Sisyphus: The Myth (Initial Thoughts)

If you're familiar with Greek myth or philosophy, you've probably heard of the legend of Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). The story goes that Sisyphus was able to cheat death twice by tricking the gods and as punishment, the god of death Hades punished the king by having him roll a boulder endlessly up a steep hill. Every time he got near the top, the boulder would magically roll down the hill once again, forcing Sisyphus to repeat the same process over and over again for all eternity. It's essentially a hopeless situation for him and as such, tasks that are laborious and futile are now described as "Sisyphean" in modern culture. Sisyphus has been the subject of study throughout historical literature, with famed author Albert Camus writing a political essay titled The Myth of Sisyphus, which delves into the concept of absurdism while using the king as an example. 

If you're wondering why I'm rambling on and on about a philosophical concept in a K-drama review, that's because we're talking about the aptly titled Sisyphus: The Myth, a science fiction thriller labelled as "JTBC's 10th Anniversary Special Drama". Starring Cho Seung-woo (Stranger, Life) as male lead HAN TAE-SUL and Park Shin-hye (Pinocchio, The Doctors) as female lead KANG SEO-HAE, this drama tells the story of a genius engineer who tries to solve the mystery of his brother's death and a strange woman from the future who has time-traveled to the past to prevent the imminent devastation of the world. As we delve deeper into the drama, let's dive in and explore why this drama has picked this specific name and how it links to the Greek legend.

INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)

Episode 1 alone hasn't actually given us all that much information yet and we know very little about the direction the drama is going for. The episode begins by showing us a fairly dystopian future, where society seems to be run by a military regime. For whatever reason, people are being sent back to the present with just one suitcase (this gets important later) and female lead Seo-hae is one of them. She's briefed by her father before she time travels that the moment she reaches she must start running, trust no one and most importantly, never interact with someone named "Han Tae-sul". The reasons for this have yet to be properly revealed to us, in fact the dystopian future and military regime part are merely speculation on my part. At any rate, the moment Seo-hae arrives in the present, she's more or less on the run from the get-go, being chased down by a large group of unknown people wearing gas masks, some clad in full PPE and others wearing Special Forces attire. Again, we don't know the reason for this yet. 

At the same time, we're introduced to male lead Han Tae-sul, a famous genius engineer who's also the co-founder of Quantum & Time, a fairly big scientific research company. Name sound familiar? Well, about one paragraph ago I mentioned that this is the man Seo-hae's father warned her about. What's the reason for this? I have no clue. Anyway, Tae-sul is on a plane back to South Korea and at first, he seems to have a normal interaction with his older brother Tae-san, albeit ignoring him. Turns out, Tae-san's dead and Tae-sul is merely hallucinating, with it being revealed to us that he's on some form of medication. The plane he's on suddenly experiences turbulence, with some random object crashing into the cockpit, breaking a hole in the glass and killing the pilot. Tae-sul is able to fix the plane with his engineering skills and saves all the passengers, allowing the co-pilot to safely land the plane, with the incident being put down to a bird strike.

Unfortunately, we soon find out that Tae-sul's on the verge of losing his company, with the board members losing their trust in him after he's missed one too many meetings, partially because of his devil-may-care attitude. However, as we delve deeper into his backstory, we see that Tae-sul is completely wracked with guilt over his brother's death, with their last interaction ending in a fight. We get flashbacks to the brothers' final meeting, with a distressed Tae-san trying to warn his younger brother about "visitors from another world", who come bearing suitcases. Of course our hero doesn't believe him and angrily brushes off his brother, not knowing that this would be the last time he saw him. Tae-sul's regularly counseled by his psychiatrist ex-girlfriend Kim Seo-jin and requests countless drug prescriptions rather than actually undergoing therapy. One night as he's returning home, Tae-sul meets the co-pilot from the earlier flight, only to find him in a disheveled and roughed-up state. The obviously anxious man is clearly on the run and passes Tae-sul a thumbdrive with a video recording of what actually happened, telling him that the plane wasn't hit by a bird but was instead hit by a suitcase. This causes alarm bells to go off in our male lead's head and he's reminded of what his brother said to him.

Tae-sul inspects the recording and to his absolute horror, he sees not only a suitcase but also a man crashing into the plane. Upon sharpening the video's quality, it appears that Tae-san is inexplicably that same man. With no possible explanation, our hero deduces the possible location of where the suitcase could've landed and heads out to Gimpo in the hopes of finding the person who he thinks is his brother. Around the same time, Seo-hae ends up running into Sun (played by Chae Jong-hyup), a money-faced young chap who works in a Chinese restaurant and pretty strangely, she uses her memories of the future to accurately state out that day's winning lottery numbers. As she hears Han Tae-sul's name on the news, she starts to flicker as if she was a computer programme and the restaurant's lights also start to flicker, ending with Seo-hae falling unconscious. The next morning, she wakes up in Sun's home and urgently looks for her suitcase, which upon opening shows us that there's two white cylinders emanating a strange blue light. Seo-hae then calls Quantum & Time in a bid to contact Tae-sul himself and while she ultimately fails, she attempts to warn him of future events, telling him that he's in danger and not to open any suitcases. Her warning comes too late though as Tae-sul has managed to find his "brother's" suitcase and is able to open it, recalling that all of his brother's lock combinations were Tae-sul's birthday. The episode ends just as Tae-sul opens the suitcase, leaving us in mystery. 

I can safely say that I have no idea where this drama is headed. I can't figure out how the dystopian future has come to pass or even if it's really dystopian at all and I don't know why people are being sent back in time with suitcases. What are Seo-hae's true motivations behind warning Tae-sul of imminent disaster and who were the strange men chasing her? What does Tae-sul even have to do with the future and how is Tae-san still alive? Well, I do have some theories to propose with relation to the drama's title. I can't explain Tae-san's mysterious time-traveling appearance but I believe that somehow this event is always meant to happen and Tae-sul will somehow find the suitcase. After finding the suitcase, it's possible that Tae-sul will uncover the secrets of time travel using that suitcase and that'll somehow lead to the dystopian future we see. Seo-hae'll end up going back in time to prevent this from happening and save her future. However, as we know from Sisyphus' legend, he's condemned to an eternity of constant futility and hopelessness because no matter what he does, the cycle repeats itself so maybe regardless of what Seo-hae does, the future will still go down in flames. I don't know it's a definite possibility. 

So far, I'm quite intrigued by what's to come and the acting by our leads has sold me, especially Cho Seung-woo's. The anguish he brings across when he describes his guilt at not being nicer to his brother in his last moments and the cheerful mask he puts on in order to hide that pain is just... wow. Cho Seung-woo has done an excellent job portraying these aspects and I'm really looking forward to more from him. We haven't gotten a lot from Park Shin-hye yet because her character hasn't really done all that much but I do hope we'll get more interesting stuff once Seo-hae finally meets Tae-sul. 

While this drama is still airing, it's already gotten pretty stellar ratings, ranking in the top 50 highest-rated K-dramas on cable TV and this is probably in no small part due to it's soon-to-be intense plot and fast-paced action. From the trailers, the production value seems to be pretty huge for this and I'm really excited to see what's to come. More importantly, I want to see what's the actual relation between the drama's plot, ideas and its title. I hope you'll join me as we get ready for a wild ride with Sisyphus: The Myth.