Okay. I totally realize I have way too many projects going on here. I’m in the middle of one Meteor Garden episode (which is really the first of the HYD shows I’m doing), one Cinderella’s Sister episode, and now this… To be fair though (to… who?), I’m really only going to summarize this instead of my recaps with an ungodly amount of screen caps (now with gifs!). That, and endlessly compare it to Dae Jang Geum.

I was one of many who freakin’ loved Dae Jang Geum when it came out. I even bought the complete set from YA Entertainment for about $90 (it was on sale). In retrospect, it’s rather repetitive (Jang Geum does something, is thwarted, then unthwarts herself in each episode, and during the entire run of the series itself), so I may have enjoyed it solely because it was different from the other dramas that I’d watched around that time. (I.e., Poor girl has struggles, catches the eye of two guys, girl dies or is really sick, everybody cries.) But, I love historical fiction and dramas, and it was well-acted, so it’s all good.

BTROS, obviously a HK production based on the English title alone (seriously, Revolving Doors of Vengeance? I’ll give you points for creativity and uniqueness, but I’m not gonna stop chuckling when I say that name), is loosely based on DJG. It was one of the “grand production” dramas to celebrate TVB’s anniversary last year. This show was actually on my to-watch list, but since it’s shown up my satellite TV — well, I can just knock that one out of the park without… Internetty means.

That means mostly walls of text! So retro, like my VM summaries! Oh and I’m not taking notes. Because TVB’s other 2009 grand production drama that is also on my to-watch list is currently airing, almost immediately after BTROS. That’s just… too much, man. Oh my, with such scheduling I feel like I’m really watching Hong Kong TV…! IN THE PAST. Hurrhurrrrrrrr

So I may get some info wrong (when I’m not being facetious, that is), or more accurately, I’m going to use “for some reason” a lot.

Why I Use “For Some Reason”:
1) I forgot the reason
2) They didn’t give a reason
3) I didn’t understand the reason (I have a weak understanding of formal, old-timey Cantonese, at best.)

On with the comparison!

We start en media res with Sam-ho (Charmaine Sheh) arguing with Kam-ling (Tavia Yeung). I think it went like this: “Rrrrrrrrrrrr hsssssssssssss rrrrrrrrahrra, rawr, ssssssssssssssssssss!” They were once close sisters, but what happened? That’s right, time for the childhood scenes!

In DJG, we start at a more logical beginning: the beginning.

Both Sam-ho and Jang Geum’s mothers are on the lam from the royal palace for some reason (did I mention that that is my favorite kind of reason?). Well, for Jang Geum, it’s much more convoluted than that: Jang Geum’s mom originally escaped from certain death when her friend secretly diluted a poisonous drink given to her because she was falsely accused of something involving food. (My memory is rather fuzzy, so forgive me if the details are wrong.) She is found by a former palace dude who nurses her back to health, and they eventually marry, leading to their precocious daughter, Jang Geum. One day, Jang Geum blurts out that her father was a royal dude and knows martial arts and can kick all yo’ asses, which leads to his arrest, and presumably, death. (I remember reading he would pop up later, but I guess they changed it???? That kind of stuff can happen when episodes are taped THE WEEK BEFORE IT AIRS. [Actually, I'm not sure if that's how it went during DJG. But it definitely happens in South Korean TV, so, there.]) This means his family will also have to be punished, so they go on the run, but the mom dies for some reason and Jang Geum can only bury her mom by putting rocks on her corpse. JG is adopted by the stereotypical comic-relief family, and somehow makes it as a palace girl in order to fulfill her mom’s dream.

This is fertile land, you guys

We have Sam-ho’s mother already on the run, with her daughter and Kam-ling, their child maid. Also, I totally mixed up which little girl would grow up to be who, because I based it on looks.I thought the child Kam-ling would grow up to be Charmaine Sheh, and the child Sam-ho would grow up to be Tavia Yeung. It’s my fault though, ’cause really, which Hong Kong TV show or movie casts child or younger actors who could actually look like the adult? SHAWN YUE GREW UP TO BE TONY LEUNG CHIU-WAI WTF. Anyway, Sam-ho woke up early to collect citrus fruits (which is a little hilarious considering the location looks more barren than a tumbleweed setting), and escaped the capture by the royal guards, but eventually found her way back to the palace and thus to her mother, thanks to a kind-hearted eunuch.

These girls…

…grow up to be them?

Sam-ho’s mother doesn’t die yet, because they need her for some reason. Haha, just kidding, she’s a genius at crafting jewelry, and for some reason the current Royal Department of Jewelry suck big balls at making this specific piece: a hairpin in the shape of a phoenix with multi-colored feathers for the Empress Dowager. The Empress Dowager is a meanie, and also the phoenix cries tears of blood, which is inauspicious. Sam-ho’s mother receives corporal punishment for wrongdoing and when she finally appears to the two girls she is on the verge of death.

At her deathbed, the mom tells Sam-ho to remember the meaning behind her name (literally “three good”), to do good deeds, to bring goodness, and something about goodies. Then to Kam-ling, who has been crying as well, she’s like “lolbyebitch,” and dies. With nowhere else to go, the two little girls will have to grow up in the palace.

Here’s a screen cap of them for no reason (my second favorite kind of reason), except that Sam-ho’s face cracks me up

With the general summaries out of the way, we can go deeper! The most obvious similarity is that its setting is set in the imperial household, where the people behind the traditionally “important” characters (emperor, empress, concubine, that guy) are the main characters instead. Jang Geum ended up in the kitchen department, so DJG was Joseon-Dynasty food porn, but Sam-ho and Kam-ling end up in the embroidery and jewelry departments, respectively, so BTROC is Tang-Dynasty fashion porn (mm-mm I love me some of that good stuff). The most obvious difference? There are two main characters instead of one! Jang Geum rises from apprentice cook to royal physician, whereas both Sam and Kam are destined to rise through the ranks, but by divergent paths. (But it seems Sam-ho is the “real” main character, because she’s “good” and we can’t have all the guys falling ass over head in love with the wicked girl, right?)

The daughters take after their mothers, working in the same occupations as they once did. Jang Geum pretty much caused her parents’ deaths, because she’s a big mouth. Kam-ling was the source of her mistress’s misery, because as she snuck a look at the phoenix hairpin in the cover of darkness with only a candle to guide her, red candle wax miraculously fell onto the phoenix’s pearl eye AND NO WHERE ELSE so it looked like it was crying blood later on. So, yeah, good luck with that guilt, although she admitted it to her when Sam-ho was out of the room and she basically forgave the child. A CHILD?!?!? HOW DARE YOU FORGIVE YOUR CHILD MURDERER, SAM-HO’S MOM.

In both, the emperor takes in an interest in the “main” character, although in BTROC the future emperor (Moses Chan, who fills in his brows in every costume drama he appears in, apparently) is interested in Sam-ho much earlier… AS CHILDREN. IT’S TRUE LOVE, GUYS. EXCEPT NOT. The relationship of Sam-ho and the Prince Lee Yi is interesting in that it’s terribly clichéd with the trappings of “young love” — they meet as children, he gives her flowers for her dying mother (well to be fair it just fell into his hand, but he still gave it to her), she comforts him as he has to leave the palace and is super nice to him when he returns as an adult with his turtle, and discovers his secret that he is not actually mentally incapacitated. (Long story short: Empress Dowager is a meanie, remember? She is constantly plotting against him and his mother, one of the previous Emperor’s consorts, so he, beginning from ten-years-old to present time, pretends to have sustained a concussion that facilitated his brain impairment, so he’s able to leave the palace, thus removing himself as a threat to his queen mother and saving his birth mother. FOR NOW.) However, in a cliché-breaking turn that is probably actually a cliché unto itself, Sam-ho does not return his feelings in that way and falls in love with a palace scholar who knows martial arts… JUST LIKE JANG GEUM!

It’s kind of ridiculous when she spends more time with every other guy than the guy she’s supposed to be in love with. I barely remember the times she met with Kevin Cheng, who plays the scholar. (Oh, Kevin. He just looks too modern to be hanging around back then.) The story is telling us they are TRUE LOVE, instead of letting us see for ourselves. And for me, it just looks forced. She’s nice to EVERYBODY and treats everyone the same and tries to help them all out, really no different from Kevin Cheng’s character. Sam-ho is so friggin’ nice and lucky, she should just be called Ho-choi (Lucky), because when she’s nice, even when taking the fall, she’s rewarded. But when Kam-ling tries to be nice, she always gets punished. And you wonder why she decides to eschew Sam-ho’s mother’s teachings.

Kam-ling, who eventually turns into the “villain,” is much more interesting to watch than Lucky Mary Sue. You slowly get to watch how she transforms from a young, naive girl to villainous imperial consort using her cunning, scheming mind. Sam-ho could fall into a pile of shit and find a million dollars. Every thing seems to come easy to her, and she gets no hardship. The most trouble she seemed to be in so far was getting caught in the claws of a rabbit trap and two — TWO!! — guys save her. Gimme a break. It was as if they split Jang Geum’s character in half and created two new people — the kind and talented girl who uses her wits to beat those who are always trying to plot her downfall becomes a boring Mary Sue and the interesting antiheroine. And the message seems to be (from an “official” summary I read, to the way the drama is acting out) that you should be good in order to win, like Sam-ho! Well, she’s boring as fuck, so shut up.

I like watching interesting characters evolve, for better or for worse, with warts and all — not boring-as-hell people that the show is saying, “THIS GUY IS THE BEST!!” Sam-ho is blemish-free and also, she shat out a rainbow once. It was so fucking amazing everyone fell in love with her. Kam-ling also shat out a rainbow, but they blamed her for shitting it out during lunchtime, when few people could enjoy it, so they punished her by punching her in the face.

Final thoughts:

• I’m only up to Episode 9, but I know how it plays out, generally.
• I really like looking at the costumes. (Tang Dynasty’s my fave.)

Edit: I totally forgot about the political parts and palace intrigue going on in this show. I LOVE PALACE INTRIGUE! And so does TVB, apparently. They always have a palace intrigue show annually or something. DJG didn’t show the royals or any high-ranking officials much, unless they were interacting with the Imperial Household Staff. Corrupt eunuchs wheelin’ and dealin’ are a constant (haha obviously, this is Imperial China we’s talkin’ boot), and there are always secret conspiracies, discreet talks, and passive-aggressive power plays happening as well. So yeah, that’s definitely a major difference. I remember Jang Geum always talking about food and she lost her sense of taste and then they had to cook whale meat, and when she became the royal physician she was talking about medicine and pills and then she performed a C-section.

I’m pretty sure I neglected to post the parts I truly liked about BTROC when this first went up was because I didn’t know how to make fun of it. I only do it because I love! Or because I mildly enjoy its smooth Marlboro flavor. Or because I hate it. So… I just make fun of everything.

My new TV obsession.

(Haha I totally lied about writing here more often when I resolved to do so almost a year ago.  Oh well whatever.  Yes, that’s my new Mother’s Day resolution.)

I know Meteor Garden is kind of stuck in limbo (and thus, so is Hana yori dango, which was what I originally planned to do before I foolishly decided to start at the first HYD incarnation), but I did start on the next episode. However, screencaps! SCREENCAPS! They made Cinderella’s Sister show too pretty. On the other hand, the continuity errors are quite charming and endearing, so much so that I almost feel bad for pointing it out. Almost.

I take it back Eun-jo, I take it all back ::whimpers::

All you need to know is that this show is addictive and AWESOME. And not just because it’s a Korean drama (you know those people who say those things.) I honestly can’t get into too many K-dramas because of their reused, overused tropes. Although this drama uses those methods, the awesomeness of the rest of the show trumps it. Take that, super-long shots of things I don’t want to see beyond a couple of seconds, girls crying gushing rivulets that can carve stone, and people having nosebleeds that obviously mean THEY ARE GOING TO DIE.

I’ve been watching each episode repeatedly to get my fix. (Since subtitle release is slower than the episode airings.) I signed up for Soompi despite refusing to for the longest time for the better part of the decade of the 2000s, in order to get the latest updates, analyses, etc., on the show. I ship the main couple HARD (and you can’t convince me otherwise, COME ON). The last time something similar to this happened was for Veronica Mars. I recorded VM off the TV and watched it over and over; I joined a bunch of LJs and just lurked around like a bottom-feeding fish; and Logan and Veronica — no matter how unlikely their chances appeared to be time and time again — I was just shipping like a mad longshoreman. Even though Rob Thomas (and KB) seemed to hate Logan because he’s not Duncan, the fact that Veronica still had “that look” for Logan (in the series finale) in spite of her just telling him moments before that he was out of her life for good, gives me hope for Eun-jo and Ki-hoon no matter how dire their straits are. Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself…

 
Eun-jo’s mom, her hairy ahjussi partner, fat kid named Jung-woo

Despite having only seeing Moon Geun-young as a teenager in the K-drama Autumn in My Heart (ugggggggggggh *shudders* the first Korean drama I saw that forever tainted Korean dramas to me) and in the movie A Tale of Two Sisters, she left quite an impression on me. Moreover, she’s pretty kinda really famous so that easily ensured that she would always be in my Asian entertainment consciousness. I’d always wanted to see her in something else, but for various reasons, I never got a chance to. So when I heard about her new project, I was intrigued. A story where Cinderella’s stepsister is the main character, played by MGY… sold!

While I planned on watching it, I was fully waiting for when it’d be on Dramafever or something… or at least when the whole drama came out. Hmmm didn’t quite turn out that way. My er, uh, “source” had the softsubs for the first episode within a week of airing. Well, let me check the first episode, I thought.
Oh dear, my future self said.
Just to see if it’s worth it, I thought.
What happened, happened, my future self said.

When I finished the first episode, I watched it again. And again. Then I couldn’t take it anymore and downloaded the rest of the available raws. I had no idea what was going on. (Well, I did have some idea, as my eyes are in working order, but seeing as the only Korean words I know cannot be strung together properly to make a sentence, it can only take me so far.)

 
The perfect setting for running away from the hirsute alcoholic who is also fond of physically abusing his partner.
“Run away, run away, run away if you wanna survive”
“And I ran, I ran so far away / I just ran, I ran all night and day / I had to get away”
“I run for hope / I run to feel / I run for the truth / For all that is real / I run for your mother, your sister, your wife / I run for you and me, my friend / I run for life”
Okay I’m stopping; I could do this all day, but I only have twenty hours

Sometimes desperation calls for leaping over a hobo. Actually he seems like a bum. Hobo up and get a job, bum!

 
Forget baseball, Jung-woo should pursue some track & field event. Look at him leaping atop the hairy man so the girls can have their getaway

We’ve been laughing (I can only extract humor), and the show has kind of had a light touch so far on these somewhat heavy themes, but this once again brings home what an awful man that hairy ahjussi is. (He left huge bruises on the mother, Kang-sook, claiming she should not be near him when drunk; and he was about to swing a bat at her until her daughter, Eun-jo, came in.)

 
The beauty of the Sarlacc pit!!!! SHE BURNSSSS

They make it to the train, but Hairy Fella sends some goons after them because his ring is gone (that’s what Kang-sook is looking at opening up the Sarlacc pit), but what kind of fella is he who has such authority over a bunch of goons? The goons catch up with them at the next station. Eun-jo spotted them while her mom was asleep and slips past her way too easily and quickly for it to be a first-time thing… but she eventually changes her mind and naturally some kind of hilarity ensues.

“Help! He’s touching my special area!” (Her shoulder. …Perverts.)

Darling you gotta let me know, should I stay or should I go?
Also, I love Eun-jo’s style, now and later. (What you didn’t know there’d be a time skip? You obviously have not seen enough Korean dramas to know this would happen, i.e., any one.) Her sweater’s full of holes, but she’s rockin’ it. As an adult, she has an effortless casual look that is not too casual (it looks like she just threw it on, but they’re good workclothes also). Very nice stylin’, wardrobe department.

A chase through the train leads them to a car full of stupid teenage students having fun by shaking balloons and doing things with flour, apparently. Well, to be fair, the flour didn’t get anywhere until AFTER it went through a dark tunnel. So… I still don’t get it. Were they frying something with the flour? Why am I assuming the white powder is flour? Here are the things that are a white powder besides flour that a teenager might bring with them onto a train:

• Baby powder
• Baking powder
• Foot powder
• High-definition powder
• Cornstarch
• Cocaine
• Powdered sugar
• Anthrax

Kang-sook and her daughter hide in the bathrooms. Eun-jo, however, meets a person in hers: Goo Hyo-sun. EJ clamps her hand over HS’s mouth as she begins to scream. Symbolic transfer of locations, perhaps? You know, through protein strings in the hand and stuff.

Seo Woo got quite a bit of flak for the way she acted as the teenaged Hyo Sun, and I can see where it’s coming from. “She’s too cutesy,” “she seems mentally challenged,” I’ve heard. To me, it kind of feels like she’s overcompensating for the fact that she’s got nearly ten years over her character, but the producers say that SW has acted exactly as according to their plan, so it’s most likely a plot point. HS’s mother died when she was about seven, and it’s like she never really grew up mentally. Furthermore, she’s the princess of the household — all she has to do is act cute and beg a bit and she gets what she wants. I do feel like SW’s laying it on a bit thick, though, but aside from her uber-annoying, cloying cuteness, I think Seo Woo really captures the spirit of a young girl well. And a girl who can do a million different faces one after another, most of which can crack me up, can’t be that bad. (I am tired of people citing one of the reason SW sucks is because she got a bunch of plastic surgery. Well, okay, so what? Honestly I think plastic surgery is totally unnecessary unless you are missing a jaw bone or something extreme, but she didn’t get surgery on her acting abilities and her face still functions fine in expressing her emotions, so can you stfd and stfu already? And ha, like she is the only person ever in the history of acting to ever get plastic surgery.)

Oh, God, Chun Jung-myung. HOW DOES A MAN LIKE HIM EXIST ON EARTH. He’s thirty (or will be, according to Western age), but he’s playing a college-aged kid here, and then all of a sudden his character has aged eight years AND IT’S ALL VERY BELIEVABLE. WHY AM I TYPING IN CAPS. AND HE JUST GOT OUT OF HIS MILITARY SERVICE IN REAL LIFE I THINK MY HORMONES ARE GETTING VERY ATTUNED TO THIS SITUATION.

Logical self: Uhhhhhhhhhhhh what situation is there, even if there is one, this man lives on the other side of the world.
Irrational self: SHUTUP LET ME HAVE THIS BRIEF MOMENT IN GEOLOGIC TIME DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW IT CAN NEVER BE
Logical self: Wait a minute that’s reasoning and logic, but… you’re irrational I’M LOGICAL WTF
Irrational self: SELF-DESTRUCT
Logical self: END OF DAYS
Irrational self: DOES NOT COMPUTE
Logical self: WHAT IS YOUR MAJOR MALFUNCTION

Some days must have passed because now Hyo-sun has cut school to ask Ki-hoon oppa (who works in her father’s winery and is doing deliveries) where the “ring” could be. Nice implication that the ring was given to HS to hide, rather than explicitly shown (it sounds like it’d be a corny scene). I like implications so much that it has long ago crept into my manner of speech and writing and I always end up having to explain myself. (Well in speech mostly; in writing I always self-edit. A LOT.) This is actually a very terrible habit and I must stop it. I should only do this kind of implicit talk when I’m trying to catch a mate while wiggling my eyebrows. Anyway, this scene sets up their characters well (HS is kind of spazzy but childish, thinks the world of Ki-hoon; KH is kind, treats her like a kid sister, drives a truck.)

 

 
Good Lord I can watch him jump all day long

 

 
Lol Seo Woo… I just can’t hate Hyo-sun (much). I can’t believe I’m going to quote Beyonce, but all the haters to the left, to the left.

This part is amusing because Ki-hoon is listing all the things she’s “lost” and then found, and one of the items that he mentions is a T-shirt with Kangta’s face on it. After Chun Jung-myung, Kangta became the second celebrity to be awarded as an “elite soldier,” causing Kangta to joke that he was in a rivalry with CJM.

She will believe him if he says the moon is square… if he tells her salt is sweet and sugar is salty, she will spit out candy and drink salt water… kind of eloquent for a teenager.

Lol when she sneaks back into class

Kang-sook, seemingly dressed as tacky as possible, visits Hyo-sun at school in an attempt to get the ring back. Eun-jo’s staying with the hairy ahjussi because, according to her mother, it makes it seems less likely that they are going to run away. (Even though they will be once the ring is returned.) At first KS is terse with HS, complaining about the distance to her home and not-so-gently suggesting a taxi (even though they seem to be in a very wooded area). Once she overhears that HS’s father is a cruel taskmaster since his wife had died many years ago, KS perks up and immediately changes her tune.

For you see, he had gone drunk with power and began smashing all the wine batches because they were, according to him, shit. He made everyone get on their knees while he cracked open all their hard work, even kicking HS’s uncle — his dead wife’s brother. So the two ahjummas (well I guess only one is an ahjumma and the other’s a halmeoni since I heard the latter term used somewhere during this drama) of the household went to find Hyo-sun in order to placate her father, although I don’t know how they snuck out during his tyrannical rule. Kang-sook can only follow lamely, the retrieval of the ring the only reason she’s putting up with this.

Oh. Hello there.

 
Lol he doesn’t even make contact with him… AND he kicked him TWICE for good measure lol (It looks as if it was supposed to be just once, but they filmed it twice to get different camera angles, so they just put all the kicking in there.)

 
 

Huhoh whut? Oh… what was I going to say… Why so much KH in Dae-sung’s introductory scene; well ever since the delivery scene, someone has been taking pictures of CJM and it’s no different here either. Oh, but who? AND IT’S NOT ME OKAY HOW COULD I EVEN GET ALL FIVE NECESSARY DROPS OF GHB INTO HIS BREAKFAST BIBIMBAP IN ORDER TO KNOCK HIM OUT COLD SO I COU

 
Hah, that first guy with the head covering cracks me up. He looks so unworried. I mean LOOK AT HIM

 
JUST LOOK AT HIM. WHAT IS WRONG, MISTER?? OR SHOULD I ASK WHAT ISN’T WRONG? Even that guy that doesn’t look worried looks more worried than you.

 
 
 

Haha Kang-sook looks like she’s about to puke after witnessing Hyo-sun’s cutesy attempts to win her father over. More than just acting cute, however, she did bring up the very good point that half of these workers are her friends’ parents. And, it worked! See, her “cuteness” does work, maybe not on you, but on her father. OTOH, he probably relents so she’d stop doing those things. Ironically, Seo Woo hated this aspect of her character lulz.

Hyo-sun brings a now kinder Kang-sook to her large abode, and KS is very impressed. You can almost see the gears turning in her head. While searching her room HS remembers where she kept the ring, but a sudden cry breaks her thoughts. KS tried helping the ahjummas in their chores, and according to one of them she leapt into the pathway of tossed fish water. Methinks she did it purposely to gain some kind of sympathy, as the two ahjummas keep questioning who she is. (To their credit, KS never responds and only smiles a bit, mysteriously. At least say something. I AM THE LIZARD QUEEN is pretty crazy, but it’s a response.) So Hyo-sun, who was looking at her mother’s personal belongings just moments ago (she said to herself she hadn’t looked in that box for a long time, so the ring couldn’t possibly be in there, but she checked anyway), now finds herself giving Kang-sook her mother’s clothing to wear so her fish-corpse smelling clothes can dry. I hope they scrub it down, too.

 

Seeing her mother’s clothes being worn again, Hyo-sun cries, but she’s unsure why. Kang-sook comforts her and HS craves this motherly affection. (What about those two ahjummas though, they seem rather close. Maybe clothes really do make the man. Or dead-mother replacement.) HS directs her to pat her head again and we see KS look a bit confused, surprised even. “Er… oh well… will this get my ring back?!!?!?” But I think she continually refines more and more her scheme the longer she stays…

 

Hyo-sun claims the bag housing the ring had been loaned, so Kang-sook speaks personally to Dae-sung to see if she could stay and work at his house while waiting for its return. In reality HS had asked her uncle (the one who got kicked twice) to hide that bag in order to force KS to stay with her. And so, with HS unknowingly fertilizing KS’s scheme seeds, Kang-sook uses her womanly wiles (and his dead wife’s clothing no doubt) to worm her way in.

 
Even a HBIC has a weakness. And it totally looks like he’s about to get a magical tent. In his pants.

Meanwhile Eun-jo has to tolerate living with the hairy ahjussi, who has gotten drunk again. He thinks her mother has abandoned her, but she refuses to believe that. He stumbles into her room and although he passes out right in front of her, she freaks out, screaming for Jung-woo. JW, bless him, drags him away, while complaining that he is too heavy. I really think they are implying that this sort of thing had happened before (with another man), in a much-less-happier ending.

 

Hyo-sun, otoh, is very very happy. She got a splinter in her finger! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Lol @ her goofy faces. Srsly, I need Seo Woo to be in more comedies.

 

 

 

 
Well all I gotta say is some people keep much weirder stuff, so give the kid a break.

In a huge coincidence, Ki-hoon, HS’s uncle (wth is his name I still don’t know and it’s way past the halfway point of the drama run now), and Dae-sung are all witnessing this event at the same time. That high level of improbability forces a wormhole to appear and sucks all of our characters into a parallel universe, where everything is just slightly off-kilter. Fire hydrants are yellow, people call soda “pop,” and taxicabs are green. Or maybe they just went into the next town. Seriously, the uncle is not happy, Ki-hoon seems to long for his own dead mother, and Dae-sung just stands there in a very peculiar fashion.

 
Because it’s STOP! HAMMER TIME

While Hyo-sun seeks any way for Kang-sook to act like a mother to her, Kang-sook seeks any way to get as close to Dae-sung as possible. Hmmm these two are quite manipulative, aren’t they? Ironic, much? (Remember it’s called Cinderella’s Sister, not I Love My Stepdaughter.) In one instance she asks DS something about buying ingredients for HS’s lunch, and he offers to take her on his bicycle. She finds this the perfect time to kick the wheel every now and then so that when she holds onto him she can press her bosom to his back. You know until they both tumble off the bike and roll down into a ditch or something.

 

The next scene, Hyo-sun cries. Oh no, are they dead???? No, the uncle has returned the ring to Kang-sook, who now has no other reason to stay. I didn’t notice this before, but apparently he claims that she knew HS was hiding it all along. Hmmm interesting. Maybe it was just the uncle being bitchy. In any case, KS is at the bus stop, while Ki-hoon tries to convince Dae-sung to go after KS because Hyo-sun hasn’t been so happy since her mother died. I didn’t notice this line before either… so how long HAS Ki-hoon been there?? Was he being presumptuous? “I am assuming the way Hyo-sun is acting now with a surrogate mother was exactly like this with her biological mother! Rawr!” (It just seems to make sense that he roared.)

Kang-sook, that crazy confident ol’ bitch, is fully expecting Dae-sung to come to her; she’s not waiting for the bus at the bus stop, but him!! Herderder… He finally makes his way there and tries to stop her from leaving, because Hyo-sun is upset.
“Well… my daughter may be upset.”
“Bring her here!” +10
“Is it just for Hyo-sun that I should stay?”
…
HUG +100
BEYONCE ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: HE LIKES IT SO HE’S GONNA PUT A RING ON IT
MAXIMUM POINTS SCORED. MOOCHING-OFF-NEW-MAN PROCESS COMPLETED. GAME OVER.

Back at Hairy Ahjussi’s place (I wonder if it’s rent-free), Eun-jo is busy making kimchi, probably to pass the time. Once again, WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM? Jung-woo notes he and Eun-jo are the same, because both their mothers abandoned them with the Yeti. With a slight upturned corner of her mouth, Eun-jo finally realizes she can run away, guilt-free. She packs her bags, but Jung-woo tries to stop her, sort of. He’s still too scared of her death glare. She tells the drunken and unconscious Sasquatch that she made enough food to last them for two months, so she has no debt to him. If he wants the ring back, he’ll have to take it up with her mother. And she leaves.

But her mother’s new boyfriend has sent two of his workers to pick up Eun-jo, the uncle and Ki-hoon.

 
 
 
 

And we finally, finally, get to the crux of why I started this in the first place: the aching, arduous, agonizing, ardent ardor between these two. So much is implied and written on their faces that I go into implication overload. But I’m going too far ahead again…

 
 

The uncle (who knows how long ago) launched into one of his rants about his feelings doing this as the brother of Dae-sung’s dead wife, whilst driving. Ki-hoon notices how anxious Eun-jo looks so he tries to impart some words to calm her down. She blurts out that she was to go to the bathroom. The uncle creepily stands outside peering through the door and wonders if she wants to “expel all her insides,” LOL. A woman comes out, notices him, looks up at the sign as if to make sure she came out the right restroom, then continues. If the mere sight of a man standing outside the ladies’ bathroom makes her question her gender, maybe she/he should do a bit of soul-searching.

 

Eun-jo is doing what she does best: she is running away. She refuses to follow her mother’s lead in accepting a man to take care of her. After all, how long will this one last? How will this man treat her? Both of them? However…

Omg… this scene… is probably my most favorite scene in the history of my watching television. (You know, until the next one comes along.) The music, the directing, the cinematography… guhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh~

Although out of context and parsed by still frames, the chase scene becomes quite rapist-y. (I mean check out this still captured by the on-set photographer, which is even rape-ier than anything that ended up on air. [But then, look at how much fun they are having here!!])

 
 
 
 
I really like how their legs are nearly matching step-by-step when he gets closer (the first of many parallels for them it now, in retrospect, seems)
 
Although I don’t know what’s up with this windmill move

(Joking aside, actual rapes [even in fiction] are not funny, okay? Even if it’s a douchebag getting a plastic Easter egg stuffed up his bum. BTW, fuck you, RT. [Yeah I am still bitter over the direction Veronica Mars ended up in. Whatever.])

 
 
 

Ki-hoon has only managed to grab her pencil, which only serves to unfurl her long, wild mane of hair. Loose hair usually signifies beauty (you know, when that nerdy girl finally turns into Rachael Leigh Cook) and vulnerability, but I think (especially moreso than the former) it also denotes her “wild” status — untrusting of anyone, immediate verbal barbs and death stares, wanting to be free — this Eun-jo is still very rough around the edges. Did Ki-hoon note all of this in this one prolonged glance that literally took his breath away? Whatever he does realize here (and if he doesn’t here, he does eventually), it was enough to stop him.

On a superficial note, this scene is the most gorgeous I have ever seen Moon Geun-young… she’s not unattractive, but she wouldn’t be what you would consider a “sex symbol” or a “bombshell,” either. After all, I don’t imagine looking like a sex kitten would earn you the title of “Nation’s Younger Sister”; she has a sweet, girl-next-door face. But here I suddenly realized she’s all grown up. The long hair extensions definitely help. Haha maybe this is what made Ki-hoon stop in his tracks.

Forest chases are love.

Oh… dear.

Oh, no.

NO KI-HOON THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO A LADY’S HEART

 
 
 
 
STOP IT, KI-HOON!!!!!!!!!

In retrospect, this chase scene is actually quite fraught with sexual imagery:
01) The chasing is foreplay.
02) Her hair is let down, that means SRS BSNS
03) She begins the uphill climb, he follows.
04) Brief interlude running through the forested hill.
05) He catches up to her; some hair pulling and biting is involved (and some grunting and screaming).
06) Final chasing.
07) He bodyslams her.
08) Both out of breath, he lies down next to her.
09) ????
10) Profit!

Maybe I’m being pervy but… did it really have to end up in a forest on a hill? That’s just inviting sexual metaphors, yo! Or maybe I’m underestimating the amount of hills in South Korea. Then it’s just probability! But then again, heh look at these caps:

 
 
Jfc even I want a cigarette

BUT how did Ki-hoon even know to chase after Eun-jo? OMG HE IS A RAPIST. Nah I’m just joking he’s all right. Kang-sook apparently knows her daughter very well and warned him that she would not go with them so easily, so he was well-prepared. Except maybe the hill-climbing part, did you see his face? It was like, “Oh jfc come on this is just plain rude.”

As if knowing from experience, KH asks Eun-jo where she will go when she has run away? And does she know the kind of difficulties that she will need to embrace simply because she’s a minor? So wait until you are of age before you run away okay? Lol, that’s not running away, that’s just moving out. But she takes in his words because, as she says, it feels as if she’s been put under a spell and she could believe him even if he said the moon were square.

 
 

I’m still not sure why she and Hyo-sun used the same terms, unless it’s some kind of foreshadowing of the love triangle, that they both regard him in the same romantic manner. Or is that reading too much into it? I am getting ahead of myself here, but I honestly think the two girls are two halves of a whole. One is the brains and the other the heart, and only together can the company flourish. This is why it would have made more sense for her to say that she would believe him even if he said the sun were square — something different, yet complementary to what Hyo-sun said. But that’s me. And maybe that’s a well-known adage in Korean. But the fact that these two girls are the opposite sides of a coin, means to me that Ki-hoon cannot love both of them with the same kind of love — with both of them he can achieve familial and romantic love, but that can’t happen with only one of them, because in most situations you do not love a family member with the underpinnings of desire, and if you desire somebody you don’t want to treat them as if they were your parent, sibling, or child. (Forget about those distant cousins in Shelbyville for a moment.) Both scenarios are really, really awkward. It’s like the one where Rachel dated Yeti the Danny and she finds out his relationship with his sister is… not very sibling-like. So yeah somehow this paragraph devolved into me trying to convince myself that the endgame has to be Ki-hoon and Eun-jo. IF IT IS ITALICIZED IT MUST BE TRUE AND I DON’T MEAN ANCIENT ITALIAN PEOPLES BEFORE THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

Though Eun-jo follows them back, she immediately gets into a shouting match with her mom. There is so much going on here one after another. They are yelling aloud their frustrations, but it doesn’t sound hokey (well then again I don’t know Korean so maybe it is), it’s totally natural and you get a sense of their past through this argument.

EJ wants to know why can’t they just figure out a way to survive together, without depending on a man, because who knows when they will get kicked out again? Kang-sook asks, who does her daughter think she’s doing it for? But EJ thinks it’s only for her mother’s own selfish reasons, and threatens to “bite her tongue till [she] bleeds to death” unless she listens. KS pulls her away into the woods so she can smack her around in secret and reiterates that she’s only doing this for Eun-jo. EJ retorts, well if she was doing it for her, why did she abandon her? KS is totally shocked; she may be many things — manipulative, sly, a liar, a rodeo clown, a lumberjack, a longshoreman — but abandoning her daughter is not one of those things; not even the shame of being a single mother made her think otherwise. Then, why did she leave her at that horrible Hairy Ahjussi’s place? KS immediately picks up on her meaning and asks if he did something weird. What do you mean “weird”? Like, was he juggling three bowling pins whilst on a unicycle while spinning plates? That’s pretty strange. But no, he didn’t do anything “strange,” although EJ was afraid he would. Because if the plates fall and break, that’s money wasted! KS says, unconvincingly, that she knew Jang (yeah that’s his name I think it’s the first time I wrote it) wasn’t as bad as that other guy in that other place (you know, besides getting drunk and beating women), so she could leave her there. It’s like saying, “Hey, why don’t I punch you five times instead of seven, because it’s two punches less.” Anyway, I get the strong feeling that that other guy in that other place DID do something weird to Eun-jo, which is why she reacted so strongly to Hairy Man falling flat drunk in front of her. :(

EJ, like me, doesn’t really believe her line of reasoning; she thinks her mom doesn’t care about what happens to her anyway, so why did she bring her here? She turns to go, but Kang-sook asks, has she ever before been so absolute and certain about a man? This place is it — it’s got everything, including stability, and KS can finally send EJ to a normal school. Eun-jo is intrigued; she will stay under one condition: if they do have to leave this place, her mom will have to let her go, no matter what. “Yeah, okay, whatever,” she seems to say, just glad that her daughter is staying. “So, just how horrible is this dude anyway?” Eun-jo asks. Aw, he’s just a sweet old bear who wears parachute pants, Eun-jo! That doesn’t make him a bad man.

Next, all three are sitting in awkward silence, drinking tea. Won’t you share some wisdom? Kang-sook asks Dae-sung. He says about a million different things before settling on, he wants to do good by her, so he will promise whatever she wants. EJ says curtly that she doesn’t believe in promises, and to just let her attend school. Hyo-sun comes home and upon seeing a new person who she thinks would dote upon her (ha, Hyo-sun, ha!), screams and says, “Unni! Annyong!”

The differences between these two girls is just hilarious.

Moon Geun-young has been slowly trying to shed that “Nation’s Younger Sister” image, but with her seemingly ageless face, how can she? That’s why I think she chose such a rough role — not necessarily rough to portray (though I imagine it is), but a prickly, no-nonsense girl with a dark past, who is plagued by the sins of her mother. Furthermore, though she’s the main character, she can be extremely antagonistic towards others. So even with MGY’s “sweet” face playing this character, your perception of her changes with her character portrayal. This was especially apparent when I saw the cast on the Korean show, Happy Together, after I had seen a few episodes of CS already. I was a bit surprised at how much MGY’s face differed from what I was now accustomed to — she wasn’t mean or abrasive, she was herself. Which definitely goes to show that while people can have “good” or “bad” looks, personality can color someone’s appearance also, for better or for worse. Rather than trying to look bad (like so many Hollywood women do to win that naked Oscar), she is bad, and that is currently why the gentle face of the Nation’s Younger Sister hides beneath the wicked face of Cinderella’s Sister. (Also Moon Geun-young probably has great control over her facial muscles.)

This drama is a bit unpredictable so far… usually it’s the man that is a gloomy gus, and a cheerful girl er, cheers him up. BOR-RING. Eun Jo is anything but cheerful or helpful, giving it a unique twist. Well, a unique Korean drama twist. It’s not a new concept, but it’s definitely fresh among K-dramas, I think. Then again, the number of K-dramas I’ve watched can all be clutched in my two beautiful and ironic fists. Prove me wrong, universe!

So since the last episode, Nina Sharp was shot and Walter Bishop allowed himself to be whisked away by that observant guy with alopecia who eats spicy stuff. I’m assuming these are appropriate cliffhangers for the penultimate episode of the season, not the season finale? According to the security footage, Nina Sharp was shot by masked men whereupon the camera went black for four minutes just as we see a case of instruments brought out. Strangely, only one of them is bedecked in bandages rather than the regular black ski mask that most masked men wear. The FBI wonder why, but I’m guessing the better for us to discern the leader, my dear? They also enhance the audio, and it’s pretty clear by the first play, even with all the tinniness and fuzziness, it’s that German guy, who might not even be German because shouldn’t it be like Jan or Janssen, not Jones? I don’t know, I’m not German. But Jones is definitely English. Maybe his father is English, or being surrounded by Germans in his German prison gave him a bit of a German accent. Why was he even in the German prison?

So yah, it is Jones. Big surprise. Broyles and Dunham wonder why Jones, who they believe is backed by William Bell, would shoot Bell’s COO. Dunham wants so badly to get Bell she keeps interrupting Broyles. OHNOSHEDIDNT!! Head snap! You don’t do that to Lance Reddick. He will push you around in a wheelchair, convince you to go on a walkabout, rise in the ranks of the Baltimore PD before becoming a lawyer and then he will cut you.

Peter comes into the lab looking for Walter, who didn’t sleep in their hotel room last night. Asteroid doesn’t know where he is, then Olivia arrives looking for Walter as well. Peter makes a call to look for him and Olivia asks Peter if he ran away because she emotionally assaulted him at a pastry shop. Aw, how cute, Walter and Peter hung out at a pastry shop! Until crazy Olive came in and made Walter cry. That scene was so gut-wrenching for me… Olivia would not let up and it was obvious Walter felt so badly for what he did, even though he didn’t remember. Sadface. Olivia apologizes for her pastry-shop attack, but Peter tells her not to worry about it.

Where is Walter? In a cemetary going up to an as-of-yet unseen tombstone whilst being watching over by the spicy-eating bald man.

Nina Sharp wakes up and her robot arm is all wonky. They insinuate that she survived the gunshot because she has Kevlar parts in her ribs. So, she’s pretty much Bionic Woman, right? Why does she have more fake parts than some porn star who used to be really ugly? Broyles asks what’s up with the shooting and her crazy-ass robot arm, but all Nina does is request to speak with Agent Dunham immediately.

The next scene, I see the all-too-familiar Refrescante billboard, to which I said, “Oh, that looks like Williamsburg.” Cut next to the Williamsburg Bridge, which, if you didn’t know, is in Williamsburg. So Fringe has pretty much been a drinking game of, “Hey, that looks like [Insert some place in NYC here], and oh, wait, it is!” for me. There was also one particular scene in Episode 1.17 Bad Dreams, where the mother who was coming home from the circus with her kid, that irked me because everything about it was all wrong. She was heading down the hallway to the subway, but it actually leads to the Metro-North tracks and the underground dining sensation that lies beneath Grand Central Terminal. She swiped the MetroCard for the HEET turnstile and then went through a different door. I was wondering how she was gonna push that baby stroller through the turnstile before she went through. And, now that I think of it, it wasn’t even the right platform for the 7 train! It looked like the platform for the Times Square shuttle. And, you know, I don’t really feel like going back and checking all these things, I’m surprised I even remembered them all considering I pretty much watched these last six or so episodes back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And I know people who say only New Yorkers care about these things, uhm yeah. I live here, I kinda go on the offensive when they get these things wrong about my hometown. How about some big-name production goes to the place you live and love and gets the details all wrong. I’m not angry enough to write a letter to them, because that’s a waste of time, it’s a show and I know they take liberties telling the story since it’s not a documentary. It doesn’t mean I can’t gripe about it and nitpick a bit. And yeah, there’ll probably be a lot of griping from me, not even for NYC, just in general.

RE-RE-RE-REFRESCANTE

Nina Sharp explains after they fix her robot arm that Jones used to work for William Bell, and that Bell certainly is not the head of a terrorist organization. Nina thinks Jones did all his darndest after teleporting from prison to try to prove to Bell he was special, including making creepy calls to Massive Dynamic that involved a lot of heavy breathing, I bet. They think Jones will try to kill Bell, so they want to bring Bell in, but Nina has not seen him for months. I think he’s been cavorting with intergalactic honeys. Nina proposes that if Olivia can stop Jones, she will serve up Bell. Well, if she doesn’t know where he is, how can she do that? If Jones gets Bell first, all her questions cannot be answered, so stop Jones to get answers, Olivia! Oh, and probably to stop any more deaths. Olivia finally asks what Jones did to her, and it turns out he stole a powerful energy cell hidden in her robot arm. You fools! Why do people always hide things in their prosthetic limbs? That’s always the first place they look!

Not enough H-people. Also featured: Williamsburg(h) Bridge

Mr. Jones and his guys start setting up some contraption in Williamsburg, which is seriously lacking any extras that seem like they actually are from Williamsburg. (Namely, Hispanics, Hasidic Jews, and Hipsters. And others also, but they don’t start with H’s; sorry, suckas.) I think his face is supposed to be an anti-teleportation ad, because there is some kind of melted Mexican cheese blend pus running down his bandages, which serves as a foil to the photo of him that appeared in the FBI databases not more than ten minutes ago. Like a, “This is your face. This is your face on teleportation,” with Rachael Leigh Cook smashing up his mug with a frying pan sort of thing. At first I thought Jones was gonna do a sonic boom to bring down the Williamsburg bridge, but it looks like he wants to do another teleportation hole, but it fails because the back wheels of a eighteen-wheeler truck suddenly disappear, so that an out-of-control truck is suddenly veering towards a very calm Jones and his cronies. He says that it’s “too thick here” and that it’s the wrong coordinates. “Try again, please.” I don’t care what you say, German prisons teach hell of manners! I should send my future son/daughter to a German prison, then I’ll have the most polite hermaphrodite in the world! Oh, and he takes off his glasses and it looks like one of his eyeballs is turning transparent or into jelly. Perhaps both!

Sargento Fancy Shredded 4 Cheese Mexican Blend for $6.99/lb at Pathmark. And hot damn, did you know Sargento made a SIX-cheese Italian blend? Hey, Sargento, you’re forgetting the other Italian cheeses like Pecorino, Gorgonzola, Piave, and technically-not-cheeses Ricotta and Mascarpone! Dump those in there too!

Also, thank you for showcasing the Williamsburg Bridge! It is the forgotten half-step-brother of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges who is also the middle child and adopted. After all, it defeated the Brooklyn Bridge as the longest suspension bridge on Earth, why shouldn’t it get more love? And I don’t think they are actually trying to depict Williamsburg, despite filming in Williamsburg and having the Williamsburg Bridge in the background. I think they just wanted a wide road that has relatively little traffic (little compared to, say, Queens Boulevard aka Boulevard of Death) to do the truck scene in. Or maybe they just wanted a cool bridge background, and DUMBO streets are hell to have fake car accidents in? Who knows! I am focusing too much on little things, but after all, isn’t that what I always do, whether it takes place in NY or not?

On a beach, Walter and baldy walk. I hope he has sunscreen, I hear the skin on the scalp is quite sensitive to the sun. “Do you recognize this?” he asks Walter, and holds out a coin. He does, but the Observer says it is only similar to the one he knows and cryptically adds, “There’s more than one of everything.” He then says he’s done or said too much, and this is as far as he can take him. Next, he asks if Walter recognizes a beach house close in the distance. He does, and he asks if he remembers what he has to find, but Walter doesn’t remember, again. The bald hot stuff walks away, leaving Walter to walk toward the house.

Back at the Harvard lab, Broyles presents Nina Sharp to Aspirin. They want to ask her some questions concerning Walter and Peter pops out of nowhere. She says that Jones took something that Walter may know about. They maybe think Jones had something to do his disappearance. A fax comes in showing Walter Bishop at some rail station from three hours ago thanks to Massive Dynamic’s peeping-tom ways. Peter says the station’s near a beach house they own, so Peter volunteers to go fetch him himself.

In Williamsburg Olivia and Charlie start interviewing witnesses about half of a truck. A man had a black scanner thing that emitted a high-pitched noise. The truck just appeared out of nowhere, there was some weird shiny window and the guy with the scanner was wearing a mask. Olivia asks the witness if she’s sure it’s not bandages, and she said, yeah, it was bandages. Noooooooo that’s not how you do it, you are putting ideas in her head! Wroooooong. They get some info on the driver, or not, as it turns out nothing — the person, the vehicle or even parts of the vehicle, are registered or can be confirmed as ever existing.

Peter arrives at the beach house, which looks quite messy. Peter seems to be enjoying the memories, no matter how dusted over they are. He calls out “Walter” several times with no answer until he finally sees him sitting in a room. Walter says he’s looking for something important that may be in this house. Peter is quite understanding, shock!

If Jones is looking for Bell, what does an energy cell and a magical truck have to do with it? Sharp is evasive and Olivia threatens that she will look all up and down this world finding Bell. Nina finally admits that Bell is not of this world anymore. No, not something as crazy as death, silly! He’s just in another universe. Why are you so silly, silly? Charlie doesn’t quite understand, however. Olivia tells him that Walter told her it was more like an “alternate reality.” Charlies tries again: so he’s not on this planet? Nina: Nooooooooo he is on this planet, just another version of this planet. This conversation is really hilarious. I’m not sure if Olivia is really clearing things up when she explains to Charlie that déjà vu is a glimpse into the “alternate reality.” Broyles says that some people may be able to pass from one to the other, and that’s why the truck cannot be identified, because it’s from the “other side.” I thought it was an alternate reality, not Opposite Land, where people wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people. I thought alternate realities were “alternate” because of different decisions that were taken (or not), that lead to different outcomes. So technically, wouldn’t the truck still be identifiable in some way? Ehh… I don’t know, I’m not good at this stuff. Okay, so Nina says that’s why Jones took the energy cell hidden in her robot arm, it was to cross over to get to Bell. Lol, “other side,” “cross over” — it’s like Ghost Whisperer all up in here. Everyone gets a call at the same time: “Did you know O not only boned her partner, but also briefly shared his memories too, after some sort of freaky fringe-science experiment? OMFG! XOXO, Gossip Girl.”

Walter is quite anxious looking for the thing he can’t remember, yet he knows he has to finish it. He looks ready to chew his arm off as he’s having a muttering fit. Then he runs to another room and says he can’t leave yet. Peter remembers aloud when he was a child living here in the summers while Walter worked in the city. On Saturdays he would wake early and smell pancakes, meaning Walter had arrived. In Manhattan, waking early and smelling pancakes only meant the winds were blowing just right from the fenugreek-seeds processing plant in New Jersey. In a turn of events, it turns out Walter made the pancakes! Hehe, I thought it’d be Peter’s mother, because it was Walter’s favorite, but it was actually Peter’s favorite, or favorite shape, rather. Walter suddenly remembers that he made them in the shape of whales, which ties in with his whole looking at the ocean thing? (Peter liked staring at the endless ocean.) I wonder if he ever iced a pancake with, “To a Whale of a Wife.” And how did he make the whale-shaped pancakes? I bet this is one mystery that’ll be dropped. :(((((((( Walter also now remembers what he is looking for.

Jones stops in Providence, Rhode Island at an amateur soccer game; how he got another set of coordinates I don’t know. The gang were called up here by Gossip Girl to interview the soccer players. Again, the same description: that a shimmery yet warped window appeared. One of the guys had hit it (that’s what he said). We saw half a soccer ball in the opening of this scene to clue us in what had happened. We then cut to a body that looks as if it had been seared by a very hot frying pan. Like Joey said, “Whoa. That’s a spicy meatball!”

Meanwhile, Walter seems to have remembered what he was searching for as he looks into a trunk with certainty, with none of that crazed, unsettling movement. He sees the coin, similar to what the Observer had held, atop a lockbox, to which he does some shifty eyes. This is why we’re here, he says, and tries to open the lockbox, but it’s you know, locked. Or stuck. They open it and Walter admits to tripping acid with Belly. LOL. They believed that they were seeing other worlds while on acid trips, so they resolved to getting there without the LSD. Bell thought children had the natural ability to see them and that he may intensify that with Cortexiphan. Walter then says that something precious was lost, so he thought he would go over and get that thing to fill his loss here. He also mentions that things from there can pass over here and it’s dangerous, which is why he built a plug, or a patch, to close the hole; that is the thing for which they were searching. Walter says they have to go to Reiden Lake.

Olivia magically discovers the link between what happened in Williamsburg and what happened in Providence! Her abilities should be a case! Actually, she asked for all files that had to do with weird paranormal things, then she stuck pins on a map to correspond to the files, and they seem to be concentrated in the areas around New York City and Boston. Well, they are the areas that matter the most (in that order). Somehow she figures the connection between the two and immediately asks Broyles to call up Nina Sharp. Olivia shows her a fancy computerized map as opposed to the paper one, showing a pattern to… the Pattern. How patternictable! Nina thinks she may know: there are “soft spots” in the world where the membrane between realities is very thin and until recently, have been rare. Turns out scientific meddling have increased the numbers of these spots. Does it not seem like a veiled global warming message? ZOMG STOP POLLUTING YOU GUYS OR YOU WILL TEAR AN OZONE LAYER HOLE AGAIN!!! Is it no mistake these attempted “soft spots” all appear along the BosWash megalopolis, the second biggest megapolitan area in the world? So Jones is looking for a proper soft spot to break through. Then they notice another cluster of soft spots whose center is Reiden Lake, NY. And oh, what is the time frame of the episode, and are these people taking helicopters or going by car, ‘cuz it takes like three hours to get from Boston to New York City.

Jones and gang are already at Reiden Lake, while Walter and Peter are driving there. Walter says it’s the place where he opened the hole. His bald friend only comes during dire circumstances, which is why they are on this little road trip to Reiden Lake. “What else aren’t you telling me?” Uhm… how about that “precious” thing he lost? It wasn’t a ring, was it? Peter sure is not curious about the matter. Walter mentions Peter’s sickness again, and that to calm himself down, he took to coin collecting, then brings out his favorite coin, that was on the box. Peter doesn’t remember any of that, but he knows how to do that awesome coin trick with his knuckles, so maybe he subconsciously does remember? Suddenly they are pulled out by mysterious big dudes, but they are only the FBI.

The FBI go to where they suddenly see the shimmery light. One of the cronies shoots an FBI agent, but all Jones says is, “Don’t stop what you’re doing,” and to hold them off. Peter goes instead of Walter to try to plug the hole and Walter shows him how. Olivia calls out Jones, who only turns around probably because he recognizes her voice. She shoots all the others and finally Jones, but apparently his new special gift is that bullets only go through him. Oh, I thought they’d be stuck to him, like how sometimes melted cheese would stick to your teeth if you had a bit too much at once. Jones heads for the shimmery window just as Peter comes along. Right when Jones is partly through, Peter plugs the hole. Am I the only person who is having flashes of Carrie ever since Walter said he made a “plug”? “Plug it up! Plug it up!” So Jones now has only parts of him on the other side.

CONCLUSION! Broyles announces a cease and desist in investigating Belly. Astral Projection brings cereal, and it makes me sad she didn’t have a bigger part in this episode’s events. She’s just at that lab, again. She and Peter see a letter addressed to him perched on a roll of Necco Wafers (looks like it): “Stepping out for a bit.” She wonders if she should call the police, but he says it’s okay because it’s the first time he ever wrote a note instead of mysteriously disappearing. Walter, turns out, is at the mysterious grave again; he places that coin atop the gravestone, where it’s revealed that ZOMG PETER ACTUALLY DIED OF HIS CHILDHOOD ILLNESS WHEN HE WAS SEVEN AND THIS LIVE ONE IS ALTERNATE PETER!!!!!!!!!!!

Nina calls Olivia and says that she’s keeping her promise of allowing her to see Bell. She tells her not to tell anyone and to come alone to NYC. Girl, you don’t do that! That’s how you get kidnapped by pimps and are forced to perform salacious acts! Olivia arrives at their meeting place, but she never arrives. She calls Nina’s office, but it turns out she’s out of the country. Olivia is in the elevator leaving when suddenly there is that familiar shimmery flash again. The elevator doors open to a too-white hallway, where a woman dressed entirely in black calls her Agent Dunham and brings her to a room. There is a New York Post whose cover is about the Obamas. Olivia continues to look around the room when a man with a shadowed face enters, which is quite hilarious and borders on the manga-style of obscuring the face. He’s been waiting quite a long time for this, he says. He finally reveals that he’s Spock, or Belly, and perhaps remembering that Nina told her he was in an alternate world, she decides to take a look out the window. Unfortunately, she’s not able to see that she’s looking out from THE WORLD TRADE CENTER.

Wow, so the major thing is, why is William Bell hanging out in Alterno-Land? What of Alterno-Bell? Can two versions of one person live together in the same world if Alterno-Bell isn’t gone? How was she able to “cross over” — was she in a soft spot? And what exactly is the deal with the Observer?

And, gah, seeing the WTC just brought up a lot of memories again. I was up there only once, but I visited the area pretty regularly… I remember going to the Borders bookstore to buy Mary Higgins Clark’s books. I remember taking the PATH to New Jersey to watch movies. I remember the really bland and boring shopping concourse, but still… I remember going to SamGoody and buying CDs… I remember discovering an entrance that was more accessible to SamGoody than the one I had been using… I remember the places, but I don’t know where they would correlate considering the state the place is now in. I remember them, and that’s all I have of them. :((((((((((

ANTM Cycle 12 Finale: Who really expected a different winner? They kept pushing Teyona on us so much I just ended up feeling meh about her. Sure, she took great pictures, but with all the throat jamming they did (could they be anymore obvious) I just got sick of it. Oh, and whenever she and Aminat were being bitchy in the house because of in-fighting (Lord, I don’t even remember what they were about, which is, honestly, a good thing) helped sour my impression of her. I was totally rooting for Allison, BTW, but I’m glad she didn’t win, because many of the ANTM winners seem very Where’s Waldo? right now. Runners-up look like they have more promising careers. Being “America’s next top model” is more like being “America’s next CoverGirl shill,” anyway, so good for Allison for not winning! Yay for Teyonasaurus selling makeup awkwardly!

Okay, that’s a velociraptor, but you get the idea. And at least I didn’t photoshop the dinosaur head onto her body. Because other people did it already.

This post sums up pretty nicely my feelings toward Teyona. Plus, I think most other people’s.

Lost Season 5 Finale: WHAT THE HELL IS LOCKE?????????????????????

Whoa… seriously did not expect that. I hated Locked more than ever this season, with his smarmy, cheeky, shit-eating grin he had plastered on his face constantly this year. Now, it makes sense! Or… not! What the hell happened? When Christian returned, his body was gone, but Locke’s body is still here! And that flash! I think it means time travel again, but back to their correct times. Also, I think I’m wrong. ONLY ONE MORE YEAR.