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The Review Geek
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
The Defects – K-drama Episode 1 Recap & Review
Refund Episode 1 of The Defects Season 1 starts with a flashback to 2011. The episode introduces us to two men driving to what looks like a run-down warehouse. One of the men asks Tae-sik to take care of something and promises him good money. He asks if Tae-sik is curious about the job, but Tae-sik insists he doesn't want to know. He only wants the job to pay his mother's hospital bills. Shortly after, we see Tae-sik drag a big black bag and put it in a big metal cylinder. He is about to add a cement mixture when the bag moves. Upon opening the bag, Tae-sik is taken aback to see a young girl begging him to spare her life. He pulls his gun and fires a shot. Presently, a young woman makes her way downtown. She enters a closed bathhouse and cooks noodles for her younger siblings. There are currently four kids secretly living in the bathhouse. They have surveillance cameras everywhere and monitor the police radio. One of the girls, So-mi, is sulking and wants chicken instead of noodles. To cheer her up, A-hyeon promises to get them chicken. The kids sneak out of the bathhouse, and Tae-sik is immediately notified of their movements. He is tracking them with his phone. To get money to buy chicken, the kids infiltrate an illegal gambling house. They start a fight with the guards while two of the kids, So-mi and Joo-an, open the safe. After an intense fight, the kids win, but they only take enough money to buy chicken. They leave the gambling house before the police arrive. After getting their beloved chicken, the kids get a message from Tae-sik, asking where they are. They hurry back home, where Tae-sik is waiting to train them. As they shoot at their targets, each kid relives the moment his or her adoptive parents betrayed them. They envision shooting their parents and getting revenge. Based on their memories, these kids suffered a lot at the hands of these parents. Later, Tae-sik warns them not to leave the house again if they don't want to endanger all their lives. So-mi lashes out at Tae-sik, blaming him for their sad existence. However, A-hyeon reminds her that they all wanted to live, and Tae-sik saved them. Later, Tae-sik talks to A-hyeon and shares his plan for the kids. He wants to send them out of Korea, where they can start a new life. He already organised a small boat to take the kids away soon. He asks A-hyeon to wait for the call patiently. He promises that he will join them once he wraps a few things up. The next day, Tae-sik talks to his boss to see if they could get more business. Tae-sik suggests going behind Director Jung and contacting the higher-ups about business expansion. His boss refuses, noting that it will be dangerous and they don't know who the higher-ups are. Elsewhere, we see a woman, Se-hee, visit a children's home and have a meal with the kids. On the other side of town, Jung-hyeon kills a reporter who was onto their child trafficking business. In the meantime, A-hyeon rewatches old videos of Se-hee advising parents on how to show affection to their kids. The scene cuts to Se-hee at her daughter's school. Se-hee is pleased with her daughter's progress at the school. However, another woman is displeased by her son, Si-woo's progress. The teacher informs Si-woo's mom, Min-joo, that her son is not a mathematics genius, and is unlikely to join the Mensa maths class. Min-joo is disappointed with Si-woo and makes plans to return him. A call is made to Se-hee, but she subtly hangs up so as not to alert her daughter. Se-hee uses her daughter to get more information about Si-woo. On the other side of town, Tae-sik's boss asks him to take care of Si-woo's refund. He leaves Min-joo's voice recording with Tae-sik and heads out. Poor Si-woo asks his mom to take him to play, not knowing she is organising his death. Min-joo calls her husband and convinces him it is for the best to abandon Si-woo. She asks him to drop by and play the act of a concerned father once Si-woo goes missing. Without missing a beat, Min-joo waits for Si-woo to be taken before pretending her son is missing. Tae-sik takes Si-woo and plays for him the recording of his mom's call to the higher-ups. He promises to keep Si-woo safe and breaks the sad news of his parents' betrayal to the 11-year-old boy. His boss calls to check how things are going and says he will be there shortly. As he is running out of time, Tae-sik drops Si-woo near the bathhouse and gives him instructions on where to go. Unfortunately, Si-woo sees a payphone and calls his mom. He believes Tae-sik is lying, but after hearing his parents' reaction to his call, he breaks down and cries. He realises that Tae-sik was not lying about his parents wanting him dead. At the same time, Tae-sik texts A-hyeon, informing her of Si-woo's arrival. After hearing from Si-woo, his parents call the higher-ups to ask what is going on. Jung-hyeon calls Tae-sik's boss and asks for Si-woo. Tae-sik boss quickly drives to the warehouse and finds Tae-sik wrapping things up. Tae-sik plays cool and acts like Si-woo is already in the cylinder. Unfortunately, Jung-hyeon and his men show up, too. Jung-hyeon kills Tae-sik's boss and demands to see Si-woo's body. Tae-sik quickly takes Jung-hyeon's gun, and a gunfight ensues. Tae-sik manages to take off, but Jung-hyeon and his men follow him. A car chase ensues with Jung-hyeon actively trying to hit Tae-sik's car off the road. At the bathhouse, Si-woo safely arrives, and the kids warmly welcome him. They do their best to cheer him up, but Si-woo can't stop crying. Over the radio, they hear news of Si-woo's disappearance. They ask Si-woo if he contacted anyone, and he confesses to calling his mom. A-hyeon quickly leaves to save Tae-sik, but she arrives too late. She watches in horror as Jung-hyeon succeeds in pushing Tae-sik's car off the road. The car rolls a few times before blowing up. In the epilogue, we go back to the night Tae-sik rescued A-hyeon. She gave him a handkerchief with her name tag. Later, Tae-sik brought her to the abandoned bathhouse. A-hyeon immediately decided that it would be her new home and settled in. Soon after, Tae-sik brought more kids, and they became a family. They even took pictures and enjoyed dinners together like a real family. The Episode Review If you are looking for a light, fun show, this is not one of those. This show deals with heavy themes such as child trafficking, child abuse, sexual abuse, and many more. It will be an emotional rollercoaster that will tug at your heart. Brace yourself! This episode introduces us to our protagonist A-hyeon, Tae-sik, and the other kids. Their adoptive parents returned them for disappointing them in one way or another. For Si-woo, his parents were offended that he was not a mathematics genius. For this, they abandoned Si-woo and ordered his execution. The kids are simply toys that they used to their advantage, and once they are done, they are disposed of. Their disregard for human life is astounding. Frankly, it makes our blood boil. These people didn't deserve to be parents in the first place. The plot aside, we have to talk about the acting. It is nice to see Dex in another main role. This may be the first episode, but he is pulling off this cold character well. His UDT training comes in handy in the action scenes, and we look forward to seeing this new side of him. Of course, he is joined by the talented Jung-ah. We are used to seeing them in Fresh Off The Sea, and their dynamic here is quite a change of pace. The rest of the cast, including Jin-ah and Na-eun, are winning us over with their stellar performance too. Overall, The Defects is starting on a high roll. Hopefully, the show will maintain this pace throughout the 7 remaining episodes.
The Review Geek
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
Untamed (2025) – Episode 4 'Gold Rush' Recap & Review
Gold Rush Episode 4 of Untamed Season 1 starts with a flashback of Lucy revisiting her old home. She is wearing her mom's yellow dress and is startled when a man asks if she needs help. She runs off and changes her outfit. As she was about to leave, her friend asked her to stop assisting the wrong people. Lucy simply shrugged and went to the caves. Presently, Naya and Kyle continue investigating the caves. They head back to see what they can find. This time, they find Abuelo's lower jaw. A deeper investigation leads them to Abuelo's body. Based on Abuelo's body, it looks like he was killed roughly a week ago. Kyle goes back to the squatter village and informs Gloria of Abuelo's death. The news does not sadden Gloria since he was her ex. Kyle brings in more rangers to search the squatter's belongings and bring them in for questioning. Summer sees the rangers and hides behind a tree. Meanwhile, Kyle tells Souter that the cases are all connected. They find drugs among the squatters' belongings. Gloria, hardened by the world, refuses to talk. The rangers start running background checks on the other squatters. Lucy's DNA results come back and prove Rory was not her biological father. Kyle wonders if Lucy's mom had an affair. He insists on investigating, but Souter says it won't help much. A kid drops by the office and asks to talk to Kyle. The young man believes he knew Lucy when she was a teenager. He thinks Lucy is Grace McRay. According to him, Lucy/ Grace lived with a pastor's family back in Nevada. He last saw her ten years ago, and the Gibbs family reported that she had reunited with her family. The young man gives Kyle a picture of Lucy at the church. Afterwards, he asks about the reward money. In the meantime, Naya finds Summer and asks her about Lucy. Summer mentions Lucy has a boyfriend, whom she referred to as Terces. Lucy kept a lot of secrets, but the relationship changed her. She started selling drugs for her secret boyfriend. Sometimes, Lucy returned home all beaten up. She and Pakuna were close to Abuelo. Summer also adds that she saw Lucy on the day she died, right before she went on her usual swap at a nearby gulch. Naya briefs Kyle on her latest findings after talking to Summer. They agree to take a helicopter the next day and search the east side. Naya also goes through Lucy's bag. Later, Kyle does the same and notices a picture of Lucy with a man's hand on her shoulder. Unfortunately, the man's face is cropped out. At night, Kyle drops by Shane's favourite bar and asks about Abuelo and the drug ring. Kyle assumes Shane was in the drug business. Shane admits that once in a while, he got paid to look the other way. Other than that, he has no idea who is running the show. Shane brings up Lucy's case and mocks Kyle for failing to save Lucy. He also brings up Esther, Sean's lawyer, and implies Kyle might be involved in Sean's disappearance. Souter arrives in time to take Kyle away. He warns Kyle that if he does not stop drinking, he will lose his badge. Souter worries that Kyle is torturing himself with his cases and Caleb's death. At Naya's house, she gets a sudden visit from her ex. He demands to spend the night and reunite with Naya and Gael. He insists that Naya must return to L. A with him and cover for him about a case. He is currently on leave pending an investigation into missing money. He wants Naya to lie and clear his name. Naya refuses but agrees to let him spend the night. She sneaks out with Gael and drives to Kyle's house. She comes clean about her situation and the restraining order she has against him. Kyle agrees to let them stay over for the night. He allows Gael to play with everything except Caleb's toys. The following morning, Jill offers to babysit Gael while Kyle and Naya work. Kyle asks Milch to turn Pakuna loose and send him back to the empty squatter village. They secretly follow Pakuna to the caves and the drug ring leader. It turns out the gang executed Abuelo for betraying them. The episode ends with Naya and Kyle bringing Pakuna in. The Episode Review Kyle was smart to secretly follow Pakuna. He knew Pakuna would lead them to the ringleader. Pakuna doesn't look like the type to keep his mouth shut; he will sing like a canary. Naya's situation is scary. Imagine getting home and finding your violent ex in your room. He is trying to use Gael as leverage against her. He probably took the missing money but doesn't want to take the fall. At least Naya has filled Kyle in on the situation, and she is no longer alone. However, is it a good idea for Jill to watch Gael? Won't he remind her too much of Caleb? What did Shane mean when he asked Kyle about Sean? Was Sean linked to Caleb's death? Did Shane see Kyle kill Sean? There is a lot of tension between Shane and Kyle, and we still have no clue what they are beefing about.
Fast Company
18-07-2025
- Fast Company
The simple pleasures of computing in 1995
This is an edition of Plugged In, a weekly newsletter by Fast Company global technology editor Harry McCracken. You can sign up to receive it each Friday and read all issues here. Hello and welcome back to Plugged In. We at Fast Company are uncommonly fond of the year 1995. After all, it's the year we officially began ongoing publication, after putting out a test issue in 1993. But there's a more straightforward reason why we decided to publish a series of stories this week about some of 1995's most significant products and developments. Last year, we produced a package paying tribute to 1994, and it turned out so well we decided to continue the tradition of 30-year-old flashbacks. Here are the seven stories that make up our 1995 Week: Until we began work on these stories, I'd forgotten that in 2015 we published a similar roundup of articles timed to 20 years post-1995 (I told you it's a special year to us.) The topics were entirely different from what we picked this time, so what the heck—here are those pieces, too: Submerged as we are in a never-ending deluge of news about AI and other pressing subjects, it's always nice to have an excuse to briefly press pause on concerns of the day and look back. At the same time I get nervous about growing too nostalgic. Any objective assessment of tech circa 1995 should acknowledge that in many ways it was terrible. For starters, the PCs were disastrously crash-prone and prone to eating your work in a way that's far less common today. Sans modern conveniences such as USB and Wi-Fi, they made tasks as fundamental as adding a printer into a bit of a science project. Online search tools were rudimentary, digital photography wasn't yet capable of competing with film, and downloading software such as Netscape Navigator over a dial-up connection took so long that it was borderline impractical. In short, I don't want to go back. Yet thinking about the period as we worked on our new series, I also developed a new appreciation for what we've lost. Many of the ways technology has changed everyday life for the better were yet to come—but so were most of its downsides. In case you've forgotten the state of computing in 1995—or weren't around to experience it—a study from October of that year provides some helpful context. Conducted by the Times Mirror Center, it reported that only 32% of Americans used computers. Of them, only a subset went online—typically a few times a week. They typically sent three email messages per day and received five. Just 32% of those online said they would miss it 'a lot' if they couldn't do it anymore, a far lower percentage than the newspaper readers and cable TV subscribers who deemed those media essential. In other words, the digital world didn't matter all that much, even to most of the relatively few Americans who were online. It's tough to have an unhealthy relationship with a technology if you use it only occasionally and can easily see yourself living without it. Nobody checked their smartphone a jillion times a day in 1995: Smartphones barely existed and weren't yet connected to the internet. Even laptops were a rarity, owned by only 18% of people who had a PC, according to the Times Mirror study. Instead, computing was still nearly synonymous with desktop PCs, and going online was a conscious decision involving a dial-up modem and a phone line. Unless you had two lines, you couldn't even check your email if someone else in the house was making a call. Compared to a modern computer or phone with a persistent internet connection, a 1995 PC on dial-up was a Fortress of Solitude. Hackers were already wreaking havoc when they could—read Alex Pasternack's story on 'AOHell' for proof—but with e-commerce and online banking still rare, there was a limit to how much damage they could do. Being overrun in notifications was unknown, because there was no practical way to deliver them to a computing device. (Even Pointcast, the famously bandwidth-sucking alert system that pioneered 'push' technology, didn't arrive until 1996.) The business models that powered access to technology in 1995 also feel healthier than those of 2025. Online advertising was already getting rolling— ran the web's first banner ad in October 1994—but the days of tech giants collecting vast amounts of personal data and using it to target advertising were still in the future. People paid for tech products with money, not by sacrificing some of their privacy. In retrospect, it all seems downright Edenesque. But the consumers of 1995—including me—didn't look at it that way, because we didn't know what was to come. The Times Mirror survey says that 50% of respondents were already concerned about computers being used to invade privacy. Some 24% considered themselves 'overloaded with information,' though perhaps they were more stressed out by an excess of cable channels than anything they were doing on a computer. The Times Mirror Center later changed its name to the Pew Research Center and continues to survey Americans about their attitude toward technology. In April, it reported that twice as many adults thought that AI's impact over the next 20 years would be negative than those who expected it to be positive. I can't help but think that the past three decades have left us more jaded than we were in the 1990s—and that it's a fair reaction to what the tech industry has given us. Will the tech of 2045 or 2055 prompt reveries for the simpler times of 2025? It's a scary thought. I repeat: I have no desire to return to the tech of 1995. But understanding it better can help gird us for what's next. That was among our goals for 1995 Week, and I hope it shows in our stories.
The Sun
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Kate Abdo branded ‘elite' in bold outfit for Champions League final before she's embarrassed with ‘beer maid' footage
KATE ABDO showed how memories are 'maid' - as CBS served up a flashback fashion parade to shock her colleagues. The broadcaster, 43, covered her eyes at one point - as co-presenters saw her in outfits from her 20s ahead of the Champions League final. 5 5 5 Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards gasped with awe at first when they saw Abdo 's garb. But that turned to howls of surprise and amusement when she was seen dressed like a German beer maid. CBC showed the clip to mark her years working in Munich two decades ago. That's where Saturday's clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan took place. And when it got to the waitress-style outfit Abdo was seen back in the studio covering her eyes with apparent embarrassment. CBS posted the throwback video with the caption: "Rumor has it @kate_scott had her own Munich moments." But Abdo had to correct cries of "lederhosen" from her studio colleagues - pointing out that's the name of traditional leather breeches worn by MEN in Bavaria. 5 And bizarrely she didn't hang around long afterwards. 'Omg so cringe' say fans as Man Utd legend Peter Schmeichel and Kate Abdo involved in awkward blunder live on CBS Sports Fellow broadcaster Anita Nneka Jones replaced her while coverage was still building off to kick-off. Abdo told her CBS team-mates: "I would love to stay and chat guys but I have other friends waiting for me tonight..." Footage then showed Abdo's pals David Beckham and Tom Cruise in the Allianz Arena. How about that for a duo to discuss past fame and fashion with?
