Just finished it this morning and wanted to get my thoughts down. I was intrigued by the premise initially -- Choi Mika (played by Lee Sung Kyung), a woman who can see the lifespan clocks of everyone she meets (including herself), is facing her last days. She's running out of time and she can see it slowly ticking away. She meets a man, Lee Do Ha (Lee Sang-Yoon) who seems to have the ability to stop her clock from moving forward. Will he change her fate? Will they fall in love? Will there be a happily ever after? Can there be a happily ever after when, in her experience, nothing can be done to change your clock?
Things are, of course, complicated by a number of factors. But you knew that. To begin with, she's not sure exactly how or why or when he is affecting her clock. At first, it just seems to stop when she's near him (and that distance is variable). Then, once they get closer, it even adds time. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly (this is one of the areas where the mythology of the piece is a bit iffy; it's inconsistent and never really explained and obviously used purely for heightening tension within the plot...which I'm fine with in general, but sometimes it was a bit clumsy and too-convenient plot-wise). And how does a musical actress get close to a richy-rich third generation chaebol? And one that is engaged, no less? And has anxiety issues (due to a very bad past breakup experience)? And has quite possibly one of the most contemptible families in history (well, the dad and one brother, anyway)? And...and...and...there's a lot of complications. Not the least of which is getting close to this prickly man at all.
Let me just stop and say here that overall I did like this one more than not. The acting, other than a few hiccups in the early episodes, was pretty good. I enjoyed it, even the heartwrenching moments (of which there were many). The supporting cast was fairly well developed (other than a couple of things I'll talk about later). It was good. I'll look out for other things by these actors. I wanted to say that up front because now I'm going to break down the things that didn't work as well for me and I have to admit that it's likely because I'm a writer and stuff like this gets under my skin. But it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this one. In fact, it's because I enjoyed it that the bits that were off are nagging at me.
The arc with the nice older brother of Do Ha was a good one, though sad (though his death seemed to come too soon based on how much time she'd said he had left on his clock...like there was a time jump of sorts that wasn't really explained, especially as all the other ongoing plot threads didn't seem to jump as well.). The digression into the romance between Mika's best friend and younger brother seemed to have been inserted to lighten the dramatic tension and was welcome because of that--there did need to be some laughs in-between the intense crying scenes or it would have been far too depressing. The stuff with the babyfaced genius director sometimes went on a little long, but that was partly because the writers were setting him up as a red herring of sorts as a potential love interest (more on that in a minute).
There are 16 total episodes in this drama. It's possible that there were about 2 too many or 2 too few. The first few, setting up the premise and characters, move at a decent pace. The middle sometimes drags, but is mostly okay. The end is where things fall apart.
There are two major plot threads that are working to keep them apart.
The most straightforward one is the fiancé, Bae Soo-Bong (Im Se-Mi), who at first is playing hard to get (it's an arranged marriage type of thing and she's turned down Do Ha's proposal, like, ten times) and then morphs into absolute batshit crazypants "If I can't have him, I'll destroy us all" territory. Im Se-Mi does this well and Do Ha's father is her willing accomplice (seriously, he's a terrible dad...the writers kept trying to throw out little redemption tidbits for him but, no, he's just awful). But then...after ramping up the stakes again and again with both Soo-Bong and the dad, it's resolved FAR too easily. Soo-Bong, after one last desperate plea for attention, is about to commit suicide. Mika and Do Ha stop her (Mika having been alerted by Soo-Bong's clock wavering between 54 years or 2 minutes). And then...she just kind of gives it up. Returns the rings. Stops all of the intense business bullying, etc. Basically disappears as an obstacle in the space of 20 minutes. It was too sudden, especially as the father as an obstacle (threats of disowning Do Ha, etc. etc.) aren't even MENTIONED at all. There's no resolution there. When you finally do see the dad again, they are simply having yet another uncomfortable family dinner. There were no repercussions. There was also no resolution of evil big brother either. The only movement there is that you see that his wife gains a little independence and confidence by the end of the series.
I mean, I realise why they did this. They were, hahaha, running out of time and they had to wrap up the main plot thread--Mika and Do Ha's fated love story. But it bugs me because it felt lazy. They should have either toned it down and wrapped it up more neatly OR expanded it out and done it properly.
So, anyway, the main obstacle, of course, is that once Mika discovers that she is stealing time from Do Ha (he had 61 years to start with, while she had about 80 days), she feels she has to run from him. She can't kill the man she loves. But she doesn't tell him this, instead drawing it out over a number of episodes as she keeps trying to give him excuses ("I don't like you." "I made it all up.") to push him away but he keeps pursuing her. All of that was fine, story-wise. It was painful to watch, but it works. That's the story. That's their love; while it may have started under strange circumstances, they are both the kind of people who put others in front of themselves. She doesn't tell him that the reason she is running from him is because she is taking his time because she KNOWS that he would be all too willing to give it.
Once he discovers her deception, that is what he wants to do. Of course it is. But she, of course, can't accept that because she loves him just as completely as he loves her. They come to a compromise of sorts (and all of this pretty much plays out over the last 3 episodes--rush, rush, rush) where she promises not to run and he promises to stay far enough away while she acts the leading role in a musical (I didn't talk at all about all the stuff going on with the musical...and I'm not going to even though it's a huge part of the story because, ultimately, it's part of the vehicle of the plot but it isn't the driving force and I've already written too much about this). But, he says, after it is done, she has to "do things his way." Well, you and I know that there's no way she'll do that. I don't know why Lee Do Ha thinks for a minute that she will. But I suppose love--and hope--are blind.
Predictably, closing night comes. She is down to a small amount of time. A handful of days. Lee Do Ha takes her hand. He makes sure to cover her clock and his, hoping that if she can't see it, she won't focus on it. They spend a nice day & night together. He is blissful. She, on the other hand, is enjoying it like an inmate on Death Row enjoys his last meal. And the first chance she gets to see her clock, she does. And there it is, rapidly sucking away his days. Remember how I said up above how it was annoying that there was no consistency with how the time passes between them? Sometimes it was just seconds passing by at normal time...at this point it was days getting sucked up. After she (of course) runs and he (of course) finds her (with the help of her mom because, once mom finds out what's up (of course) she's going to do everything she can to prolong her daughter's life), there's the dramatic scene where the years are passing from his clock to hers over the space of seconds. She's panicking. They are in the street. They both get hit by a truck.
An effing truck. She apparently has really bad luck with cars (her grandmother saved her from one and sacrificed herself).
Which, by the way, you freaking knew was going to happen because the preview at the end of the last show TOLD YOU IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. That kinda pissed me off. Anyway. Way to spoil the dramatic moment.
And here is the most annoying thing. Oh no, she's thinking as they lie there bleeding in the street, after all of this and I've killed him, oh woe, what kind of fated love is this? Then it cuts to her in a hospital bed. She wakes up. Looks at her clock. We don't know if she can see it or what the number is or anything--a blaze of light as the door to her room opens and....CUT to a new scene.
Okay, remember how I said they'd given little red herring hints of the Director being a possible love interest? They tried to shove that in here in the last episode as a little gotcha thing (I get it, I get it, as a writer I get it, but it really pissed me off). It's too disjointed. And unsatisfying. And rushed.
She's dancing and it looks like a scene from early on when the Director who has turned her down for casting a couple of times sees her performing for herself and tells her some kind words (sort of; he's snarky because he thinks a lot of himself). Same song as the first one at her first audition. Same song as the first time she wound up kissing Lee Do Ha. I appreciate the symmetry, I do. But the execution is a bit clumsy. It's too long and you feel like you're in just another random flashback (there are SO many flashbacks in this, like they don't trust you to remember things on your own and have to force feed it to you) and when you finally get to the point where you figure out it isn't a flashback but possibly some new future and are they are pushing Director boy but then finally Lee Do Ha enters the scene and you're like oh FFS. At least I was. Then it goes into all these other little wrap-up scenes: the ex-fiancé having dinner with a new man, the younger brother & best friend sharing time, that uncomfortable family dinner of the Lee family, a visit where Lee Do Ha finally meets Mika's dad...and I'm like, okay, great, you tried to do a brief fakeout and then you go into the epilogue, basically, but just tell me what happened already, would you? The pacing was just all over the place in the last episode. Too fast, too slow. It was both satisfying and not at the same time. They do finally come back to it, him opening the hospital door, them both having survived being hit by a truck and her ability to see clocks gone.
But they just left that hanging there. The viewer is left not knowing how much time they have left. They don't know either. And that's not necessarily a bad ending but it felt unsatisfying, especially when one of the wrap up scenes is with Madame Oh (who also can see clocks) and you SEE HER LOOKING AT MIKA'S CLOCK but then they don't tell you. I'd rather they either left it alone OR gave it a concrete resolution. Like the most likely thing would be that the time he had had been split between them. Or, (more happily but less likely from a world building point of view), they now both had the same amount of time (some 60 years).
And there was the stuff thrown in at the end about all of the fated lover stuff that I'd already guessed WAY early on -- when Mika's grandmother had died after saving her from a car accident, it had been Lee Do Ha as a child in the car and how it was him bumping into her on the street that had first made her clock visible to her -- they threw it out there but then didn't really do anything with it.
Yeah. So. I feel like I've complained a lot about this one. Mostly it comes down to the last episodes feeling rushed and incomplete. It could have gone longer...or shorter, if they'd wrapped up some of the fiancé angst earlier. I dunno. There are definitely things I would have done differently. But maybe some of this is also a cultural thing for the Korean audience? I'm not sure. The first few K-dramas I tried I found really unwatchable. I'm not Korean and I'm likely far too Westernized, even if I am half-Chinese. Watching things like this is almost a surreal experience. Some of it I identify with so much and other things feel so foreign. Being half something is sometimes hard. It's a foot each in two worlds.
BUT to sum up...I more liked it than not. The actors all grew on me. Especially Lee Sang-Yoon--he was so stiff in the beginning but then once he warmed up, was just lovely. Also like that in real life he majored in Physics. I feel a little sad that I wrote up all of this nitpicky stuff when I did like it so much--mostly because of the cast. Viewer's guilt? Well, this blog is just for me anyway. I write things for myself to remember them and I do want to remember this one. I am disappointed but still happy that I watched it.
Edit: After watching Lee Sung Kyung in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (in which she was much better) and a number of other better Kdramas, I'd have to downgrade my opinion of this one. It had promise, but it did fall short. Am on the lookout still for more Lee Sang Yoon though.
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