Alice: Episode 3

by LollyPip

Our stalwart cop starts to suspect that there’s something very strange going on when he finds a woman who reminds him of someone very special. Oddly (to him), she acts nothing like the gentle, caring woman he remembers, despite looking exactly like his mother, who’s been dead for ten years. More strange coincidences lead him deeper into the rabbit hole, putting his very life in danger.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

A man makes fate itself before he meets it. – Thomas Wilson

Tae-yi is in the middle of a physics lecture when Jin-gyum walks into her class and stares at her, tears filling his eyes. He’s seeing a woman who looks exactly like his mother who died ten years ago, but to Tae-yi, she’s being assaulted by a random hugging stranger. She slaps him and starts yelling at her class to video this while she calls the police, ha.

Eventually Tae-yi calms down, but she squints suspiciously at his police badge and asks if it’s fake. Jin-gyum says it’s real and asks if she knows him, but all she knows is his name from his badge. She does a literal spit-take in his face when he asks if she’s over fifty or has a son, then kicks him out of her office.

A background check informs Jin-gyum that Tae-yi is a genius who graduated high school at fifteen, got her doctorate in physics at twenty-three, and even published a book. She was a highly respected researcher before she became a professor, though nobody knows what subject her research was in, not even her parents.

Her family happens to run a Chinese restaurant near the station. Jin-gyum goes there for dinner to check them out, and Tae-yi’s parents seem pretty normal. Her younger sister TAE-YEON (Yeonwoo) shows up whining for money so that she can get her own place and move out of the apartment she shares with Tae-yi, but they refuse and tell her to come home instead.

Having seen enough, Jin-gyum pays and leaves. But he waits for Tae-yeon outside, and he tells her he’s investigating Tae-yi and has some questions. He asks if anything happened to Tae-yi in 2010 (the year his mother died), but Tae-yeon describes her as “constantly and unchangingly annoying,” lol.

Jin-gyum is surprised, since he remembers his mother being kind and patient. Tae-yeon scoffs — the Tae-yi she knows is impatient, demanding, and dismissive. When she asks Tae-yi later about the attractive cop, she gets her head bitten off, but Tae-yeon says that he knew a lot about Tae-yi like how she likes her ramyun, though he got her personality all wrong, ha.

At the Alice building, Seung-pyo informs Min-hyuk that Jin-gyum seems to have Hong-seob’s missing Time Card. All they know about Jin-gyum is that his mother is dead and his father unknown, though they find it interesting that he was diagnosed with alexithymia (inability to identify and describe emotions) as a child.

Min-hyuk notices a picture of Jin-gyum with Captain Go and his wife, and Seung-pyo says they’re still investigating their relationship. Min-hyuk decides to retrieve the missing Time Card tonight, and he asks where Jin-gyum is now.

He’s actually at the library looking at Tae-yi’s book, Physics for Geniuses, when one of the Alice drones locates him. Seung-pyo and Shi-young approach him and demand that he return the card, and when he refuses, Shi-young activates a device that blows out all the lights and causes books to explode into a cloud of pages. Seung-pyo sets off a smoke bomb as more Alice agents close in on Jin-gyum.

Jin-gyum holds off the Alice agents at first, but he eventually ends up with several of their guns pointed at him. Min-hyuk shows up and punches Jin-gyum to the ground, and Seung-pyo grabs the Time Card from Jin-gyum’s jacket. As smart as he is, Jin-gyum picks up that Min-hyuk calls it a “Time Card,” a clue as to its purpose, leading Min-hyuk to determine that he has to get rid of Jin-gyum.

Min-hyuk takes aim at Jin-gyum, who recalls that his mother was killed with a similar strange weapon. When Min-hyuk picks it up and starts shooting, Jin-gyum avoids the bullets and get in a few shots of his own. Injured, he swings across the library on a decorative wire and finds a hiding place, and Min-hyuk is forced to leave with the other Alice operatives since the police are on their way.

Before they go, Min-hyuk warns Jin-gyum, “Don’t even try to look for us. You won’t always get this lucky.” The lights come back up, and Jin-gyum checks his wallet – he still has his mother’s Time Card.

The next day, Tae-yi finds Jin-gyum lurking in her school hallway and asks him cheerfully if he’s a stalker, ha. He apologizes and asks for a favor – he wants her to look at his mother’s Time Card and see if she can figure out its use. Tae-yi points out her huge backlog of work and declines, and she dismisses Jin-gyum’s claims that the card makes things float when he touches it, and his mention of time travel.

Tae-yi mentions having seen strange things herself, like the red propeller-less drone. Jin-gyum tells her that he saw it too, and her.

At Alice, Cheol-am warns Min-hyuk that just because Jin-gyum is from thirty years in their past, he’s still a police officer. Min-hyuk snaps that they shouldn’t have built Alice in this time, then, reminding Cheol-am that he called Min-hyuk here to solve some problems. He says that to achieve his goals, Cheol-am needs to push harder to protect those he loves, but Cheol-am fires back, “Were you able to protect them? Were you strong enough to protect the ones you care about?” Dude, ouch.

Jin-gyum and Tae-yi go out and discuss the strange things they’ve seen recently. Tae-yi says she followed the drone that day because it didn’t seem to use any of the known methods of propulsion, and she believes that someone somewhere has just developed advanced technology that isn’t widely known.

Jin-gyum asks if Tae-yi believes those people could develop a time machine, and she says of course they can. Jin-gyum shows her the Time Card again and says he thinks it has to do with time travel, but Tae-yi retorts that she believes in it theoretically, but not necessarily literally. Tae-yi refuses to look at his Time Card until he tells her where he got it, so he says simply that it was his mother’s.

Tae-yi asks if he’s saying his mother was a time traveler, and Jin-gyum says no, but someone else who had an identical card is presumed to be a time traveler. Tae-yi still thinks it’s ridiculous but agrees to study the card.

She notices that Jin-gyum isn’t drinking so he says he just doesn’t care to. Tae-yi downs a shot and tips the glass over her head, which Jin-gyum remembers his mother always did when she drank. For some reason, he changes his mind and asks for a drink. He admits it’s his first time drinking and says he just wanted to try it.

They’re spotted later by one of Tae-yi’s sunbaes, who seems like a creep. He takes Tae-yi’s clear rejection as romantic tension, and a now-drunk Jin-gyum bellows at him in banmal for daring to speak to a woman over fifty like that (lol). It gets rid of the guy but makes Tae-yi angry at him all over again.

Jin-gyum slurs that that’s how old his mother would be now, and he asks Tae-yi if she’s a time traveler. She starts to leave but Jin-gyum grabs her wrist… then conks out on the table, hee. Luckily, Do-yeon calls Jin-gyum and Tae-yi picks up, and she tells Do-yeon to come pick up Jin-gyum. Do-yeon gets all protective — she yells at Tae-yi and accuses her of doing something to Jin-gyum.

Do-yeon is really mad by the time she gets to the restaurant. But the moment she sees Tae-yi’s face, so much like Jin-gyum’s mother’s, all the wind goes out of her sails. Tae-yi feels strange in the taxi on her way home, remembering the look on Jin-gyum’s face when he stopped her from leaving, and she admits to herself that she can’t stop thinking about him.

In the morning, Jin-gyum wakes with a mammoth headache and finds Do-yeon making him hangover soup. LOL, he declares the soup bland, so Do-yeon helpfully offers to throw it at him. She notes how much Tae-yi looks like his mother, and Jin-gyum says vaguely that that might not be all that’s similar, though he can’t really explain what he means.

Do-yeon snaps that Tae-yi isn’t his mother, since she’s a physics genius while his mom was an ordinary woman. Jin-gyum doesn’t react until she calls Tae-yi rude, then he orders her to leave. She goes, but on her way out she says that it’s love for the subject that makes for good photos… “You’d probably take terrible photos of me.”

Jin-gyum goes back to Tae-yi’s office to see if she’s learned anything about the Time Card, but she hasn’t even looked at it yet. He watches her work and remembers how his mother would help him with his schoolwork. She’d been exceptionally intelligent, and had joked that she did better in school than him.

He also remembers that his mother had a strange birthmark on the back of her neck. He lurks in the university cafeteria while Tae-yi eats lunch, trying to see the back of her neck, but her hair is down and he ends up getting caught. Jin-gyum asks to see the back of Tae-yi’s neck, which only makes her more cranky.

Back in her office, Tae-yi finally looks at the Time Card, which seems to her like a normal card. She casually tosses it aside and it lands on her phone, but she pays attention when the card makes her phone go haywire. Curious now, Tae-yi calls a friend and asks if she can use their lab.

Captain Go has noticed that Jin-gyum is away from the station a lot, and he’s told that it’s because he’s investigating Yoon Tae-yi. He takes Jin-gyum to lunch and admits that he regrets letting Jin-gyum get his own place. Jin-gyum points out that Captain Go asked him to move, and Captain Go confesses that it was Do-yeon’s idea (and grumbles that she still hasn’t jumped Jin-gyum yet, hee).

Captain Go asks Jin-gyum not to dig into the Eun-soo kidnapping case anymore, as her parents want the case closed. Meanwhile, Sun-hee takes Eun-soo to the doctor about the strange rash on her arm, but the doctor doesn’t seem too concerned and gives the girl some medicine.

The future version of Sun-hee is still lingering at Alice instead of going back to her own time, so Min-hyuk approaches Shi-young about her delay. He thinks she’s making excuses of not feeling well because she doesn’t want to go back to the time when Eun-soo is dead, and he says it’s time for her to learn to let go. Shi-young replies cryptically, “It must be easy for you… it was hard for me.”

Min-hyuk informs Sun-hee that he’s sending her back to her own time, and he brings in a driver to take her to the departure gate immediately. On the way, she tells the driver “I’m sorry” moments before he’s shot dead through the windshield. The car careens to a stop a few feet from another vehicle, and a young man with a high-powered rifle meets her and tells her she’s safe now.

The Alice staff knows exactly what happened — Sun-hee hired a broker to help her stay in this time illegally. Min-hyuk issues an order to watch the broker for now, and to keep an eye on Sun-hee’s location.

Elsewhere, a strange man (Choi Won-young) reads the Book of Prophecy. The book warns, “The mother who went through the door of time to prevent her daughter’s death turned the past upside-down, and is about to shake the future.” Oh no.

Eun-soo’s father goes on a business trip, leaving Sun-hee and Eun-soo home alone. He notices someone who looks like his wife entering the building, but he decides he’s seeing things. Sun-hee snuggles into bed with Eun-soo, but she’s woken a short time later by her doppelganger, who’s hovering over sleeping Eun-soo and stroking her face.

Future Sun-hee whispers that Eun-soo looks like an angel, then turns her angry gaze on Present Sun-hee. She snarls, “You failed to save my girl. Get out. I’m the one who should be here!” as she grabs Present Sun-hee by the throat.

The next morning, a car is in the process of being processed at a junkyard when one of the workers notices blood dripping from the trunk. He checks the trunk and finds Present Sun-hee’s body. LA and Sergeant Hong are tasked with notifying her family, and when Sun-hee herself answers the door, they’re shocked speechless. They bring her to the station, but her fingerprints check out, so they let have to her go.

Am autopsy reveals that the body’s blood and fingerprints also match Sun-hee’s, and that she was first strangled then stabbed. There are signs of a struggle, and the coroner says that usually they find DNA evidence under the victims’ fingernails, yet strangely, they only found Sun-hee’s own DNA.

Jin-gyum goes to see Sun-hee, who invites him in but acts strange. He asks her a few questions about when Eun-soo disappeared for a few days, questions she answered before, but now she seems not to remember the answers. Recalling that Sun-hee told him that her daughter was afraid of the new housekeeper, Jin-gyum asks Sun-hee how Eun-soo feels about the fact that that she recently quit, and he knows something is wrong when she says that Eun-soo was very sad to see her go.

Jin-gyum’s visit panics Sun-hee, who quickly packs a suitcase then goes to wake Eun-soo. But the girl won’t wake up and is now covered in that strange red rash. To her horror, Sun-hee realizes that she’s got the same red rash on the back if her neck.

Jin-gyum asks Captain Go for permission to follow Sun-hee for twenty-four hours, saying that she’s not the same Sun-hee they met before. Captain Go wants to meet with her first, but when he gets to Sun-hee’s home, she tries to keep him out by saying that Eun-soo is ill. She finally lets him in and he says he has some questions for Eun-soo, and Sun-hee screws up by lying that she’s at school.

Captain Go gently forces his way into Eun-soo’s room, where she’s still unconscious in bed. He sees her rash, but before he can act, Sun-hee steps into the room and stabs him in the stomach. He’s rushed to the hospital and into surgery, while Sun-hee escapes with Eun-soo and calls her broker to report that she thinks she made her daughter sick.

Meanwhile, Tae-yi’s friend examines the Time Card. When Tae-yi asks if she believes in time travel, her friend says she wants to, but that theory and reality are two different things.

At the hospital, Do-yeon tries to comfort Jin-gyum that Captain Go will be okay. Jin-gyum says that even when the man who treated him like a son may be dying, he still doesn’t know what emotion he’s feeling, but Do-yeon reassures him that that’s a normal way to feel. She jumps up to get him some food, but she stops to listen when Tae-yi shows up and fusses at Jin-gyum for making her track him down.

She needs to talk to him, but Jin-gyum just looks up at her and bursts into tears.

 
COMMENTS

Jin-gyum’s reactions to Tae-yi are certainly strange –- it would make sense if he had a normal relationship with emotions, but this is a guy who only ever showed his feelings around one person, his mother. I think he’s instinctively reacting to Tae-yi’s resemblance to his mom, and I’m curious to learn more about the psychology of that. I do feel bad for Do-yeon though, because she’s been in love with Jin-gyum for years and has never gotten a fraction of the emotional response from him that Tae-yi does. Jin-gyum knows that his interest in Tae-yi is because he suspects she’s somehow a younger version of his mother, but Do-yeon doesn’t know that, and this is going to cause her a lot of heartache.

I’m honestly so confused about Tae-yi right now. I was assuming that Jin-gyum is meeting the woman who would get involved with Alice in the future and start time traveling and eventually become his mother, but that seems improbable. That Tae-yi was around twenty-five years old when she decided to stay in the past and have her child, while this one is thirty-two at this point in time. But the show is definitely proving that there can be more than one version of a person, since Eun-soo’s mother was able to go back, kill her old self, and take her place. I just can’t figure out, with the information we have, how that explains the two different Tae-yis. I’m sure it will get explained, but right now, I’m just having a little trouble following the story because I’m so in my head, trying to figure out how this works.

There’s one place I hope the show doesn’t go, because I’ll be really uncomfortable if it does. I understand why Do-yeon is feeling jealous of Tae-yi — from her perspective, Jin-gyum is showing more interest in Tae-yi than he’s ever shown in any woman. Though Do-yeon recognizes that Tae-yi looks like Jin-gyum’s mother, she doesn’t know that Jin-gyum suspects she might actually be his mother. To Do-yeon, Jin-gyum’s interest in Tae-yi appears romantic, so her jealousy makes sense. Now, we as the audience know that Jin-gyum has absolutely no feelings for Tae-yi, because he suspects that she may be his mother who will travel back in time in the future. But Tae-yi doesn’t know that, and she’s looking at the situation from the same angle as Do-yeon. Suddenly this attractive young man is following her everywhere, and it’s natural for her to think he may be interested in her… and again, because we know he’s not, I’m fine with that. But it was that one moment when Tae-yi admitted she kept thinking about Jin-gyum that makes me feel a little icky. Hopefully she’s only drawn to him because she somehow senses they’re connected, but if her interest is in any way because of attraction, I’m out. Just please Show, don’t go there.

On the subject of parents, I hope we get to see more of Min-hyuk and what he’s been going through, because I really like him. He’s still suffering from the loss of his Tae-yi (and their child), and he’s trying to do his work to the best of his abilities, but he can’t help but be affected by his loss. Every time he and Jin-gyum end up fighting, I just want them to know they’re father and son! I don’t think we’ll get that revelation for a while (it’s too juicy a morsel of storytelling not to milk it for a bit longer), but I can’t wait to see it happen. It’s not going to be an easy thing for either of them to accept, that the person who’s been giving them the most trouble is actually their long-lost father/son, but I just want them to know that there is someone who also shares a connection to the woman they both loved.

In fact, I want to learn more about all the Alice employees, as they seem to be sitting on interesting backstories. Shi-young made that vague remark about how it was hard for her to let go, leading me to think that she’s also lost someone she loved and got to go back in time and see them, but had to eventually stop. And Min-hyuk’s comment to Cheol-am about accomplishing his goal of setting up Alice in 2020 piqued my interest, as well as what he said about protecting those he loves. It seems that Alice has a lot of problems, all likely in this same vein… people can travel back and see those they’ve lost, but it probably often makes it even harder for them to let go, knowing their loved ones are still alive in another time but being unable to visit them anymore.

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