Karaoke & Partying?
Laying Low
Episode 8 of Alice begins with Jin-Gyeom bringing Tae-Yi into his old house as memories from the past come flooding back. He pleads with her to lay low in the house and takes her phone away. He’s worried that Alice or the assassins will be after her. Elsewhere, the detectives visit Tae-Yi’s parents and tell them to keep the police posted around anyone strange showing up at the restaurant asking about Tae-Yi. Back in their old house, Tae-Yi and Jin-Gyeom share dinner together and the two grow closer together. That evening, as the lights are shut off, Tae-Yi reveals more about her past.
Tae-Yi’s Past
It turns out Tae-Yi’s Mother adopted her as she wasn’t able to have kids of her own. Originally her Mother told her that she “stood out” compared to other kids as she smiled all the time. Back at Alice HQ, Min-Hyuk is patched up following his run in with Hae-Min. Despite the doctor telling him he needs rest, Min-Hyuk refuses to listen and gets back involved with the case again. With the group gathered, he realizes that neither Se-Hoon or Hae-Min were acting alone. This means there’s someone else pulling the strings. Promising to solve the case, Jin-Gyeom starts drawing up a list of names and suspects involved in this time-bending case. Among them is Park Sun Young and Tae-Yi. He’s not the only one either. Hyeon-Seok methodically looks through different case files involving Hae-Min himself. As he rips up the paper, he stuffs it in his pocket. As we soon see, Professor Seok is still being help captive.
Tae-Yi Is The Clue
In 2010 Tae-Yi told him that this younger version of Tae-Yi holds the clue to stopping time travel and bad things may well happen to her. Tae-Yi and Jin-Gyeom both wind up stuck in the closet. Given the door is broken, they’re unable to get out. Jin-Gyeom isn’t worried though and comments how the sergeant will be along shortly to help get them out. While they wait, Jin-Gyeom tries to remove his top for Tae-Yi and it causes a big issue when Do-Yeon shows up and opens the door. After getting drunk with Do-Yeon and the sergeant, the group all start singing karaoke and partying together. In the morning though, they go their separate ways. Min-Hyuk heads back and visits Se-Hon in prison. He promises to get him released if he helps with their investigation. He mentions Tae-Yi and even Si-Young, who apparently visited before-hand.
1992
We then flashback to 1992 where Si-Young visited Tae-Yi on a train. She admits to being pregnant but Si-Young implores her to give up the kid. She tells her she can raise the child but in doing so, will need to leave and never come back.
2020
Tae-Yi brings Jin-Gyeom into her room as she notices a signature matching that of Hae-Min – the assassin. While Jin-Gyeom is out investigating, Hae-Min seizes his opportunity and confronts Tae-Yi. He chases her up to the roof-top and confronts her. With Si-Young watching on the monitors, she quickly shuts off the drones as Min-Hyuk arrives. He confronts her over the secrets she’s hiding and asks for an explanation. Just as they do, Hae-Min grabs a time card but Jin-Gyeom shows up and shoots her. Just as he does, Hae-Min drops to the ground in a bloody mess but Tae-Yi is nowhere to be found.
2021
When she awakens, Tae-Yi finds herself sitting on the ground with by-standers walking past her. Armed with nothing but the time card, she heads up to the police station but learns that Jin-Gyeom passed away a year prior.
October 2020
As we jump back to 2020 we see Jin-Gyeom has died seemingly at the hands of Hyeon-Seok while Tae-Yi pleads with a dying Jin-Gyeom to awaken.
The Episode Review
With Hyeon-Seok allegedly involved in this big mess, it’s fair to say Alice and the police are so utterly incompetent that it makes this a difficult drama to watch at times. Even worse, a good portion of this episode focused on comedy shenanigans and misunderstanding tropes with Do-Yeon. This completely off-set the pacing of the drama and dissipated some of the sci-fi elements that worked so well early on. There’s also no progression on the prophecy either. It’s such a shame because this one started so brightly but now it’s causing a lot of issues with pacing and the sci-fi narrative. It’s always difficult to deliver competent time travel and this one is leaving lots of holes in its logic. It seems like the focus is now shifting to Tae-Yi and from what I can gather, she’s the central focus and the primarily protagonist now. It’s quite confusing to be honest and I hope this drama starts to make sense of what’s going on because right now this is a difficult one to decipher.
