[Spoilers are contained at the end]

The red string that stings 💮 The red thread of the dead 💮 The red cord of discord 💮
The red rope without hope ➰💔➰ Red, Red, Redeaux 💮 The red line that binds 💮 At the end of the line



MY HEAD HURTS

🅱 is a story about a grim reaper who inhabits a fresh body to conduct an investigation. He ends up uncovering a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions that's encapsulated in Ha-ram's mother's declaration: "Everything that happened was wrong." While it's altogether 💓-wrenching, it's also cathartic & oddly satisfying. 🅱 is simply profound.

The wham-crammed-jammed final eps gave me palpitations. I'm still trying to sort it out & get back in rhythm. Just b/c a concept is opaque or lofty doesn't mean we should bypass the effort to get to the heart of the matter. So ~ a-digging-I-go ~ Found~~>> Unpopular Opinion: 'Hated Black's Ending? Well, You're Wrong,' by Joelle Halon. She hella-helped lift the veil.

The names & numbers of the main characters were chosen w/ care. Ms Halon mentions the significance of Black's reaper#. 444 stands for death & misfortune, but the alternate meaning is a sign of God's love & protection. Ms Halon digs out Easter 🍳s that the writer tucked into her work. Our protag will embody both the +&- of #444 thru the course of 🅱. Ms Halon's article helps w/ the complexities of the last couple eps. Though 🅱 is challenging, it's worth the effort. The 📝 embedded meaning behind every detail. Once you've seen 🅱, the following is likely to produce chills:

#416 is an optimism stamp. The glass is half full. Look for a + in the broken pieces.

#419 signifies being chosen to unleash true potential & let ☀ shine. Guardian angels are watching.

#420(Prisoner#): 420 is about fulfilling potential, or life purpose.

"Ha-ram" means that, in love, it's best to make decisions w/ the ❤. Refrain from behaving in emotional ways at work.

"Joons" suffer the life challenge to avoid disillusionment.

The name "Soowan" warns that there's a limit to how much a person can influence others. Anticipating one's own emotional changes & vulnerabilities is the challenge.

"Man-soo" augurs how patience can take personal plans a long way.

Pay attention to the ⬆⬆ for a rewarding payoff.

Huck Reaper⛏ When we first meet 🅱 he's loathsome. Cold, rude, dismissive... we could throw the 📖 of Hateful Adjectives at him & give him the maximum sentence. But 🅱 goes from sneering at humans to sacrificing himself for one human. In fairness, he was giving up himself to save ALL the victims of the collective horrors depicted on screen. The transition 🅱 undergoes is similar to that of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. Unlike 🅱, Huck is a kind person, though he hadn't challenged society's view on Africans who were forcibly captured & enslaved. Like 🅱, the odyssey Huck found himself living out completely transforms him.

Huck's traveling companion is Jim, who is of African descent. At 1st, Huck looks at Jim thru society's eyes & unconsciously presumes his own superiority. As things progress, Huck is confronted w/ the realization that Jim is as human as Huck is. Soon, Huck starts to see Jim as a friend… then a brother… by the end of the book, Huck is ready to /die/ to protect Jim: He valued Jim more than his own life. 🅱's triumph over his prejudicial nature is just one of the positive messages that arise from the ooze in this show.

🅱's primary msg is messianic. Other themes include the dark 🖤 of humanity, self-sacrificial love & painful parent/child relationships. Sadly, most of the parents depicted in 🅱 are deplorable.

2 primary protags are Moo-gang & Joon. Joon has a strong sense of justice. He's a protector. We see it ♻ver & ♻ver. As a child, Moo-gang shows how brave, loyal & protective he is. It's no surprise he becomes a policeman. As the story progresses, we see those commendable qualities are continuously pumped into their consciousnesses. Their good ❤s mature as they mature. Moo-gang's mission is to investigate a tragedy that his family suffered: It will lift the lid on a cesspool of shocking corruption & other muck that seems almost too-2-too vast to neutralize. He has a monstrous task ahead of him.

Many viewers are tripped up by 🅱's deficiencies. Ha-ram is incredibly stupid to go after villain Wang Young-choon (WYC) herself, yet she does w/o communicating anything to the police. So irritating. While Go Ara was amazing at 🕞s, Ha-ram, unfortunately, spent most of the show in a rattled panic attack. Her heavy breathing while gasping out words was overdone by ep4. In addition, 🅱's timeline includes things that aren't possible. While 🅱 takes leaps that lead to logical ⚫holes, the director & 📝 still created a superbly crafted story. Avoiding spoilers prevents sharing of most techniques.

The series is powerful not only b/c the inspired script, but also its skillful construction. We are able to get our romance fix filled to the brim with SK's other offerings, so don't fret that this is not the romance you wanted. 🅱 is something much deeper. It is as thought provoking as it is a bit of a mindrape. Yes, on the pure romance scale, it's mundane. YET - 🅱 is one of the most romantic things EVER.

The stage is set early: 1st, by the name of the series (there's no mistaking what to expect) & also w/ the close-up of a skull as the post-prelude opening shot. They spread out a menagerie of subtleties, grey areas, circle backs (or spirals), as well as visual metaphors, cues, links, & juxtapositions. Like a shadowy blanket, irony covers 🅱. Almost /every/ line poin⬆s ↖somewhere↙or↘somewhen↗ else.

Meet Moo-gang, the cop who, ironically, can't l👀k at a body. He meets Ha-ram, the girl who sees t👀 many bodies. Watch for mℹsℹnformatℹon. Whenever 444, or anybody else, says: "That's n🅾ne of my business/That's has n🅾thing to do w/ me," it's probably n🅾t so. Don't assume that any assertion is correct. There is also irony of scale, or phrases that mean much more than what was 'intended'. "Do you know what I went through so that he could live⁉", queries 1 mother- Trust me, you have 🅾 idea.

🅱eat, 🅱eat, 🅱eat, 🅱 is a drumming debate over fate. Foreshadowing is 1 of its c♻nstant tenets. Cut to Ha-ram, who has a vision of Joon telling her: It's cold; she shouldn't sleep there. This dream will take the viewer below the surface. A 🦋 watch cycles in & out of the spotlight. It's an odd design for a man's ⌚, unless it's a symbol of a 🦋's passage to new life. Repeated w♻rds & c♻ncepts make a showing. In one scene the word "black" is used a dozen or so times within 3ish minutes, as if it was a behind-the-scenes dare.

🅱 mercilessly forces the 🔪 & bleeds out every bit of our ❤s. 444 is warned: Don't make eye contact w/ any person in love, or a horrible tragedy will befall you. Such c⚠utions are meant to be heeded. The filming has Ingmar-Bergmanish redolence of iconic bleakness in the scenes where Ha-ram & Moo-gang discuss what's occurred.

Then we have the H🔥T 🅱lack-🎱n-bl♠ck-💣n-Bl🅰ck shower scene, which is absolutely necessary to move the plot & not the least bit gratuitous, thank you very much. Perhaps I'm being a little gratuitous about that. 🤔Hmm. Anyway, it's a m👀d-lifter.

🅱 is icky at times. When police examine the murder scene of a stabbing victim, Det 444 handles the victim's intestines w/🅾 gloves. Then his lunch arrives▶ "Who the he‼ ordered food⁉", says one cop. 444 eats his dinner of intestine🥘, even the chunk that went in the goo and it is so over the T😱P. So far over. Good stuff. I have an appetite for more.

Strangely, there's lots of laughs. Humor lifts the pressure release valve, thankfully.🤧. Teaming the Joseon GR with a middle-school wannabe rapper is a new twist on The Odd Couple.
Ha-ram calls 444 loser. He calls his ex-partner loser. You'll have to watch to appreciate it. 🅱 gets nostalgic when he's separated from Ha-ram. He recalls every 🕞 Ha-ram kicked or clocked him, or cursed & yelled at him. He drops his head & says that he just wants to hear her voice. It's 🅱lack humor by 🅱, thus it's metaphorically funny too. The police squad is a whole fruit 🍰 of nut jobs. A couple seasons following them around would be full-on fun. Nothing's as special as a 1st💋kiss, right? Seeing a man go bug-out-🦇-crazy over the experience makes it even better. The scene is perfect.

While 444 & Ha-ram are just starting to circle r♻und eachother, she says she'll keep her 👀 on him & make her /own/ conclusion as to his character. He tells her to N🅾T keep her 👀 on him. But just #l👀k at him in that 🅱lack suit! What woman could keep her 👀 averted for long? 🅱 is, well, just adorable when he takes Ha-ram to his doctor to explain his odd behavior as due to the bullet in his head. His expression is priceless.

But for Ha-ram's shrillness, the acting is ✨. WYC, 1 of the bad guys, is used in some twisted ways that dovetail w/ his personality. Not only does he take a beating over the course of the show, but they generate some oddball laughs at his expense. 444 is pressing him for ℹnformatℹon, when WYC bellows: "I didn't kill your brother‼." Kudos to Woo Hyeon for the spot-on acting. He's deranged, but entirely credible. I believed him. Go Ara dispatched some serious acting skill in the last 5 potent minutes as she reviews the staggering entirety of her life. All the cast made the cut. 🅱 is a quality production on every level.

Most of the 'problems' are minor, except for a couple quagmires that remain a big ?mark. Just bypass all that, as 🅱 is colored like no others.

My heart hurts.


〰🖍 IMHO

🎬10 🎭8 〰🖋9 💓7 🦋8 🤔10 🌞1 🎨8 🔚9

Age17+ extreme violence

👀📺again? ✅🔂 I'm upset because it hasn't been available for streaming. I went to put it on for family and, to my dismay, it wasn't to be found. I am waiting for it to return so I can get a team watch going.




⛔️SPOILER SECTION⛔️

💮 More humor:

The kiss hit him like a train, not a car. Who's to believe the scene where this totally scrumptious man is checking out guides on how to kiss, or smearing ice cream on his face hoping that Ha-ram will lick it off again?😅 Those b@$t@rd$ didn't even allow him to kiss her much! All that practice went to waste.

Luckily, 🅱 came up with a plan, b/c misfit squad was about to electrocute him! They only wanna help him regain his memory... Shades of Airplane, or Bugs Bunny, smh🤣.

💮 More romance:

Falling for Ha-ram is 🅱's trigger for change. It starts quickly. By ep6 he's already acting a tad jealous, though still one cold, heartless jerk. In one of his many deaths he says: "Why, when I was dying, did /that/ girl pop into my head? That's so annoying."

By ep15, he's thinking of Ha-ram 1st. 🅱 decided to find Joon for Ha-ram's sake. In the end, he's selfless even when he's being selfish. He decides he 'deserves' to live a happy human life➡with Ha-ram. That is not the complete story, though. He wants a life with Ha-ram, in part, to protect her from ever finding out what happened. That is why destroying the laptop is a priority, even if it would have exposed the truth of his horrific death & lead to the justice for which he had strived. Knowing the details of that woeful night would eviscerate Ha-ram, and those details are on that laptop. Even Ha-ram's mother begged 🅱 to stay.

💮 More filmcraft:

💮 The 1st of the many devices the director used to craft this intricate work is constant foreshadowing: As it turns out, it's not entirely false that Ha-ram brings misfortune. Also, when Ha-ram screams at her stepfather, "How can someone die like that!?" Think: JOON.

💮 Visual cues are employed: After 007 talks about the mall collapse & all the kids that died, his head turns to 416.

💮 There's brilliant juxtaposition: Leo's filming a movie & 🅱 is on live-feed jumping from a moving car to latch onto the window of an also moving bus. It looks like Leo's been upstaged.


💮More irony:

Both 🅱 & Ha-ram comment on suicide early on. 444 refers to the grim reapers who had committed suicide as "these idiotic pathetic ones that used to be human." Who will commit "suicide" later?

Moo-gang & Ha-ram BOTH helped WYC, unwittingly

444 tells 007: "That woman will never be able to save anyone's life. I'll make sure..." Then HE saves multiple lives through his sacrifice.

20 yrs: Mad Dog says he's been making the same hangover soup for 20 years. That means he's needed hangover soup since he lost Clara. The camera pans from Clara dying to a label: "Handle with care."

Speaking of pushing the 🔪 in, heartbreaks are alluded to by the dozens, it seems. Most of the characters die in the course of the show, including Black's 7 deaths (+ the scene: Get out of Moo-gang's body! Now! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang❗ is in addition to his other deaths).

The most difficult scene in the show is when 🅱 goes to visit his mother at the restaurant. She thanks him for figuring out who killed Joon. Then she tells him that she went to prison for Joon. Compare that to his adopted mother. "It's too unfair!," he laments. He's like every other "pathetic" dead person: Caught flat-lined.


💮 About the ending:

Ha-ram tells 🅱 that her life doesn't have to be fabulous, but she's going to live to be an old lady. She asked for it & he's listening.

The ultimate penalty is that his existence will be denied. No one will remember him. 🅱 still exists, so it's the memory of him, and likely his existence on earth, that is being revoked. In doing this, he takes on the alternate meaning of 444, and becomes a redeeming messianic figure. The messiah theme is reinforced by a verse in Revelation where it says: "I make all things new," which 444's sacrifice effectively does. As we said in the 90's: Be kind & rewind.

Ms Halon's insights are also worth noting here: Some cultures believe people die three times, the 3rd death being that no one remembers them anymore. "...by exposing the loophole and having #419 remember him for Ha-Ram, a third death did not occur because memories of Joon were preserved."

"What kind of ending is that? That poor GR!," laments Ha-ram.

When Black comes to retrieve her, she lies about having been "very happy." It's on her face. Ha-ram got exactly what she asked for. The fact that her soul emerged as the young Ha-ram signifies which life was the most important to her, per Ms Halon.

The worst logistical prob: How would a Reaperless Leo have known to prevent Ha-ram's father from getting in an accident?


Just bypass the issues, as 🅱 is colored like no other. This is really black.