3
Zogitt
Australia
This review may contain spoilers
Can a drama be too smart for its own good?
Hats off to writers who pick time travelling as the subject and doubly so if it involves a major romantic plot but it is also a trap for the unwary.
Love in Time (2022) definitely took on this task with gusto. The promise is even more complicated because the time traveling is both ways(!) and it covers a short 4 months span. You can imagine all the timey-wimey shenanigans that ensue.
To be fair, the start of the Show is very well done. It hooks the viewers in with some delicious interactions between the leads and a zany plot. It would have been a very solid base for a movie or a shorter drama. However, with 24 episodes to fill, the time traveling threads begin to look like pretzels by the half-way mark.
The Show does use internal rules and logic to try to avoid the “I’m my own grandfather” type of cliché. They quote buzz words like butterfly effect and dropped names like Hawking to suggest some form of credibility. The problem is that they basically trampled all over the poor butterfly by letting the leads from present/future interact and communicate fairly freely and pass information from the future back to the present on a regular basis.
Rather than trying to minimise their temporal footprint, the leads spend most of their efforts in trying to change the future. I can run with that if it is done cleverly and reasonably. Unfortunately, it got more and more convoluted as the story progressed. It got to the point when it is best to ignore cause and effect and assume they are all inconsequential. In one sense, that is quite true because the show is pushing the time elasticity theory. It boils down to if event Z is meant to happen then if the nominal trigger A is altered then trigger B/C/D/etc will be created to ensure Z happens. That’s all well and good but it also means a lot of mid show plots end up achieving little other than proving this point with one exception.
This brings us to the love line of the OTP. It is intense, swoon worthy and has a decent amount of skinship. However, it is a challenge to work through some of the more convoluted plots as mentioned above. At one stage we have an alive and kicking FL, one in a coma and a dead one depending on which scene is shown. Then we have the present/future ML talking to each other on the phone(!). The date is flash up on the screen from time to time but it feels like nothing is anchored anymore. It is all about pushing the main plot forward and giving our OTP quality CP time during their precious 46mins of shared time. Those short and sweet moments are what held the show together.
Finally, there is much chatter online about the “bad” ending. I think the ending is actually decent. It is unrealistic to assume a simple HEA ending after all the temporal mischiefs. The Show needs to untangle all the twisted threads. Honestly, the whole balancing the entropy thing is gibberish. I believe the Show has a mystical wild card up its sleeve from the start. The paper crane is the key. My take is the “universe” is saying “We stuffed up” when the FL was killed and it is trying to fix it. In a sense, it is like Dr Strange doing his future scanning trick but finds only 1 possible timeline with the right outcome. I also find the present-day ML changing subtly over time to become more like the future ML quite plausible. He is him after all but experienced those 4 months from a different perspective. Once the memories melded over time, he naturally realigned his personality.
Acting wise, it is good. I like the persona shift of the ML as he flip between his two realities. The FL did well but she sounds too young from the dubbing. Would her own voice be better? To be honest, the real antagonist is really underwhelming.
Overall, I enjoyed the Show. It can be entertaining and occasionally, thought provoking but more often than not, I find it easier to go with the flow, switch off the frontal lobe and don't try to analyse it. ;)
OST is fine but a total rewatch is unlikely. A highlight reel would be nice.
Love in Time (2022) definitely took on this task with gusto. The promise is even more complicated because the time traveling is both ways(!) and it covers a short 4 months span. You can imagine all the timey-wimey shenanigans that ensue.
To be fair, the start of the Show is very well done. It hooks the viewers in with some delicious interactions between the leads and a zany plot. It would have been a very solid base for a movie or a shorter drama. However, with 24 episodes to fill, the time traveling threads begin to look like pretzels by the half-way mark.
The Show does use internal rules and logic to try to avoid the “I’m my own grandfather” type of cliché. They quote buzz words like butterfly effect and dropped names like Hawking to suggest some form of credibility. The problem is that they basically trampled all over the poor butterfly by letting the leads from present/future interact and communicate fairly freely and pass information from the future back to the present on a regular basis.
Rather than trying to minimise their temporal footprint, the leads spend most of their efforts in trying to change the future. I can run with that if it is done cleverly and reasonably. Unfortunately, it got more and more convoluted as the story progressed. It got to the point when it is best to ignore cause and effect and assume they are all inconsequential. In one sense, that is quite true because the show is pushing the time elasticity theory. It boils down to if event Z is meant to happen then if the nominal trigger A is altered then trigger B/C/D/etc will be created to ensure Z happens. That’s all well and good but it also means a lot of mid show plots end up achieving little other than proving this point with one exception.
This brings us to the love line of the OTP. It is intense, swoon worthy and has a decent amount of skinship. However, it is a challenge to work through some of the more convoluted plots as mentioned above. At one stage we have an alive and kicking FL, one in a coma and a dead one depending on which scene is shown. Then we have the present/future ML talking to each other on the phone(!). The date is flash up on the screen from time to time but it feels like nothing is anchored anymore. It is all about pushing the main plot forward and giving our OTP quality CP time during their precious 46mins of shared time. Those short and sweet moments are what held the show together.
Finally, there is much chatter online about the “bad” ending. I think the ending is actually decent. It is unrealistic to assume a simple HEA ending after all the temporal mischiefs. The Show needs to untangle all the twisted threads. Honestly, the whole balancing the entropy thing is gibberish. I believe the Show has a mystical wild card up its sleeve from the start. The paper crane is the key. My take is the “universe” is saying “We stuffed up” when the FL was killed and it is trying to fix it. In a sense, it is like Dr Strange doing his future scanning trick but finds only 1 possible timeline with the right outcome. I also find the present-day ML changing subtly over time to become more like the future ML quite plausible. He is him after all but experienced those 4 months from a different perspective. Once the memories melded over time, he naturally realigned his personality.
Acting wise, it is good. I like the persona shift of the ML as he flip between his two realities. The FL did well but she sounds too young from the dubbing. Would her own voice be better? To be honest, the real antagonist is really underwhelming.
Overall, I enjoyed the Show. It can be entertaining and occasionally, thought provoking but more often than not, I find it easier to go with the flow, switch off the frontal lobe and don't try to analyse it. ;)
OST is fine but a total rewatch is unlikely. A highlight reel would be nice.
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