I finished this shortie before the flu and Christmas ran away with my time and energies and thought I would come back and try to do the 2 episode summaries, but I find that I can’t muster the enthusiasm to go back and figure out what happened in those final 6 episodes so as to avoid spoilers! 😊 I’ll just have to lump it all together below (spoilers after the jump), but I will say that in general I enjoyed this drama and the couple and was surprised on a number of points — all good things!
The best part of this story is that it organically made me come around to understanding and feeling empathy for him (whereas his reactions to her PPD and earlier grief at the loss of her mother made me want to kick him for being so clueless, as did his initial reaction to being back in time and “free” of her). It made me think about how cultural mores and behaviours of communication can be highly detrimental to a relationship, such as ideas like “suffering in silence” and waiting for someone to talk to you (rather than starting the conversation). We may be excessively touchy/feely in our part of the world, but a little more verbalization would have gone a long way to healing them — not to mention some well-applied embraces. In general, I found the dynamics of these two just felt so authentic, both in good times and bad.
What was weaker was how her almost relationship with cutie ROTC played out. I liked his part and his reactions to her and could totally see his fascination with her was meant to be as a womanly, maternal figure — someone who really knew how to love someone — but felt that there was a disconnect between the young man they gave us who was all a-fluster at holding a young woman in his arms to stop her pellmell downhill catastrophe in the making and the “Aigoo” dowdy ahjumma she was in her revised past. She came across most of the time as someone with less sex appeal than the woman who played his stepmom. The ‘resolution’ of his crush on her at the end was less satisfying too, whereas the dancer had already moved on (and had new horizons opened to her by him).
I kept wondering how they would address the impacts of the changes wrought in the past but I’m kind of glad that they kept it (mostly) low-key — the wealthy parents was just a little OTT. They learned to be better people, they all learned to love themselves a little more, and all was good… Except… Did we really need that epilogue about the quarreling god & goddess and their rings? That was such a throwaway (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun) bit of justification for the ‘magic’ of the journey!
We Talk Dramas All Day 