omfg I can’t believe I missed doing a spring roundup post. Real talk, I was not watching any dramas in the spring, which is a bummer to think about since I’m just wasting money on my DramaFever subscription…
There are a few dramas that have piqued my interest (mostly on the j-drama side) but for now, I am watching the OCN remake of BBC’s Life on Mars.
[white_box] MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR EPISODES 1-8 AHEAD. [/white_box]
Without having watched the original or knowing anything about it, I started Life on Mars because of strong cast (Go Ah-sung, Jung Kyung-ho, and Park Sung-woon) and I’m enjoying it. There are a few things I was put off by, namely the casual 80’s misogyny and violence; I recognize that these are things that just come with the times but I’m judging anyway lol. Lee Yong-ki sucks and Nam-sik’s silence is violence. Put some RESPECT on Yoon Na-young’s name!
The nature of this story is one that requires you to have your brain turned on at all times, but in earlier episodes I found myself sort of turning my brain off and just enjoying where the episode’s mysteries took me. I wasn’t too concerned about the bigger picture until his family entered the mix. Then I was invested! So much so that I have three theories about his whereabouts:
Theory #1: He’s dreaming— deeply, but not too deeply, given that he’s also able to “hear” things from the present day…
Theory #2: … but there’s also SO much happening in SO much detail that suggests that he could have simply time traveled to the past, which may explain the presence of the criminal in the first episode (who he was supposed to remember/recognize) and the man who shot Tae-joo. I’m also sure this person also appeared in the past and Tae-joo is just confusing him for the first criminal. There has to be something significant about the fact that time rewound not once, not twice, but THREE times when his father was shot. Why? There’s something he’s meant to see. And speaking of Han Choong-ho… he’s scum and definitely killed Madame Jo, but I think it’s a little too convenient for him to be the manicure murderer or even its precursor. He’s probably being framed.
Theory #3: Ball park theory? Han Tae-joo is already dead, but his soul isn’t able to rest. Think about it! If someone has truly time traveled to the past, their body would no longer exist in the present. They wouldn’t just show up with a story, you know?
I mentioned this to someone before, but initially I felt like maybe these events were only happening on a subconscious level (dream) because Tae-joo, while cautious, is showing a surprising amount of disregard for the era he’s in. It’s almost… careless. Take Minakata Jin (from JIN) for example. He constantly grappled with how much he could do and say because of the implications it could have for not only Japan, but the world. The butterfly effect was something that weighed heavily on him for the longest time. On the other hand, we have Tae-joo casually eating dinner with his family and young self… like, BRO.
And it’s interesting that for all his meddling, he is only a witness to 1988. Everything is happening as it should and there’s not really much Tae-joo can do to stop it. The kidnapping event in episode 7 really happened, little Tae-joo was meant to see his father in the abandoned factory, and his father was meant to die. His shooting rewound 3x with many variations, but nothing changed. Kinda fatalistic tbh…
So with that in mind, these visions and voices might just be hallucinations — a mechanism to convince himself that he’s alive and this is all just a dream. The man with the gun could be a manifestation of something he needs to confront. It also could be that all these adventures in 1988 are just events meant to bring him peace, in a weird way. I don’t know what the implications of peace in the afterlife would have for the real world though… HMMMMMM.
Theory #3.5: Like #3, but instead a parallel universe????? idk I can’t think about this anymore lol