We are starting this on Monday. As always, we will watch one episode on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. How many of you will be following this one as part of the Drama of the Month group? I know some of you have seen it already, but you all voted for this drama, so I'd like to know who will be following along with me.

I've read mixed reviews about the ending. Some liked it and some hated it, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how we feel about it.


(Courtesy of Asianmediawiki)
 
Profile
• TV Show: IRIS
• Revised Romanization: Airiseu
• Hangul: 아이리스
• Director: Yun-ho Yang, Kyu-tae Kim
• Writer:
• Network: KBS2
• Episodes: 20
• Release Date: October 14, 2009
• Runtime:
• Language: Korean
• Country: South Korea

Plot
Two elite National Security System (NSS) agents, Hyeong-jun (Byung-hun Lee) and Sa-woo (Jun-ho Jeong), who were sworn blood brothers, both fall for fellow agent Seung-hee (Tae-hee Kim). Sa-woo attempts to suppress his feelings for Seung-hee and wishes the couple the best.

Hyeon-jun is then sent off on a solo mission to Hungary. In Hungary, Hyeon-jun accomplishes his mission and while in escape mode becomes wounded. Shortly later, Hyeon-jun finds out that he was betrayed by fellow agent Sa-woo. Seung-hee attempts to help Hyeon-jun escape, but a car explosion separates the two and both are misled to believe that the other person are dead. Hyeon-jun is then saved by an unknown voice and learns of the secret society "IRIS".

One year later, Hyeon-jun returns to Korea to seek revenge. During this time, the two Koreas are set to reunify, while the group "IRIS" are intent on stopping the reunification.

Trailer:

YouTube Video ID: KFWKm6axvq0
Youtube video : Click here to load video  ( Watch on YouTube )OptionsClose

Hehehehe!! I can't wait!!! I'm fangirling already!!! LEE BYUNG HUN!!!!!!

*Fangirling for TOP!*

I want to watch along. *Fingers crossed*

I can try to watch this with all of you.

While you guys are watching I will run the pool on who will be the first one to break ranks and marathon it.

Trust me - it will be VERY difficult not to.

 

Can't wait. I'm looking forward to this one.

I cheated already. I'm on episode 16. I just couldn't stop myself. T's right. It will be hard not to marathon it. If you can find a place to watch it that is. The only place I've found to watch the later episodes is aznv.tv and now I'm even having trouble loading those on winamp. I'd be finished already if I wasn't having trouble.

If you were in the VC you would have finished it by now.

 

Wait! I am in the VC!! I didn't know you had IRIS already. That was fast!!! I have DJY from the VC right now though so I'll have to wait until I'm finished that. Drat!!

lol It pays to check the list.

The VC had IRIS less than 2 weeks after it finished up in Korea.

 

Everyone can watch this on Dramafever. Episodes 1 through 6 are available now. Additional episodes will become available on February 4th, and in the following weeks.

http://www.dramafever.com/drama/124/

Also, if you don't mind downloading, you can download whatever episodes you need, together with the subtitles, here: http://silentregrets.com/completed-kdramas/iris.php

IRIS and many other dramas cab be downloaded and watched here:

http://silentregrets.com/completed-kdramas/iris.php

I'll be watching

I guess it's just ladies this time. From what I've read, this looks like a high-tech action/adventure story with a little bit of romance thrown in. It looks like it would be more fit for a male audience than a female audience, so if any guys would like to join us at the last minute, please feel free. Greg? Lucas? Jim? Bob?

We will watch Episode 1 tonight, and we should start discussing it later on in the evening. This isn't a feel-good type of comedy that you just watch and enjoy, like our recent ones. This action drama will probably generate a lot of discussion like "The Slingshot" did.

Off to see Episode 1. See you guys later!


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This drama is in my top 5! Awesome!!!

EPISODE 1

This episode was very intense. It began with a scene which is either the ending or a later scene in the drama. Hyeon-jun (Lee Byung-hun) was given a top-secret assignment but in the process of carrying it out, he was shot and injured, and hunted down by what I suppose are enemy agents, led by Park Cheol-yeong (Kim Seug-woo). When Hyeon-jun requests assistance from his superior in the NSS, he is told no one is going to help him. He is on his own.

Then it flashes back to the very beginning, when Hyeon-Jun first meets Seung-hee (Kim Tae-hee), and it appears that both are acting undercover while posing as students. He has fallen in love with her at first sight. Then one day, she disappears from class, and suddenly, in the middle of the night, Hyeon-jun and his close friend Jin Sa-woo (Jeong Jun-ho) are forcibly taken from their beds to be recruited into the NSS, a top secret organization that uses torture on their recruits to see whether they break, or withstand it. After being recruited, they meet with their new Team Leader, who is none other than Seung-hee!

So far there has been bloodshed and torture, and a hint of romance.

After the lightness and humor of the last two dramas we've seen in the Drama of the Month group, this drama was quite a change. I can't really say whether or not I'm going to like this one just yet; the first episode was just too intense for me. I'll have to wait and see how the rest of the episodes develop, but I'm really looking forward to watching Episode 2.

What did the rest of you think of Episode 1?

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I really enjoyed the first episode I am the opposite I like intense action dramas.I have not seen a KDrama like this before so I am looking forward to it. It's going to be very interesting to see how this developing triangle will play out. I cannot wait to see the next episode. While watching it during the coming attractions I could swear that I recognized the rich dad from Likable or Not.

I hope everyone enjoyed the episode. Now what I truly enjoyed as a bonus was the eye candy! Yummy Yummy! I had to stay focused at times to understand what was going on between the training sessions to the shower scene oh man!

Just finished ep 1. WOW!! I really liked it. It is nice to see some other scenery besides Seoul. I like the characters so far. I thought Hyeong-Jun was going to turn into the Incredible Hulk there at the end. Very suspenseful...I can't wait for the next episode.

muscovy_2000 wrote:

I guess it's just ladies this time. From what I've read, this looks like a high-tech action/adventure story with a little bit of romance thrown in. It looks like it would be more fit for a male audience than a female audience, so if any guys would like to join us at the last minute, please feel free. Greg? Lucas? Jim? Bob? We will watch Episode 1 tonight, and we should start discussing it later on in the evening. This isn't a feel-good type of comedy that you just watch and enjoy, like our recent ones. This action drama will probably generate a lot of discussion like "The Slingshot" did.

I'm sure I'm in the minority as far as guys go, but I don't really like action shows/movies. I watched some of the first episode of this one, and I dunno, I just wasn't feelin' it. I prefer those feel good comedies/romance stories.

You guys have fun. Perhaps I'll catch you on the next one.

Well I watched epi. 1(a little late I know ) and I gotta say I LOVED IT!!!! Love Lee Byung Hun!!! On to epi. 2

OK I'm back!!! I just watched epi. 2. WOW!!! Hyun Jun is a bad motorcycle! Kicking butt and saving his buddy in the process! Love this guy. I really like Sa Woo, too bad he'll betray his best friend(I'm hoping they are trying to trick us with that little tidbit of info in the synopsis)
At first I didn't like Seung Hee but by the end of this epi. she was starting growing on me. Kim Tae Hee is doing a decent job holding her own with these heavy weight stars.

Min Joo did you see T.O.P!!! He's looking mighty SEXY!!!

EPISODE 2

In episode 2 we are given a bit more information about what happened in Episode 1. Both Hyeon-jun and Sa-Woo were in the Special Forces (I'm assuming it's something like our CIA) but now have been recruited into the NSS which is a top-secret branch of the Special Forces which absolutely no one knows about (except officials of the Special Forces at the highest level, I suppose). We learn that both Sa-woo and Hyeon-Jun were targeted from the beginning for their special talents. Seung-hee is already in the NSS, as a profiler, so her meeting with Hyeon-jun at the university was specially planned so that she could analyze him.

One of the conditions the NSS has for its agents is that they must not get romantically involved with each other, it is forbidden to fall in love with another agent. So of course Hyeon-jun and Seung-hee do just that.

On Hyeon-jun's and Sa-woo's first mission (very high-tech James Bond-esque spy gadgets and action), we get a glimpse of one of the enemy agents that hunted Hyeon-jun at the beginning of the story, Park Cheol-yeong (Kim Seung-woo). At this point, his identity isn't yet known, but we learn that he is an enemy, and he has just killed a man that the NSS was following. We see him again in a foiled assassination attempt against a popular presidential candidate.

At the end of the episode, Hyeon-jun and Sa-Woo are in the office of the President of South Korea (awaiting some sort of official recognition) when Hyeon-jun realizes he's been in this room before, when he was a very young boy, and it brings back some suppressed memories of his childhood and the death of his parents, in an "auto accident" which is shown in a flashback and does not appear to have really been an accident.

End of Episode 2


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EPISODE 3

We see in a flashback that Hyeon-jun's parents were both nuclear physicists from MIT who were deliberately murdered.

Back in the present, the President walks in, and we see that he is the candidate whose life they had saved. However, when they mention that they are with the NSS, the President did not know about the existence of said organization. After they leave, the President's assistant explains to the President that the NSS was created as a separate secret agency to develop nuclear weapons and protect national security, away from the scrutiny of U.S. intelligence. The President is disturbed to learn about the existence of such a secret organization that even he, having previously been a long-time congressman in charge of national security, did not know about. Things do not bode well in the President's office.

Hyeon-jun takes Seung-hee to an orphanage where he grew up. He goes to the priest and asks about his background, as he can only remember his life from the moment he had been brought there. The priest said he had no records of his prior life, he had simply been brought there.

When Hyeon-jun leaves, the priest calls Hyeon-jun's superior, Vice-Director Baek San, at the NSS and tells him that Hyeon-jun is inquiring into his past! (The President didn't know about the NSS, and a country priest does???)

The President calls Vice-Director Baek San and starts inquirying about the NSS, and the nuclear weapons files.

A guy whose name we do not yet know (played by T.O.P) appears at a hotel in China, massacring a group of people, who we later learn are somehow involved with nuclear weapons. He searches them for something that he does not find. He says "now only Hong Seung Ryong remains". We later learn that Hong Seung Ryong is North Korea's head nuclear scientist in weapons development, who wants to seek asylum in South Korea, but is presently being held in Hungary. The NSS (Sa-Woo, Hyeon-jun and Seung-hee) successfully rescue him, and turn him over to the agents who will take him back to Korea. During a brief conversation with Hyeon-jun, Hong Seung Ryong removes a chain and cross from around his neck, and hands it to Hyeon-jun (I think this chain & cross might be of some significance to the story). Unfortunately, at the airport, the assassin (T.O.P.) is waiting with a rifle. He kills everyone except Hong Seung Ryong. He approaches the car and asks Hong Seung Ryong to hand "it" over. (We don't know what "it" is, but I'm pretty sure whatever it is, is imbedded in the cross he gave to Hyeon-jun). When Hong Seung Ryong says he doesn't know what "it" is, the assassin kills him.

End of Episode 3.

Finished ep 3. I felt sorry for Sa Woo when he realized Seung-hee and Hyeong-Jun were involved with each other. He doesn't seem too happy about it. I hope he doesn't cause trouble for them.

I don't understand why the team did not escort Seung Ryong to the plane and watch him take off. Weren't they supposed to be protecting him? I definitely think that cross was of more significance

Anyway, I'm really enjoying this drama.

It just gets better and better!

Finished ep 4. OMG! I'm trying really hard not to do a marathon and watch it all at once. I think I'm going to lose.

Let me take a vote here and see how many of you are following this, and how many are on track with Episode 4. I don't know how many of you, other than jigsaw and me, are watching it as part of the Drama of the Month. If you guys want to us to move ahead and watch one episode every night (which I am dying to do) I'm all for it. This is a drama that we definitely need to watch at a faster rate.

Please let me know if we should watch one episode each night (even weekends if you all like) instead of three times per week.

jigsaw1800 wrote:

Finished ep 4. OMG! I'm trying really hard not to do a marathon and watch it all at once. I think I'm going to lose.

Well jigsaw I'm glad you have some will power because I sure don't!!! I did a mini marathon this weekend during the snow storm and now I'm up to epi. 10! So my hat is off to you for holding out this long.

Maria as you can see I'm all for watching an episode of IRIS every night.

jigsaw1800 wrote:

Finished ep 4. OMG! I'm trying really hard not to do a marathon and watch it all at once. I think I'm going to lose.

I lost!

OK, an episode each night it is! Tomorrow we'll watch Episode 5, and so on. Do we continue through the weekend, or skip the weekend?

Oh Man! I will never be able to catch up at this rate. I will try