Last call for MOTA.
6:30am PST
9:30am EST
2.30pm in London
3.30pm in Paris
4.30pm in Athens
Enjoy the show!
87 Comments On “Memories of the Alhambra: Ep 16 Rewatch Sat May 6”
Comments are closed.
Last call for MOTA.
6:30am PST
9:30am EST
2.30pm in London
3.30pm in Paris
4.30pm in Athens
Enjoy the show!
Comments are closed.
Last episode. Not the best one. Slow, angst, etc. I didn’t liked first watching. But as I rewatched it recently, it’s better than what was in my memory. There is information here and there, not to miss to better get the ending. Well, I didn’t get it fully yet. ^^
Thanks @pkml3! I knew you’d remember to put up this thread!
Hi @WE!!! We have run the good race and have come to the end. See you in 15 hours time!
Sorry that my first BOD rewatch is coming to an end, and that I won’t be able to join in for the last episode due to a conflict. Have enjoyed the learning experience, and look forward to doing another rewatch in the fall.
Hi @LL, I’m sorry to know that you can’t join us today. It was a pleasure to have you here.
I don’t know if we’ll be doing more rewatches in the Fall but you’re welcome to come any time and just jump right in with us.
I hope you can come back to read us here after today! I’m generally here and roundabout to get alerts for when anyone leaves a comment. 🙂
I’m here, missed the last2 re-watches due to unexpected events.
Hi great to see you so early @FF!
I’m about all set and ready to rock/watch. Maybe I’ll just get some fruits to eat while I wait.
Hi @GB, let’s enjoy the last episode.
Hi everybody. Sorry for Lootie.
Conflicts are nice in kdrama but not much in real life.
Hi @WE,
Conflicts as in clashing timing for different appointments are not so bad.
Conflicts in relationships are a different matter.
Now I’m in conflict between 4-6 relatively good to watch shows with limited drama-watching hours. LOL.
It’s just about time!!! Let’s start our last Episode NOW!!!
@GB, yeah, in screenplay, conflict isn’t just arguing with someone else. There is internal conflict, and also, conflict vs environnement, like a crazy virtual game, or rain and frost. 😉
Hello @WE @GB, @Feifei. @LL sorry you will not be able to join us!
Hi WE, missed the last two episodes and we start with Prof Cha dead.
Poor Park is in shock at seeing Prof Cha dead… poetic justice for Cha though… killed by the NPC version of the son he practically disowned, most unfairly.
The end of the scene previous episode, he enters and sees… (we couldn’t see but we see now). Pr Cha dead.
@feifei, I suppose you already watched the drama, so.
Hi @SD!! Did you say you might join us for Liar Game S2?
It’s about more than 12 episodes Park is in shock and doesn’t believe anything. Scared to become crazy.
The other poetic justice thing is that it’s Cha who put on the server to get JW killed by the NPCs but it backfired on him. He also forgot that with his son’s NPC, even the server being off would probably not help much.
So Brother… why don’t you say us more about how you spend your last year on the train bridge? HUH? Hee-Ju, can’t ask this to your brother, HUH?
Hi,SD good to have you for company.
@WE, yup watched the drama before but poor memory plus MOTA messes with one’s memory causes much confusion.
NOw its flash back again. Maybe Hee Ju explaining to Se Ju through the flashbacks.
THanks @Feifei. I am a bit under the weather today. At the rewatch but may not be commenting much.
Well, the “angst flashbacks”, a lot. I don’t have the reflex to use that, it slow a lot. Or just one or two.
Anyway this episode is sloooooow.
@WE, poor Park has had calamities hitting the company one after another in quick succession.
Loss of friend HS who becomes a competitor
JW’s fall
HS’s death
Se Ju’s disappearance
Sec Seo’s death
JW supposedly going crazy and all the responsibility coming to Park
Cha being unreasonable
Yoo Ra causing trouble
Park realising that he’d failed his friend JW
Su Jin attempted suicide
JW disappearing
Cha dying
Still no JW and only heaps of crystal on the floor of the church.
Now Park finally wears the contact lenses so that he can see the heaps of crystals on the floor. Don’t think he ever wore the lenses before. As the co-CEO he should have, actually.
Great trick: as the bug are eliminated in flashback, Park see in real time the powder piles of eliminated bug on the ground. It’s powder as surely a kind of reference to cenders of dead people burned.
Why is HS bug 1? Bug 1 should be Marco, is it not?
Of course a kind of cristal powder to get the numeric feeling. 😉
@WE, yeah, now I remember why you say this is a slow episode. So much flashback. At least JW gets to eliminate the bugs quickly at the start of the episode rather than later.
HS sure took a long time to be debugged LOL. Now for the nasty ally Prof Cha.
Pr cha is weird as a bot, we don’t feel so much difference with his usual “him”.
@FF, yes, I did wonder why the Marco bug was not addressed. Maybe it was a bug only with Se Ju. When Se Ju was in the Instance Dungeon, the bug vanished.
Saddest debugging with with NPC Sec Seo. He hugs him… I love the expression on Hyun Bin’s face. Sooo good. His grief!!!
Good emotional scene here. Hui Bin great in his acting. Sad… with a sad piano music. T T
SD, in that case you just enjoy the re-watch.
Must have been so difficult for JW to stab his secretary even though it is just in the game.
Reason why See-Ju and Marco aren’t eliminated as bugs remains OBSCURE. Obscure like obscurity in HOLES.
@WE I don’t get the timing… City Hunter was created only 25 days ago? All that we see with the falling in love, suicide attempts etc happens within a month? Wow!!!
I forgot that Prof Cha was a bot. Of course it makes absolute sense. Re: Park, I think when he put his lens in/started the game the game queues said it was the 145th log in for him. So he must have tried it a bit.
@GB, I don’t plan on watching (or rewatching) Liar Game 2. Something about the first one bothered me too much. Maybe the ‘I am subordinate to everyone/high pitched mushi-mushi’ of the FL or perhaps that it is a liar’s game; and I worked so hard in my working life that truth be told, or at least not obscured. I had too much trouble with it. Too much of a downer for me in these troubled times.
@FF The bug makes this a more than normal brutal game. One has to stab one’s allies as well as one’s enemies. Game sure needs to be debugged properly before people should be allowed to play it.
The last powder… Jin Woo. Or rather ZINU.
Poor Park. Pile after pile of white crystals.
For both Park and JW, they have to grieve again for those they lost. I agree Hyun Bin’s acting is superb here.
@WE,
Yes, the break in logic takes place with Se Ju and Marco… also now with JW. He’s a real person but he’s been incorporated into the game as a game character only like an NPC. He seems to end up in the Instance Dungeon too I think… that’s why Se Ju is able to get out.
So why should JW be considered a bug when Se Ju wasn’t.
I love the game reset. All bugs gone and so the game reinitialises. There’s too much AI here taking over from reality. It should have been a human being who decides on the reset and not the game taking over so much. Se Ju’s programming was one heck of amazing and scary!!!
The reset is a mystery… I guess it’s EMMA. But there was a delay. (needed to see the scene with powder on the ground, lol).
See-Ju is traumatized. But if I was Park I would ask him: so this year in a dungeon, how it was?!! ^^
Jin Woo can only be in a dungeon, because else: they would find his corpse. OF COURSE.
HJ must have felt so guilty because she told JW about the function of the key.
The boyfriend wannabe is always around.
Hah! Irony of Emma killing Jin Woo/Zinu, when the real HJ only wanted to keep him alive. However in a way, both Emma and HJ saved him. He would have been trapped forever if not for the bug deletion.
But I don’t get the idea of a dungeon because of the reset. The dungeon should reset too?! So where he is then. Maybe not a dungeon but something more mysterious after the dungeon vanishes? (in the hypothesis of dungeon don’t survive reset).
@WE, exactly no one ask SeJu how he last 1 year in the dungeon. How is that possible?
In all her 4 high concept fantasy drama: SJJ make ALWAYS the woman crying in last episode, because the man vanished, died in another time or world, etc… And plot-twist, in some way the guy come back in the last episode (in the last few minutes).
Almost boyfriend only did 1 useful thing ie bring HJ back to get rehydrated after her crying dehydrated her LOL. But the minute she wakes up, back she goes to church to cry herself silly.
“maybe boyfriend” should be happy now. ahhaa this sucker Jin woo is dead, I’ve a chance to get the girl now. Only… She remains one year depressed, going to church, remembering angst flashback.lol.
YuRa marry a old dude. lol. MONEY.
Her ex manager (and sex friend, and in a way her real man still here).
I think this guy is the ideal man for her. I know her by heart, anything about how she is bad and is ok with that (but always clashes her about that). In a way, it’s the most good love she can have with this guy.
The parallel.. JW had to make a self-sacrifice like Jesus on the cross. So SJJ chose to place the scene in a church. We get the stained glass of Jesus on a donkey with the sun shining through it making a star through it. @pkml3 pointed it out and said it was to counterbalance the first knight on the horse in the game that fell down dead. It was meant to be a game of salvation/redemption but not for Granada or JOne so much as for the individuals like JW and Su Jin.
Well, if Jin woo is in a dungeon and the dungeon vanishes because of the reset, SO, like Park says “he’s erased from this world”.
And so, he guy hits a passerby BECAUSE he was fighting a bot. Just he didn’t see the passerby. Then, it goes into justice and the game could be canceled. OR ELSE: it needs specific area where you can play it, but not in everyday place. Suppose a gamer pushes someone by accident in the subway and the passerby is pushed under the train?!
So many females playing the game in Seoul.
LOL they had to limit the game time to allow people to work. It was really unsafe having those people about totally not noticing anything while fighting invisible beings.
And I need to say. The script of SJJ is smart and take this eventuality into account. ^^
Slow and angst scene in a bar. PARK have become the male lead now, so much screentime for him. He deserves it after so many troubles.
@WE, I felt that SJJ was warning against AR/VR games while writing about JW’s story.
She CAN’T FORGET Jin woo. Love in a challenge now.
@WE, nice wrap up in the sense that even Se Ju gets a resolution. Such a warm applause for Se Ju the game creator, the idol of the programmers.
The geek “write something like ‘become friends'”. lol.
@GB, I agree about the warning. Although maybe AI in general, and the problems of unintended consequences especially when we humans try to play God.
Choi Yang Ju abuses his power, he asks SeJu to sign an autograph for him …. “Fangirling SeJu”
See Ju speak about the dungeon. It’s something beyond himself, a true paranormal thing. Now, after so many episodes, it’s sure, the drama isn’t explainable just with “lens make the brain believe”, something else, real magic.
The END. Really, an end that made people so mad, maaaaaad. But I like it. I make a parallelism with W screenplay: the people without identity arent faceless zombie like in the drama. They are black figure. Exactly like Jin Woo here (about physical aspect).
Final voice over, about MAGIC.
Well, not even a voice over, just a text. Weird.
We finally see the silhouette of JW.
@feifei, the sad thing is, we see it but not Hee-Ju (yet).
@WE, HJ is on her way to meet him.
Wow we spent 16 weekends together for MOTA re-watch.
The music at the end is hopeful, as HJ is crossing the street.
Goodbye all. I will not join you on the next rewatch (Liar’s Game 2) but will keep my eyes open for any others. I do like these play with reality types of shows which are especially good for a rewatch as you pick up on things you missed the first (or second, or third) time, ha ha. Take care!
Ok salteddust, see you on another rewatch after. 😉
Yeah Feifei, it was an odissey. 🙂
@FF, yes 16 weeks for this show. We’ve been together since before that as well. Definitely more than 16 weeks if we count the other shows.
Bye @SD! Take care! Yes look out for our rewatches.
@WE, besides Liar Game, we should figure out what other shows are good for rewatches.
Bye everyone! Thanks for a great rewatch. You’re always welcome to join us for future parties!
@GB & @WE its Liar Game 2 next week. See you all, I hope more people would be interested to join in the re-watch.
Yup, me too @FF. Maybe Liar Game’s style is an acquired taste. Not everyone can take the stylized way of the drama.
@GB, I could just say, shows people like to rewatch too?
It’s still a problem about shows we didn’t watched yet.
I (of course) focus on: HEAVY content. Yeah. The kind that NEEDS a rewatch.
Many rewatchs. 🙂 … Yeah yeah, I know, I’m a bit, how to say. I don’t find the word.
🙂
16 episodes of MOTA. I was so happy to be here. As I don’t have time to watch dramas, this was my only dream escape way, each week. I enjoyed it a lot.
@GB, did you watch LG2 already?
There are SO GOOD MOMENTS… The poker game. GOOOOOOSHHHHHHH.
And the NEW VILLAIN. I just love her!!! Ah ah;
And in a scene we get the reason why she want to fight the ML. It’s “so”… derisive.
Ayaaah, just more great. ^^
@WE, I don’t know what word you were looking for, but I might put you down to being quite ‘highly focused’ on the structure and content of shows, because you’re trying to find good examples of interesting scripts.
I just watch to be entertained, and if I can find something more in a show to analyse, so much the better!
See you next week for Liar Game S2!!
@WE, I’ve watched LG S2 without fully understanding the motivations of the players. As usual they are generally out to win for themselves, and it’s KN who changes their mindset by being giving and forgiving.
Hi all, joining belatedly having just rewatched ep. 16 and read all of your comments. I also understood ending better this time as HJ’s steadfast faith was rewarded with JW’s reappearance. In my mind the fourth pile of crystals was a fake out indicating JW was permanently eliminated, but since JW was a Master perhaps the rules could be different. He wasn’t eliminated, he was debugged and carried over to newly reset game. Or along the lines of the religious undertones he died but was resurrected. Thanks to all for including me in this rewatch.
Hi @LL
Great to know you’ve watched the Ep and read the comments. I like the steadfast faith theme. Practically everyone lost faith in JW and the game and that would have resulted in everything ‘going to hell’, but Park’s renewed loyalty and trust, and HJ’s constant faith allowed JW, the ‘saviour’ to do all kinds of inexplicable things that go against the grain of common and business sense, in order to bring about the redemption of Se Ju, and redemption too for all the ‘bugs’, the game, the business…
If we take the Christian motif a bit further, the saviour is no longer present in the flesh, but his presence is still palpable, and his spirit is still with his players, as he goes about ‘saving’ them. HJ and Park’s job is to keep believing. LOL.
I believe that Writer SJJ may have wanted to bring this theme out more strongly but somehow did not manage it. Taken as it is now, it is too subtle and easily missed. There were a few clues but too little, too quickly overtaken by other scenes and too far in between. Perhaps she was restricted by other demands of the production.
Still it was a good rewatch. 🙂
Hi @GB
Yes, your second paragraph makes clearer the comparison to Christ after his death and resurrection , “no longer present in flesh, but presence is still palpable.” It just seemed that quite a bit of Ep 16 was set in church…at one point spotlight focused on Crucifix, etc.
MOTA was one of first Kdramas for me, and I recall being pleasantly surprised that a mainstream TV drama in S Korea would openly convey the Christian theme of Christ’s death and rebirth. I also enjoyed Fiery Priest later on. . Other dramas followed that presented Buddhist and Confucian themes, as well. I appreciate that in SKorea religious and philosophical beliefs are acknowledged as part of many lives to one degree or another. In the US religious beliefs are often depicted as “far right” or extreme…getting in the way of progressive agendas. BTW this is only one of many redeeming features of Kdramas, but
Is related to MOTA.
Thus was discovered a great contrast to US programming,
and I was rescued thanks to Kdramas.