autumn carrot

I feel like she is virginal archetype. She has no principals, just heart eyes. She saved Sooho when she thought he was a student protestor, then she helped kang mo even though he is an ANSP agent, and now if she ends up helping Sooho again, that means she just does whatever a person with a penis tells her to do regardless of them being a handsome student intellectual, a torturer or an enemy spy. That comes across as a very virginal trait to me.
I've been irritated by her actions for a while now but now I feel more at ease with her because she's just a loose canon! No point in finding logic in her actions.
Sooho is a spy. I feel that's the beginning and end of him. It's a complicated concept in itself but there's not much I can really say about him other than that. Yes, it has all those duty/heart conflict and being good in bad situations but then there are all these characters running around too who just disrupt the flow of his angsty character arc! I could care less about the wives, for example. Or like Kang Mo is such a useless foil.

We were shown today that the gun was empty all along. He was bluffing the whole time.

I don't trust my own opinions about soo hoo at all. I'm just not sure if I am feeling sorry because it's Jung Hae-In or because the character is actually good.😶
I actually like Young Ro going the manipulative way because so far she was the only character who seemed all good in a white lotus way but now she's grey and ambiguous like everyone else.
At this point I'm not really holding out a candle for a sweet or even plausible romance...I just wanna get out of that dorm. I feel like we're held hostage there too!

All I could think about during that hug was, "damn, They must both stink like sweat right now!"

Han Joo Won is truly an immature child. He's so naive and really sees everything so simply.

Nooooooooooooooooo😭😭😭😭

I really like Lee Dong Shik. He's just such a fun character to watch.

I thought the synopsis sounded like The Night of. Turns out it's based on the same story as that show!

Me too. I don't understand what's happening at all!

I really dislike him too.

Such a helpful list, thank you!
If you would like to add, Inspector Koo has a side character who is heavily implied to be gay (he is and is even in a relationship with another guy, but they don't say the word explicitly).

I hope she'll get more main character roles. She's very good.

Very interesting points.
As you mentioned, the writer seems to have had big ambitions of portraying ambiguous characters with questionable morals and then setting up the viewer to decide who is the one they will root for. However, I think for these narratives to work, the characters require a certain amount of charisma that unfortunately, the mostly bleak and moody acting of everyone does not deliver on.
So now the writer is slowly revealing that maybe the situation is not as grey as we initially thought and certain characters are definitely better than the others.

Yes, the show shot itself in the foot by placing the show in the 80s. It doesn't really add anything to the show other than opening painful wounds and bringing up controversy.
The main plot is political fallacy, romeo and juliet romance, and fatal ambition. They could set this any time between 1954 to present day. It would be the same.

I understand. I'm not sure if I'll finish watching it either.

what a mood!

If you think about it, it's very clear that Sooho doesn't really intend to harm anyone in the process of this hostage situation because most of what he does seem to be for show, rather than as a real threat. I will give credit for that.
But I really think the writer is in over her head. I guess it'll take the whole show to properly judge the work but so far I just don't know where she's going with all this and it's already halfway through the show. It still feels like set up but we should have some direction by now, right?

Oh seriously! I think it'sthe direction. I think they realized shoving a gun in a 20yo's face is super messed up so they tried to fix that by showing how she is not afraidat all!!! Which makes no sense.
And yes, the other hostages don't really seem to grasp the severity of the situation most times except for when someone is going to pass out.
And those bombs are so pointless when people can easily jump over them all the time?! Like what's the logic there?

Exactly! During the last episode there was a shift in how sooho is shown and it comes across as if the writer felt like the grey scaling of his character might be tipping him too far into villainous so he was suddenly defanged a little. It'll probably work on most viewers if they're not trying look too hard into things but for me the writing is very shaky so far. Good at creating tension but the intention behind it all is very sloppy.

I really like your comments. They are very well-thought out and you raise really good points.
I think so far the show has failed to define its ethical dichotomy.
That hostage ansp agent is constantly shown through the lens of a hero. It might show the political leaders are bumbling, self-serving fools but the only characters shown to be ruthless are the northerners which is not a surprise but it does undermine the male lead and just problematizes the show further because at the end of the day it's a showdown between two villains and so far the fictitious villains are more villainous than the real life villains still fresh in the public's mind.
I don't understand how the writer could’ve missed the implications of her work while writing it.