Drama friends, we have the first K-drama turd of 2021 and the first holder of the crown is unsurprisingly Sisyphus: The Myth. A sole source of comfort for fans of both leads is that it might get lucky and pass it on soon depending on what Mouse keeps pulling out of its Doraemon pocket of serial killer tricks. But I digress, because Sisyphus did indeed keep on writing and executing one nonsensical and absurd development after another, almost like it was trying to double down on itself. So I think the first few episodes were stupid even within the broad reaches of sci-fi or even broader reaches of fantasy, each new episode kept telling the previous episode of Sisyphus to “Hold my beer, bitch!” I actually didn’t FF through the second half of the drama as much as I should of, I didn’t want to miss dialogue that would finally explain shit. But when it did try, all I thought was “huh?” and most of the time it didn’t even make further effort and just left it at that. It’s like a flat earther saying the earth is flat and then not actually bothering with the rationale behind it.

I feel like Jo Seung Woo must’ve done this project as a favor to someone higher up or else he only read the first episode script and signed on. Park Shin Hye I could see taking this on because her character has agency, is kickass, and after Memories of Alhambra she must be annoyed at playing basically an RPG character or a weepy Candy. Sadly this was a terrible career move for her because I spent 16 episodes actively frustrated with her every action/line of dialogue. The entire Sisyphus plot was about one mentally unhinged boy turned man who nuclear annihilates the Korean peninsula, then uses the time-travel machine Uploader to go back in the past and make sure all the events happen so he can annihilate the Korean peninsula and also go back in time. No matter what anyone does, the cycle continues even after the leads pull a time heist to go back in time to become their future saviors (someone watched Endgame too many times). Cycle seems to be broken before Eddie f*%king useless Kim suddenly shows up as the new bad guy and male lead Tae Sul decides to off himself. In the end, Sisyphus took the time travel conceit and managed to end even more stupid than Alice (congrats, Alice you’re off my shit list because you were at least good for 8-episodes), and it somehow ends in a way even less coherent and even more frustrating than Memories of Alhambra? Remember how MOH ended people?!? Let’s never forget trauma lest we are bound to repeat it.