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While You Were Sleeping korean drama review
Completed
While You Were Sleeping
1 people found this review helpful
by maritagp
Apr 25, 2023
32 of 32 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.5
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

I wanted to enjoy this one

This is not a terrible drama by any means. The effects, cinematography and music place you in an almost magical, ethereal visual experience. But when I thought about it more, if you remove all that, you're left with an average story that turns out to be incredibly predictable from episode 2. I will say the first episode is one of the best first episodes I've watched for a drama but I found myself predicting everything afterwards down to the last twist.

There are a few things in this drama that became repetitive and episodic, mainly the cases and the dream part. At times things felt a bit too convenient and the lack of tension died because you knew things were going to be okay and they always were. When a MC got hurt I knew they'd recover, I knew they'd catch the bad guy of the week/episode and move on to the next one. Overall it did not feel like there was an overarching plot throughout the drama until the very end. I'm not counting the backstory because you can tell that one in one episode of flashbacks and as soon as we saw the boy in the baseball cap I knew it was the FL. It's not very well disguised and the drama underestimates their audience by making it feel like a surprise when the reveal happens when it was a bit obvious.

The chemistry for the main couple... this is hard for me because I absolutely love Lee Jong Suk, he's probably one of the most lovable actors for me. But I just didn't feel his chemistry with Suzy and honestly I think this is because I have seen LJS with much better female leads and I buy their relationship a 100%, whereas in this one I was constantly feeling the acting between the 2 whenever they shared screentime. I do not think this is entirely his fault, he did what he could with the character and his FL.

There is something defenitely off about Suzy's acting. It felt forced and not entirely honest during the entire thing. Like that one girl that tries to be quirky and funny on purpose and it comes out as dishonest and try-hard. I'm sorry if I'm being too harsh on her, but I just think she didn't do much with her character and that affected her on screen relationship with ML. That being said both characters are a little one-dimensional and maybe that's why I couldn't relate to her in particular. Her character is represented as flawless most of the time. His as well, but hers even more so.

I think this is because they both have these second hand embarrasment moments throughout the whole drama. (It got old and broke the mood on a lot of scenes.) But while LJS's character had them and the side-characters acknowledged it was cringe and unprofessional and it was something LJS's character seemed to improve on and learn from - one example is when he used his cringe to interview the child witness - for Suzy's characters it is represented as endearing and quirky and lovable from day 1 and it never serves a purpose other than to show she's cute and not like other girls.

The drama was afraid to paint her in any sort of negative light and it was counterproductive. Let her be human too. Let her be cringe and weird in the other characters eyes as well. I could not fathom why everyone saw this human disaster as a femme fatale when in fact she's just as a perfect match for her one brain cell idiot boyfriend. That would have been incredibly lovable. But the drama is afraid to go all the way. If you introduce this weird girl as a weird girl (literally in caps), don't make her cool at the same time in the eyes of everyone else. She's cringe my dudes, and that is perfectely okay. He's cringe, she's cringe, they will be cringe forever and have little cringe children. Embrase it. A perfect moment for this would have been when everyone was describing her character in the elevator as a femme fatale and this sexy badass lady, but then have her defy all expectations by making her ridiculous in front of everyone and they going like... yes this is definitely Jae Chan's girlfriend.

That's my take on her, but I might be a minority here. It's fine if you disagree.

The writing is okay. I enjoyed the backstory the best rather than the episodic current events. But like I said before, the main plot line got repetitive. The villain was one dimensional while trying too hard to be protrayed as a more interesting character, the drama just scratched the surface with him. He had some interesting quirks like the paper thing and the hand washing thing, but we never explore him as a character nor his motivations. Instead of spending 95% of screen time on the couple, spend 85% on the main couple and give me more backstory with this villain. He has tons of potential with his relantionship with ML and the inspector. But the one with the inspector just got shoved as a last minute thing and I never quite grasped why he was so nasty towards ML when they were younger. Maybe explore something like jealously between them, maybe he was envious ML had a better life with his Chief of Police dad while he had to work in order to be able to pay for school or something. Just so much wasted potential.

All in all this drama is not the worst thing I have seen. I know it can sound like that in this review. But it's just so incredibly disappointing maybe because my expectations were so high after watching Pinocchio and I Hear your Voice. Both of these are miles better than this one in terms of story and acting. The one thing I will give this drama is that it is pretty to look at. A beautiful cake on the outside that is bland in flavour.
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