Every so often, I would try to pick a good Korean drama to watch. It will not be fair to say that this drama was not good, but I definitely did not feel good after watching.

Is it just me, I wonder? Korean dramas, many a time, though try to convey thought-provoking and inspiring messages to audiences at the end of the show, tend to have stories with lots of angst and make them sensational, but sometimes ended up making the stories more complicated and confusing than they should have been.

This 12-episode drama gave a glimpse of how in order to save and have something back, one has to give up in return another thing of the same value or at least that was what I thought it was trying to convey.

Kim Hye Ja (Han Ji Min), though wasn’t sure about her direction in life, was an optimistic and bubbly 25-year-old girl. She found a watch on a beach when she was young and this mysterious watch when winded, allowed her to turn back time. When her father met with an accident, she desperately winded the watch, hoping to prevent the accident from happening. Despite trying many times, she failed again and again. Eventually, at the very last attempt, she managed to save her father’s life, but as a result turned into a 70-year-old woman herself.

The initial 10 episodes of this drama were interesting. They showed in detail Kim Hye Ja’s initial shock and her gradual acceptance from a 25-year-old girl to a 70-year-old woman who was acted by another actress also by the name of Kim Hye Ja. The problems she faced all of a sudden as a 70-year-old woman were realistic, such as not being able to run like before, knees cracking after climbing up a few steps, feeling tired and wanting to rest after walking just a short while, not being able to see as well as before, feeling sleepy early in the night and waking up very early in the morning, etc. I felt intrigued watching all of these. They were portrayed so well in the older Kim Hye Ja. Although I did wonder why they didn’t use the same actress, the older Kim Hye Ja looked convincing enough with similar face features, build and mannerisms as the younger one.

This drama also highlighted some of the issues faced by less well-off families in Korea and problems faced by the elderly in the Korean society – abandonment by their own children, loneliness and suicide.

I had wanted to give this drama a high score when I was watching the first 10 episodes, in fact I binge-watched the 10 episodes in less than 2 days because I was really curious to know what would happen to Hye Ja at the end, whether she would remain as an old lady or return to her original state and how, and what would become of her romance with Lee Joon Ha (Nam Joo Hyuk), the cute-looking male lead.

However, I changed my mind entirely after watching the last 2 episodes. I do not know how to describe my feelings towards these 2 final episodes. It felt like a different team of scriptwriters took over the script-writing or the scriptwriters couldn’t decide how to continue the story, or simply they just changed their minds and decided that they did not wish to continue with the original script, but all in all it was a total letdown for me…It was incoherent and I was watching with bewilderment the whole time. I did not quite understand why things were happening the way they were because what I saw in the first 10 episodes seemed no longer valid. The characters were the same, but the setting was no longer the same. It felt like what happened in the first 10 episodes was just a dream, imagination or illusion of Kim Hye Ja or was it not? I wasn’t sure.

I will not be able to describe my thoughts of the last 2 episodes without some spoilers, but as I do not want to write spoilers in this review, I will just touch a little. Simply put, there was a twist in the last 2 episodes, totally unexpected, everything just changed all of a sudden and we were thrown to the year 1970 when Hye Ja and Joon Ha (whose wig was hilarious – the typical long straight and thick hair of the 1970s) met before their parents’ times. There were neither explanations nor hints, maybe there were, but I didn’t see nor understand them. And then we were brought back to the so-called present where we saw Hye Ja, an old lady in a nursing hospital with slight dementia and her father and mother in the past 10 episodes were now her son and daughter-in-law. We were then shown frequent flashbacks on her life with Joon Ha in the 1970s from their dating, marriage, birth of their son, death of Joon Ha to just Hye Ja and her son eventually.

All the while, until the very end, I was hoping for an explanation or at least clearer hints as to which was actually the present time, which was the past, what exactly happened, how were the last 2 episodes related to the past 10 episodes, was the watch responsible for all these, but I never got the answers from what I saw, at least not from watching it once. Maybe I have to re-watch twice or even thrice to better understand.

As for the cast and their acting, I have no negative comments – from the first episode to the end. I think their acting was believable, everyone of them from the main leads to the supporting leads did a good job. When they were jubilant, sad, helpless, desperate, or even silently devastated, whatever emotions, I could feel and empathize with them and I cried or laughed with them. The BGM also helped. Such were the emotions I had when I watched the first 10 episodes, but the last 2 episodes had me in disbelief that this was the show I had binge-watched the day before. The acting was still just as convincing, but the turn of the story gave me so much confusion that I couldn’t wait for the show to end. The incoherence made everything, whether it was the movements or the conversations, suddenly just became meaningless, exasperatingly slow and draggy.

Overall, I would still recommend this drama to anyone, because I did enjoy the first 10 episodes, but enjoy the first 10 episodes and be prepared for some confusion in the 10th and a half episode mark onwards till the end.