Link Click II was off to a fine start, but this was the first episode that fully recaptured the magic of the first season for me.  Not a coincidence that it most resembled that first season in most ways, but there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on there, I think.  For me the first three eps seemed to be trying a little too hard.  The first season episodes – and this week – have a natural ease to the narrative which is extremely absorbing.  The first three episodes kind of felt like a very good conventional thriller, but I think Shiguang Dailiren is one of those shows that’s better when it’s as unconventional as possible.

We really got down to brass tacks with the mystery here, too.  It now seems conclusive (probably always was and I was being dense) that Chen was indeed framed, and that Qian Jin’s ape was the one who planted the cash.  Qian Jin and his boss are primarily concerned with finding Liu Min’s phone, and it seems as if it was the mysterious ability user who took it.  That person is the key to an awful lot of what’s happening here of course, and we seemed to learn a whole lot more about them as well.

This was the first episode of the season that saw Cheng and Lu actually use their abilities, and I realized how much I’d missed that.  It’s really the centerpiece of so much of Link Click, not least because it highlights the difference between those two.  Just “let it be” where the past is concerned – but that’s easier said than done.  The way Qiao frames the situation is very interesting – in effect, what we’re doing in the present is having a butterfly effect on the future.  Whether there’s any material difference or not depends on how much you view time as an elastic concept in this mythology, but as Lu Guong says even if they did change the past, they’d likely be unaware of it in the “present”.

Captain Xiao being fully looped in on the secret it a big deal in its own right.  He wigs out a little when he learns the whole truth, and even more when he sees it in action.  The potential for investigations is obvious, but these two have a system in place and his frantic requests aren’t going to help matters.  The photo they enter is of course the one Lu Guong has been hiding from the others – “I can’t stand losing my beloved brother” – but another photo is critical too, and that’s the one which the other ability user exploited to possess Qiao Ling.  That came from her friend Shanshan’s phone, and it was sent by MMS to a person who’s supposedly been dead for several years.

As best as I can surmise, the other ability user seems to be the girl from the photo, now a teenager.  The hair matches, and so does the (apparent) lack of speech.  That girl is named Xixi, and Cheng Xiaoshi blurts out an “OK!” before Lu can warn him that Xixi is mute.  Her mom (also in the photo) freaks out at this, and immediately drags Xixi to Qin, the doctor of Chinese medicine that’s been treating the girl.  Cheng immediately writes him off as a quack, Lu scolds him for it, and Qin is puzzled when he takes Xixi’s pulse and it’s that of a boy.  I don’t know enough about Chinese traditional medicine to assess this – or about how it’s perceived in modern China – but I certainly don’t dismiss it out of hand.

So how does all this fit together – Liu Lan (the owner of the phone Qiao’s photo was sent to, maybe the mother), Xixi, Liu Min?  Perhaps the most critical question is who is the “brother” the ability user (assuming they are the ability user) who gave the photo to Lu refers to (assuming they’re even the one who wrote the message)?  I can’t shake the notion that the brother in question is Cheng Xiaoshi himself, though that’s pure speculation at this point.  Something tragic is seemingly about to happen in the past, Cheng is in the middle of it, and there are delicious riddles to savor.  This is the Link Click I fell in love with, and I’m thrilled to have it back.