Ghost, Episodes 4, 5, and a TINY bit of 6

So, this is going to be a short entry from me. I've gotten through episodes 4 and 5 of Ghost, and it's kept my attention very well so far. I really do have nothing too bad to say about it, except for one character that just gets on my LAST NERVE...

*rantrantrant*

HYUK JOO IS SO ANNOYING! In episode 5, we find out who the actual killer is, and I guess he's supposed to be the bad guy, but I hate Hyuk Joo more than the bad guy! I had to stop like one minute into episode 6 to complain about him because I literally just screamed in my apartment, "REALLY?? REALLY????" (Although I guess my neighbors are used to my screaming antics from sports by now, so they probably assume I'm watching football or baseball on TV... which I currently am at the moment, but that's besides the point.... ^^;;)

Hyuk Joo hates Woo Hyun because of incidents from the past. Fine. But he hates him SO much, he's getting tunnel vision. He's the Team Leader of the Cyber Security team for God's sakes, but his mind is SO FOCUSED on Woo Hyun, and catching him, and throwing him under the bus, that he fails to even think about the cyber crimes that could um, possibly affect ALL OF SEOUL?? >___< *angry*

Basically, Hyuk Joo has an idea of who "Woo Hyun" really is. So while Woo Hyun and the rest of the cyber team are trying to catch a notorious group of hackers who may or may not have possibly put in a virus that is going to attack a server that affects all of Seoul, Hyuk Joo becomes all excited that OMG Woo Hyun might be Ki Young. When Woo Hyun/Ki Young realizes how/when this virus is going to spread, he makes way to his car (which is in a parking garage of a building because he went to the previous place of where our hackers were hiding). Hyuk Joo basically corners him and is all "AH HAH! I'M ARRESTING YOU FOR SUSPICION OF MURDER, WOO HYUN. OR SHOULD I SAY KI YOUNG???" Woo Hyun yells at him and says that he doesn't have time for this, but Hyuk Joo thinks that it's just an excuse for him to not be arrested.

That's all fine and dandy dude, but while this is going on, all lights go out, the computers freeze, traffic lights go out, people get stuck on elevators, and lights in operating rooms of hospitals go off. And all he's caring about is catching Ki Young/Hades????

Start episode 6. These guys are in the parking garage in complete darkness, and Woo Hyun/Ki Young says to him AGAIN that the real attack was on an electric power company, and they need to go ASAP. Hyuk Joo says, "I don't believe you." (Cue me going, "REALLY?? REALLY?????" and angrily going on to the blogger to rant about this... ^^;). OH YEAH. THEY'RE IN COMPLETE DARKNESS, AND THEY HEAR THE CHAOS GOING ON OUTSIDE, AND HE DOESN'T BELIEVE HIM.

Woo Hyun/Ki Young: "When Seoul is thrown into chaos... will you believe me then?"

YEAH. BITCH. *angry face*

Anyway, I should get back to watching episode 6. If I come across anyone/anything else that bothers me, stay tuned! ^____^

Ghost, Episode 3

So... Before the Episode 3 recap... A few things that came to mind after thinking about the first two episodes:

A pondering Marielle + Recap

- How he looks after reconstructive surgery is kind of unrealistic. I mean his whole body was CHARRED. And after a year, he looks perfectly fine and only with a few scars...?

- Funny how even his voice became different... ^_^; I wonder if they were the same height too?

- I didn't type this in my last recap because it was only supposed to be a basic one, but while Ki Young was in the hospital, the guy who tried to kill both him and Woo Hyun sneaked into the hospital and tried to kill him again by stealing him away and almost gave him lethal injection. ANYWAY..... After Kang Mi takes him away and saves him... Why doesn't he try to go back and kill him? I think I might have missed something, but maybe he was told by a higher power to stay back? No idea... But I would think that since he's up and walking again, then he would be in danger of being killed again as well....

Anyway, on to Episode 3. The episode starts off with a girl (who was scared crapless by a mysterious Phantom hacker at the end of ep 2) waking up, turning the lights on in her bathroom, and seeing "Remember the sin made by your hands" written in lipstick on the mirror. Then on her forehead, "Go die" is also written. This creeped me out SO much. What an awful way to start the morning. >_<

Next, we see Kang Mi try to help Ki Young be as "Woo Hyun"-y as possible. She shows him pictures of people he would work with and what their relationship is with Woo Hyun. She also tells him what's "Woo Hyun"-like and not very "Woo Hyun"-like - Like how he never drank beer, so Ki Young shouldn't be drinking beer either. That'd be too strange. Also, he has to be aloof at work because that's how Woo Hyun is like. If he's greeted, just greet back politely and don't smile. That sort of thing.

He gets back to work and finds out, unfortunately, he'd been demoted from Team Leader. The new Team Leader is Kwon Hyuk Joo, who was the crimes chief in charge of the investigation (also, he knows almost nothing about computers, but he's very good with crime scenes).

A surprise welcome back party is also thrown for him. Aww....

Anyway, 2 other women besides the girl in the beginning of the episode are also cyber stalked and die. And the girl at the beginning dies too. In each case, the cyber team finds the women in their apartments with scary writings on the walls saying stuff like "Die Die Die!", and the deaths made to look like suicides. They find out that the things that tie them all together is that the writings on their walls are actually comments that they had made as netizens being all anti-Hyo Jung when she was going through her sex scandal. News starts to spread... Hyo Jung haters are dying for saying bad things about her? It turns out that the cyber stalker who killed these girls is NOT the one who killed Hyo Jung... But Ki Young determines that he must know Hyo Jung's killer... since he saw a half-pic of the killer on cyber stalker's hard drive after hacking into it.

They realize that another connection between the 3 women is that they all saw the same musical and all received an email to get a VIP ticket to the show. The musical is called "A Magician's Dream". When investigating the theatre and talking to the worker at the front desk, they find out that all VIP tickets are to the same seat - that is D7. So, whoever is stalked and murdered.... must have also sat in that same seat. Are they all connected or is it just a coincidence? Hmmm...

They are about to leave when Ki Young's assistant at the online newspaper he used to work at - Seung Yoon - shows up and claims that she received an email for a VIP ticket. Uh oh.

Seung Yoon and Kang Mi end up switching seats to see what would happen... The show starts, and it's two stories about couples falling in love, with the help of a mysterious "Phantom" who does magic tricks (to make the scenes more romantic, I guess).

In the meantime Hyuk Joo is interrogating a man named Seung Jae, who is suspect #1 as Hyo Jung's killer, because he was the boyfriend of one of the women who died. Also, he used to be Hyo Jung's manager until 2 months before she died. He claims he did not kill her, and his girlfriend was not the one who wrote those hateful comments online - He did. He also mentions that it all started with that musical - And actually, he was the one who received the VIP ticket to the show. He just forwarded it to his girlfriend so she could watch it...

Back at the musical, the couples on stage end up with happy endings. The Phantom asks who will accept his love, and the spotlight shines down on seat D7 - on Kang Mi! The theatre lights go off, and when they go back on again, Kang Mi is gone...

Episode 3 was just as interesting as the last two. I read a comment online that says that the portrayal of hacking is so creepy, it kind of makes me want to not check my email ever again. ^_^;; Overall this episode was very good. Very suspenseful, and the whole hacking thing is creeping me out. I thought it was very nice that certain character traits are being channeled (not going to say specifically what since this part of my post isn't hidden ^_^;), but it's nice to see some emotion in our main male lead.

Also, there was a scene where The Stare is given between our main male and our main female, and I SO hope that doesn't mean that they're going to unnecessarily add romance in this drama. >_< At least, romance that is so out of place and prevents our female lead from making rational decisions.

Scenes of note: There's a good hacking/cyber team running around trying to catch the bad guy scene. I'll have to time it later on, but it's a good scene that shows both the hacking and police aspect. Could be used for both the Police and Suspense category if we choose to keep them.

Ghost, Episodes 1 and 2

I finally decided to start on the Korean drama "Ghost", which aired this summer. At first glance, the title of it can be deceiving - someone would think that it would be about ghosts (of course).

I watched the first two episodes, and from now on, I will try to give an episode-by-episode update. But here is a basic summary:

SPOILERS AHEAD ^_^

It starts off with the supposed suicide of an up-and-coming actress named Shin Hyo Jung, who jumps out of her apartment window. It is assumed that she committed suicide because she was involved in a sex scandal and basically couldn't take the talk and rumors anymore. Prior to jumping out of her window, she had also Tweeted that she was going to die anyway.

Our lead male is Kim Woo Hyun (played by actor So Ji Sub), team leader of the cyber investigation squad. We see his team try to take down illegal gambling sites, but as they try to save the data stored on the computers, a notorious hacker called Hades beats them to it and causes all the servers to self-destruct, destroying the evidence. Here's our antagonist.

Our female lead is Yoo Kang Mi (played by Lee Yeon Hee). She is also a member of the cyber investigation team. I think her role is to be a super beauty, but to be kick-ass and super intelligent. Well, she doesn't really seem super intelligent (not like our hacker, who is a ghost behind the computer... hence the title ^^;), but she doesn't seem dumb at all.

Anyway, the police are being quick to rule the actress's death a suicide. I mean, the girl jumped out the window. But our friend Hades posts a clip to the city's video board that shows the actress being pushed out the window by a guy. So.... The assumption of it being a suicide is squished pretty quickly. But since Hades put up the video, then Hades ALSO must be the killer...

The cyber investigation team analyzes the clip and concludes that it has not been edited or tampered with. They see a reflection in the window, and after increasing the quality of it, creating an outline of the face, and then trying to find a match.... They find a match. His name is Park Ki Young (played by Daniel Choi), and he apparently went to the same police academy as Woo Hyun. They were roommates, but he dropped out. So, he becomes Top Suspect #1.

Ki Young runs into Kang Mi after infiltrating the police department (he was trying to find the actress's laptop to find a certain clip), and he swears to her that he didn't kill her. He confirms that he is Hades, but he didn't kill her. He had hacked into her laptop in order to find a file called Phantom. He received an email that said that if he found it, then he would be rewarded (money, I think).

Kang Mi doesn't believe him, but allows him to find the clip in front of her. He finds the Phantom file in a file called "36.avi". The actress used steganography to hide the file... hiding a message in another file or writing. So, Ki Young finds it and extracts it. They expected to find a list of sexual favors or clients or something to do with the sex scandal... but he finds another video.

We find out later that the video is of a man being poisoned and killed. And then men around him are just watching. One of them stands up. It's our main guy... WOO HYUN.

O_O So our main guy who's supposed to be a good guy is actually a bad guy??? *mind blown*

Anyway, Woo Hyun and Ki Young meet at a factory to discuss this. Ki Young chews out Woo Hyun, asking what he was doing just sitting there and watching the man die. Woo Hyun basically says he regrets it and wants to turn things around. He tells Ki Young to go and leave the country and live peacefully, because if he sticks around, he'd be charged for murder. *cue bromance*

The rest of the police figure out that Ki Young is with Woo Hyun, so they head to the factory.... only to see it get blown up. Oh no! One body is totally charred and completely dead, the other is still.... really ugly, but hey, he's moving and alive! So they rush him to the hospital.

At the hospital, they identify him as Woo Hyun, by his ID. His body is so deformed, that they can only go by the ID. However......

Back at the police station, Kang Mi sees Woo Hyun's badge by his computer. Then she remembers Ki Young wearing his own fake badge, with the name "Kim Woo Hyun"....

O_O....

Kang Mi goes to confirm that the Woo Hyun at the hospital is actually Ki Young (much to the resentment of the disgruntled nurse, who says to leave the patient alone because he needs to be stable). She takes his fingerprints. Tries to match it up with Woo Hyun's.... and it's negative. That patient is NOT Woo Hyun.

So Kang Mi freaks out and asks Ki Young/Woo Hyun all these questions, and he basically says that someone else was in that factory. He tried to kill him. And that Woo Hyun wanted to change everything around. And after thinking about it, Kang Mi decides to help him.

After a few scenes of Kang Mi sneaking around, switching dental files, and disguising herself as someone working on Woo Hyun's autopsy, it is confirmed that the charred dead body IS Ki Young. And the patient in the hospital is team leader Woo Hyun. The identity of Woo Hyun lives.

But that's not all. Ki Young/Woo Hyun's body has been discombobulated in such as way that extensive surgery and rehabilitation is needed. It really is a miracle that he lived. A year passes by, and we see a man at "Ki Young"'s grave.

It's the real Ki Young. With - after extensive surgeries - the face of the late Woo Hyun. Ki Young lives with Woo Hyun's identity and, with Kang Mi's help, swears to find the killer that did this to them.

I am extremely pleased with how this drama starts off.  It's intense and suspenseful.  And I can't believe all the things that happened in the first two episodes. I haven't really come across a Korean suspense drama that really sucks you in so quickly.  It had me yelling at my computer.  It had me have that feeling of "OMG what's going to happen next??", which I hadn't felt since Bloody Monday or Maou.

I'm just worried about 2 things:  1.)  It'll end up stupid (like some unnecessary romance or political inter-department drama), or 2.)  They won't be able to keep up this pace for 20 episodes.

But for now I am very pleased, and I can't wait to watch the rest of this series!