ShortCircuit

For something that's supposed to be based on a real case, this is a copy-cat of 12 Angry Men that really missed some easy marks with me.

First off, it didn't know if it wanted to be serious or a comedy - that music didn't fit any scene and kept grating on my nerves.

Second, if the movie wanted to portray the SK legal system in a positive mark, it managed to imply basically the complete opposite (shoddy investigation, shoddy defence/prosecution, strange involvement of the jury in the actual discovery of how things happened.) The only thing that sounds about right is that innocence must be presumed and guilt has to be proven.

For a cast pretty studded with known actors, it didn't manage to stand out a lot.

The good parts - well, it's a feel good story in the end, so I guess that's okay. And it was an enjoyable throwback to 12 Angry Men, as I said, though that does make me wonder how much it actually resembles that first jury trial case it's based on, LOL.

Edit So I googled it - the first trial by jury in SK did happen in 2008 and it involved a man in his 20s who robbed a woman (70 years old) in her own home, to pay for some debts he and his family had, or whatever. He admitted to his guilt, there was no murder involved, the jury found him unanimously guilty but recommended a short/light sentence due to his circumstances. The judges agreed with the jury and so it ended.

This movie then IS basically a SK take on 12 Angry Men much more than a reflection of any actual cases in SK, LOL.

I got hooked from WWX standing on the cliff and letting go, LOL. Basically from the first half-minute of the drama. Because well. Xiao Zhan and that degree of desperation.

When WWX is recalled by MXY, and I got to actually see him looking cute and that wide million-watts smile, it was just icing on the cake :D

What can I say, I like a pretty face and a tortured hero. I'm shallow that way. :D

I watched it last year LOL. It's one of my favourites, actually (despite the suspension of disbelief parts, and the parts left unsolved - like what happened to DHS's mother in the end? My theory is that she's his father's first victim, but the drama doesn't say anything about it to clear it up.)

I also actually really liked the ending. The fact is - Hyun-Soo basically dies. His body just keeps on breathing. His whole BHS persona and all the memories he's created under that name are wiped out, so he's mostly a blank slate left to take up with Ji Won again, if he so feels like. And he can do so while NOT lying to her about who he really is - the person (probably on the autism spectrum) who can't understand or recognize emotions, but is capable of feeling them, their kid's father (she would be too young to understand if there's any significant change with him, anyway), a person who isn't afraid to be a little cold if he needs to be and someone who doesn't carry the whole blame&guilt for things he never did.

Because TBH, DHS in his BHS persona really had a lot of weight to carry around.

And I really liked how the memory wipe worked - the whole memories-to-dust scene was done perfectly IMHO. I was afraid he'd get his memories back in the end (because that would have cheapened the whole use of the trope in that kind of ending) but they did stick with it and gave it meaning after all. I appreciated they had the guts to keep with it to the bitter end (because yet, it felt a bit bitter, too. After all, DHS struggled so hard only to lose it all - except it didn't feel like he lost everything in the end.) If he had died instead - well then I would've sharpened my pitchfork and readied my torch :D

So I don't know, the whole drama - including the ending - did work for me very well. I do like LJG a whole lot, and he did his outmost in this role, so that may be a part of it, but he really IS that good an actor, and the role fit him very well. I hope his next drama is as good as this one, I've been missing him for the past year :D

It's not huge once you get invested LOL. It's one of the most bingeable dramas I've ever watched.

Be warned the first two eps set up the present timeline, so if you get confused with the names and character introductions, don't worry, they'll be revisited. The first half of the series is going to start at the beginning (in a very long flashback) and lead you to those first two eps in a logical manner, once you're in. Don't skip them - by the time you're in the present again, they'll make a lot of sense.

The series is on Youtube for free, from WeTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GVDlK0Sxb0

The novel it's based on is danmei (yes, that's BL). But the story moves on its own accord until the romance blooms in the last few chapters, so if BL is something not your thing, you can pretend they're just soulmates in the platonic sense, LOL, because Chinese censorship of the drama will help you with that, a lot. If you do like BL... it's pretty obvious, what's going on. Well, for the watchers, not for one of the main characters, who's been born with the nickname Captain Oblivious LOL.

Erm... I didn't get to invent mouth-to-mouth LOL. That's how they transfer SOME air to people who are in danger or drowning and can't be pushed out of the water immediately or something. It's also a basic stage in CPR anyway (which she also gives him once he's out, but he's already not breathing on his own at that point), beside cardiac massage and other measures.

If this were real life, and he were really drowning (and saved in the last possible second), the chances of him surviving would already be in the less-than-10% numbers. IF he survived, he would also stand a good chance to have some brain damage, too. If you want to be picky about CPR and dramatic rescues, pick on those statistics, LOL.

RE: If I think it helps... Well, I know the real-life statistics of CPR success, and ALL the movies and dramas I've watched have those statistics basically reversed. So yes, suspension of disbelief is required. But they're not actually lying either - it COULD work, given a number of conditions were met. Unless you want to nit-pick at each and every thing - but it's fiction so they can get ignore some hard facts from time to time. This is not a medical hard-fact drama.

Much harder to suspend disbelief, for me, was with the fast recuperation of BHS from his years-long coma than DHS's almost-drowning... But again, this is not a medical drama, so there.

She's not giving him CPR yet, she's giving him air (because he's still at least partially conscious,) You can see the bubbles escaping while she makes another dive or two to get him enough air to breathe until she can drag him out.)

She IS giving him CPR after she has him by the pool side.

That is disheartening to read :( I was hoping that after that whole uproar, they'd give back his plotline and (considering the time spent on it, it's probably a lot of the filmed scenes) re-edit the whole thing to include more of him.

Oh well that only helps me wait for the end more - I am happy he got top billing again, but it DID look like they were using his name to get the people's attention, but not planning on letting him show off his skills much (so a PR stunt on their side, doubled with a huge dose of f-u toward XZ). So if they generally edited him out of half the series, then they'd better be ready for the probable consequences in terms of ratings (if it matters to them.)

What are the new rules being introduced? They get involved in TV&web dramas so much lately, it's hard to keep up to date :(

I'm not watching this yet until it's certain XZ did get back most of his scenes in it, and that he's not SL-but-posted-as-main-cast-for-PR-purposes (I remember the situation last summer.)

But - and I'm sorry if it's been asked before - does he sing the ED song? (The duet with the female singer.) It definitely sounds like his voice, and I don't know how to look for it in YT. (I didn't even know it aired until I saw the notification on MDL T_T)

PS. From the snippets I've watched, it definitely looks properly era-aged, LOL. It definitely caught my interest, and I'll watch it... provided there are no shenanigans with XZ's top billing. I don't like HJY enough to watch a whole drama just to see him get the girl and be the hero in the end.

K acts separately, outside RSY's knowledge - like his letters to the FL or his donation of RSY's money.

It looks more like DID.

He let go because the other cop - the witness - hit him over the head and then destroyed the phone. He could only go try and save the FL after that.

But then this series doesn't rely on too much inner logic anyways LOL.

Jae Seong + Gyeong Tae = LOVE

I just love how everybody's adopting the rookie as their little brother LOL.

Also, the plot is going a bit crazy right now, I have no idea how it could be solved rationally... then again, there was a lot unreasonable about this drama anyway, so, oh well :D

Zombies, 8 episodes... Everybody ded.

I am still on the fence about her, though. The only parts she's in that I kind of like are the parts where K is bashfully in love with her and I can only imagine what comes through RSY whenever he (K) is in his lovey-dovey phase LOL.

But mostly I forget what they're doing in that scene and just consider her eye-to-eyebrows ratio and wonder if her eyebrows are left that thick by accident or it's actually a very well planned form so that her eyes' arc*** can be better shown. (This might be beer talking LOL, nevermind me, I usually don't start calculating actors' appeal during the episode... if it's enticing enough. Unless it's Xiao Zhan. Because he's Xiao Zhan. I can't help it.)

*** In case this doesn't come clearly (because beer), her eyes look pretty Renascentine to me. Like she's a maiden in a Renaisance or Byzantine painting, if you know the kind I mean.

It improves from ep 2, and gets right up my alley from ep 3. The first one was a bit frustrating for me too :D

K is growing on me LOL. He was a lot more fun this episode.

And OGT is in the team now, yay! Poor Jae Seon is drinking vinegar :D

PS The Heart Mender steals the show LOL. More of his whacky treatment plan please :D

The Moon's gravitational acceleration is only 1.6 m/s2 (square, I don't know how to make it appear correctly), whereas the Earth is 9.8 m/s2. That means things weigh about 6 times less on the Moon than they do on Earth (not 80 times less :) ) The thing about astronaut costumes is that in the yea back years (when the Americans were putting Armstrong on the Moon, for example), they weighed quite a lot, precisely because the reduced weight could be moved by a normal-powered person. I don't remember right now, but they were in the 100 kg of mass or less range, added to the astronaut's own mass. And they still jumped around pretty funnily because they COULD. No air resistance, lower gravity, and the need not to stay in the sun for too long (because they were shielded from the radioactivity but they had to keep risks low.) Nowadays, space suits in the ISS are around 50 kg of mass, and they can do EVA in them, some of which last for hours, so I guess they advanced pretty much from Neil's time (with added functions too.)

So assuming the astronauts at LEAST kept up to our current abilities, they'd have similar space suits and could walk in them (or jump, rather) for a pretty fast walk in the sun while on the surface of the Moon. They said something about the reduced oxygen reserve to justify the need for speed, but it was not very specific, so I guess you could say they had to leave the shuttle so fast they couldn't get into more advance EVA suits. Or something. But let's say they weren't in the right suits, and the oxygen was depleted pretty fast - high effort activity would consume that oxygen even faster. So,,, I don't know. I mean, astronauts would be trained for such an instance, presumably, but some of the crew were not astronauts. This is a find-your-own-explanation thing, and not the only one.

The thing re: lunar water is more complex and I'm not that good at chemistry, so for me it's mostly mumbo-jumbo and even less hard science than the maths and physics. I mean - the first infected in the present team gets it from molecules he inhales (because NO MASKS DAMMIT - no seriously, this still pisses me off so much!) from the dessicated lungs of a corpse that supposedly remained in vaccuum and space-level cold for 5 years... So the molecule is incapacitated at minus 80C, but it remained active and infected a new host after YEARS of basically minus 200C?!

And as you say, if it clones itself indefinitely from an original molecule, then why the need for a host's biological fluids after all? That behaviour is organism-like, so it would have to be alive, but water is inorganic (non-life.) If it's self-replicating, where does it get the matter it needs, when it ends the fluids of the host? That final gush of water is like all the water from the previous victims just gathered around - in liquid form - for 5 years and just... decided to destroy everything in one go, for drama reasons LOL.

Plus the haunted elevator - that served what purpose? Unless it was just for another chance to neglect the existence of gravity LOL.

I haven't watched that one, because the trailer made it look like a SK version of the originally Japanese/Chinese drawn-into-the-game kind of story (I'm not certain if it would qualify as isekai.)

Would you say the plot was ignoring the laws of physics there, or that the fantastic elements (of the game world) were more important than the actual science? Because that's the definite separation mark / element between fantasy and scifi for me.

W: Two Worlds was a fantasy, for example, even if things were happening in the present-time, in both worlds, and that's because none of the causes of the world change was explained. Likewise The King Eternal Monarch - the whys were never explained. That's pure fantasy.

In Space Sweepers at least they had a try at space opera - and managed it, more or less, on a pretty simple scenario that borrowed a bit from this or that (the space dock for example was pretty reminiscent of the stage in The Fifth Element docks, and the general atmosphere was kind of like William Gibson-inspired cyberpunk. So even if they didn't try to explain the tech and the setting, it was familiar at the same time and tried to follow the rules of the universe as we know it.

The Silent Sea did very well, IMHO, with the Earth background - the deserts, and the dust-filled atmosphere, and the general sepia colour tone, but completely ignored simple facts like Moon's gravity being 6 times less than Earth's (even outside the station, Cpt. Han moved on that elevator like it was in Earth gravity, for example.) Or simple preventative measures that a scientifically-trained crew (of which we actually don't know much on what they were supposed to even do there, except for the captain, Dr. Song and the other doctor, and the engineer/villain) would have no excuse not to use. Like Dr. Hong using medical isolation equipment only inside the med lab, and everybody else - and her too actually - touching dead bodies with their bare hands and not even simple masks on, while trying to figure out a maybe-airborne virus. That is just not done, and not destroy suspension of disbelief immediately. And that's not even touching the maybe-immortal clone girl that didn't age from when she was tested on, didn't breathe - or need to (but she can cry and make sounds), didn't eat or maybe drink (but her hair grew, elsewise she remained the same as 5 years back...)

Anyway, as I said, for a drama that tried to be at least generally-scientifically sound, this failed. I really hope the next time they try something like this, it'll be so much better and inspire others to try a bit more, dare a bit further, give it a chance or two extra and make something that could really stand out on its own power.

Since binging this series the day it aired - because I was waiting for it and hoping for the best - I've expressed my dissatisfaction with what I think didn't work in its favour, and then came back, from time to time, to see how other people considered it.

What I've seen are a few people who know their tastes - and their simple, undeniable science facts - well enough to say it, and who give a little credit to the actors for making do with whatever the script gave them. And also, I've seen a lot of personal attacks on those people, from other watchers who keep gushing over how good and amazing and awesome this drama is.

Over the few past days, my initial impression of it didn't change for the better. I'm even glad I managed to see it before reading some of the "fan" comments, because that would have probably tainted it even more. To all these persons attacking anyone who "dares" not like the drama to the skies and above, here are a few things:

1. Most of us have seen other scifi series and movies, a lot of them much, much better than this one. We haven't seen many SK (or Asian) pure scifi (that is, one that tries hard enough to respect the facts of science) series so far because there aren't many of those. With the exception of horror, which is very well represented, and a few paranormal or fantastic elements in dramas (things like time travel or fantastic beasts of Asian lore like the gumiho, etc, used as plot elements to move the story along), I can only think of one newish SK movie that is actually scifi, and that's Space Sweepers. And even that one is way better than this drama, in terms of entertainment and plot, and it wasn't one of the very best scifi movies I've ever seen. (Keep in mind I AM a scifi&fantasy reader & watcher, and I've read and watched movies for decades. Yes, I am that old.)

2. All of us know well what we like and what we don't like, and most of all, what WORKS for us. We all make allowances for actors we like, and we're willing to close our eyes to the not-so-great of their work that they starred in. Not-so-great movies/dramas happen, from time to time, and it's not the fault of the cast that they're just not good enough. And despite the talent involved, if things do NOT gel well in a drama, they do not magically become better just because good actors are in it. So the argument that the cast and crew are good therefore anything they made is good does not hold water, sorry.

3. This is one of the very first scifi dramas that SK made (with foreign investment). They're allowed their learning pangs. I have no doubt that, as they learned to make very good horror movies/dramas, they'll be able to make better scifi movies/dramas in the future. But this is not the best they could have made, and pointing out the flaws in the script does not make the commenters "haters" or giving them bad intentions. The comment section should allow all opinions to be expressed with no attacks at the person commenting, just to keep it civil. So to you all persons who liked this above all others and keep comparing it with classics, I'll give you your right to your own opinion (can only speak for myself, obviously), and hope you'll give me the right to my own opinion. And no, I am not easily bored, I have a long enough attention span, I am pretty good at catching hidden details, as I've already said I have a VERY extensive list of scifi&fan movies/dramas I could draw upon for experience, I know my physics and maths so I just can't suspend disbelief in order for the story to make some sense, and no, I am not a direct fan of any of the actors in the drama, nor did I watch it for their sake - I watched it because the premise looked very interesting and after Space Sweepers, I really did hope it'll be at least as good (if not better).

And it was not.

I won't get into an argument here, just in case anyone is feeling like it. Let's all agree to disagree and maybe please keep the personal attacks aside, if it's possible.

If you've reached so far, thanks.

Soooo...

RSY: What's your name?
K: K
RSY: GAY?!
K (threatening tone): K.

OK, show, I'll believe you. A-ha.

LHK: Why do you keep leaving me flowers and not talking to me?
K: *shy emoticon*
LHK: What?!
K: *starts writing a whole romantic poem on the spot*
LHK: Okay *clicks off*
K: OH NOES!

Also, I'll bet you that's the orphanage where RSY started his life or where he was dropped off or something, before being adopted by mamma Ryu.

Episodes 3 and 4 are much better than the first two. The crazy is toned down, which works very well for me, and the bad is - like before - not necessarily that bad, LOL.

Yay, OGT woke up! I'm watching it for his story line, I want him to go on the Narcotics team to replace someone there, or if not, working with RSY in Internal Affairs.

So this is going to be an episodic - but linked - series. First you get the politician, then the druggies, what's next?