The math isn't mathing... except for Woo Do Hwan that man's math mathes everyday

So I'm not going to lie, I really enjoyed the setup and even the middle of this show. It's entertaining, fast paced and has just the sort of tropes I like. The issue I have with it it's the story's resolution and most of the characters.

While there are no hateable characters. I found most of them to be pretty average. ML is okay I guess. He's a little bit flat in his delivery, but I think that's because he's this royal person who has to be stoic... but still, because he had some childish behaviors at times I didn't think he was completely stoic so it was odd. I found it hard to connect with him most of the time because of his lack of expression.

FL started out great, but ends up becoming a bit too dramatic. She honestly just cries for no reason at times, every time ML showed up she cried. Girl, this man hasn't been hurt once and ALWAYS came back for you, what made you think he was going to stay away? This dynamic just became tiring. If they had given us reason to worry about ML I would have bought FL's worry, but hoenstly? He's never in any sort of real danger. We know it, they know it... so the crying FL became unnecessary and just annoying because it kept happening after a certain point in the drama and it took a lot of screentime.

On top of that, the love story went from zero to a hundred. Maybe I'm more used to slow burn, but in one episode FL is annoyed at ML or at least she acts rudely towards him. (Understandable btw- the guy seemed crazy) And the next one she's confesing her LOVE? I understand if after proving he's not lying she decides to give him a chance but instead she confesed love? That escalated quickly.

However the love story is not awful, they do have chemistry on screen and the characters are okayish most of the time. All in all the love story has its cute moments at times, but it was more draggy than lovable. The leads are not entirely unlikeable , in fact I think I like them more when they are separated. They are much more interesting characters apart than together.

I really liked ML when he had to deal with the treason part of the plot and the FL when she had to do cop stuff - also the cop team is nice. I think my favourite was the "ganster" cop who was actually so soft and liked macaroons. What a jem.

The rest of the characters are okay. But there's a shit ton of them and I gotta be honest I lost track of whose mother suffering for her son I was watching at some points. Just how many crying moms are there in this drama? There was also a pregnant lady who got replaced by her counterpart in one world and that plot line went nowhere. There's just so many side plot things that go nowhere. Everything gets fixed somehow in the end by pure magic.

Honestly the saving grace this drama has and the reason for this rating to be above 6 is Woo Do Hwan. This man can act and he carried every scene he was in. He is a joy to watch on screen as both his roles and his characters are the most fun. I wish Jo Youngand Jo Eun-Sup were the protagonists instead... I flipping love these boys a lot. Their stories seemed to have the most heart in my opinion, and the most personal stakes. Young's undying loyalty and also respect for his friend the king and his duty as a personal guard... or Eun-Sup's love for his family and his relationship with his little siblings and Na-ri. Give me this drama instead. I loved how by the end Young became a bit more open towards people while Eun-Sup became a bit more professional. These two actually learnt from each other and became friends... and then--- those memories got erased. Lmao.

Ok here's where it gets tricky.

The writer tried to make this really convoluted plot involving one of the trickiest tools to pull off because it can create a lot of plot holes --- time travel. Now I'm all in when it comes to time travel, when it's handled well it creates majestic, adrenaline inducing stories that just leave you in awe and feeling extremely satisfied. When it is not well handled however, it creates time paradoxes and obvious plot holes.... this one, I am afraid, falls in the second category.

You had me until ML went back to fullfill his destiny and save himself as that was the start of the show. Brilliant. Saw it coming yes, but loved that things came full circle. THEN you lost me when he did it AGAIN to kill antagonist before he run off to the other world. Sir, are you aware that creates a huge paradox that means ML wouldn't have gone back in time in the first place to safe himself if he never had gotten the half flute thing? Are we just going to ignore that? Ok sure. Oh what is that? We're also conveniently have the two leads remember everything despite the huge sacrifice this impossible deed just did? Of course, no consequences. And also lets make most of these characters we care about forget about everything we just watched.

Heavy long sigh.

Look I'm all in for happily every afters, but they need to feel earned. This one just felt like plot armor for the sake of the love story. Simply put, the writer wrote herself into a corner and used time travel magic to fix everything, deliberately erasing everything from the reality we just watched but from ML's and FL's memories... also Young's at least he gets to keep his memories.

Towards the end things got unnecessarily complicated. The drama is not terrible, but it's very infuriating. There is some brilliant acting from Woo Do Hwan and some really good moments, but nothing that can make me rate this one higher than a 7.

TLDR; Watch it with low expectations and suspend your disbelief. Throw logic out the window and you'll get a tropy enjoyable time.

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I think that if this series had been shorter I would have given it an 8.

The drama has its funny and satisfying parts. Even some parts that become quite addictive to watch, smile from ear to ear moments. But those last few episodes are so incredibly frustrating and not in the good way.

I want to say that I think the drama suffers most from the writing of its characters.

I could never for the life of me root for FL one. This is not the actress' fault, the character started out as an incredibly mediocre and even corrupt cop, going as far as to hide her own crime against ML. As she progressed she became more of a nuisance than someone I wanted to succeed. She is not a passive character by any means, but my gooness there were times when I just wanted to estrangle her because of incompetence. By the end of the drama when she is put in danger after achieving a whole lot of nothing (I think she forgot her cop training and prefered to watch as ML and antagonist fought it out instead of REACTING and trying to escape... granted she did escape but girl took her sweet time). I was honestly rooting for the amazing likeable villain to just off her and do the world a favor.

ML... ML is on and off for me. At the start of the drama he's this doormat annoying character. I sometimes felt sorry for him, but the way he acted just rubbed me off the wrong way at times... he was too over the top with his depression and sadness that I could not buy it. I personally think the tone of making him a comedic character and addressing themes such as suicide and abuse with comedy was not the ticket... I started rooting for him when he gained confidence and started behaving like a psycho and I consider these scenes the most entertaining ones out of the drama. I wish that sort of character development had stayed... as soon as he "kills" the informant he completely reverts back to his dormat over the top self and it just goes downhill from there. Because his acting when he's the pushover is so exaggerated to the point of satire, I could not take his genuine tragic situation seriously. He also had a tendency of not using logic at the most important of times for plot convenient reasons and that frustrated me to no end and not in a good way. There's nothing worse than an incompetent protagonist. He is not as useless as FL though, so I'll give him that. I also think this is a writing problem... and partly the actor's interpretation of ML when he's on doormat mode. It was just too ridiculous for me and it pushed me out of the story.

Main antagonist was a joy to watch. 10/10. I was rooting for you dude, next time pull the trigger faster. Awesome character and such a charismatic actor. YES. Absolutely.

Surprisingly, the side characters were more likeable than the 2 leads. I think they were used properly. Some of them were a bit annoying at times but because they were not on screen all the time they grew on me.

All in all this drama is not terrible... it gave me some genuine laughter at some point but it drags so much after the midpoint... should have been shorter by like 6 episodes.

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Wholesome and deep

Surprisingly deep and chracter driven!

Seen the movie it's based on and they did an amazing job exploring the characters and diving deeper into their backstories and adding more characters that compliment the narrative. Everyone felt more real and with actual problems detached from the leads which I appreciated. The leads didn't solely exist to fall in love again. They felt like real people with problems outside of their romantic relationship.

The dad feels were the best part of the drama for me. The family dynamics are very strong in this one and what kept me going. I do wish we could have seen even more backstory for the 2 main leads while they are younger parents. I loved those moments the best and wish we could have gotten more of that instead of: the love triangle, the friend and teacher cringy + draggy love story.

Towards the end things felt a bit more calm. Like there was no big climax in the story. Things just slowly and quietly fell into place without any struggle. Which is fine, but to me it dragged the excitement of the earlier episodes and stole some of the satisfaction I wanted to feel at the end. I think if things could have been condensed a little bit it would have been perfect. It also felt a bit episodic from time to time, like first with the gym teacher then with the stalker guy, then the love triangle, it was a bit like a bad guy of the week situation, which is acceptable but not my personal favourite. If you run out of conflict just end the drama early, there's no shame in it. The side characters' stories felt a bit draggy from time to time.

Other than that this drama was really charming, enjoyable and gave me all the feels. If it had been shorter it'd be perfect!

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Absolutely not

Let me be clear in saying I'm not the target audience for this drama. I haven't been in that age range for a good fifteen years. But I do enjoy the charming if cringy teen comedies from time to time. I'll also say this is my first real experience with this plot since I've never watched any of the versions of this story. And now I'm glad I hadn't.

This drama is just plain frustrating. Am I supposed to root for ANY of the F4 when they're obviously abusers, bullies and even condone rape attempts from the get go? Sweet Lord can someone please arrest these motherfuckers? Yes I'm including the sad boy artist here. I don't care how sad he looks when the rest of the school and his friends are assaulting this poor student on scene one, he still didn't stop it. It just bothered me so much that the one time he intervened during the red card treatment was when someone he was interested in was the victim. In fact all the F4s do that. They never genuinly feel bad about all the trauma and pain they have caused others, no they think with their junk.

I was rooting for all of them to die. That first episode is simply unforgivable in terms of character likeability. They are all just pricks that the show wants to manipulate you into liking by making them laugh and run around like children. Did you know the Nazi guards in charge of concentration camps have a bunch of pictures smiling and having a great time just next to the death camps? Same energy. As if I'm going to forget they were marching into that abandoned stadium smiling and feeling like kings about to brutally torture one of their subjects.

Yeah no. None of the MLs is redeemable after that.

FL... FL started out like conflicted, scared yet righteous interesting character. She had all the boxes to become something great. Unfortunately as soon as artist ML shows her his wallet we lost all of that and she becomes a love interest that screams at ML but smiles while being literally pushed around by him. Holy shitshow batman. This character makes absolutely no sense. This chick claims to be disgusted by ML's actions but still leads him on and goes on a date with him before he has even apologized? What? And she feels bad for leaving him out in the rain? Girl this man is directly responsible for people abusing you, you almost got raped... wtf run for the hills. I just- I am so frustrated. Whatever likeability this character had, has gone down the drain with her brain along with my patience and her common sense.

It's been five episodes and no one has apologized, but characters still act like they can be good friends after literal abuse and the victims are all smiles instead of creeped out. This pacing and writing is ridiculous and this drama is just wrong but wants to paint itself as charming. I have no idea how it got this rating but I wouldn't let anyone watch this problematic, toxic, shitshow.
I could have forgiven this if it were an older drama, but this is a remake and I had hoped they would have fixed dated issues but they just put on cute BG music and hope you don't notice. What an insult to its audience.

Nope. Just no. Absolutely not.

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Not my cup of tea

I feel bad because a lot of people have recommended this drama and I genuinly tried to enjoy it.

I think this one might just be me more than the drama. I'm more of a main character focus first then slowly get into plot - high stakes - larger than life conflict sort of person. This drama just failed to make me care about the characters.

When I first started watching the very first episode we hardly spent much screen time with the MC. There is just too much going on, so many overly complicated political nuances that I honestly do not have the patience to follow at this point in the story. I usually can appreciate the political side of dramas and the evil overlords that want to conquer the world and kill ML but with this one, because I barely had any information about ML and the situation at hand, I couldn't care less if he died or not. It's a bit of a structural problem... like they're introducing the bad guys and side characters first and ML and FL second. It just felt all over the place and very disconnected. I gave it five episodes and each one felt like a chore and homework mixed together. I had to keep tabs on everyone all at once and the backstory is not very engaging.

ML is charismatic and has um.. visual appeal, but other than that I'm not really seeing much five episodes in. He might get better in the future but if you haven't been able to properly introduce your ML in five hours I can't help you. His connection with FL- them knowing each other as kids but maybe not remembering is something that I've seen being handled so much better in other dramas. A picture of both kids sleeping next to each other is just not enough to make me relate to them. If you're having them be childhood friends at least have them be awake. I don't care for sleeping characters as an introduction.

FL is annoying... such a disappointment from her wonderful introduction being raised by thugs. All that goes out the window very quickly for the sake of rescuing her. I love me some damsel in distress actually, but it felt... forced here.

I did not care for Reporter guy or his backstory. Sorry.

Overall this drama lacks the binge factor/page turner/mystery aspect that makes me click the next episode. I might come back to it one day and give it a chance, but probably not at the time being.

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