This review may contain spoilers
Just A Typical RomCom
First things first, do NOT go into this show thinking this is anything resembling a revenge drama. It's not! No, I didn't see any trailers nor did I have any prior knowledge of this series before I watched it, so maybe it's my fault for assuming that. Either way, this is definitely nothing of the sort. It's a nice, cheesy, typical romantic comedy. Truly. As long as you watch it with that little tidbit in mind, you should be fine going into this story. (Also, I've decided that I'm actually going to remember the character names from now on to make these reviews more seamless.)
Now. The one thing I will say is that this was another show that I felt had amazing potential but it fell flat for me in some aspects. While I understand that expecting the female lead to hit us with a complete 180 was unrealistic to begin with, I still expected her to have more of a backbone than she did. After watching the first episode, you would be under the impression that she's going to be a tough, femme fatale getting back at her family and ensuring that she doesn't waste her life again. Wrong! You would be dead wrong if you allowed yourself to believe that? What's wrong with you? (I'm joking about that, friends. That was just a little bit of sarcasm.) But seriously, I fully expected Yi Joo to go toe-to-toe with her stepmother and stepsister and never miss a single step. In fact, I expected her to always be three, maybe four, steps ahead of literally everyone else. She has the advantage here! She's the only one (that we know of at this point) that has literally traveled back through time. She knows what most of her opponents and enemies don't know. So, why isn't she beating them at their own game? Why wasn't she able to do that?
Granted, I understand that she couldn't possibly be three steps ahead of her brother-in-law because he was running circles around his own family for years. She couldn't possibly beat him, but HER family? Yes, she should have been able to neutralize them very very early on in this show. She simply didn't, and I don't understand why the writers wrote it that way either. Which brings me to another issue I had - there were far too many players in this game. There were far too many moving parts in this machine and that bogged the show down tremendously. There was no reason for this show to have this many villains at once. Absolutely none. In my opinion, they should have picked one - if it was going to be Jung Wook, then let it be him. If it was going to be Yi Joo's family, then let it be them and only them. It didn't need to be both sides of the family causing a ruckus here.
Back to my original point though - there were times when Yi Joo allowed people to chew her out and she stood there and said nothing! When her pathetic ex-fiancé chewed her out in the bridal shop, I wanted to scream! Why are you letting him, of all people, chew you out and humiliate you in front of all of these people? Especially when YOU didn't do anything wrong. Se Hyeok only married you to get closer to your sister, who he was truly in love with. In knowing that, that man could NEVER raise his voice to me out of indignance. It wouldn't have happened. Yi Joo should have shut that down immediately! I understand her needing to get stronger to fight back against her stepmother, but that shouldn't apply to everyone else. Everyone else should be fair game. These people abused, isolated, alienated, and treated you like a stranger in your own home since you were a child. Where's your anger? Where's your fire? Where is it?! Your own father allowed his wife to do all of those things to you and he said nothing. Now that I'm thinking about it - maybe that makes more sense to the story. Maybe the reason Yi Joo didn't know how to stand up for herself is because her own biological father didn't know how to either. Like father, like daughter.
I have no notes on her husband. Do Guk was fine. I had no issues with him. I did, however, have some issues with his story though. Let me explain - yes, I know that he traveled through time like she did. However, there were some things he'd say that made no sense. He mentioned the fact that Yi Joo spoke casually to him first and that's why he felt so comfortable doing that when they met in the future. However, we NEVER saw anything like that. In fact, Yi Joo questioned whether he even knew her before she got married when they met in the current timeline (that's technically in the past, weirdly enough). So, when did they have this conversation? During the big reveal, that was something that was still left unexplained. They went back to the events of the first episode but not any further than that. I think the writers wanted to fully sell the idea that they knew each other but they failed at doing so. They wanted to create this intimacy that never actually existed between the two leads. The point is that the writers should have incorporated some scenes prior to the first episode that explained why Do Guk was so enamored with Yi Joo. Do Guk was in love with Yi Joo like Se Hyeok was in love with Yoo Ra. Which actually means that both of them were in love with a fantasy because neither of them knew these women enough to be in love with them. We all saw what happened when Se Hyeok finally saw the real Yoo Ra. It wasn't pretty! It simply worked out well for Do Guk when it didn't for Se Hyeok. Go figure!
All in all, I wouldn't rewatch it. It was okay. It was nothing absolutely amazing, but it's something to watch when you're bored and you don't want to watch anything too dark and heavy. This is a lighthearted show that makes no sense at all when you truly examine it, but that's fine.
Now. The one thing I will say is that this was another show that I felt had amazing potential but it fell flat for me in some aspects. While I understand that expecting the female lead to hit us with a complete 180 was unrealistic to begin with, I still expected her to have more of a backbone than she did. After watching the first episode, you would be under the impression that she's going to be a tough, femme fatale getting back at her family and ensuring that she doesn't waste her life again. Wrong! You would be dead wrong if you allowed yourself to believe that? What's wrong with you? (I'm joking about that, friends. That was just a little bit of sarcasm.) But seriously, I fully expected Yi Joo to go toe-to-toe with her stepmother and stepsister and never miss a single step. In fact, I expected her to always be three, maybe four, steps ahead of literally everyone else. She has the advantage here! She's the only one (that we know of at this point) that has literally traveled back through time. She knows what most of her opponents and enemies don't know. So, why isn't she beating them at their own game? Why wasn't she able to do that?
Granted, I understand that she couldn't possibly be three steps ahead of her brother-in-law because he was running circles around his own family for years. She couldn't possibly beat him, but HER family? Yes, she should have been able to neutralize them very very early on in this show. She simply didn't, and I don't understand why the writers wrote it that way either. Which brings me to another issue I had - there were far too many players in this game. There were far too many moving parts in this machine and that bogged the show down tremendously. There was no reason for this show to have this many villains at once. Absolutely none. In my opinion, they should have picked one - if it was going to be Jung Wook, then let it be him. If it was going to be Yi Joo's family, then let it be them and only them. It didn't need to be both sides of the family causing a ruckus here.
Back to my original point though - there were times when Yi Joo allowed people to chew her out and she stood there and said nothing! When her pathetic ex-fiancé chewed her out in the bridal shop, I wanted to scream! Why are you letting him, of all people, chew you out and humiliate you in front of all of these people? Especially when YOU didn't do anything wrong. Se Hyeok only married you to get closer to your sister, who he was truly in love with. In knowing that, that man could NEVER raise his voice to me out of indignance. It wouldn't have happened. Yi Joo should have shut that down immediately! I understand her needing to get stronger to fight back against her stepmother, but that shouldn't apply to everyone else. Everyone else should be fair game. These people abused, isolated, alienated, and treated you like a stranger in your own home since you were a child. Where's your anger? Where's your fire? Where is it?! Your own father allowed his wife to do all of those things to you and he said nothing. Now that I'm thinking about it - maybe that makes more sense to the story. Maybe the reason Yi Joo didn't know how to stand up for herself is because her own biological father didn't know how to either. Like father, like daughter.
I have no notes on her husband. Do Guk was fine. I had no issues with him. I did, however, have some issues with his story though. Let me explain - yes, I know that he traveled through time like she did. However, there were some things he'd say that made no sense. He mentioned the fact that Yi Joo spoke casually to him first and that's why he felt so comfortable doing that when they met in the future. However, we NEVER saw anything like that. In fact, Yi Joo questioned whether he even knew her before she got married when they met in the current timeline (that's technically in the past, weirdly enough). So, when did they have this conversation? During the big reveal, that was something that was still left unexplained. They went back to the events of the first episode but not any further than that. I think the writers wanted to fully sell the idea that they knew each other but they failed at doing so. They wanted to create this intimacy that never actually existed between the two leads. The point is that the writers should have incorporated some scenes prior to the first episode that explained why Do Guk was so enamored with Yi Joo. Do Guk was in love with Yi Joo like Se Hyeok was in love with Yoo Ra. Which actually means that both of them were in love with a fantasy because neither of them knew these women enough to be in love with them. We all saw what happened when Se Hyeok finally saw the real Yoo Ra. It wasn't pretty! It simply worked out well for Do Guk when it didn't for Se Hyeok. Go figure!
All in all, I wouldn't rewatch it. It was okay. It was nothing absolutely amazing, but it's something to watch when you're bored and you don't want to watch anything too dark and heavy. This is a lighthearted show that makes no sense at all when you truly examine it, but that's fine.
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