Recap: Sisyphus (Episode 3)

We are introducing a new style of recap which is dramedy recap because, to us, Sisyphus has gone into ridiculous territory similar to how Vagabond took a comedic and yet not comedic turn during its run. Kill It and Hwayugi also fall into this serious and yet not dramedy watch. The ind of show that makes you wonder, are they for real right now?

This does not lessen how much of a fun watch these shows are, in fact, it might heighten it, because, y’all, these kinds of dramas are fun to watch. They are a gift to the world. They just limit my ability to not be sarcastic while discussing it. So, fair warning, this recap contains snark.

Warning: lots of sarcasm ahead.

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SISYPHUS KDRAMA RECAP EPISODE 3

We open with Seo-hae taking a taxi to the conference center. She is amazed at the sea and everything she sees as she drives there. They do not have these things in the future.

Cut to the conference building where we see that some future people, who come to the past, do not actually make it all the way. Their upload/download is only partial so some people die half transformed and others look like they are made of coagulated liquid.

One future person is able to make it through, though he looks horrible, like his skin does not have an outer layer. It looks painful, but he doesn’t care. He goes to a balcony, knocks out a cop, locks one door while the other doors remain perfectly open, and sets up his gun to assassinate Tae-sool. No one else is in the theater yet, so he waits for the lights to dim and the event to start.

But when the event starts, Eddie is the keynote speaker instead of Tae-sool. The assassin is confused, he continues to wait.

Eddie tells the crowd that Tae-sool cannot make it due to the airplane event. However, Tae-sool shows up in dramatic fashion to give the presentation, which partially humiliates Eddie. Eddie was going to use this opportunity to make a name for himself and that is gone now that Tae-sool has arrived.

Tae-sool takes the stage with swagger like Steve Jobs and gives his presentation on their newest invention. He demonstrates it by moving a sugar cube from the travel machine to his cup. Everyone is amazed.

While this is going on, Seo-hae storms into the building and easily pushes the security officers away because they are all inept guards who stand no chance around her. They look at her in shock as she races to the conference room.

On stage, Tae-soo sees his brother in the audience and starts to yell his name. This causes everyone to think he is going crazy. Eddie tries to calm Tae-sool down while on stage but Tae-sool continues to yell his brothers name. Meanwhile, the assassin is taking his lovely time to shoot Tae-sool. 

The assassin finally decides to shoot Tae-sool after Seo-hae runs into the room, writes KNEEL DOWN on a computer, holds it up, and yells Kneel down to Tae-sool. This alerts the assassin that he should probably do some assassinating so he shoots Tae-sool.

But Tae-sool kneels, so he only gets shot in the ear. The assassin is not deterred and keeps shooting though he does not shoot Tae-sool, the person he is there to shoot, instead, he shoots Seo-hae, Eddie, and the huge bodyguard. Only the bodyguard gets hit because he decided to stand on stage and stare bravely at the audience instead of pulling Tae-sool to safety.

Sae-hae struggles to the stage and is able to get to Tae-sool to safety. She drags him behind the podium and explodes a gas bomb so cover them. However, the gas starts to fade quickly. The assassin comes on stage, sees them hiding behind the podium, and shoots at them but Tae-sool and Seo-hae are able to miraculously disappear through the door due to time travel apparently impairing the assassins eyesight.

But the assassin finds them in the hallway and fights Seo-hae! She handles him easily and knocks him out for good measure with her bedazzled gun. But the mall cops are still after them so she drags Tae-sool away, breaks the glass on the building, and jumping out the window sliding down the side of the glass building to escape.

But, they are coming to another steep drop off in their free-slide! When they leap off this new hard angle in the glass, Seo-hae is able to miraculously disobey the laws of gravity and pull Tae-sool safely to the steeper angled window. But the angle is steeper, they are free-sliding even quicker! Seo-hae thinks fast, pulls out her bedazzled gun, and digs it into the windowed wall to help stop their slide.

It stops their slide enough for them to hit several AC vents and roll onto another rooftop, perfectly fine. But they have to run again because the cops took a shortcut and got to them! 

Seo-hae thinks fast, grabs her zip-line gun, and shoots it across the street to another building. The zip-line also defies gravity (with future technology) and zips at a perfect 180 degree angle to lock into a secure location across the street.

The police still have not run up to them on the rooftop, but they are getting close. Seo-hae acts quickly and anchors the zip-line, turns around, pops her leg in defiance, and then jumps off the roof with Tae-sool. She grips mightily onto the zip-line, sliding them both James Bond-esque style to safety while Tae-sool screams and passes out.

They successfully fall to the ground and roll with the force of landing, but Tae-sool has to be woken up by Seo-hae. He immediately asks if she is a terrorist. She hits him like a child on the head and tells him she shouldn’t have rescued him! 

But two mysterious Asia Mart employees show up with shotguns pointed at them. The president of Asia mart steps out of the supermarket van they all drove in on and jokingly tells them that he is the one that called Tae-sool the other day, we know each other.

Seo-hae reaches for her bedazzled weapon but one of the guys shoots his shotgun at her. The spray of bullets hits no one, and the mysterious Asia market owner sighs. He tells them to come on. Tae-sool and Seo-hae are knocked out by the shotgun toting men and taken to the van where they are driven back to the Asia Mart headquarters in Seoul.

They wake up hours later. They are tied back-to-back in a storage room and start arguing with each other about their situation. Tae-sool tells her to give him the ruler under her foot so he can cut the rope, but she is annoyed with him so she doesn’t do it and stews in how much HE RUINED EVERYTHING!

The Asia Mart employees come in and take them to another room inside the Asia mart so they can chat. The main person of this Asia mart is President/CEO Park. He asks Tae-sool how much he would pay if he can change a past that he regrets?

Tae-sool tells him he would pay everything. Park says he wants the key and in exchange will show him around the Asia mart to inform him on what is actually going on here. Tae-sool agrees so President Park takes them into a secret room in the Asia mart. This secret room is a super machinery room with lots of blue and red lights shining on a supercomputer.

The person behind the monitors is using VR glasses to look inside the monitor to a secret location in order to find out where the latest download has landed. Tae-sool looks on with interest though he does not know what any of this means. Seo-hae rolls her eyes at disgust at him.

They all get into their Asia Mart delivery can and head to the download location. On the way, CEO Park chides Seo-hae on her cute bedazzled gun and little girl diary, so she beats him up which leads to a shotgun standoff inside the van while it is still in motion.

Tae-sool is able to talk everyone down with jokes and gives CEO Park $150k for the diary. Seo-hae looks at him with less disgust.

Meanwhile, just in case you did not know that this time travel immigration is a metaphor for non time-travel immigration, we have a scene where immigrants in Korea are vying with Koreans for medial labor jobs. An argument breaks out between the immigrants and the Koreans. 

Behind them, we see that one of the illegal time-travel immigrants has shown up with his suitcase and is walking away.

Cue the secret service immigration officers who come rolling up in their black SUVs. They take out all their equipment, a couple people have on gas masks just in case, and they start to scan everyone. They find the illegal time-travel immigrants among the people and capture them.

The Asia Mart team see this all happening while inside their van. The president tsks, but they have more pertinent things to do because they have an actual download location, so they are going to that spot right now. 

They drive to an abandoned warehouse and wait. 

While waiting, President Park shoots the breeze with Tae-sool and asks him if he saw photos of images that he did not remember taking? This triggers Tae-sool’s memory of his brothers camera photos. President Park is surprised that Tae-sool looks like he has seen something like that. He tells him to think about how it can be possible. 

Tae-sool thinks about it, the recurring thought in his mind are people telling him that the most important thing is not where something is from – it is when.

Suddenly, a suitcase materializes in the same way that the sugar cube materialized. Then a naked man shows up with only special time-travel underpants on. 

President Park asks Tae-sool if he ever heard the quote “The future is all around them.” It’s cool right? 

Tae-sool knows this quote because he coined it at the convention center. 

CEO Park motions to the time-traveled man and tells Tae-sool, welcome to the future.

Tae-sool is shocked.

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COMMENTS

I had a blast watching this episode. It really kept me on my toes. I mean, what is going to happen next? What laws of gravity will be broken? What other bedazzled gun will she pull out? Will Tae-sool faint in every episode? Will these secret immigration officers ever manage to be secret?

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and have decided that I am just going with it. Though I do not believe I will be able to contain my sarcasm while recapping. I tried to hold back here, but in order to fully appreciate this drama, I feel like you must be honest with the ridiculousness and just enjoy it.

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