What an impressive pilot episode! There is…

What an impressive pilot episode! There is a lot introduced here, and a lot that has yet to be explained. I love that in an opener to a show: give me enough solid ground for me to feel some sense of the show, but enough intriguing questions to make me want to keep watching. I think that they accomplished that here. I was very wary to actually watch this show because I have been burned by high concept Korean sci-fi in the past, but I saw a clip of it by accident and was so charmed by Park Shin Hye's performance that I had to give it a shot. I am happy that I did, although I still have some trepidation. You can never really know if a show is good until the last episode has aired, after all. So far both the leads are excellent. The last role I saw of Jo Seung Woo's was in Stranger, where he plays a character who is basically emotionless, very quiet and reserved. Here he is completely different: arrogant, emotional, pretty fucked up in an ugly way, addicted to pills, a genius, witty and flippant -- his energy is suddenly huge and he's very physical, as opposed to in Stranger where he felt focused, fussy and precise. It's amazing how a great actor can seem to physically transform from character to character, even without the help of prosthetics. Park Shin Hye is also very good, but we've gotten to see less of her inner psyche. I can already tell that she will be well-suited to the physical aspect of her role and I thought she nailed her performance in her scene with her father. I am really excited to see her character develop and to see these two meet. Overall, I really loved the episode. There were some quibbles that I had (the trainyard scene was strangely directed, the airplane crash when he's talking on the phone felt like it was pushing my suspension of disbelief a little too much), but on the whole I thought it was great.

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