I’m here!

OK it’s TIME!!! Let’s start now! 🙂

HI @IF @GB, I am here.

Hi @WE.

Hi @WE, I find that now the start or Opening Credits gives us the FULL opening tune, (when before there was just a short snippet of it) with the sound of discordance in the music… I guess to refer to the nightmare in the prophetic dreams.

This dirty girl lives in a pig room. 🙂

Hi @FF, @MM!

We get the dream that keeps HJ from going to work.

Hi @WE, @IB, @FF, @MM. Since I always get behind I started a few minutes early and immediately got caught up in the drama again. How does it do that.

@GB, I am not sure my opening credit is giving me the full tune…hmm, I will have to listen again after this rewatch is over. Very interesting that there would be a discordance in the music.

HJ tries to catch JC every morning at the cafe? … Why?

@GB, I think they didn’t kiss in reality. They kissed only in their dreams lol.

YB and JC chatting as if they are good friends.

@FF I can’t stand YB. He deliberately makes it look like JC is holding up the lift and then he takes the opportunity to announce/boast about himself and put JC down in front of everyone there.

LOL the funny parts about Prosecutor Shin (the girl).

@WE, Writer/Show gives us intro to the side characters who will play a bigger part in later episodes. We already see Cho Hee from the cafe and later we meet her brother who sells chicken parts.

@WE I believe Shin just wants to hear good stuff about herself but instead she hears that she’s just slightly above average.

Then LOL the femme fatale is holding up bones of chicken and causing a scene in the chicken restaurant.

We the jacket in HJ’s dream worn by this guy who is her senior.

Her argument about the chicken is so funny now that I know where it leads. Her deductive skills are being put to good use even before they are needed for crime solving.

“patient Zero” would have been a punchier title for this episode. I guess it doesnt pick up the romance pivot.

How disgusting YB is in the elevator about “bases”.

There is a series of ‘people peering in thru a window///to peering into a future, perhaps not so clearly. Pardon for being late to reply I lost sound…

@MM, YB has always been ‘yucky’ in what he pushes others to do and what he insinuates.

@WE, yes it was a joke of the show. HJ is not at all like a femme fatale and with chicken bones to boot, even less so!!!

I like that Woo Tak is trying to solve the mystery of why the dream about each other.

Hesitation should have been the song. HJ asks JC for advice as she hesitates to return to work. JC hesitates to makes a swift judgemment. She defends him. and lastly that beautiful metaphorical crosswalk.

@IB, I fancy that we the audience are the ones peering through the glass darkly, only seem warped images. But at the same time show is giving us lots of clues.

The chief is the only christian here, another is bouddhist (we see his bracelet) and other, I don’t know, confusean or anything else.

@WE…. LOL The prayers before meals are full of agenda!!! They are telling each other off by praying out loud. Then they argue in prayer about how the other person is wrong about the case. Totally unChristian in their prayer!!!

Femme fatales never live in a pig room, they are like Sacred Birman cat, only top luxury and beautiful silk hair. 😀

@WE, well this femme fatale is not the killer looks type but she really knows how to argue.

Boss remembers Nam Hong Ju as the reporter who disappeared from the news.

@WE, yes for this Writer, no scenes are totally random. We will see the cats again.

I wonder what HJ’s cutting her hand accidentally might signify. She goes out fed up with herself and her lot of being afraid. Yes that crosswalk scene. She cannot take the steps to cross over yet.

@FF just when HJ decides that the guy feeding the cats with chicken he stole from his customers is not her business it will become worth reporting.

@GB, reporting about cats dying mysteriously?

@WE, Hong Ju does not think ahead about other consequences to saving someone, without explaining it to the other people involved.

LOL Curse of the Han River District Pros Office.

Hong Ju really should have said something first before spraying the extinguisher over the people. How can she imagine she’d get away with doing that and apologising.

The cute bad-breakfast meeting of the guys, WT and JC.

The accident/murder of the brother of the fried chicken shop happened during JC’s shift. The prosecutor in-charge should have been JC but his colleague covered him so that he can save HJ.

@FF it was the “Curse of the Han River District Pros Office strikes again” where the one taking over someone else’s night shift gets to deal with a lot of work. In this case, with a death and an autopsy. Pros Lee will get into trouble over this case.

@GB, yes HJ acts on impulse. Hesitation is a good thing?

A good billiard player sets up each play considering all the consequences to the other balls in play.

@IB regardless of her lack of caution, I like HJ’s way of talking her mum around to allowing her to go back to work at SBC.

@GB, No. Kdrama heros never justify themselves about so mudane things. It’s better to say nothing, run, and risking to be beaten to death. LOL.

@FF, yes thinking that the one who saved him is a boy instead of that it was a girl, and HJ to boot, is JC seeing through a glass but darkly… not getting the clear image.

@IB I wonder if nothing being decided if Cho Hee was saved by HJ might start dreaming about her. But we don’t really get to see that.

In this episode we really start to see the unintended consequences of changing the future. It seems random. Surely JC would have had to deal with the same situation in the autopsy room (and be less prepared for it possibly — what are lawyers there doing an autopsy for! — since he is new). It looks like nothing is affected except Cho Hee does not get burned, and HJ and JC do not get beat up. But, we know that there is a residue of sorts since Cho Hee feels that burning sensation and earlier that WT feels like he should have died.

@SD, now mum comes up with a plan to get her neighbour to keep HJ safe. She’s bribing him with breakfast. He was just trying to sort out the garbage and decide if mackerel was food waste but finds that the has to make other decisions out of the blue.

@FF, probably is the tagline of all shows that keep us guessing too and where characters are being ‘blur’ or gaslit.

@IB so we finally get a real mirror and HJ looking into it to cheer herself on to face a challenge. And we have JC’s voiceover about a mask and a mirror. Now this is another seeing through the glass but darkly.

Lots of cautions about safe driving? Had laws recently changed in S korea or was it a big issue for some reason?

So it finally takes JC holding her hand to get HJ to cross that road. I liked that he gave her a long considering look and then seeing that she didn’t mind, nodded and brought her across to start work again.

@FF yes, compared to how he avoided the kiss, he has now decided to take on the task of protecting HJ. Must have been that her mum’s words struck a chord in him.

Yeah @MM it’s the Korean great tradition/practice of being appreciative and thanking others… feeling that they owe and must repay. It’s embodied in this show as dreams which show their saviour needing saving themselves, and how the grateful person responds.

The only strange one is HJ because she dreams of strangers getting hurt or dying, and it’s unlikely so many of them had a hand in saving her.

The last 5 or 10 minutes of this episode are outstanding, in my view. 2 beautiful osts

The work outfits on the bed showing her mother’s permission and then the new workplace outfit in blue representing her fear.

He mother and her discusing her going back to work-talking about whether fate is inevitable or not. Her confucian respect to her mother-that she will not go back without her mother’s permission. More mixed philosophical/religious views

The music and lyrics while she is standing at the crosswalk and then he supports her to cross the road . The scene we see in retrospect where she wipes her mascara on his tie is like a confession scene. When I watched this drama before I kept asking myself how it seemed they were dating.

The message is to not let fear of a bad outcome stop one from living one’s life. She feels a degree of control over the future now and support to deal with what the future holds. TRUST.

This was an inspiring ending to this episode, mixed with scenes of the cat murderer who I think is related to her death vision.

@GB, I had the same problem. I could only hear one part or watch instead of reading (or when the dead cats were on the screen, read rather than watch). That’s why I had to stop and go screen by screen to write the text down. I have been thinking along these lines lately (though not the imagery of mirror and mask), so I copied the voice-over to think on it some more.

I got a book out of the library yesterday, essays by Milan Kundera (“Encounter”); in one he writes: ” I could put it differently. Bacon’s portraits (writing of the Irish painter Francis Bacon) are an interrogation on the limits of self. Up to what degree of distortion does an individual remain himself.” So not on the topic exactly, but the dissolution of self in death, or here the ‘fading between the mask and the mirror’ coupled with a shot of the coffin going into the crematorium fire is very similar.

BTW; the discordant note is in the Episode 4 intro as well. I have not gone back to check the earlier episodes.

Okay, I got too curious and was sure I would not hear it if I didn’t listen right now. The discordant notes are in the intro to Episodes 1-3 as well. Early on as the graphic of the girl sinks into the bed and a bit later as the bus passes by and then the field shows up — or at least that’s the imagery I see with the Viki episodes I am watching.

I had not noticed it before, though, so thanks for pointing it out.

@GB She did save all those strangers, though, on the bus.

With a bit of time here are my ‘analysis’ and thoughts on the mirrors and masks theme. I’ll break it into parts as it’s rather long with the transcription of the dialogue.

[Timestamp 51:50] Voiceover of JC as he watches HJ from a distance: “Facial expressions are so mysterious.” HJ stands at the bus stop ready to return to work. She looks at herself in the traffic mirror and psyches herself up to return to where danger lurks. The mirror reflection is warped because it’s a convex mirror.

JC’s Voiceover: “You can tell the mood, thoughts and emotions easily through one’s facial expression as if you’re looking into the mirror.” JC boards the same bus as HJ but she does not even notice that he’s there as she speaks to her mum on the phone.

Voiceover: “But you can also hide your mood, thoughts, and feelings with your face expressions like putting on a mask.” Outside SBC Hong Ju stands frozen at the crosswalk as others cross. The traffic light changes and she still has not crossed. JC watches her.

Voiceover: “But in the flash of a moment … [ we see the coffin of Cho Hee’s brother going into the cremation chamber … the body is evidence that is to be rendered into ashes].

Voiceover: “… where the boundary between that mask and mirror comes down. The truth that no one saw.” We see that fraticidal killer Dae Hee’s face at the window looking into the chamber changes from tearful to broad gloating smirk – a grimace of triumph, because no one can see his expression.

We cut to the view of several dead kittens. The discordant note joins the OST to alert us that things are way off from the happy melody. We (the audience) see in this scene, not through a mirror but clearly through the window.

@IB, @MM
Continued …

JC protests that his nice tie is used as a tissue: “Excuse me.”
HJ: “You said you’d protect me. Can’t you at least do this for me?”
She leans her head against his shoulder and he puts up with it with forbearance LOL.

She glances at him and notes: “You’re not avoiding it today.”
He thinks about it and decides that part of protecting her is to give her a reassuring hug or pats on the back LOL.

Remembering all this, HJ takes heart as she looks at the new jacket that her dream has told her she will die in, and says with a smile that she really likes the jacket. With JC she believes she can change her dream. So we know that HJ’s breezy entry into her office was another mask she had to wear. Her walk back to work had been a difficult one.

Outside JC continues to stare up at the building. He looks at the mascara/eye-liner stain on his tie, and smiles to himself. Make up is another part of our mask. HJ had finally let her mask slip when she had cried and wiped her make up off on his tie. With one less mask or wall between them, the stain was the mark of their restart as friends and much more.

= = =
My theory as to why Hong Ju seemed to have been trying to meet JC for days after the almost kiss.

In her dreams, she saw that in the future, she had trusted him. She had hugged him and kissed him first. Facing the demons of wanting to go back to work but fearing that she would die, she sought a sounding board. Knowing that JC would understand her predicament of her dreams coming true, she wanted to bounce the idea off him about her returning to work. Perhaps she hoped that he would be on her side and offer to help her. She could not steel herself to actually ask him to protect her, nor to make the decision to face her possible death alone, but needed the hope or assurance that with JC in her life, she could change her dream.

When she heard his words offering her his protection, she burst into tears because it was what she had needed to hear.

As for JC, he had been avoiding her for days because of the almost kiss, but at the same time he had been alerted to HJ’s predicament by her mum and he saw that HJ had been searching for him. His voiceover tells us the flow of his thoughts as he observed HJ from a distance to gauge whether she needed his protection or not. Even at the crosswalk, he had looked at her to see her reaction. She did not baulk at the idea of crossing the road when he held her hand, so he nodded to himself and took her across the road.

Unlike many others, for eg his fellow prosecutors, JC made the choice to notice what the mask and mirrors hid, and to take the responsibility to find a solution. In the light of this, we think again about the drunk driver case and how unlike two of the others, JC had seen the culpability of the man who made a decision to allow the drunk driving. [Just like in I Hear Your Voice, the purveyor of the law, grows from being careless to serious about dealing responsibly with guilty parties.

This Writer has this underscoring theme in mind … that those who are to uphold the law, should do so responsibly.]

I had to go away fast yesterday, and reading your last comments now.
Then, I have to rewatch last ten minutes because I slipped at what you say, GB.
It’s interesting, all this play with masks and mirrors. I need to take a close look.

@GB, I remember Investigator Choi Dam Dong had a reaction, like he doesn’t trust the crying brother. This guy has an eye! He already cornered the bad father about a detail. Nice character.

Hi @IB, I’m glad you came back and had a good read. This writer has the knack of laying out a whole bunch of clues about what she wants to say and then bringing them together in flashbacks or flashforwards interspersed with current time action. It makes the analyses richer and if we are quick; or like me, slow but have time to rewatch and think it through, we will notice a lot more going on within, between or despite the characters, than just the peripheral action. 🙂