae Jong Hyeop has puppy-dog eyes. When he raises his eyebrows and widens his eyes, he makes this expression that stirs the maternal nurturing instinct and the “awwwww” response from the viewers. His puppy-dog eyes tug at our heartstrings.
Like here:
and here:
Unfortunately, however, it’s not working with his co-star in this drama. I’m sure he’ll die trying.
@GB, I’m also looking forward to the personality change in the loan shark. I like that actor, Kim Sung Oh. He has great range.
Let’s enjoy the show.
Aww thanks @pkml3. I was drowsing over a movie, and sort of woke up to find so many posts.
It’s always fun to watch stiff, rigid, cold, mechanical characters start to warm up, thaw, soften and show their nicer sides. I’m noticing it here in this show with Boss and loan shark, and with ML in Flight to You.
LOL the puppy-dog eyes of In Sung. They failed both with Se Yeon and dad. The joke is that In Sung’s dad thinks Baro, the robot, is warmer and sweeter a ‘kid’ than his own son. He only warms up to IS when he thinks In Sung is mentally unsound! What will it take to bring some characters around!?
I just finished Ep 9 and 10. This show has managed to keep up the pace/tension through the later episodes–in fact the end of Ep 10 had my heart pounding. That’s because I have grown to care about all the main characters, especially Mapi. He is not a one-dimensional bad guy but has a complex past that has slowly been revealed. I’m hoping he survives that big fight (I think he does according to the previews) and will be able to stay in Min Ah’s life in the future as “Uncle Mafia.” I like his redemption story arc.
Redemption is one of overall messages of this show. For Mapi, it’s his realizing he can be a good person or at least do good deeds when there is something to fight for (like Min Ah). For President Kim, it will be his realization of how he should be kinder and more present in Min Ah’s life through In Sung’s example of making time to play with Min Ah and his being kind to almost everyone else in his life. For In Sung, his redemption is being needed and important instead of just being an impoverished job seeker and sidelined actor.
I’m not sure I’d describe Se-Yeon’s storyline as one of redemption but of opening up emotionally. She realizes now that she should have shared more with her mother while she was still conscious, and that she needs people. The romance between her and IS has been paced well–her standoffish-ness means it has had to evolve slowly and that she had to take the initiative to get it going.
Looking forward to the last two episodes (when the boss finally is set free from his phone–please!). Some people on the Internet are theorizing that Pres. Kim is actually not in his phone but it’s Baro 4.0 talking–like the computer Jarvis in Iron Man (In Sung made the reference in Ep. 9; having watched Marvel movies recently I got the reference!). However, since it clearly states at the beginning of each episode that this is a work of fiction, I guess he COULD be trapped in his phone and they may come up with some gobbledygook/pseudo physics terms to explain how it happened. If so, I think most viewers won’t really stress over it since they’ll be so relieved that Min Ah gets her dad back.
SPOILERS FOR EP11
Ep11 is really intense. If the whole show had been like this I wouldn’t have been able to stick with it until now.
I can’t believe Mapi is dead! I was really hoping his death was a fake to keep the bad guys at bay.
The Iron Man reference proved to be true, alas. Now what? I can’t see this show not having a father-daughter reunion, but then I was wrong about Mapi surviving that fight…
Episodes 11 and 12 – It was a realistic ending, while a little bit abrupt, but good on the whole.
What I liked:
The message that no matter how convincingly real Augmented Reality seems, it does not make the program or the virtual reality the same as its original.
AI played its part but show was grounded in reality. Mina got to know the truth about Mapi and her dad and at the last, we see that she has accepted it.
The romance was low key and believable and not the focus of the show.
The uncertainty about how Baro 4.0 got reinstalled. One assumes that the program was saved somewhere and could be reinstalled into the smartphone after being tweaked a bit.
The explanation for the Boss in the phone is fully explained and the realistic end for all characters is shown to us.
What I’d have preferred:
To understand how Mapi’s death was necessary. He was a character somewhat beloved by Mina and us. He’d promised her that he wouldn’t disappear without a word. But he suddenly is killed. I’d have thought that having him injured but able to make a full recovery was more in line with the earlier tone. His death brought us into darker territory, but I’d never pegged this as a dark show.
Of course I believe most of us wanted to see that Mina really gets to interact with her real dad, but we only get a flicker of hope when his eyelids twitch.
I thought it was sad that both Se Yeon’s mum and Seon Joo remain unconscious even at the end, although it’s probably truer to life.
= = =
While I might recommend this show for a first watch and found many parts of it fun and satisfying, I will likely not consider this for a rewatch because the darker parts were troubling. My grade for this show, for what it’s worth: B- 😝 😃
I would have rated the show a solid B+ or even an A- until it took a (I think an unnecessarily) dark turn, starting with Mapi’s death.
Without Uncle Mafia and, later, the butler in her life, Min-Ah was left alone with a housekeeper who was no relation to her and who obviously wasn’t getting paid enough for her services since she was selling the child’s old clothes on the sly. We have no way of knowing if In-Sung was part of her life anymore at the end. We see just her, the housekeeper, and her unconscious dad in her house (I assume he had nursing care there, but they only showed him in his bed alone, surrounded by machines). Why do this to poor little Min Ah? We needed a happier ending for her–she had already tragically lost her mom. I was hoping In-Sung’s parents might visit her, as they did SY’s mom, but there was no indication of that.
I don’t see what Mapi’s death added to the story. Also the final fight scene (where he is murdered) used “Nobody is Perfect” by Mckdaddy, a fast-paced, mostly rapped song as the background music. It was inappropriate since it sounds like the soundtrack of someone overcoming an enormous obstacle (even if it does include the sound of police sirens…). Having Min-Ah (happily?!) reading to his grave at the end just made his death more poignant because it emphasizes her aloneness.
I also thought the last few minutes were rushed and didn’t explain things very well–at least to my satisfaction. While I appreciated the gag where In Sung “interviews” Lim Chul-Soo–who mentions his past job as an insurance salesman, shift changer, and military man (his roles from 3 dramas), I would rather those few minutes have been spent on showing him with Min Ah and/or showing how he made his exit from Silver Lining.
Perhaps my biggest disappointment is that with the explanation that In Sung was communicating with AI and not Kim Sun-Joo being stuck in his phone, we realize that Sun-Joo hasn’t learned anything from In Sung’s ongoing kindness. I was hoping that “Unlock My Boss” meant he would be unlocked emotionally. Instead his brain has been asleep this whole time. Only the AI was learning and adapting. While this explanation kept the show too much out of the sci-fi realm, it made me question what the point was after all that In Sung did for him. The boss didn’t grow at all. Rather than show his eyes fluttering at the end, I would have preferred that he had woken up at least a few minutes before the end, and then show him expressing his gratitude to In-Sung and Se-Yeon.
With that all said, I agree with @GrowingBeautifully – and give this show a B-. I am not sure I’ll recommend it to anyone else, given how unimpressed I was with the ending.
Thank you @BethB. You’ve made a very good point. The boss is still locked in a coma, and he has not grown emotionally from all that IS has done. I thought it would follow the way of kdramas and end up a healing show, but it was just a show with a ‘sort of’ happy ending but still short of satisfactory. I feel it was a miscalculation to not only include an unnecessary death but a lack of happy reunion for Mina with her dad who was already rather absent when awake, and now more so when in a coma.
aNNyeong 🐇
I have yet to watch the “Witch’s Diner” —
But i finished this show. and i enjoyed most of it… partially happy with the ending– and i agree with your grading, @BethB and @GB and also your comments about Mapi’s death; that the boss remained Locked at the end of the show (emotionally and physically)… is there a 2nd season? but i like that IS got his dream to be an Actor – so funny. and romance for him and SY 💗