oddsare

Forest walk, wood-fired sauna, then straight into the river. That sounds like the best possible way to spend a day, and I’m a little envious reading it from California.

And you’re right about the location scouts. Somebody drove those mountain roads over and over looking for exactly the right bend. That work never gets credited and it’s half of why this show feels the way it does.

Very Finnish greetings received and returned. 🤍

You spotted the home thing on your own, which is the hard part. I just had the Chinese to back it up.

The media war was so well done. Buying trending topics, planting the counter-narrative, timing the announcement to bury the scandal. That’s exactly how it works, and I loved that they showed both sides of the fight instead of just the damage.

And yes, what Jialing and Qing Lang say about getting to your goal keeps circling back to Lan Jie’s speech. You don’t force the melon off the vine. Jialing didn’t deny anything or beg for sympathy, she just brought Lan Jie’s own work forward and let it speak. The slow honest thing beat the fast loud one.

As for Chang Yang, my guess is he’s not pulling away at all. He knows his father has people watching him, and he knows his sister isn’t on his side. So he’s back in town, in a cheap hotel, saying nothing. That’s not withdrawal. That’s positioning. He’s keeping Qing Lang off the board while he works out how much of Old Xu’s plan he’s already holding.

Ep 1 does the thing I was hoping for. It doesn’t rush into cute couple mode. It sits with the apologies first, which is the closure Season 1 never gave us. Everyone gets to start clean.

The future Gelz and Baby storyline is a great hook. It makes the 2024 scenes feel warmer and sadder at the same time. You’re watching something you already know has a shape.

The look is still very Gelboys. Colors, illustrations, music, all of it. Fun, messy, stylish, loud.

They’re back. Ep 2 can’t come fast enough.

Three is not excessive, three is commitment. And the age thing kills me. This material would sink most actors twice their age and they are out here underplaying it perfectly. Hiding talent like that should be a crime.

Yes, and that irony never stops being devastating. You cannot send people out to learn how the rest of the world runs and expect them to come home unchanged. Staying in the middle was the only honest option available. Anything else and it stops being a drama and starts being an argument.

You go twice a year, at this point citizenship is just paperwork catching up to reality. And yes, Inn took this one. Knowing the choice is coming does not help at all. I saw it on the horizon the whole time and still got hit by it.

Same, I braced for the soft version where love conquers the monarchy and everybody hugs. Instead they let it hurt. The chokehold is deserved, I am also not being released.

History lessons. Bestie is out here doing homework while I am rewinding to study how Ongsa cries. Because somebody needs to teach me. That was art. What I do on my couch is a medical event.

The history part is what gets me too. It would have been so easy to flatten that into costume drama and let the romance carry it, and instead they made the politics cost something real for both of them. Inn and Ongsa are doing the heaviest lifting of the year. No notes, no miracle needed.

That much you can say. That much. Ma’am, what else are you sitting on.

Oh, this makes so much sense now. You’re not watching Chang Yang go into the woods, you’re recognizing it.

And here’s the funny part: the very first thing I wrote about this show was that I wanted to walk into that mountain and hunt for mushrooms. I meant it as a fantasy. You just described it as your autumn. Finland and Yunnan and a woman in California all reaching for the same thing.

That grounding you describe, forgetting your worries among the berries and the moose, is exactly what the mountain does for these characters. The show understands it because you understand it. Some things don’t need translating at all.

Not stalking, that’s just how MDL works! And you’ve described exactly what this is. I write because the feelings won’t sit still until I’ve put them somewhere. It is tiring, you’re right, but the alternative is walking around all day with an unsorted episode in my chest. Virtual tea gratefully accepted. ☕

This is the most meaningful response any of my posts has gotten. “My life looks like mine, no one else wrote it” belongs beside Lan Jie’s speech, honestly.

And what you said about regret is true and worth repeating. People don’t regret their mistakes at the end. They regret the things they were too afraid to try. Which is exactly why her definition of courage matters, it happens before anything visible, in the private moment of admitting what you’re actually scared of.

Also, Chang Yang as the male version of you made me smile. He’d be lucky to end up where you have.

That’s very kind, thank you! The truth is my posts are pure impulse. I watch, I get emotional, I type. There’s no structure holding any of it together, which is exactly why I’ve never thought about the discussion forum. But I love that you’re reading them with your morning tea, that’s the right way to take them.

Yes, exactly. That last point is the whole thing for me. Proximity as opportunity only looks like generosity if you assume the ceiling is fixed. A favor granted and a right held are not the same object, even when they get you into the same room. Phob knows that in his body, which is why he cannot be grateful the way they want him to be. And you are right that the royals are not being cynical about it. That is what makes it hard to argue with them.

It rewards every rewatch. Enjoy round two!🙌🏻

Phob has no way of knowing what comes after. He picks constitutional rule because absolute power has to end, and the cost of that is Thin. He knows it and does it anyway. What he gets is not a clean future, just a door that was locked for a very long time and is now open. Everything ugly that follows does not cancel out his courage or his hope. It only tells us that changing a system and finishing the fight for democracy are two different jobs.

And Thin needs time. He is grieving two things at once: the aristocratic world that raised him is going, and the person he loves is the one holding the knife. Phob's choice is political. For Thin it is personal, all the way down. So when he pushes back, I do not read it as a man who cannot handle change. He is mourning a world, an identity, and a relationship that all felt permanent right up until they were not.

Then he apologizes to his father. He says sorry because of him, the whole aristocratic class goes down. His father is a royalist to the bone, and he still tells Thin it is not his fault. I believe he means it. But this is the same man who spent years handing Thin the family honor to carry, and you cannot put something that heavy in a son's hands and then absolve him of dropping it. That is how grief works when you have been raised to believe your bloodline is the point of you. You cannot separate the man from the class, so when the class dies you file the death under your own name. His father says no. Thin has already decided yes.

Thank you for this! If the leaf is his award, then the birthday gift is even funnier and sweeter than I thought. The world gave him one golden leaf for being a great actor. Chang Yang gave him 1006 for being himself. And insisted it was just an investment.

Oof, “illusions of heaven so many times but always takes it away” is such a precise way to put it. That’s exactly the pattern, and it explains why leaving quietly was never going to be enough for him.

And you’re right that being hated is still better than being forgotten. For someone who’s spent the whole show being treated as replaceable, making himself unforgettable might be the only power he’s got left.