Well, we’re not at the point of emotional crescendoes or anything.  But at least we’re starting to get some answers, and I suppose that’s progress.  The disconnect I feel with this season of Link Click isn’t going away (yet), and it was totally absent with the first.  But the more the mystery resolves itself the better chance there is for that to change.  I think it’s more a case of being very slow on the reveal rather than not playing fair, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of audience gratification either way.

The essence of this episode was people not being who they appeared to be.  Starting with Xixi, who turns out to have been her brother Tianchen in disguise.  That explains why there appeared to be two ability users, and why Xixi is now able to talk.  I was actually surprised to find out these two were twins (I assumed Tianchen was older by at least a year or two).  What it doesn’t explain is why Tianchen is now seemingly indifferent to his sister, where before he was obsessively protective.  Qian is the X-factor of course, no pun intended – he clearly saw the potential in Tianchen’s ability when he was assigned the case.  Has he somehow managed to turn the boy against his sister?

The other case of misplaced identity is Lu Guong.  In the sense that the Lu Guong who showed up at the riverbank was in fact Cheng Xiaoshi using his own ability and inhabiting Lu’s body (which I’m pretty sure is the first time we’ve seen that happen).  Let’s for the moment look past the temporal paradoxes hinted at here – for just how long was Cheng in control of Lu’s body?  And why did whichever one of them it was have access to the information about where the riverfront escape was going to take place?  Seemingly the plan all along for for “Lu” to prevent Cheng from being taken away, though presumably Lu himself being taken hostage was not part of that plan.

With the real Xixi now in police custody, we may start to see even more answers soon, especially if Qiao Ling is successful in opening a channel of communication with her.  I’m assuming Xixi herself has no special powers, though that’s nothing one can be certain about at this point.  What’s in this for Tianchen – is he simply being manipulated by Qian, or is there a specific motive in this for him?  Who was in control of Lu’s body when he was leaving all those clues behind – was Cheng leaving them for himself?  And what is the significance of “09135”, Lu’s smartphone password?  That itself seems to be a clue that it was Cheng in control, since Lu (to our knowledge) was unaware that Cheng knew his password.

I won’t say all this is uninteresting, because that’s not the case.  It’s a good mystery, and it’s pretty artfully laid out.  The difference as much as anything is that this season I feel like an observer, and in the first I felt like a participant.  And that’s the difference between having only an intellectual connection and having an emotional one too.  For a series that was as fabulously immersive as Shiguang Dailiren, that distinction is a mighty important one.