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Find Me in Your Memory korean drama review
Completed
Find Me in Your Memory
0 people found this review helpful
by nimwoo
May 15, 2020
32 of 32 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 9.0
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 9.0
This review may contain spoilers
'Find Me in Your Memory' is one of the hidden gems that 2020 has to offer. I met a lot of people who had the same thing in mind when starting it, including me: most of us only started it because we were bored and in quarantine, so why not watch every airing show. That's how I found myself looking forward to every episode every week because of how beautiful this drama was, how engaging the story became by each episode. The chemistry between both characters was amazingly good, the thrilling suspect hunting at the first half was very interesting and made so many of us come up with theories to wonder who could be the stalker and it brought a lot of fun to the whole plot. I really liked how unique and refreshing this story was for most of the drama, so I enjoyed every bit of it... Until about episode 14.

Yeo Ha Jin's character was one of my most favorite FL for the most parts of this show. She was cheerful, strong, mature, feminine and not embarrassing at all. This is not a combination that we see in K-Dramas very often, because the FL "must" be tough and not pay attention to her looks if she wants to be strong, or she "must" be feminine and weak. So, I really liked this formula for YHJ and I believe that's one of the things that stood out the most about her character. I liked the fact that she was the one who liked the ML first and she did push herself on him in order to make him like her back, but we never once see her being ridiculously into him, making him directly uncomfortable, chasing him around after he pushed her away and stuff like that. She always gave him the space he needed but staying close enough so that he wouldn't go away. With one-sided love lines like how this one started, it's very common to feel second-hand embarrassment with the FL's actions, but I never felt anything like this with YHJ because she always knew her place and knew when to stop.

However, with all that in mind, I do believe the writers ruined her character by the last 3-4 episodes of the show. She was always very giving, never thought only about herself but also didn't put others' feelings before her own. She was balanced, but they ruined this towards the ending by making her quite selfish and even incoherent with what they built throughout the rest of the drama. The fact that she kept going back and forth on her words and pushed him away just to go back to him was nonsense to me. The last goodbye wasn't even for her own sake or his, which is the main reason why I was angry at the writers for throwing in the most common cliches of sudden breakup, going abroad, timeslip, getting back 1 episode later. If any of this had been for either of their sake, I would've understood YHJ but she was in pain and so was he, so her actions didn't make any sense to me anymore. I blame the writers for a lazy ending.

Now, moving to our beloved Anchor-nim, Lee Jeong Hoon. I must confess in advance that I really had no expectations from this character (or from YHJ) because I had never seen Kim Dong Wook in a drama before (I saw him in Coffee Prince but that was so long ago and I didn't really pay attention, also he has just a supporting role anyways), so he was actually one of the reasons why I wasn't sure to start this drama or not, but I'm glad that I did. Lee Jeong Hoon started off as a stiff man with too many memories from his first love that were triggered by little details and affected his daily life. For this he didn't let anyone in his life, he didn't want to be involved in anyone's life anymore and was afraid of being too hurt again and not forgetting his pain. But then, this very cheerful and happy girl comes to his life and a series of events that looked like fate start happening as they find themselves involved more and more in each other's lives, and LJH ends up becoming YHJ's protector.

I usually don't like the damsel in distress type of plots, but I kind of gave it a pass in this case because YHJ was always a very strong character that didn't need protection (not because of her personality at least, but because of her celebrity status). So LJH protecting her and saving her multiple times didn't really feel bad for me, as they never made her look like a weak woman who needed a man's protection, yet there he was for her.

I loved how he always showed his true emotions after he realized that he couldn't live without her; he never kept anything to himself when it came about his feelings and was always vocal about how much he loved her. One of my favorite things about this couple is actually their communication. Aside from the story about YHJ's dead friend, they always talked each other's problems out, they never held themselves back while creating unnecessary misunderstandings or anything similar. That's why they were always true to each other and loved each other dearly. Their chemistry as actors also helped immensely to like this couple with such a huge age gap, so every time they were on screen together we could see their eyes sparkling love, their smiles expressing how much they loved each other.

And then: the skinship. Being Moon Ga Young so much younger than Kim Dong Wook, I honestly didn't expect so much skinship (not beyond a few hugs) or the amount of kisses that we got. Since the very first kiss was the usual lips pressing each other with no movement, I thought we would get like 3-4 kisses like this and the usual FL being surprised at the sudden kiss from the ML. But! We never got any kiss like this and I totally love it. Instead, we got really nice kisses that felt absolutely soft and in the right place, and the ML never roughly kissed her (which is the type of kiss that I hate the most in K-Dramas). I lost count on how many soft scenes of hands-grabbed and walking next to each other, or sitting on different locations and head-on-shoulder resting we got, but I totally love this drama for the amount of love that the main leads showed and how they carried this drama on their own with no issue for about 13-14 episodes. The last kiss melted me too much, to be honest.

So, leaving our main leads aside, this drama was full of likable characters that made the plot much better. Ha Kyung was such a great and supportive sister and I was so glad to know that they gave her a love line as well with Il Kwon, mostly because Kim Seul Gi's characters are usually an accessory of the plot and I am tired of this type of mistreatment. She's such a great actress and deserves a plot with a story on her own, not one that keeps making her an added element of either main lead. I really hope she gets better characters and especially characters that don't focus on how (not) "ugly" she is, or make her tacky or boring. I'm quite tired of seeing her in the same type of role. I don't know if she likes to be called ugly, I bet she doesn't, but seeing her in 'Queen of The Ring' was such a pain, and then seeing how her she's also considered ugly or "the strong girl" (therefore, ugly, not woman enough) is really tiring. But either way, I'm glad they gave her a short love line on her own with a cute character like Il Kwon. At the beginning they were very cute, but by the end I found myself skipping some of their scenes or fast-forwarding through them.

We have other supporting characters like Director Choi and her husband who were totally lovable, or YHJ's Director, Chul, the stalker Director... All of them were very cool characters that added different things to the plot and made it much more interesting. Tae Eun is one of the characters that I could never figure out and felt like he was just thrown there for no reason, yet he had an important role on the story. Still, it's not like I hated him but he was a bit confusing. The doctor was horrible and I knew since the very beginning that I would hate him greatly because it was awful. The stalker was one of my favorite characters, actually, since he managed to really look like a madman and psycho and made me fear for the characters around him. Also, Jung Seo Yeon was such a lovely girl and I'm still sad that such thing happened to her, Ha Jin and her would've been so cute together.

To conclude this review, I just want to say that even though this drama was a huge victim of great start but lazy writing, I still loved it a lot and is one of the dramas that I would always recommend because the plot started off good, and like most K-Dramas it went downhill by the end, but it's not like the quality dropped from 10 to 5, I would just say it went from 9.5 to 9.0-8.0, depending on your POV. Still, this drama isn't a hit that you MUST watch, but it's something not to miss out since you will most of the show.
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