What have I been doing this week? I’m glad you asked! Here’s what’s been on my watchlist this week:
*Note: My reviews usually contain spoilers. You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk.*
TV
Lovestruck in the City (2020) – Ep 5-8
We seem to have gotten more insight into Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook) the past couple of weeks, while Lee Eun-oh (Kim Ji-won) continues to be a mystery. While I do believe that she was being genuine while she was with him, there’s so much about her motivations that is still unclear. We don’t know why she left the city two years ago, we don’t know why she adopted a different personality and didn’t tell anyone from her life about it, and we don’t know why she came back either. Hopefully now that the two have finally met in the present, we can start getting some insight into Eun-oh’s thought process. But honestly, I’m not holding my breath, considering the pace that things have been moving at.
The other characters have started to get fleshed out a fair bit too, although some of them would have been fine without some of the stranger quirks – like Seon-yeong’s (Han Ji-eun) bizarre need to reclaim all the things she gave her boyfriends when they break up, and Jae-won’s alcoholism. They seem like plot devices more than character development.
While I’m enjoying the snappy editing and crisp dialogue, I am still a bit confused by the framing device of the mockumentary format. While we have seen the occasional camera or other characters filming in the background, there seems to be a disparity in those moments where characters are clearly by themselves, or during events that happened in the past. My current theory is that this is some kind of reenactment, but that seems a little too farfetched even for this writer’s style.
Graphic Novels
Paper Girls (Issue #21-25)
As things start to get wrapped up, all the disparate narrative threads are slowly coming together, and we’re starting to see the bigger picture. The girls landed in the future, and as they try to figure out how to get home they are also each on their own personal missions. Mac’s seems the most pressing, as she thinks the cure to her future illness can be found in the future, only to learn the hard truth that the reason she’ll even become sick is because of the time-travelling in the first place. Mac also helps KJ come to terms with her own internal struggles. As her prophetic visions come to a head, and she finds it difficult to open up to Mac, not sure if she can trust her to be understanding and accepting of her. Ultimately, their friendship wins out, and the girls not only reconcile but also take their relationship to a romantic place.
The other half of the group have similar levels of success and failure. When Erin finally realises that the Old-Timers are being headed by the very same prehistoric people they helped rescue, she and the Tiffanies immediately make their way to find Wari, who somehow managed to survive and travel to the future with Jahpo and Dr. Qanta. What ensues is a mess of trying to decipher Wari’s amnesia-riddled memories, and consequently trying to return to their own time. Ultimately, the older Tiffany has to sacrifice herself so that the girls can return, which comes as a shock to all the girls. They barely have time to recover from all this before they are once again faced with their final difficulty, Erin’s clone, who ends up scattering the girls through time so that they won’t be able to cause any more havoc.
As all this happens, I really do wonder why all these events have been taking place. We still don’t fully know the reason for Stony Stream’s or the girls’ importance to the time stream, and I hope that we get answers in the final stretch of the comic. Every time I think I’ve figured out people’s motivations, new things are added to the mix just to muddy everything up again. Can we please get some answers, Mr. Vaughan?
Colourful Granny 