Hi,

I won't spoil at first but then draw a line when the spoilers begin, okay?

In general this was a good idea and a lot of fun to watch. Watching two strangers get stuck with each other -- and all that entails -- was super fun, especially since this is a Chinese drama. If you've watched the trailer and are interested, I'd say it's good enough to watch and that you'll be happy (enough) that you did.

You'll like the leads. Especially 'the boy' who does some serious heavy lifting here. He essentially plays two characters with two character arcs, which means he plays four 'individuals' and does so really well. In fact this aspect may be the best part of the series.

I was a little disappointed with 'the girl' because. well... she came off as a little too girlish. Young bright eyes but she's a big reporter. I think I needed more of a Lois Lane, you know? And she didn't seem to be a strong enough actress until the last quarter of the series where her red sad eyes finally made her truly compelling. Apparently I wasn't the only one who found this actress weak because I gather the producers dubbed her voice with a different actress, which in America is verbotten but maybe people in China don't care. Still why bother having two actresses playing one character when you could simply find a better actress in the first place. Hmm. But she's okay and enjoyable in the role just the same.

***************************** SPOILERS BELOW *****************************

There were actually a lot of things that bothered me in this series. Nothing big as much as little pesky issues.

The first was they simply never explained this time overlap thing in the first place. Going to the internet and studying up on time travel was simply an embarrassment of story telling. Every last word regarding entropy and overlap was painfully juvenile writing. These two kids are not experts and so they neither know where to look for information or what to make of what they've found.

Science fiction has a well worn tradition of an 'expert', which is an old male scientist with white hair whom they consult. They could have modernized this cliche by having a blind genius of a scientist woman in wheelchair, a former client of the lawyer who is sort of in on what's happening to them and trying to help them. Sometimes I get this strange feeling that the Chinese are so new to producing any movies or TV that they're literally still in their early days of all this.

The next thing is related an absolutely critical to explain: where did the origami 'bird' come from and why it is magical and why did it pick on these two crazy kids? Just because it exists doesn't mean it 'is' yet. Like the monolith in 2001 you must explain what it is, where it came from, what it can do, and why it is doing it. Or what you're watching feels like a silly Saturday Morning cartoon.

Okay, now, early in the story our leads were aware that there was a 'girl' in 2022 as well. This girl would be perfectly aware of their situation since she's already lived through it. She'd be a CRITICAL source of information on what to do about their dilemma. For reasons that make no sense our couple avoided her like the plague. Because the writers did not wish to reveal her predicament yet. The problem is --

-- you can't do that. The couple would seek her out. And so by episode 3 or 4 you MUST deal with this issue. I would have simply had her GONE. Without a trace. POOF! What happened to her? Where is she? Nobody who knew her knows. This creates a GREAT mystery and allows the story to move forward without pretending the characters wouldn't look her up for help.

So basically LOVE IN TIME is an interesting premise that isn't properly set up to be utterly engaging. The origami bird and ignoring the girl in 2022 for too long kept me out of the story because the viewer needs to know what's what with these critical details.

The story was laced with many subplots to... frankly... make the story last 24 episodes. They were okay themselves but rather cumbersome and clutter. A lot of names and faces and events to keep straight, especially when they'd try and try to change outcomes. In general all the characters were interesting and well played, but I felt it all distracted from --

-- a more interesting drama that could have happened with our girl and her two boys. What if this story had been about how the girl first falls in love with the boy she can only see for 40 minutes a day... but over time... she finds he's more about fun than being serious... and that... she begins to fall in love with the boy in 2021 more?

That would have been a fascinating portrait of a girl who fools around with a better version of the boy she thought she first loved. A real live LOVE TRIANGLE but with this unique twist. Imagine her cheating on the man she loves with himself? I think this would have been more interesting and worked even better.

So LOVE IN TIME is really okay and worth trying. But I think there's a better series hiding inside this concept.