Under The Hospital
Episode 9 of Sisyphus The Myth begins with Seo-Hae awakening at Tae-Sul’s place, recovering from her hand injury. She asks about Sigma but Tae-Sul tells her they should take a break given it’s her birthday. The funfair brings up lots of treats, including photo opportunities on the merry-go-round and a chance to laugh while wearing cat ears together. When they do sit and discuss the future implications of stopping Sigma and the Uploader, Tae-Sul hands over 2 tickets to a pool villa. As he heads off to get them some snacks, Seo-hae starts to glitch out as she notices her Mother and a younger version of herself from afar. Well, that younger version winds up in front of Tae-Sul at the queue while Seo-Hae picks up coins that her Mother has dropped on the ground. Eventually, Tae-Sul receives a call from a mystery ID which he immediately recognizes as Sigma. He drops his ice-cream to the ground, as the Control Bureau suddenly show up and begin hunting for him and Seo-Hae. Well, this leaves Tae-Sul with a choice of saving the girl or stopping Sigma. A gunshot piercing the air is enough for Tae-Sul to make his choice. Only, this leads to failure as Seo-Hae is captured and taken away while Sigma remains untouchable – at least for now. We then cut to October 31st 2020 as Seo-Hae is driven up to her Grandmother’s house. Only, this is cut short by multiple missiles flying overhead. This, of course, is the start of the war. It’s pretty shocking too and there’s lots of high octane action as the missiles pummel Seoul into submission. A raging inferno brings Seo-Hae and the family out of the tunnel they were planning to drive through, while missiles continue to rain down around them. Determined to make it to safety, the family find a bomb shelter and manage to open the door enough to head inside. The switchgear is down though, thanks to the failing electrics. With 3 minutes left until certain nuclear doom, Seo-Hae’s Mother makes a big decision and steps outside to shut the door. She sacrifices herself, as the nuclear blast ravages through Seoul on this horrid day. We then jump back to September 30th 2020 with Seo-Hae cuffed to a metal chair in the Control Bureau’s HQ. Hyeon-Gi’s ID doesn’t work for the interrogation room, leaving Hyun-Seung to deal with this himself. He tells Seo-Hae that he knows everything… and then asks why she approached Tae-Sul. Bit of an oxymoron there, eh? Anyway, the torture continues and he injects Seo-Hae with a lethal serum that causes the girl to glitch out. While they struggle to get anywhere with her, both Seon-Ho and Seon-Jae wind up joining CEO Park in the cells. Seon-Ho is not in a good way, but CEO Park convinces the guard to get the pills for him. Determined to save Seo-Hae, Tae-Sul starts to piece together a route using fragments of his own knowledge when he was driven there by the Control Bureau. Using his senses, Tae-Sul narrows down an exact location where the Control Bureau is situated. Before that though, Tae-Sul shows up before Eddie Kim and makes a scene in front of all the investors. After the meeting, Eddie berates Tae-Sul for not showing up at the Chairman’s funeral but he obvious has his reasons why. As the two come to blows, Tae-Sul records their confrontation and eventually leaves with Sun waiting in the car. In fact, Tae-Sul decides to use Sun and plant him in the position of Eddie Kim. I’m not quite sure how they get away with this given they don’t look anything alike, but Tae-Sul guides Sun into heading down to the basement while visiting the hospital. There, Sun finds a retinal scanner on the door, which he passes thanks to Tae-Sul drawing up contact lenses that are identical to Eddie’s retina. Sun manages to find his way into the Control Bureau HQ too…which as it turns out is directly under the hospital. Hyeon-Gi manages to break into the interrogation room with Seo-Hae, and threatens to make her disappear. He holds the serum up and threatens to inject her. As he stabs the girl in the leg with it, Hyeon-Gi watches as she starts to glitch out. Pointing a gun at her head, he prepares to fire. Only, just before he does, Sun manages to get access to the mainframe and sets off the fire alarm.
The Episode Review
Wow, Sisyphus is a mess. Just trying to get your head around the time jumps, skewed timeline and the baffling logic (or lack thereof) in this is enough to give you a headache. How does Sun manage to grant access into the Control Bureau? And by extension, how does Eddie Kim? Why are none of these hospital workers aware of what Eddie Kim looks like? Surely one of them would have seen the news and the press conferences about Quantum & Time? It also doesn’t help that Sun and Eddie look absolutely nothing alike. It would be like putting my picture up next to George Clooney’s – even a blind man wouldn’t be fooled. But even ignoring all of that, the Control Bureau located in the basement of this busy hospital is another level of stupidity. Wouldn’t people grow suspicious of all these strange suited men arriving and leaving? What if someone accidentally stumbled down to the basement? And have none of these people actually experienced a fire drill or a false alarm from the sprinkler system going off? If that wasn’t bad enough, we’ve also got Seo-Hae and Tae-Sul interacting with younger versions of Seo-Hae and her Mother, which, based on the laws of time travel, always happened at this exact time in this exact order. Either way, this show is giving serious flashbacks to last year’s Alice, which suffered from a similar problem of skewing its timelines. Having said that though, this show is visually stunning and there’s some gorgeous cinematography here too. It’s just a pity that the writing isn’t matching the visuals.
