Transferring @BethB’s post here. Spoilers for Eps 12 and 13
-pm3
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EPISODES 12-13 (is anyone else still watching this drama?)
After indications that the murderer would be GMS (detective novelist whose latest story has a lot of detail about the town’s murders, sister who falsely accused her brother of murder, person who was on the scene of at least one murder in the past and the FL’s mother’s murder in the present) suddenly in these last 1-2 episodes the murderer is a MAN who flees the scene when the ML arrives to find Yoo Bum-Ryong already dead.
Unless this is someone we’ve already seen, this seems like a last-minute curveball.
(To be honest I couldn’t watch most of episode 12 because the previews promised scenes of violence–specifically that Soon-Ae would be tied up and hurt. I am really squeamish when it comes to scenes where women are tied up/tortured/hurt. And then Bum-Ryong is hit repeatedly with a rock, which I also FF-ed through. So if I share thoughts on these episodes, much of my info is from just reading a recap of Ep 12.)
I am still watching this show, despite the violence, because I thought the concept was intriguing and, at times, it is still interesting because of all the remaining mysteries. But the show only has three more episodes to tie everything up. Unless we’ve already seen the person who made the time machine and the person who is the murderer I don’t know how they can squeeze everything in in three hours.
Remaining mysteries (in no particular order):
–who made the time machine? why did they leave it for the reporter?
–who is the murderer (do we know the murderer?) What is the murderer’s motive–especially if he is also the same person who killed the ML and the mom in the future?
–why did the ML’s mom abandon him?
–Why is the ML’s dad working on his car for free (except for grilled cheese sandwiches)?
–Did the murderer flee into the tunnel (is he from the future or the past?)
–Have the ML and FL messed up the space time continuum?
If anyone else has any theories, let me know! (PS I don’t have Kocowa, so I can’t watch episode 14 until Wednesday).
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
Thanks @pkml3. I wasn’t going to bother much with this show after the sense of tedium still pervades when I watch or even think of watching.
Nevertheless, I decided to do a quick watch to get a gist of happenings and an idea of the denouement.
Hi @BethB, I’ve watched Ep 11-14. I FFD or skipped most of the violence.
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SPOILERS
I felt that the being able to ‘discover’ that there must have been a book involved in all the killings was pretty thin. I was not convinced that YY and HJ could just figure that a book must have been present. Although Soon Ae and GMS are supposedly writers, and YY is an editor… there is no proper linking of books with the victims except for the cryptic message in the matchbox. Show just needed YY to say that she felt it was not a coincidence that the killings had to do with books.
It was satisfying that GMS got caught stealing Soon Ae’s story… the future will definitely change now. But we get to see that GMS has her own backstory.
We get HJ’s backstory of how he was ignored by his grandfather and had a mostly missing father. Grandfather only instilled hatred in him for his missing mother. On the whole a very unhappy life that HJ had. So later when we see that Grandpa Yoon actually doted on having a grandson, that the watch he gifted him with the inscription was still worn by adult HJ, we realise that the ‘story’ HJ knew was not complete.
HJ’s mother’s backstory is also slightly told. We get to know why she left and why she maybe could not bear to be with the baby that she had actually looked forward to meeting.
YY tells HJ that she did not want to have a future without him in it.
She mentions what she’d like to do in the future together with HJ:
1) She’d take him to her favourite restaurants,
2) Walk on paths that are newly paved,
3) Have conversations about silly things not just scary things.
We see the reciprocal response to these 3 plans in Ep 14.
1) He wanted to see a pretty view with YY
2) He wanted to order her fave sweet-salty food and watch her eat with gusto
3) He wanted to listen to her talk on and on about trivial things.
Episode 14 ends with the mother of all plot twists LOL. Or as @BethB says, of all curveballs. But really… has Show been letting us, viewers, play along? We had red herrings but where are the real clues?
The motive is totally obscure!!! It’s likely to be another red-herring… otherwise why was the time-travel encouraged?
It’s more likely that there are 2 people involved in the killings. GMS and a guy whom she was convinced would never get caught. She told Hae Kyung that, when she explained why she was going to report her brother for the murders, and had no fear that the real culprit would come to light.
@BethB
Maybe a couple of your questions may be answered but not all.
We may know who left the time-travel car but not quite why.
While the life that HJ had in 2020 is explained, the murder mystery still remains, however we can guess why HJ gets murdered in the future. He really stirred up a lot by his coming into the past.
HK_Lady
Annyeong 🌸
OMG that EP 14 ending… but misleading again, i believe. I do NOT think so!!! circumstantial evidence? the rope. the missing time machine car. his demeanor changed from easy going to guilty? or concerned perhaps? but why did he run?? and run over JH? noooooo
wait a minute… JH’s dad wasn’t even there before the killings began. yes? ugh! this show is so confusing.
HK_Lady
Hi PM3, GB and Beth ~
That ep 14 ending. what?!! but no! way! How? Otoke? He wasn’t there when the murders first began. Can it be just circumstantial evidence? – the rope? so why did he run, why did he run over HJ with the time machine car? whoa!!! crazy show!
i was wondering why HJ just stood in front of the dead body – the reason why he was arrested. why the daze look? did he realize something? did he realize it was his future dad?
ugh
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
@HK_Lady
You more or less echo my sentiments about the Ep 14 twist. The reason for my dissatisfaction is that there were not enough clues, not enough scenes with and therefore chances for the viewers to even consider this alleged culprit.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Something questionable is how HJ’s mother was on the bus during the news cast but was able to catch the news … I suppose in 1987, they could telecast live news on buses already? Anyway she saw that HJ had been interviewed and she knew he had lied. She was even able to return quickly to the village that very night.
The scene where the Yoon Yeon Woo (YYW) needed to enter the house to use the washroom, highlighted the matchbox that had fallen onto the carpet but later we see that he accosted HJ about it and acted like he suspected HJ of the killings. This might have been a red herring ie he looked like he was scared of HJ, but perhaps he wanted to find out how much HJ knew. But on the other hand, nothing else was made of this to make YYW look suspicious.
The ‘evidence’ is indeed circumstantial, and one wonders why a clever character would so obviously use materials from 1 place, thus making it more likely to be suspected. I imagine that anyone could walk in and take the yarn and matchboxes from the Teahouse.
My first thought too was that YYW was not even in Korea when the murders first took place. The murders had happened in the last 30 days (news report mentions 3 deaths in 30 days). However, his girlfriend is advanced enough in her pregnancy that she knows she’s going to have a son in the Winter. That would have been past 14 weeks of pregnancy? YYW would have had to have been around 4 months earlier.
Was he hiding in Korea much earlier, or is the timing all messed up, or did he repeatedly use the time machine to come and go before he ‘arrived’ in Korea in the normal way. But he couldn’t space travel from US to Korea… he was supposed to have been in the US for many months. This part feels like a plothole.
The events that make YYW suspicious:
– He’d got the car to work and had hidden it away (perhaps he wanted to go on joy rides?)
– He was approaching HJ’s home but started running when Dong Shik knocked over something that scared him away. (Why should he run? Because he’d stolen the car? Possible.)
– This is followed by how he got to the car and drove it towards the tunnel. All these make him look more suspicious than the circumstantial evidence.
The thing is that there are only 2 more episodes. For want of a more convincing suspect, we end up going with Yoon Yeon Woo, but I’m not convinced.
(To be continued…)
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
(Continung…)
TIME MACHINE
What is more likely is that YYW was the one to leave the time machine for his own son. Another one of those time loops?
Guesswork:
– YYW of the future makes a time machine.
– He finds out that His son is murdered/disappears and the matchbox points to the killer of 1987. YYW realises that the events in his own family can be changed. HJ’s mother Jung Ah had suspected YYW of being the 1987 killer, and as a result, HJ has a miserable childhood abandoned by mother, practically abandoned by his father and lived with a grandfather who did not want to see him.
– YYW leaves the time machine for his adult son in 2020. Why he does not himself return to solve the murders is unknown, but possibly he was too closely tied to the events and chooses to let his son do it. If HJ can prove YYW’s innocence, then the unhappy childhood experiences stemming from the suspicion would not have happened.
I feel that YYW’s ‘guilt’ only extended to his making the time machine and traveling about by himself. 🙂
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
MY SUSPICION
I’m more disposed to think that the killer was a twosome of Ko/Go Mi Sook and her brother Ko/Go Min Soo.
In the original timeline: She wrote her murder stories from a 1st person perspective and she’d said in interview that she wrote what she knew, so her killer was always female. She was on the scene to witness the killings, so she could write the details. In the first timeline, the killings stopped when her brother was in prison for 30 years. When he’s out and meets up with his sister again, HJ gets killed in the future. The timing of the killings work out better.
However we are susceptible to a plot twist… someone from the past could have gone to the future to kill HJ and leave the matchbox (*eye roll*) LOL.
YY’S FUTURE
Yoon Young had gotten caught up in the time machine. With the changes that she makes in the past, it’s likely that her mother will be a well-known writer, her father and uncle may be better liked by her and maybe Yu Sub would not be so mentally ill.
It would be interesting if she’s working for the publishing company to promote her own mother’s works. 🙂
BethB
SPOILERS for Episode 14
I really don’t know who the killer is at this point. 🤷♀️
Some viewers are theorizing that it’s the cafe owner/ML’s mom. This seems as plausible as anything else. I suppose the mom could be jealous of all those other women. She had the red rope in her possession. And rather than fleeting because she’s afraid of her boyfriend being a killer, she could be fleeing because she thinks she is about to be caught and then only comes back to town to have the baby and flee again. But if so why did she come back to scold the ML about putting himself in danger?
Or is it really the ML’s dad? I’m unsure when he came back to town in the original timeline. The murders happened a little later the ML came in with the Time Machine than they did originally. But why would he kill his own son in the future after being comfortably distant from him all his life? Also—Did he really try to run over his son in the Time Machine in 1987? The music playing as he emerged from the car sounded menacing but that have been a fake out as well.
I don’t know though how these murderers would tie in with the writer going back to her hometown to tie up loose ends in one of the earlier epilogues.
Ugh. Everything had better make sense when it’s all clarified for us before the end of episode 16 (and it had better not be in the last five minutes!)
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
@BethB @HK_Lady
I’ve watched Episode 15 and 16.
SPOILERs
SPOILERs
Somehow it lacked the oomph in its denouement. It sort of simply petered out.
Good things:
We get to know the mystery of the time machine. We even get to know a little something of HJ’s future.
I watched to know the changed future of 2021 and that was covered in the last few minutes. It was good to see YY with her 2021 family, and as expected, working as her mum’s editor.
I really wished that the culprit was someone else, and show never told us why he committed the crimes, but at least there was resolution among the family members so that HJ who grew up in the 2nd timeline had a better childhood.
I felt that the premise was cute, the concept was good, but the execution was wanting. Show was never able to engage me fully. The usual warm camaraderie and family bonding thing that we get in lots of dramas, was somehow lacking in this one. We had only little bits of it. At least there was Dong Shik and Grandpa who knew the secret and helped HJ out so he wasn’t so alone in the investigation.
There seems to be a missing element in all the relationships. I guess ‘chemistry’ is the closest thing to what was lacking. Not only between the leads but also among all the members of the cast.
I was actually relieved when this series ended. I didn’t really want to continue watching it all that much, but I wanted to know how the Show would finally resolve the mysteries.
I hope to see this actor and actress in a better show but probably not together LOL.
BethB
@GB You’ve echoed many of my misgivings with this show. I would have been OK with the romance IF they had met again in the future and, because of this shared experience, wanted to be together–the show could have shown this in the last few minutes in the revised future. But I didn’t like seeing her expressing her affection for him while still pretending to be his sort-of niece. Ick.
As it was, the budding romance was unnecessary and just took up time. I would have preferred they had remained partners in mystery-solving in the past. The two actors seemed to not warm up to one another until almost the last episode (maybe because they were relieved it was almost over?) Without that romance, (and the violence!) the show could have been cut down to 14 episodes.
While I liked the concept of the show, the execution was strange at times. It almost seemed that a different writer/director took over after the first few episodes. The format and the focus changed–specifically with the epilogues at the end of those episodes showing the mystery writer coming back from her hometown with mud on her pants hems (what was that about?!) and, in another epilogue, greeting her brother after his release from prison–the brother she’d lied about to get in prison (um–wasn’t he going to be pretty mad, given his past abuse of her? It’s hard to believe she would have greeted him in their old house by herself since it was probable he was going to hit her). Another epilogue (I think) showed the FL’s mom recognizing her killer (how well would she have known the director’s son after all those years to be able to recognize him? And why would he hurt her then after all those years?) Then, no epilogues and the mystery writer is shown in the past as a troubled, abused teenager who plagiarizes her classmate’s writing. I really wanted to know what became of her in the future, but Episode 16, in the final minutes, only shows her for a moment in a bookstore, still clutching her necklace.
But really has me scratching my head is the big reveal for the murderer. Huh?
SPOILERS
If the ML’s dad didn’t like “women who read” why did he send his girlfriend those long letters, hmmm? And why did he kill just those (originally) three women? Was he killing “reading” women when he was in America all those years (and maybe even women in SK when he came to visit) or was this just some kind of restless/revengeful season for him because he was back home where his mother supposedly neglected him (BY READING)? It seems weird that so much of the show was about solving the mystery and then gave no trigger for these particular killings (I mean, wasn’t he going to a university in the US, surrounded by women who read?!). It kind of hinted that he had a split personality (when he took his glasses off he was EVIL!) but then kind of dropped it.
Also it’s weird that he was shown in the original past being a loving father to his son–and then shown to be the one who murdered his son on the frozen lake. Why?? Did he do that as an old man or as the young man who traveled there via time machine? They showed both the old and the young man hitting the ML with a rock in one of the later flash-forwards so I was confused.
ML’s dad is shown finding the time machine manual but then we don’t see what he does with it. If he’d been a genius, as show hinted at, you would think he would have gone back a month prior and killed the ML before he discovered his connection with the murders. It almost seemed like the show ran out of time and just threw that in that without following through on it. (Or was he committing the murders as someone from the future–since after the last murder of the male student he runs towards the tunnel??)
Unlike a lot of kdramas we discuss here, I’m really not willing to analyze it or dissect it any further because I’m not sure that there was any kind of master plan behind it—in other words, I don’t think it’s worth it. If someone else wants to give it a try, feel free!
Overall, here are the things I didn’t like:
• I was uncomfortable with the level of violence in this show. I really hate seeing women tied up and in vulnerable positions–I especially hated seeing Soon Ae tied up with a bag over her head. It almost seemed like a fetish to show them that way. And I hated seeing the student getting killed with a rock, even if it was only shown in shadow. Maybe the reason I hated the violence is that the show mostly seemed like a romantic mystery, with its light-hearted moments and revisiting family pasts, and then you see these acts of violence.
• Epilogues and then no epilogues (i.e., format changes)
• Unnecessary/awkward romance between ML/FL
• Bad direction and/or no action for actress playing the FL. Packmule3 called this her “deer in the headlights” look, mostly in the earlier episodes just after she had gone back to the past. But I’m not sure if Jin Ki-Joo is a terrible actress. Sure, it’s possible she lacks a lot of range, but I’ve seen her in other dramas where she played a sparkly personality and she did a good job with it. I think her deer/headlights look had as much to do with the poor writing/direction as her abilities.
Things I did like:
• I thought the final scenes before the FL/ML go back to the future were delightful, especially when they showed the FL having a picnic with her future parents and they fussed over her like she was already their child. I also liked how the mom in the present still remembered her good friend from 1987 and had named her daughter after her, even thinking her daughter resembled her (and that the weekend anchor resembled their Korean teacher from 1987).
• I like how the show showed the consequences of their time travel, though I would have welcomed at least half an episode of the pair being back in the present. But most dramas/comedies that deal with time travel rarely linger in the returned present (Back to the Future being the biggest example) because there would probably be too many repercussions/changes to explain—so the few minutes we were given were satisfying.
• I thought the actor who played the FL’s father was quite good for his age, showing exasperation, infatuation, terror, etc. I look forward to seeing him in future projects. (Or is he another 30-year-old playing a high schooler??)
• I liked the theme of healing family rifts and learning to understand and forgive one’s parents by gaining empathy from seeing why they were the way they were.
• The cinematographer gave us some gorgeous scenes, especially when the FL/ML were near the water or standing in a flowering field. If I’d liked this drama more I’d take the time to do some screen shots of them—but I’m ready to move on now.
GrowingBeautifully (GB)
Thank you @BethB for laying it all out here for us (because I did not wish to think about it further LOL). I agree with you and I feel the same in practically every respect. I do not think this Show is worth the effort to analyse. Much needs to be figured out but whereas I’d be diligently rewatching to find the clues with other shows, in this Show I’ve preferred to FFD the last 2 episodes and do not choose to rewatch anything of the previous ones.
Whether there was a change in the writers or in the intent, we may never know, but Show has ended up being all over the place. It was a time-travel drama but it only made use of time-travel in the beginning and the end instead contributing more to the plot. I recall how Nine Nine-times Travel was so interesting by contrast. I found it strange that YY and HJ returned to 2021, but that their memories were not ‘updated’.
Although YY comes around to appreciate her parents (and HJ, his mother), it did not feel like a warm, coming to terms family drama. It did not seem like a proper murder mystery drama or a proper crime investigation drama. Perhaps show was reflecting the haphazardness of HJ being in the past once the time-machine broke, because it felt lacking in direction.
I didn’t like how Show suddenly ‘revealed’ with circumstantial evidence only, that YYW was the killer, as if it was running out of time and a killer had to be plucked out of the air and presented to us. His so-called motive was insufficient, unless besides being a genius he was also insane.
Yes, the epilogues hinted at so many things to do with GMS/KMS and the killings but I dislike heartily that this led nowhere ie she was a complete red-herring in relation to the murders she claimed to have committed. Her relationship with YYW and how she knew of his crimes is never explained. At the very least she must have been in the know, a party to them of some kind, since she was on the scene to watch and then to write about them. It seems that she made a deal with him… then knowing that she knew about his crimes, why should he have left her free to accuse him later? He should have killed her too.
Too many circumstances are unexplained and do not make sense. Perhaps some new writers had to patch it up here and there but could not tie up the loose ends. Ultimately the ending that was meant to ‘feel-good’ was mostly blah.
As I said, I hope to see these main actors again, but not in the same show or at least not in a romance with each other. They were fine as uncle and niece or partners in investigation, but never looked so unconvincing until they claimed to have a romantic interest in each other.
I’m definitely moving on …
HK_Lady
Annyeong 🌷
@GB and BethB, thank you for hanging with the show til the end.
i’m wondering if them going back again to 1987 is to stop the future dad in committing these murders? yes?? anyhoo, i do like the happy ending YY *happy family* and meeting the future SON of YY and HJ. what a handsome and smart boy! So he’s the one who created the time machine car and fixed it, too. wow! if i’m the boy, why didn’t he just do it? but maybe coz he’ll be too young in 1987. leave it to the parents. haha.
i like that HJ was able to have good memories/farewell time with his grandpa and his mom.
so YY started a book titled “A perfect stranger” hmmm 😊
Transferring @BethB’s post here. Spoilers for Eps 12 and 13
-pm3
***********************
EPISODES 12-13 (is anyone else still watching this drama?)
After indications that the murderer would be GMS (detective novelist whose latest story has a lot of detail about the town’s murders, sister who falsely accused her brother of murder, person who was on the scene of at least one murder in the past and the FL’s mother’s murder in the present) suddenly in these last 1-2 episodes the murderer is a MAN who flees the scene when the ML arrives to find Yoo Bum-Ryong already dead.
Unless this is someone we’ve already seen, this seems like a last-minute curveball.
(To be honest I couldn’t watch most of episode 12 because the previews promised scenes of violence–specifically that Soon-Ae would be tied up and hurt. I am really squeamish when it comes to scenes where women are tied up/tortured/hurt. And then Bum-Ryong is hit repeatedly with a rock, which I also FF-ed through. So if I share thoughts on these episodes, much of my info is from just reading a recap of Ep 12.)
I am still watching this show, despite the violence, because I thought the concept was intriguing and, at times, it is still interesting because of all the remaining mysteries. But the show only has three more episodes to tie everything up. Unless we’ve already seen the person who made the time machine and the person who is the murderer I don’t know how they can squeeze everything in in three hours.
Remaining mysteries (in no particular order):
–who made the time machine? why did they leave it for the reporter?
–who is the murderer (do we know the murderer?) What is the murderer’s motive–especially if he is also the same person who killed the ML and the mom in the future?
–why did the ML’s mom abandon him?
–Why is the ML’s dad working on his car for free (except for grilled cheese sandwiches)?
–Did the murderer flee into the tunnel (is he from the future or the past?)
–Have the ML and FL messed up the space time continuum?
If anyone else has any theories, let me know! (PS I don’t have Kocowa, so I can’t watch episode 14 until Wednesday).
Thanks @pkml3. I wasn’t going to bother much with this show after the sense of tedium still pervades when I watch or even think of watching.
Nevertheless, I decided to do a quick watch to get a gist of happenings and an idea of the denouement.
Hi @BethB, I’ve watched Ep 11-14. I FFD or skipped most of the violence.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
I felt that the being able to ‘discover’ that there must have been a book involved in all the killings was pretty thin. I was not convinced that YY and HJ could just figure that a book must have been present. Although Soon Ae and GMS are supposedly writers, and YY is an editor… there is no proper linking of books with the victims except for the cryptic message in the matchbox. Show just needed YY to say that she felt it was not a coincidence that the killings had to do with books.
It was satisfying that GMS got caught stealing Soon Ae’s story… the future will definitely change now. But we get to see that GMS has her own backstory.
We get HJ’s backstory of how he was ignored by his grandfather and had a mostly missing father. Grandfather only instilled hatred in him for his missing mother. On the whole a very unhappy life that HJ had. So later when we see that Grandpa Yoon actually doted on having a grandson, that the watch he gifted him with the inscription was still worn by adult HJ, we realise that the ‘story’ HJ knew was not complete.
HJ’s mother’s backstory is also slightly told. We get to know why she left and why she maybe could not bear to be with the baby that she had actually looked forward to meeting.
YY tells HJ that she did not want to have a future without him in it.
She mentions what she’d like to do in the future together with HJ:
1) She’d take him to her favourite restaurants,
2) Walk on paths that are newly paved,
3) Have conversations about silly things not just scary things.
We see the reciprocal response to these 3 plans in Ep 14.
1) He wanted to see a pretty view with YY
2) He wanted to order her fave sweet-salty food and watch her eat with gusto
3) He wanted to listen to her talk on and on about trivial things.
Episode 14 ends with the mother of all plot twists LOL. Or as @BethB says, of all curveballs. But really… has Show been letting us, viewers, play along? We had red herrings but where are the real clues?
The motive is totally obscure!!! It’s likely to be another red-herring… otherwise why was the time-travel encouraged?
It’s more likely that there are 2 people involved in the killings. GMS and a guy whom she was convinced would never get caught. She told Hae Kyung that, when she explained why she was going to report her brother for the murders, and had no fear that the real culprit would come to light.
@BethB
Maybe a couple of your questions may be answered but not all.
We may know who left the time-travel car but not quite why.
While the life that HJ had in 2020 is explained, the murder mystery still remains, however we can guess why HJ gets murdered in the future. He really stirred up a lot by his coming into the past.
Annyeong 🌸
OMG that EP 14 ending… but misleading again, i believe. I do NOT think so!!! circumstantial evidence? the rope. the missing time machine car. his demeanor changed from easy going to guilty? or concerned perhaps? but why did he run?? and run over JH? noooooo
wait a minute… JH’s dad wasn’t even there before the killings began. yes? ugh! this show is so confusing.
Hi PM3, GB and Beth ~
That ep 14 ending. what?!! but no! way! How? Otoke? He wasn’t there when the murders first began. Can it be just circumstantial evidence? – the rope? so why did he run, why did he run over HJ with the time machine car? whoa!!! crazy show!
i was wondering why HJ just stood in front of the dead body – the reason why he was arrested. why the daze look? did he realize something? did he realize it was his future dad?
ugh
@HK_Lady
You more or less echo my sentiments about the Ep 14 twist. The reason for my dissatisfaction is that there were not enough clues, not enough scenes with and therefore chances for the viewers to even consider this alleged culprit.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Something questionable is how HJ’s mother was on the bus during the news cast but was able to catch the news … I suppose in 1987, they could telecast live news on buses already? Anyway she saw that HJ had been interviewed and she knew he had lied. She was even able to return quickly to the village that very night.
The scene where the Yoon Yeon Woo (YYW) needed to enter the house to use the washroom, highlighted the matchbox that had fallen onto the carpet but later we see that he accosted HJ about it and acted like he suspected HJ of the killings. This might have been a red herring ie he looked like he was scared of HJ, but perhaps he wanted to find out how much HJ knew. But on the other hand, nothing else was made of this to make YYW look suspicious.
The ‘evidence’ is indeed circumstantial, and one wonders why a clever character would so obviously use materials from 1 place, thus making it more likely to be suspected. I imagine that anyone could walk in and take the yarn and matchboxes from the Teahouse.
My first thought too was that YYW was not even in Korea when the murders first took place. The murders had happened in the last 30 days (news report mentions 3 deaths in 30 days). However, his girlfriend is advanced enough in her pregnancy that she knows she’s going to have a son in the Winter. That would have been past 14 weeks of pregnancy? YYW would have had to have been around 4 months earlier.
Was he hiding in Korea much earlier, or is the timing all messed up, or did he repeatedly use the time machine to come and go before he ‘arrived’ in Korea in the normal way. But he couldn’t space travel from US to Korea… he was supposed to have been in the US for many months. This part feels like a plothole.
The events that make YYW suspicious:
– He’d got the car to work and had hidden it away (perhaps he wanted to go on joy rides?)
– He was approaching HJ’s home but started running when Dong Shik knocked over something that scared him away. (Why should he run? Because he’d stolen the car? Possible.)
– This is followed by how he got to the car and drove it towards the tunnel. All these make him look more suspicious than the circumstantial evidence.
The thing is that there are only 2 more episodes. For want of a more convincing suspect, we end up going with Yoon Yeon Woo, but I’m not convinced.
(To be continued…)
(Continung…)
TIME MACHINE
What is more likely is that YYW was the one to leave the time machine for his own son. Another one of those time loops?
Guesswork:
– YYW of the future makes a time machine.
– He finds out that His son is murdered/disappears and the matchbox points to the killer of 1987. YYW realises that the events in his own family can be changed. HJ’s mother Jung Ah had suspected YYW of being the 1987 killer, and as a result, HJ has a miserable childhood abandoned by mother, practically abandoned by his father and lived with a grandfather who did not want to see him.
– YYW leaves the time machine for his adult son in 2020. Why he does not himself return to solve the murders is unknown, but possibly he was too closely tied to the events and chooses to let his son do it. If HJ can prove YYW’s innocence, then the unhappy childhood experiences stemming from the suspicion would not have happened.
I feel that YYW’s ‘guilt’ only extended to his making the time machine and traveling about by himself. 🙂
MY SUSPICION
I’m more disposed to think that the killer was a twosome of Ko/Go Mi Sook and her brother Ko/Go Min Soo.
In the original timeline: She wrote her murder stories from a 1st person perspective and she’d said in interview that she wrote what she knew, so her killer was always female. She was on the scene to witness the killings, so she could write the details. In the first timeline, the killings stopped when her brother was in prison for 30 years. When he’s out and meets up with his sister again, HJ gets killed in the future. The timing of the killings work out better.
However we are susceptible to a plot twist… someone from the past could have gone to the future to kill HJ and leave the matchbox (*eye roll*) LOL.
YY’S FUTURE
Yoon Young had gotten caught up in the time machine. With the changes that she makes in the past, it’s likely that her mother will be a well-known writer, her father and uncle may be better liked by her and maybe Yu Sub would not be so mentally ill.
It would be interesting if she’s working for the publishing company to promote her own mother’s works. 🙂
SPOILERS for Episode 14
I really don’t know who the killer is at this point. 🤷♀️
Some viewers are theorizing that it’s the cafe owner/ML’s mom. This seems as plausible as anything else. I suppose the mom could be jealous of all those other women. She had the red rope in her possession. And rather than fleeting because she’s afraid of her boyfriend being a killer, she could be fleeing because she thinks she is about to be caught and then only comes back to town to have the baby and flee again. But if so why did she come back to scold the ML about putting himself in danger?
Or is it really the ML’s dad? I’m unsure when he came back to town in the original timeline. The murders happened a little later the ML came in with the Time Machine than they did originally. But why would he kill his own son in the future after being comfortably distant from him all his life? Also—Did he really try to run over his son in the Time Machine in 1987? The music playing as he emerged from the car sounded menacing but that have been a fake out as well.
I don’t know though how these murderers would tie in with the writer going back to her hometown to tie up loose ends in one of the earlier epilogues.
Ugh. Everything had better make sense when it’s all clarified for us before the end of episode 16 (and it had better not be in the last five minutes!)
@BethB @HK_Lady
I’ve watched Episode 15 and 16.
SPOILERs
SPOILERs
Somehow it lacked the oomph in its denouement. It sort of simply petered out.
Good things:
We get to know the mystery of the time machine. We even get to know a little something of HJ’s future.
I watched to know the changed future of 2021 and that was covered in the last few minutes. It was good to see YY with her 2021 family, and as expected, working as her mum’s editor.
I really wished that the culprit was someone else, and show never told us why he committed the crimes, but at least there was resolution among the family members so that HJ who grew up in the 2nd timeline had a better childhood.
I felt that the premise was cute, the concept was good, but the execution was wanting. Show was never able to engage me fully. The usual warm camaraderie and family bonding thing that we get in lots of dramas, was somehow lacking in this one. We had only little bits of it. At least there was Dong Shik and Grandpa who knew the secret and helped HJ out so he wasn’t so alone in the investigation.
There seems to be a missing element in all the relationships. I guess ‘chemistry’ is the closest thing to what was lacking. Not only between the leads but also among all the members of the cast.
I was actually relieved when this series ended. I didn’t really want to continue watching it all that much, but I wanted to know how the Show would finally resolve the mysteries.
I hope to see this actor and actress in a better show but probably not together LOL.
@GB You’ve echoed many of my misgivings with this show. I would have been OK with the romance IF they had met again in the future and, because of this shared experience, wanted to be together–the show could have shown this in the last few minutes in the revised future. But I didn’t like seeing her expressing her affection for him while still pretending to be his sort-of niece. Ick.
As it was, the budding romance was unnecessary and just took up time. I would have preferred they had remained partners in mystery-solving in the past. The two actors seemed to not warm up to one another until almost the last episode (maybe because they were relieved it was almost over?) Without that romance, (and the violence!) the show could have been cut down to 14 episodes.
While I liked the concept of the show, the execution was strange at times. It almost seemed that a different writer/director took over after the first few episodes. The format and the focus changed–specifically with the epilogues at the end of those episodes showing the mystery writer coming back from her hometown with mud on her pants hems (what was that about?!) and, in another epilogue, greeting her brother after his release from prison–the brother she’d lied about to get in prison (um–wasn’t he going to be pretty mad, given his past abuse of her? It’s hard to believe she would have greeted him in their old house by herself since it was probable he was going to hit her). Another epilogue (I think) showed the FL’s mom recognizing her killer (how well would she have known the director’s son after all those years to be able to recognize him? And why would he hurt her then after all those years?) Then, no epilogues and the mystery writer is shown in the past as a troubled, abused teenager who plagiarizes her classmate’s writing. I really wanted to know what became of her in the future, but Episode 16, in the final minutes, only shows her for a moment in a bookstore, still clutching her necklace.
But really has me scratching my head is the big reveal for the murderer. Huh?
SPOILERS
If the ML’s dad didn’t like “women who read” why did he send his girlfriend those long letters, hmmm? And why did he kill just those (originally) three women? Was he killing “reading” women when he was in America all those years (and maybe even women in SK when he came to visit) or was this just some kind of restless/revengeful season for him because he was back home where his mother supposedly neglected him (BY READING)? It seems weird that so much of the show was about solving the mystery and then gave no trigger for these particular killings (I mean, wasn’t he going to a university in the US, surrounded by women who read?!). It kind of hinted that he had a split personality (when he took his glasses off he was EVIL!) but then kind of dropped it.
Also it’s weird that he was shown in the original past being a loving father to his son–and then shown to be the one who murdered his son on the frozen lake. Why?? Did he do that as an old man or as the young man who traveled there via time machine? They showed both the old and the young man hitting the ML with a rock in one of the later flash-forwards so I was confused.
ML’s dad is shown finding the time machine manual but then we don’t see what he does with it. If he’d been a genius, as show hinted at, you would think he would have gone back a month prior and killed the ML before he discovered his connection with the murders. It almost seemed like the show ran out of time and just threw that in that without following through on it. (Or was he committing the murders as someone from the future–since after the last murder of the male student he runs towards the tunnel??)
Unlike a lot of kdramas we discuss here, I’m really not willing to analyze it or dissect it any further because I’m not sure that there was any kind of master plan behind it—in other words, I don’t think it’s worth it. If someone else wants to give it a try, feel free!
Overall, here are the things I didn’t like:
• I was uncomfortable with the level of violence in this show. I really hate seeing women tied up and in vulnerable positions–I especially hated seeing Soon Ae tied up with a bag over her head. It almost seemed like a fetish to show them that way. And I hated seeing the student getting killed with a rock, even if it was only shown in shadow. Maybe the reason I hated the violence is that the show mostly seemed like a romantic mystery, with its light-hearted moments and revisiting family pasts, and then you see these acts of violence.
• Epilogues and then no epilogues (i.e., format changes)
• Unnecessary/awkward romance between ML/FL
• Bad direction and/or no action for actress playing the FL. Packmule3 called this her “deer in the headlights” look, mostly in the earlier episodes just after she had gone back to the past. But I’m not sure if Jin Ki-Joo is a terrible actress. Sure, it’s possible she lacks a lot of range, but I’ve seen her in other dramas where she played a sparkly personality and she did a good job with it. I think her deer/headlights look had as much to do with the poor writing/direction as her abilities.
Things I did like:
• I thought the final scenes before the FL/ML go back to the future were delightful, especially when they showed the FL having a picnic with her future parents and they fussed over her like she was already their child. I also liked how the mom in the present still remembered her good friend from 1987 and had named her daughter after her, even thinking her daughter resembled her (and that the weekend anchor resembled their Korean teacher from 1987).
• I like how the show showed the consequences of their time travel, though I would have welcomed at least half an episode of the pair being back in the present. But most dramas/comedies that deal with time travel rarely linger in the returned present (Back to the Future being the biggest example) because there would probably be too many repercussions/changes to explain—so the few minutes we were given were satisfying.
• I thought the actor who played the FL’s father was quite good for his age, showing exasperation, infatuation, terror, etc. I look forward to seeing him in future projects. (Or is he another 30-year-old playing a high schooler??)
• I liked the theme of healing family rifts and learning to understand and forgive one’s parents by gaining empathy from seeing why they were the way they were.
• The cinematographer gave us some gorgeous scenes, especially when the FL/ML were near the water or standing in a flowering field. If I’d liked this drama more I’d take the time to do some screen shots of them—but I’m ready to move on now.
Thank you @BethB for laying it all out here for us (because I did not wish to think about it further LOL). I agree with you and I feel the same in practically every respect. I do not think this Show is worth the effort to analyse. Much needs to be figured out but whereas I’d be diligently rewatching to find the clues with other shows, in this Show I’ve preferred to FFD the last 2 episodes and do not choose to rewatch anything of the previous ones.
Whether there was a change in the writers or in the intent, we may never know, but Show has ended up being all over the place. It was a time-travel drama but it only made use of time-travel in the beginning and the end instead contributing more to the plot. I recall how Nine Nine-times Travel was so interesting by contrast. I found it strange that YY and HJ returned to 2021, but that their memories were not ‘updated’.
Although YY comes around to appreciate her parents (and HJ, his mother), it did not feel like a warm, coming to terms family drama. It did not seem like a proper murder mystery drama or a proper crime investigation drama. Perhaps show was reflecting the haphazardness of HJ being in the past once the time-machine broke, because it felt lacking in direction.
I didn’t like how Show suddenly ‘revealed’ with circumstantial evidence only, that YYW was the killer, as if it was running out of time and a killer had to be plucked out of the air and presented to us. His so-called motive was insufficient, unless besides being a genius he was also insane.
Yes, the epilogues hinted at so many things to do with GMS/KMS and the killings but I dislike heartily that this led nowhere ie she was a complete red-herring in relation to the murders she claimed to have committed. Her relationship with YYW and how she knew of his crimes is never explained. At the very least she must have been in the know, a party to them of some kind, since she was on the scene to watch and then to write about them. It seems that she made a deal with him… then knowing that she knew about his crimes, why should he have left her free to accuse him later? He should have killed her too.
Too many circumstances are unexplained and do not make sense. Perhaps some new writers had to patch it up here and there but could not tie up the loose ends. Ultimately the ending that was meant to ‘feel-good’ was mostly blah.
As I said, I hope to see these main actors again, but not in the same show or at least not in a romance with each other. They were fine as uncle and niece or partners in investigation, but never looked so unconvincing until they claimed to have a romantic interest in each other.
I’m definitely moving on …
Annyeong 🌷
@GB and BethB, thank you for hanging with the show til the end.
i’m wondering if them going back again to 1987 is to stop the future dad in committing these murders? yes?? anyhoo, i do like the happy ending YY *happy family* and meeting the future SON of YY and HJ. what a handsome and smart boy! So he’s the one who created the time machine car and fixed it, too. wow! if i’m the boy, why didn’t he just do it? but maybe coz he’ll be too young in 1987. leave it to the parents. haha.
i like that HJ was able to have good memories/farewell time with his grandpa and his mom.
so YY started a book titled “A perfect stranger” hmmm 😊