When last we left our time traveler and surgeon, we caught up to our surgeon as he flatlined and entered his 4-minute reality. There, he gets to make a choice.
I’m guessing he chose not to read Mom’s diary
Because gone is the unfriendly Tyme of episode 1. He’s kind to patients and eager to be a professor of surgery. He has the perfect break-up with Nutcha.
Great comes to see him for stomach and stress issues and sticks around to ask him on a date. Great and Grandma get along. The cat is there. There’s underwater kissing. There’s naked guitar.
Tyme notices that when he’s alone the clock very slowly ticks past 11.
Great goes to the bathroom again
Instead of setting up a spy camera, Tyme hears someone yelling that he’ll die if he doesn’t get out. Water hits his head. In the real world, Den works frantically to save his life in the rain.
The door opens and blinding light comes in. Tyme pounds on the bathroom door and shouts for Great to come out.
Great, lying bloody and dying on his mom’s body, hears Tyme yell his name.
In real life, Tyme says Great’s name.
Korn’s marriage plans and life fall apart
Warit’s daughter says her dad can’t help him anymore and dumps him. He gets a cell phone from the abandoned casino buildings and calls the daughter of the shareholder Warit assassinated in episode 2. He offers to tell her who killed her father.
In a hotel room he learns the police are after Tonkla for murder, and gets a text from Tonkla showing the red cat collar. They meet where the cat was buried. There are apologies and kisses.
Korn tries to help Tokla escape the police, but they get caught by Win. Win whines to Tonkla about how he was taking care of things. Tonkla says he took care of the two guys. Korn realizes that one of those guys is Great. Tonkla says also he cheated on him.
Korn tries to shoot Win, but Win shoots first. Tonkla takes the bullet in the chest to save Korn. A broken-hearted Korn aims his gun at his own head.
We see them young and in bed. Korn suggests they run away and be together forever. I assume this is Korn and Tonkla’s dying fantasy. Then we see them now, dead together. A bloody watch shows 9.
Death and Den
Tyme’s grandmother is dead, and so are Korn and Tonkla. Tyme and Great pray in front of their funerary pictures.
Den is dating his original 4-minute patient. Great and the patient know each other from an avant-garde art piece. That’s what the brains and clock projected on the wall were about. I find that underwhelming. Den’s girlfriend collapsed after the exhibit. Great saw it and walked away.
Great’s parents are still alive and criminals
They want Great to retrieve hidden money and bribe a political figure to get them back in the country. Great says yes, but records the money exchange and gets the politician arrested.
The shareholder’s daughter got her revenge and Warit has been tortured. Tyme gets to doctor him and acts like he’s going to kill him. His injuries are so bad Tyme lets him live, knowing his quality of life will be awful.
Warit’s daughter wants to know who did it to him. Presumably, the cycle of violence will continue.
But Great is breaking his family’s cycle of greed and violence. He confesses to Win that he was involved in Dome’s death.
Out on bail, he’s on a lake with Tyme. Tyme thinks the court will be lenient since he’s a strong good person. The lake is the same as the one in Great’s 4 minutes, but he’d never been there for real. Worried, they check their watches. It’s 11:04. Then it’s 11:05.
They let out a sigh of relief and lay together in the boat.
Great’s character arc is confused by the storytelling
Because we start in the middle of his story, we only know that he’s a privileged young man who, given 4-minute glimpses into the future, makes better choices. For 5 episodes neither we nor he knows what this means, even if we can guess. We don’t know who he was before he got this strange power.
It’s not until the last 3 episodes, we learn that Great was a passive person afraid of going against his parents. His parents’ passivity led them to become evil and is about to lead his older brother to the same fate. Great’s life was changed by meeting a not-passive person (Tyme) only to get shot in the stomach because of his passivity. The first 5 episodes were fantasies in Great’s dying brain that changed him into a better person. This isn’t a timey-wimey drama, it’s a Thai BL thriller crime sex version of A Christmas Carol.
But where Scrouge knew what was happening and grew from the experience, Great was clueless until episode 8. Considering hallucinating Great only remembers Tyme as flashes of sex, what does it mean? Did meeting Tyme change him or being given 4-minute glimpses into the future?
But that’s not my biggest problem with the story
My biggest problem is nothing that happens to Great and Tyme in the first 5 episodes is real. The next two episodes are backstory. The first “real” thing they do in the present timeline (not hallucinations or flashbacks) is not die in episode 8.
Also, if the first 5 episodes are hallucinations, why are we following other characters when Great isn’t with them? Tyme, Dome, and the lady who he doesn’t hit-and-run. The last character’s independent actions lead to him dying again within his hallucination. Did his brain do that to him?
I feel like dying again changes him into a fully ethical human being. Not just someone who refuses to go along with bad behavior but someone who helps catch the bad guys. It’s proof he can’t save his parents from themselves. Did his brain know that would happen?
There are hints of something more going on. The lake in Great’s hallucination is real even though he’d never been there. Tyme says things that make me wonder if he and Great shared each other’s hallucinations. While dying in his own hallucination, Great hears Tyme calling for him from Tyme’s hallucination.
Something more must be going on. But I don’t know what, because when they are both alive and well, they are in the reality where Dome, Korn, and Tonkla are all dead. Nothing changed.
There are still reasons to watch this show
The show was still a time puzzle with interesting, well-made pieces. All the actors did a lot with what little they were given. I wanted Great and Tyme to be happy. Fuaiz Thanawat Shinawatra gets extra points for his portrayal of Tonkla as a sweet, vulnerable, charming, hurt, complicated murderer.
The show also gets points from me for being ambitious. There were interesting locations and creative camera movements. I love a trope-y BL but I also welcome something unique and different. If the rumored sequel happens, I will watch it.
I have more general things to say about this show but I’ll save them for a final review this weekend. This was my chance to be specific and spoiler-y about plot.
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