Recap

Here’s a confusing start! Our lead, Yi Yong, dangles from a ledge and then falls, but we see someone else hit the ground. We then see that person do calligraphy while black-smokey forms ask for help. He shifts from a younger man to an older, grey-haired man while the forms swirl around him.

On-screen text: “Some can see, some can’t. Monsters are born from obsession”

Yi Yong is terrible in school, the exact opposite of his ‘nemesis’ Guang Yan. Guang Yan is beloved by literally everyone at their school, except Yi Yong who keeps ‘bullying’ him under hilarious circumstances. 

The school administrators punish Yi Yong for hurting Guang Yan by having him read and write the Heart Sutra, revealing Yi Yong’s one talent: Calligraphy.

Yi Yong explains to friends that he’s so good because he’s the reincarnation of a demon he got from his grandfather. His grandfather is the old man we saw earlier, and he thinks Yi Yong’s calligraphy lacks real heart. His Grandfather teaches calligraphy to a group of hilariously distracted students.

Yi Yong and his father both have terrible hairstyles thanks to his mom. His dad brings up Yi Yong’s dreams and life goals. Yi Yong is working on a comic but doesn’t mention it and has no answer for his dad.

That night, Yi Yong stands in the hallway outside the closed door to his grandfather’s room. He remembers being a kid, and through the open door seeing his grandfather dealing with a scary smoke-woman while doing calligraphy. Older Yi Yong leaves the hallway and we see that woman talking with his grandfather. His grandfather writes “To preserve one’s own purity and integrity”

Next, we meet Chu Ying, a police officer uninterested in her boring tasks and called “One-per” by her boss.

Yi Yong, his father, and his grandfather are on a bus when an airplane hits it. Yi Yong lays bloody under some wreckage and sees his grandfather on the ground with the smoke-woman over him. Then she comes to Yi Yong. Pieces of torn, burned calligraphy paper float through the air.

Chu Ying joins the other emergency personnel at the crash. We abruptly cut to Guang Yan at school, anticipating being bullied by Yi Yong, but Yi Yong isn’t there. Then we see Yi Yong again at the accident. The smoke-woman says she wants to wait and see if he’s like his grandpa.

Yi Yong wakes up in the hospital, his mom hovering over him and his grandpa one bed over, but his dad isn’t there. He’s been unconscious for 717 days.

We see the accident again, and his mom punching the airline people at a press conference. The airline company is trying to avoid responsibility for the grandfather because bus footage shows him falling unconscious right before the accident.

Yi Yong finally gets to leave the hospital on his own and takes a taxi somewhere and cries. He’s holding a piece of paper with information on where his father’s body is interred.

They have a new home bought with compensation money, a worn-looking townhouse with a creepy woman staring from next door. Yi Yong thinks she’s a ghost at first, but she’s a neighbor. 

Yi Yongs won’t go back to school because he says he has plans, but he doesn’t. He goes through boxes of his stuff and finds a career planning sheet from High School. We flashback to him receiving it, writing something, and first seeing Guang Yan.

Present-day Yi Yong crosses out what he wrote and puts it back. He finds his grandfather’s calligraphy supplies and takes them out. He starts preparing the ink, and as he does so, smoke starts to swirl around him and his house. 

Somewhere in the grass, a disembodied hand is pulled back to its body by red threads. The threads sew through the badly injured corpse. Then, it stands up like a zombie. 

Back at home, Yi Yong looks nervous, and a shadow creeps behind him, raises his hand — 

That’s it for this ep!

Thoughts

This show is so rich with detail and I can’t make my recaps shorter without feeling like I’m losing important ones.

For the record, I’m not sure what he wrote on the career sheet because iQiyi doesn’t tell me, but I think it’s about being a comic artist.

At the end of my first watch, I was confused about some details, which is part of why I want to watch it again. I’m a little afraid that in some places my confusion may be due to the subtitles, like in this episode where he casually mentions being a reincarnated demon that he got from his grandpa. I don’t quite understand what that means — the demon is in him? He is the demon? But how did he get it from his grandpa? 

I worry that there’s some nuance in the original Mandarin that is getting lost. But Yi Yong is also kind of a simple guy and his friends seem to be as well, so that may be all there is to it.

The sequence around the plane crash is a bit confusing, jumping back and forth in time and even mixing in earlier flashbacks. I’m not sure the reason for going back and forth that way, except to help get into Yi Yong’s own discombobulated headspace after waking from a coma. I like it, but I can see it frustrating viewers.

I am so impressed by how skillfully this show goes from horrifying tragedy to hilarious absurdity. Yi Yong’s loss of his father feels genuinely wrenching, but his mother dealing with landlords who are afraid to rent properties to people who might die is absurdly funny. I think it both keeps the show from being too dark and captures the complexity of these experiences, which usually don’t fall neatly into one emotional category. 

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Oh No! Here Comes Trouble is currently available in the US on iQIYI.