RECAP: Nine ep 1

Hello! This is Kjlover, laugarza, concreteroads and prwsmiles. The four of us will alternate as we recap the new 20 episode drama by TVN called Nine: 9 Times Time Travel.  Nine stars Lee Jin Wook (you may recognize him from Spy Myung Wol) as the main character Park Sun Woo and Jo Yoon Hee (from dramas like Lieto Me) ashis love interest Joo Min Young.

Nine: Nine Times Time Travel is a story of time travel, romance, mystery,and revenge. Park Sun Woo is a news reporter who has recently been told that he has less than a year to live normally. While trying to settle things in his life he discovers his brother is dead and his love interest doesn’t want a short romance with him. What’s more, he discovers that he is not hallucinating but somehow traveling back in time every time he lights an incense stick. With the lighting of an incense stick he may just have the chance to find revenge, fix the past, and gain the girl he loves.

---

The story begins with a lone man attempting to climb the Himalayas wearing a red parka. Half frozen he struggles higher with only a walking stick and compass to guide him. He stumbles in a snowdrift and falls blacking out. His heart beat pounds as he struggles awake clutching a small thin stick in his hand. The shadow of a person looms over him and grows closer as he blinks his eyes open. He stares at the person as the scene goes black.
Park Sun Woo wakes up on a plane on December 15, 2012. In pain he takes a blue pill as they prepare to land.
He is traveling to Nepal for two reasons. One is to ask his co-worker, Joo Min Young, to marry him for six months, and the other is to identify and receive the belongings of his dead brother.
Min Young picks him up at the airport, and after giving her a passionate kiss and a surprise proposal they head to the hotel.

During the drive, they argue over his sudden proposal. She jumps out of the car and so he takes over the driving.
He takes a sudden detour to the police station and says he’ll meet her at the hotel later. Sun Woo meets a man at the station who asks him to identify a photo. He states it is him in the photo and an officer puts down a box in front of them. It’s his older brother Jeong Woo’s belongings.
Hearing the case report, a flashback of his brother is seen of him being found decayed in the river by some children in January. He asks to see the case photos. Going through the photos he notices his brother was clutching a stick in his hand and asks about it.

Hearing it is a common incense stick he eventually signs the materials into his possession and heads to his hotel. After staring at the box of his brother’s items for a while he opens it and finds a journal. He starts to read it and yanks out the photo he received of himself at the station. Another flashback occurs to when the photo was taken as Sun Woo remembers the last time they met alive around Christmas time.
Finding a photo of his family in the album he remembers how his brother asked him if he wouldn’t want to live like they did in the past. He runs to the bathroom and is sick. While in there he hears someone at the door.
It is Min Young with his belongings. He doesn’t want her condolences when she tells him she heard about his brother. He tells Min Young he wants a cheerful girl which is why he proposed as he doesn’t need sadness. She admits she told no one he was there and that she really thought he was there for her and agrees to go to dinner. Sun Woo’s head pains him again but goes unnoticed by Min young. He asks for ten minutes, grabs his things and heads back into his room where he takes another blue pill and picks up his brothers things to throw back in the box. He doesn’t notice he drops a bag containing the incense stick and lighter on the floor.
He goes to eat with Min Young, and they debate on why they should marry for a few months when they haven’t even dated. So he says they should date then. Suddenly Min Young runs away to avoid being spotted by their co-workers. The co-workers see Sun Woo and, figuring out that the purse in the chair next to him belongs to Min Young, they tease him. They catch up to Min Young and tease her while Sun Woo heads back to his room. Min Young calls him and invites him out but he says he needs to rest before he heads out the next day.
Sun Woo tries to sleep but can’t. Sitting up in bed he notices the box of his brother’s items again. About to look away he spies the bag on the floor.
He picks it up and takes out the incense stick to light it before getting back into bed. The incense stick burning, he goes back to bed to sleep. Sun Woo suddenly wakes up on the ground in the middle of nowhere with snow falling all around him. He shuts his eyes just as a volley of snow is about to hit him.
He opens his eyes once more in bed but with ice still stuck to his face. The incense stick has gone out. He gets up to drink some water ignoring the fact that his clothes are soaking wet.

A couple of days later he is back in Seoul getting ready for a news broadcast as a TV news reporter at CBM. Before they go live he calls the hospital where his mother is hospitalized and asks the nurses to not let her see that night’s news even though they are not even sure whether she would recognize her son.
That night he is set to interview Chairman Choi the leader in Korean medicine who is currently in Zurich Switzerland about his stem cell research company. Choi recognizes him and asks to speak with him before the broadcast when he asks about Sun Woo’s brother. As soon as Choi mentions Sun Woo’s brother his expression changes.
Sun Woo says nothing about Jeong Woo (his brother) and the interview begins. It goes by the script until suddenly Sun Woo changes things up by asking his own questions about the problems caused with the female egg donations to the company and illegal surgery. Choi replies he knows nothing about it as the newscast team panics over what Sun woo is doing. Sun Woo wishes Choi luck in finding answers and signs off.  Choi’s team is upset but Chairman Choi brushes it off as Sun Woo turning out to be a lunatic like his brother. Meanwhile, in Nepal, Min Young and the rest of the crew are preparing to go up the mountain. After the crew teases Min Young about not calling Sun Woo, she starts thinking about what he proposed to her while he was in Nepal. In Seoul, Sun Woo’s boss is in his office arguing heatedly over the phone with what sounds like CBM’s director. They are arguing over Sun Woo. Sun Woo’s boss argues that the director would need to fire him first before trying to fire Sun Woo. He hangs up just as Sun Woo walks into his office
He tells Sun Woo to lock the door as his phone rings again (The ringtone is the same as Choi Hee Jin’s from QueenInhyun’s Man!) and in annoyance yanks out the battery. He tells Sun Woo he is suspended for 6 months depending on his behavior, but Sun Woo simply puts his resignation letter on his desk. His boss gets angry about it, but Sun Woo admits that his headaches have gotten worse. Sun Woo then tells him that when he was checked last month he found out he had a stage 4 tumor that, even if it were operable, would only allow him 2 years to live if the operation was successful. His boss is shocked and asks if it was true, but Sun Woo is not playing games. He states that he is happy it’s a tumor because he thought he was going crazy like his brother and mother.
The reasons behind their schizophrenia and his dad’s death, Sun Woo shares, are all because of Choi. Choi burnt his father’s hospital and took it over, causing his mother to go crazy and his brother to run away from home whilst Choi grew to be a leader in Korean medicine and aimed to be a leader in the world. Sun woo then puts a USB drive on his Boss’s desk. It contains all the facts about Choi’s fraud, and that’s a one way ticket straight to jail. Sun Woo asks the Boss to help him reveal Choi’s misdeeds so that everything he did at the interview doesn’t make him out to be a lunatic. Sun Woo thought he had time for revenge but he doesn’t and wants help. Back in Nepal the crew is driving up the mountain when Min Young asks them to stop the vehicle. Sun Woos phones rings as he is leaving the boss’s office. Min Young called him because it might be her last chance for a signal as they are going to a higher altitude. She wants to know why only 3 months. He says he is busy.
She insists on a real answer. So he says it’s because he fears getting attached. She asks him why that should happen, and he says because it hurts when we break up.

---

Laura's Thoughts:

For the first episode things are happening pretty fast. We have a story of revenge, what we will soon discover is time travel, and a man trying to win over his love interest. The first episode leaves us wondering what is going on with the incense, will the main character reach his goals and at least this viewer hopeful that they will have a guest appearance from a cast member direct from Queen Inhyun’s Man which I loved. While similar it looks like it will be a drama with its own strengths. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen to our main character in this 20 episode drama.

Kjlover's Thoughts:

So far I really like this drama, who would have thought that an incense stick can teleport a human being to the past. But again an amulet did transport Queen Inhyun’s Man. So no surprise there. Obviously, a similar plot line everyone might be familiar with is the “Queen Inhyun’s Man drama which I loved <3. The only difference in this drama is that the guy doesn’t take the teleporting object, and thus he will be stuck in the past until the incense stick stops burning. But that’s better than not knowing when you will go back like in Inhyun’s  Man. Because in this drama, Sun woo may be able to set the incense stick to only burn to a certain extent, if you get what I mean. Either way I can’t wait for the next ep :D

Episodes Recapped: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20