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LIFE_ON_KDRAMA

                                                      September 20, 2018
                                                      September 20, 2021

"Life On Mars" is a korean drama with only
the slightest connection to the Bowie song
(a snippet of it plays on a car radio a           Actually, he may be hallucinating
couple of times) about a fellow who's             that he's returned to Insung in
slipped back in time to 1988-- evidently,         1988... or it could be there's
if you're Korean you associate the Bowie          some strange psychic projection
song with that period?                            going on, where he's actually
                                                  physically present there, while
   Oh, this is a remake of a British              also in a coma in 2018.
   show of the same name, which is
   about traveling back to *1973*,
   when "Life On Mars" was a hit there
   (though sadly, not in the United
   States, where mainstream music        As always, my angle on pop culture
   sucked for many years after that).    is a little strange, and these days
                                         I often see a Korean remake first
                                         (e.g. as with "Bel Ami", "Suits"...).

                                                       For that matter, I only recently
This "Life on Mars" (the kdrama)                       realized how well-know and
is primarily then a cop show, the                      well-regarded the Bowie song is--
civilized intellectual fellow from                     I had the vague feeling it was
the future and the violent thugs                       just one of my personal
of 1988 both trying to come to                         favorites, from one of those
terms with each other...  and                          "early" Bowie records few in the
there's an overarching arc about                       US paid attention to...
intergenerational serial killers
that connects the two eras.

                                     "an overarching arc"?

The best thing about the story,               an underachieving sewer
however, is the actress Go Ah Sung
(aka Ko Ah Sung) and the character                 a high-flying herd
she plays-- she looks like she
might've appeared in a drama back in
1988, and certainly acts like a woman
of that era (which evidently was             The simple act of
something like the United States             finding an actress that
circa, say, 1958)-- her fellow               doesn't look like a
officers don't hesitate to have her          modern cosmetic surgery
perform menial tasks (laundry,               victim raises this one
coffee), but it gradually appears            above the herd.
that she's one of the best actual
police detectives in the group second
only (perhaps) to the main character.

It is, however, mildly disappointing in a
number of other respects, the metaphysics
remains murky, they cheat a bit about
starting to tell you something and taking        He doesn't make a lot of
it back...                                       effort to try to communicate
                                                 with the future via obvious
   SPOILERS                                      methods like handing a letter
                                                 to a legal firm, or for that
It appears that the main character finally       matter handing a letter to
returns to 1988 by committing suicide in         his mother-in-the-past with a
the present-- unless he's yet again been         do-not-open-until on it.
hospitalized.





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