First let me just say I loved this series, I think it was beautifully confusing and I had fun trying to theorize what was happening since they really left you wondering right til the end. Since there's still a lot of confusion, I figured this might help.
To make things easier--
- The concept of 4 minutes is that in the last 4 minutes of your life, you can see your life as it would have played out if you could go back and fix your regrets
- Great & Tyme both experience their own 4 minute timeline, where they both wish they could go back and redo their relationship differently
- Great's 4 minutes start when he gets shot in the elevator by Tonkla
- Everything we see in GreatTyme timeline for episodes 1-5 is a version of reality that Great has created, wishing he could change their past
- Episode 6 and 7 is their sad reality
- Tyme's 4 minutes starts when he’s shot by the thug at the end of episode 7, and we see his 4 minutes for the first half of episode 8
- They both almost die from their gunshot wounds but manage to stay alive, they have to face the ugly reality where they weren't able to prevent any of the deaths they wanted to, but they decide that they would face things together
If things are still confusing, and you want a very detailed recap, here's what I have.
I'll start with Korn/Tonkla/Win-- we see more of Tonklas storyline than anyone's, as a teen his father is abusive, he meets Korn in high school and they become secret lovers, Korn promises that after he takes over the companythey can come out in public. One day Tonkla's dad pushes things too far by killing his beloved cat, and he pushes his dad down the stairs, telling his brother Dome that their dad slipped.
Fast forward to the current story, he now lives in a house that Korn bought for him, living there as his secret mistress. Korn rarely comes home, and when Dome is killed by Title and Tonkla needs him the most, Korn refuses to answer his phone.
So Tonkla takes matters into his own hands, and kills Title in the same way and place that Title killed Dome. Enter Inspector Win who wants to find justice for Tonklas brother, and wants to comfort Tonkla in more ways than one.
They start their entanglement, Win is falling in love but for Tonkla he’s just using him, getting the inside police scoop and the comfort of another body. When Korn finally does return to the house, Tonkla blames him for not being there and tells for him to get out, leaving their relationship strained. Tonkla finds out that Korn's brother Great helped Title dispose of his brother Dome's body, so he finds great in the elevator and shoots him-- this starts the 4 minutes storyline for Great so lets jump into the GreatTyme story.
Great and Tyme have a history all the way back to their childhood, but they don't remember eachother. As kids they spent time together while their parents worked together running an illegal gambling ring, Tyme blames his parents deaths on the Sriwatsombat family, and has been working with a woman named Nan on the inside of the company to take them down.
Meanwhile, Great's life is turning into a nightmare, he hit a woman with his car and killed her, then got dragged into the situation with Title and ended up becoming an accomplice to Domes murder. He can't sleep without nightmares, so he goes to the hospital to get some meds to ease the symptoms.
At that time the woman that Tyme has been working with gets taken, and he worries she's in danger. So when he sees Great Sriwatsombat at the hospital, he decides to take things a step in a different direction and follows him to a bar to seduce him. He posts the video online, wanting to hurt their family, but it only results in Great's dad threatening his grandma and throwing money at him to stay away. Great comes running back to him anyway, not caring about Tymes motivation for sleeping with him, just wanting to be with him, but Tyme pushes him away.
Tyme sneaks onto company property to try and find Nan, he finds Korn and follows him, cornering him with a knife to his throat demanding he tell him where Nan is. Great chases him and sees his face after pulling off the face mask Tyme was wearing.
He pieces things together and tries to help by trying to find Nan secretly, he sends Tyme the location and sneaks inside, he gets there just to see her get shot, paralyzed with fear he doesn't move to save her. When Tyme arrives he immediately jumps out to fight after seeing Nan's dead body being dragged away, Great jumps out of hiding to save Tyme and they run away together. Instead of being grateful to Great for saving him, he’s pissed that Great just let Nan die, so they fight and part ways.
Frustrated, Great goes to confront his family first thing the next day, disgusted at their flippant attitude and their direct role in so many deaths. He leaves in a rage and hisparents flee the country, escaping the mess that had occurred when their illegal gambling ring was exposed.
Here's where the two stories merge, returning home after the confrontation with his parents, Great is in the elevator and gets shot by Tonkla, for 4 minutes as he lay there dying, his life flashes before his eyes, and we see the life he wishes he could have lived if he could just rewind time. This is everything we see between episodes 1 and 5, all the regrets that he wishes he could just redo, all the lives he wishes he'd saved, he does in his mind.
Great is rushed to the hospital and they're able to save him but he doesn't wake up, seeing him lying there like that fills Tyme with regret and unresolved feelings. He holds his hand and promises that when he wakes up things will be different. But that night Tyme returns home to a ransacked house, his grandma is shot by his parents real murderer as he watches over a video call, and he turns to find a thug waiting to shoot him too.
Here starts Tymes 4 minutes, which is a beautiful story of the way their romance could have played out if he decided to never open his parents journal and seek revenge for their deaths. He meets Great as a patient and they hit it off, they're carefree lovers, and he lives a life of happiness in his mind for those 4 minutes as he bleeds out.
Luckily Dr Den is able to save him in time, and both Great and Tyme live, which is not the case for our other messy couple. Korn is on the run after the gambling ring was exposed, and Tonkla isn't answering his phone no matter how much he apologizes. Korn sees that the police are on the hunt for Titles killer, and Tonkla's face flashes on the TV as the culprit. Tonkla finally answers Korns text and he runs to find him, comforting him and promising to protect him.
Inspector Win is trying to find his own way to protect Tonkla, and as Korn and Tonkla try to escape he corners them both. With both the men that love him asking what happened and why, Tonkla smiles and admits to killing the two fuckers that killed his brother, revealing to Korn that his brother was the other one he killed, and that he cheated on him with Win.
Korn is a mess of emotions, and in a split second everything happens. Korn pulls a gun and starts to aim at Win, Win's gun is already ready and aimed at Korn so he takes the shot, but Tonkla jumps in front of Korn and takes the bullet, dying instantly. Korn drops to his knees to hold him, and takes the gun to his own head, a flash of memory plays from their past of a time they both wish they'd just run away together, alluding to a 4 minutes of their own as they both lay dead on the ground.
Though Great and Tyme both live, they wake up to a reality where they have to live with so much death, but they decide theres one thing they won't regret, and they support eachother to make it through the tough times together. Is this considered a happy ending?
Did this help?
melonpanfan:I do have a plot hole question though, what exactly was the storyline where Great's mom gets shot? I don't understand why that doesn't happen???
That doesn't happen because that is in Great's 4 minutes were he change everything. He saved the first woman that she run over with his car but that woman lose her son because of the illegal gambling casino from Great's parents so she hired a hitman to kill the mother. Great got shot too because he got in the way.
In the real timeline this doesn't happen because this woman dies.
Avidkdramalover:Just one thing I had doubt on- what about the lady Lukwa that comes to Dr. Den for consultation and who meets Great in the mind room showing 4 minutes??
How does that part work in story? What actually happens between Great and her??
There really wasn't a mind room it was an art exhibition. Great get there because he was meeting Title in a bar and got lost. When Lukwa gets out she have her heart attack and Great saw it but he don't do anything to help her. I think this is mostly to show you that Great was not a very nice person.
I must be overthinking it and it might simply be the cameras the crew used.
I noticed from the start that in some scenes the background is blurry or somewhat blurry, while in some the background is clean. I used to think that it represented reality where you can see everything vs "imagination" (the coma thing didn't even cross my mind, I was thinking that he was creating and living in his own delusional world) where the only clear thing are the characters, where the background is faded because the brain isn't concentrating on creating it.
It's most visible in the GreatTyme timeline in episode 5 when the two of them are in the forest, the forest and even the picnic table where they sat are blurry (but according to my logic even if it was a camera that simply blurred out the background for quality it shouldn't have blurred out the picnic table which was technically in front of Great, I think the blur effect on the table even flickered for a second).
First, THANK YOU for writing all that out for us!!
Second, I don't think I grasp the concepts (probably because I'm from a Euro-Christian upbringing). Which was the "4 minute" clip (as most of the episodes lasted hours, if not days/weeks)? And, was the whole marketing premise of the show "poor shlub suddenly gains the ability to see 4 minutes into the future" just false advertising (which is what the above seems to indicate)? I think this show needs a 2-hour "Q&A Seminar" to understand it, as my list of questions based on my existing premise of the show ("Great is schizophrenic and therefor an Unreliable Narrator") is out the window (replaced with a whole new list)... Yikes! But, theorizing is fun (if not frustrating)! THANKS AGAIN!
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