The Women Of This Show Give Me Life.

The women of this show give me life.

Woman? Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap, if I took you for a man.

Those executives at Netflix BETTER be talking to one another ‘cause if the Head of RomCom (or whatever) who oversaw One Day isnt pitching this for another adaption to the Head of Original Kdrama’s….

Like the LONGING. The SLOW BURN. The CLASS DIVIDE.

Loving the complexity of Madeline Ushers character: a woman who declares she doesn’t want to be limited by men, who’s life is defined at every turn by the decisions and actions of her brother.

……

Madeline Usher is doomed by her attachment to her brother, and it is the root of all her eventual pain.

When Verna offers them the deal, it’s Roderick who ‘charges forward, straight at it’ and accepts the terms despite the fact that the only ‘next generation’ they current have are his kids. Madeline agrees afterwards but only once Rodrick makes it know he is already in. I don’t think she’d have gone for it if he had objected, she’s always had a very ‘both of us or neither’ kind of attitude.

And then she is as much these kids parent (from what we have seen) as Roderick is. Granted we see next to nothing of the kids biological mothers so we have to assume they weren’t very involved (either by their choice or other circumstance) with their kids after Rodrick got his claws into them.

That first scene when we meet Perry Madeline and Roderick are equally dismissive of him, but she is the one asking questions and prompts: you’ve had a year to come up with an idea, is this it or is there more? How are you going to make this successful? Why will your pitch be different? She even asks Roderick to jump in ‘anytime now’ to help her handle this train wreck. And Rodrick has just received the news he’s dying but I think it’s telling that Perry is looking at both of them for validation, for support. They are equally intimidating but equally supporting him.

With Camille we don’t get 1-2-1 interactions between her and her father (despite her own obsession with winning his approval) but we do get a scene with Madeline. After Perry’s death Camille lobbies to be given the power to lead the family’s PR response, and Madeline takes her seriously and asks what she would do. When Camille lays out her plan it’s Madeline who gives a proud nod of approval and okays her actions.

Leo unfortunately gets no parental interactions from either senior Usher. Victorine only gets it right at the end just before her monstrous actions are revealed. Otherwise all she gets from Roderick is pressure and the interactions of an investor, not a father.

Tammy gets the most parental interaction from Madeline, which is tragic as she’s trying to show her father that she can be the heir to his empire. But her aunt is the one who shows up to her presentation, who gives her the pep talk, consoles Tammy (in her own way) about the failure of her marriage, who believes Tammy when she is terrified by someone in the crowd.

Frederik is always focused on his father so Madeline doesn’t get many moments with him, but again Roderick is more of a CEO or boss than a father: focused on how to protect the company, how to secure the future. Little to no concern or support to his son as he mourns his wife’s injuries, as he deals with his siblings deaths, as he takes on more pressure from the world and the family. Roderick only mourns his son (as opposed to his heir) after Fredrick is dead.

Added to this: the security on all the kids? Madeline arranges it. When more kids die? We see Madeline demand it be doubled. She’s the only one still fighting for them, fighting fate itself.

With Lenore we see more interactions with her and Roderick but her interactions with Madeline are just as sweet and show a close, loving relationship. Lenore even calls her Granny Madeline. And Madeline is the one planning to preserve Lenore via AI: this must have been the main reason she begged Roderick to kill himself. Not to save her to but to spare Lenore. What’s the bet that she started working on the AI project in earnest when Morelle announced she was pregnant?

Madeline tracks down the supernatural entity they made a deal with and tries to negotiate a new deal: again (now we know the original terms) this is likely for Lenore’s benefit, not hers. She faces down a power far beyond herself and tries to save or protect what’s left of her family. Not Roderick.

Madeline took steps to preserve and protect her nieces and nephews, and grand niece while her brother did next to nothing. Once you know the nature of their deal with Verna, Roderick’s attitude to his remaining children after they remember who Verna is is just baffling.

Madeline even makes reference to birth control that she took on the off chance the deal was real. She says to Tammy that she didn’t want children with her first husband and hasn’t since, but she has been a mother to Rodericks kids. This lack of biological motherhood hasn’t spared her for the heartbreak of loosing a child. Or a grandchild.

And it’s even the decision of a man (again her brother) which is going to end her family’s legacy in another way. His marriage to Juno, his treatment of her, his denial of her fight to get clean and his horrible reference to himself as Victor Frankenstein and Juno as his monster - this is what pushes her to sign away the company when she inherits it. Madeline speaks about the board choosing her and moving the company away from pharmaceuticals, into the fields of AI and tech. Sure Madeline then died but a lot of the groundwork was likely there, and it could have been a possible path for the company. If Juno didn’t inherit it all and break it apart. Because of Roderick, and the way he treated her. Once again Madeleine’s legacy is destroyed by her brothers actions.

The irony of 1970’s Madeline declaring she doesn’t want to be limited by men’s choices or by a man, taking steps to protect her self and her heart, focussing her work on things outside of medical drugs in the hope that one day that can be what they become known for… then being doomed to more heartbreak and failure by every one of her brothers careless actions is so sadly tragic.

As I’m fascinated by What Ifs and alternate scenarios, and I’m going over back how I felt about Dex and Sylvie, I would LOVE someone to explore an alternate version of their lives.

(I also have a soft spot for rare-pairs, or in defiance of ‘the big destined love’. Every now and again. For balance and literary roughage.)

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Across Dex’s life there’s reinforced messaging that Dexter doesn’t know what he wants, that he lacks purpose and drive and care, and this frustration only adds to lots of his other struggles.

But there is one thing we’re told Dexter once cared about: at some point in his childhood Dexter *loved* photography.

His mum mentions it when they get lunch, and thought we realise later that she was dealing with lots behind the scenes then, her remembrance of this hobby and her retelling of it then are actually quite hurtful and ham fisted. She (in a loving way) disparages this hobby, implying that Dexter wasn’t very good at it, and that this obsession confused his parents who (by the sounds of it) didn’t support or nurture this love.

And that would be interesting enough, coming in the same conversation that she bemoans Dexters lack of purpose and worries that it will cause him unhappiness in his life. But Dexter’s reaction to this memory is fascinating.

Its startling to see him so uncomfortable. He seems genuinely hurt and confused by this summation of his hobby; whether this is in response to the general sense that his mum didn’t think he was very good, or specifically that it was directed at his fascination with photography we can’t know for sure. But it gives an impression that there *was* once something that Dexter loved to do, or was fascinated by, and it was disparaged by his parents who didn’t support his interest and now he is seen as generally lacking any purpose or anything he’s interested in.

However you look at it it’s an interesting juxtaposition within one conversation. (I also kind of wonder if other interests were also treated this way, and so Dexters lack of care or interest is partially a learned behaviour…but I digress)

We get a call back to this photography again much later in the series, when the camera focuses on several taped up photos of gravel on his childhood bedroom wall. Again whatever the intention of this, it does remind us as the audience of Dex’s previous hobby that was important enough to him that he still keeps mementoes of them on the wall.

And though Dexter struggles massively with purpose and direction, we see in his last years with Emma that with the right support (and probably following on from a period where he reached the right level of desperation to swallow his pride and self motivate) he can choose a direction and job that he enjoys.

So I kind of love to wonder what other way his life could have gone.

What if, for whatever reason, Dex and Sylvie don’t go to Tilly’s wedding? Whatever the reason, probably combined with Dex both wanting to see Em again but also being slightly terrified of it, they can’t make it.

So Dex and Em don’t get their emotional reconciliation scene; they still likely make up and become friends again (Sylvie is still preganant, they’re still getting married, Dex will likely still invite Em and Tilly at least) but without them having that time and privacy at Tilly’s wedding to lay out all their cards…. are they *as* close afterwards as they could have been?

Does a Dex who hasn’t fully regained that romantically-tinged friendship with Emma (they shared a quick kiss minutes after he shared he was engaged and about to be a father!) then turn to Sylvie more than he did in the series? With Emma back as a good friend but not kind of a flirty-friend does Dexter emotionally commit a bit more to Sylvie and their marriage?

As they don’t re-meet Callum at Tilly’s wedding I think it’s unlikely he’s invited to theirs, hence Dex probably doesn’t get an offer to work for him.

So a Dex who is still professionally unfulfilled, looking for job options and a change, right when everything else in his life is also changing (marriage, fatherhood)… does this Dex now have a similar level of desperation/motivation as the one who we saw in Paris? Could this Dex also find the motivation to retrain in a new field, but not as a chef (as he hasn’t worked in a cafe) but instead…. as a photographer?

There was *something* there that drew his attention and held it as a kid, something which a appealed to him and made him proud of his little foray into that world. And when people are struggling with purpose and direction, don’t they say go back to what you once liked?

A Dexter who rediscovers this childhood love, now with the focus and need of an adult to try something new: that would be interesting. Also I think Sylvie is a model (?) in the book, so if that’s the case she probably has contacts or friends to help her new husband learn the ropes. It might even help their relationship to have her able to help him work on that passion, and for him to have something he is definitively working towards: both for them and also to reassure her family.

Plus if they don’t meet Callum at Tilly’s wedding, who then doesn’t offer Dex a job, Sylvie won’t be having an affair with him. In addition being with a Dexter who is slightly more emotionally attached to Sylvie, with a new career to focus on, and who hopefully feels less impotent might mean Sylvie doesn’t feel the need to cheat at all?

Do I ultimately think they would stay together? Probably not. They do appear to have differences in personality which would mean they aren’t the best of bedfellows. Dex’s sense of humor is shown to grate when Sylvie needs reassurance, and Sylvies inability to relax comes across to Dexter to be a lack of trust or belief in his competency. I don’t think different circumstances would have magically ‘fixed’ these differences in attitude and personality.

But I do think they could have ended better, and had a nicer and more interesting middle-period, before they went their separate ways.

But a Dexter who got to explore that tiny bit of passion and interest we’re told he once had? That would have been a fun version of him to get to see. And the poetic irony of Dexter finding purpose in the field his mother once disparaged, who found that interest and passion she worried he lacked in something she dismissed and mocked, would have been so narratively satisfying and well tied off!

Roderick Usher is such a good bait and switch of a villain! You spend most of the show watching his ‘downfall’ and corruption, knowing that he’s going to become the monster Dupin knows him as. But you still want to believe he can’t be all that bad, and he somehow knows this and plays right into it until the very end

Roderick is telling his story and peppers it with all these asides and moments that make the audience feel some sympathy for him. That make us believe he either has good intentions beneath everything else, or originally had them and was corrupted by power.

He implies he truly didn’t know Ligodone was addictive: he tells Dupin ‘you belive the chemist when he you tells you the drug they made isn’t addictive, you trust your company not to abuse the use of that drug’. He reminds Dupin (and by extension the audience) that he ‘didn’t make the damn thing, I just sold it’. And then it cuts to show that the drug company was originally acquired by Roderick’s predecessor as CEO, who took his pitch for a pain free world and ran with it. This makes the audience feel some small sympathy for Roderick: not enough to think he’s a victim in anyway but it worms in there and makes him not as monstrous as he was a moment ago. It implies he is not solely to blame.

The audience see’s (we think) Roderick getting corrupted and swayed to the dark side of corporate greed. Brilliantly they show Roderick in present day acting in ways that seem in character for what we have learnt about him, and then flash back to the 70’s to reveal that those lines or attitudes where originally those of the old CEO who Roderick *hated*. It appears as if pure innocent and trusting Roderick who runs straight at injustice has been corrupted by the old CEO, has become the monster or villain that he once hated. It’s a small tragedy mixed in with a busy narrative but it impacts the audiences view of who Roderick once was. We interpret this as an originally good if naive man corrupted by power and wealth. Coupled with all those scenes in the 70’s of Madeline being more emotionless and pragmatic, pushing Roderick to be more manipulative and strategic, it appears as if he has been ‘forced’ or ‘groomed’ into his role against his original intentions. Part of the scenes we then spent in the 70’s is spent quietly mourning this version of Roderick, as we know it doesn’t survive his ascension.

But there are enough moments to imply that Roderick is still being an unreliable narrator. When Dupin first apologised for faking an informant, saying he feels that his lie had some role in the death of his children, Roderick’s first response is to run with that false impression. The way he responds to Dupin’s apology sounds like he’s gearing up to lay into him about his role in Roderick a children’s death, to double down and agree that Dupin does bear some blame for how they died.

And then one of his dead children appear to him. They make him pause, collect himself, and acknowledge what Roderik knows to be true: Dupin’s lie had no bearing on their death (his deal with Verna is the reason they’re dead) and any impact of that lie on their final fate is solely due to Roderick believing it and then placing a bounty on the supposed informants head. He turned his kids against one another, Dupin’s lie was just the vehicle. Roderik only voices this when he is forced to by his literal ghosts.

There are several moments when it appears his dead children are ‘keeping him honest’. When he’s getting off topic Perry or Leo appear to shock him and remind him to keep telling their stories. When he tries to downplay his part in the creation of Ligodone and argue that the horrors of its addiction are actually due to a street derivative which ‘hasn’t been FDA approved’ Camille’s appears behind him to force him to reconsider and eventually interrupts him so abruptly he trows a glass at her. When he’s lamenting Frederiks death and remembering him as a child not an adult (the last time Roderick was any kind of father to him) Fredrick takes over child/Frederick’s body to remind him of how he died and to get back to the story. It’s almost like he’s saying ‘you don’t get to remember me like this, you don’t get to miss remember and pick and chose: this is how I died and it’s because of you so keep going’. It’s only in hindsight so we realise this was Roderick trying to subconsciously control the narrative and change this confession, to reframe his actions and those deaths. And the kids didn’t let him get away with it.

Even Juno as a narrative device helps to hide Roderik’s rotten centre: she is such a bluntly honest and sincere person, she lends a little credence of honesty to Roderick. We think he must have some small good in him (albeit wrapped up in all the ‘old enough to be Juno’s father, makes the opioid she’s addicted to, doesn’t defend her from family cruelty’ BS of his ‘love’) as she is devoted to and loves him. Plus when we first meet her he states he loves her, he is always shown to be gently affectionate towards her, and even claims she is one of his ‘two favourite ladies’ along with his granddaughter who we know he dotes upon. But then at the very end his twisted horror show of devotion is revealed: anything close to love he holds for Juno is warped by her being a living totem of his product, something he can point to and use to further his cause. Juno is an object to him, one he enjoys complete control over. He has never seen her as a person in her own right, just a doll/puppet to prop up his drug empire, and he can’t separate her or his feelings for her from the drug she is dependant upon.

Added to this, towards the end of the show we discover that this ‘unburdening’ of Roderiks sins, this confession to a litany of crimes, which will give Dupin closure for both his life’s work and answers to Roderick’s betrayal of him in the 70’s… that isn’t even Roderick’s idea! Verna told him to confess. Even at the end Roderick isn’t mending bridges of his own volition.

And then his final revelation: he’s been lying the whole time, maybe his whole life, to everyone. He had always know people would die to ensure his success, that he would have to climb over ‘a mountain of bodies’ to get to the top and it never once made him pause. He wasn’t corrupted, he didn’t get poisoned by the old CEO and his views, he didn’t change to take on more of Madeleine’s views. He just noticed the best way to get work done and adapted.

Dupin had it right from the start: the only good that he ever saw in Roderik was a reflection of Annabelle lee’s. Like the moon has no inherent light of its own, Roderik hid his darkness behind the strength of Annabelle’s goodness until the time came when she couldn’t shine on him anymore. And he was revealed for the empty dead husk he had always been.

And Annabelle even said it herself, when then kids chose Roderick over her. They were starving and he told them to gorge themselves but he could never actually feed them, because he had nothing real to offer. Empty through and through, and just. So. Small.

Ooh interesting! I thought that was the eldest son in the wheelchair but I’m realising now maybe not, as he was up and standing in the office later.

Ooh so in the OG timeline the gramps/chairman didn’t die in the car crash. So it’s kind of all going down the same way in the ‘new’ timeline as in the OG one.

I hadn’t considered that we would be to see much of Do-Jun’s story continuing after the hit on Hyun-woo is complete hit I kind of want that now. How would he settle back into life again after all of this, with his future knowledge all gone?

Ok first real post here so go easy on me.

If anyone’s been watching the Kdrama Reborn Rich, I have so many thoughts and predictions that I’m sure are going to turn out to be hilariously wrong but I just had to vent *somewhere* so forgive me my crazy ramblings. plus it’ll be fun to look back later and see how shockingly wrong I was.

But also potential spoiler warning in case I’m right about anything, plus I’ll be referencing events in the show up to episode 11.

SPOILERS

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So.

THE WORLD/ TIME TRAVEL/THE RULES

I think the world Yoon Hyun-woo has been reborn into, where he is now Jin Do-Jun has elements of self fulfilling prophecy and timeline correction. My evidence? Yoon Hyun-woo’s mum and the story Yoon Hyun-woo reads in the chairman’s autobiography that he shared with him as Jin Do-jun.

Jin Do-Jun is working off of the knowledge that he has from the previous OG timeline, and as such he can only make decisions based upon this. As Yoon Hyun-woo he didn’t know that his mum had bought stock: either the family never found out after she died or his Dad didn’t tell him.

So though he went to great lengths in the ‘new’ timeline to remove the reason why his mother died in the OG timeline (trying to save his fathers job, trying to ensure his father still got worker protections, finally trading and bartering leverage so that his father wouldn’t be on the picket line protesting and being beaten up on television) in an effort to save her life, he didn’t take any steps to stop his mother buying that stock or to protect its value. He also wasn’t aware how bad her mental or emotional state was in the OG timeline, and so couldn’t have predicted she would take her own life once that stock failed. And so in the ‘new’ timeline he’s blind sighted by her suicide.

So his future knowledge is limited to things he knew, and he might not know all the information about something. In those grey areas Hyun-woo knew nothing about, things can happen or could have happened to affect change. Plus in some ways the timeline will try and correct itself: In both the OG and new timeline the mother died. Some events are inevitable.

Secondly, when the chairman goes missing Do-Jun thinks he knows exactly where he will be, due to a story in the chairman’s autobiography that he read in the OG timeline as Hyun-woo. However this turns out to be wrong: the chairman is luckily nearby but not where Do-jun expects him to be and not for the reasons he thinks the chairman would be there. When Do-Jun shares the reasoning/story he knew from his life as Hyun-woo the chairman laughs, and then states it’s a good sounding story and he will use that from now on.

So Do-Jun’s knowledge from the OG timeline can be compromised or incorrect. Plus the chairman’s statement, that he will use this PR worthy story/reasoning going forward, could explain why this was the version in his autobiography that Hyun-woo read in the OG timeline. Self fulfilling prophecy, plus Do-Jun might not necessarily have the right information.

My read on this? While Do-Jun can make small changes, the larger events will still happen as the timeline corrects itself. The changes he can make are dependant on what he knows, and even that can be incorrect. And he may even *cause* some events to happen.

EPISODE 10/11 AND THE ACCIDENT

We’re made to think that in the OG timeline this crash happened and the OG chairman and Do-Jun were killed. Due to the changes Hyun-woo/Do-Jun has made as 4-2 (befriending the driver) this didn’t happen in the ‘new’ timeline. Wether this is true or not in the OG timeline I’m not sure. But if so the ‘new’ timeline will work to self correct and events will play out as if they had died.

We’ve seen the chairman is loosing mental capacity, likely a combination of the stress of the crash compounding his chronic condition. I think (once it comes to light) the siblings will use this to question his decisions regarding Do-Jun and the succession, and act to remove him as chairman. It will be as if the grandfather *had* died, but likely much more messy and dramatic within the family (due in no small part to Do-Jun’s actions in the series so far to ruin them all). Within this messy transfer of power I think Do-jun will loose much of his power and influence in company: the siblings taking the opportunity to get revenge on him for his actions in episodes 2-10. So in regards to the *succession* it will be as if Do-Jim *had* died in that crash.

But wait! In the OG timeline Do-Jun died in that first ‘accident’. And we can guess this lead to much of the tension we see between 4 and 4 Alpha and the rest of the family in the OG timeline in episode one. And why 4 Alpha wanted to ‘know the truth about the accident’. Surely this will be changed in this new timeline due to Do-jun’s survival?

No.

I think the timeline will move to correct itself.

I think there will be a second attempt on Do-Jun’s life, by the same person as the first (at this time we don’t know if this is his cousin Jin Seong-jun or Seong-Jin’s father/ Do-Jun’s uncle Jin Young-Kim: all that has been confirmed is that it’s not Seong-Juns wife, Mo Hyun-min). In this second ‘accident’ Do-jun will survive but, realising that this family member won’t stop trying to kill him and not wanting to put other friends and family at risk, he’ll decide to allow the family to think he is dead, and continue to work from the shadows to take the Jin family down. Do-Jim will realise that with his grandfather/the chairman having been removed he has lost much of his protection within the company and family, and he might not survive a further attempt on his life.

Do-jun will go into hiding, I think only telling his CEO friend Mason Oh that he’s alive and working to take Soonyang down. And once the ‘new’ timeline’s Hyun-woo turns up at Soonyang, Do-jun can use this resemblance to move around the place practically unnoticed: why would you think it’s Do-jun who’s been famously dead for 15 years? Much more likely to be a minor employee wandering where he shouldn’t be.

In essence I think the ‘new’ timeline we are in will eventual become the OG timeline, with some small changes. Think Harry Potter time turner rules: small things can change, but the overall narrative remains.

This second ‘accident’ will take the place of the first from the OG timeline: in this ‘new’ timeline Do-Jun’s mother 4-alpha will be suspicious of foul play as she overheard Do-jun and his father confirming the first accident was an assassination attempt. This will lead to the family breaking ties with the Jin’s until 2022, when 4-alpha once again returns for answers, offering her shares in the company as a bribe for the one who knows the truth.

The second ‘accident’ and Do-jun’s supposed death will cause Seo Min-young ( the prosecutor) to shut herself off enough to become the cold and focused person we saw in the OG timeline, and explains why she has a target on the Soonyang company: in this ‘new’ timeline she also knows the first ‘accident’ was planned and so will believe that her boyfriend has been killed by his family.

And my final out there prediction….

THE KILLERS IDENTITY

The whole series the main background mystery has been ‘which family member killed Hyun-woo in the OG timeline?’.

I think… Do-jun killed himself/hyun-woo in the OG timeline, and will order the hit on the Hyun-woo in this ‘new’ timeline.

Firstly and mainly, he will realise the self fulfilling prophecy and cyclical aspect of this life. In order to go back and effect these changes, Hyun-woo has to die and in that way (violently betrayed) so that he is motivated to destroy Soonyang once he becomes Do-jun.

Secondly Hyun-woo has to die in the course of brining Soonyang’s corruption to light, so that afterwards Do-jun can reveal himself, come back into the light and revel in the groups destruction. Do-jun can’t reveal himself if Hyun-woo is still alive: they’re in essence twins. Questions will be asked and mainly by Hyun-woo himself as to why they are identical. But no one is going to suspect foul play if there is clearly Hyun-woo’s body, in the centre of an international corruption scandal, with a well documented life working for Soonyang, who can’t speak for himself anymore to contradict Do-Jun’s and explanations.

Plus as time passes from Hyun-woos death people will forget *exactly* what he liked like and only remember that he resembled the prodigal son who has just returned, Do-jun.

So yeah, I think Do-Jun will have to spend the next ~20yrs working from the sidelines and background to make small issues and problems for Soonyang and the Jin family, kind of like how he did before he was revealed as the main investor in Miracle. Lots of sneaky work and near misses, kind of a death by a thousand cuts plan. And he will set up/add to/make worse the things he knows the family will do between now and present day, so that they will be caught by prosecutors in 2022. And when that time comes the whole group and family will be taken down in one go.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on the world, we’ll have to wait and see if it’s correct! I haven’t read the web comic the who is based on so I have no idea what’s coming down the line.

Anyone agree? Or really disagree with these thoughts?