Basic and Borderline Sexist Writing

The story of this drama is literally a lose-lose situation for every character, but in the most sexist way possible? The man is simply excused for any possible wrongdoing he could do. For example, he's a cheater until he reveals he actually didn't cheat and it was because his wife was too scary for him to communicate to. His ending is to start therapy to finally learn communication but he breaks up based on a miscommunication so what is even the point.

Then we have our main character. No woman would want to work with her ex-husband who supposedly cheated on her. That makes sense until the writer keeps making her make all the wrong choices encouraged by her "bitch" friend. She goes through all this effort to find closure, from dating a blind date to getting back with her ex husband. Just for her ex husband to end it with another miscommunication. But this time she is asked to leave the workplace for the sake of her ex husband.

Then you have a character whose name is simply because the writer wanted to make a "bitch" pun, not once but TWICE (even made the character say the joke was so good he should be a writer, way to pat yourself on the back). Her entire character is about men. All she talks about is men. We don't learn anything about her character until she is pregnant and the father of her child explains to the audience that this whole time she was apparently aspiring to open up her own law firm. Heaven forbid we learn that about her character before she slept with a man and got pregnant, right? But it's fine because the father will become a stay at home father while she will become the breadwinner.

There you have it. A workplace drama about how women can't be successful unless they have children. Why else would the main character get fired from her law firm? Her ex husband doesn't want kids so obviously she's the one who has to leave. On the other hand, her friend gets to stay because she's pregnant and will even one day have her own law firm.

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Too Unrealistic For Its Subject Matter

This drama was very entertaining. It's funny, has decent VFX, and is overall wholesome. However, it was unrealistic in how it covered its suicide prevention.

There were victims who were mishandled and what the Risk Management Team does just doesn't do the topic justice. For example, multiple victims are told to either give up or get over it in a manner that triggers their fight or flight response. There's an eating disorder victim who is basically told that it's all in her head and it's her fault she's struggling because no one thinks badly of her at all. Then they don't even lead her to getting proper help. Instead they have her meet someone with a positive view of their body image. Another example is how there are victims who are experiencing grief through their loved ones dying and the drama's solution is to have them meet their dead loved one. Again, they do not lead the victim to proper help like therapy and give them an unrealistic solution. Finally, this drama felt like it wanted to be more in the vigilante justice genre.

As I mentioned before, this drama has decent VFX. It also has a decent amount of action. The story often involves the main characters executing some form of vigilante justice on behalf of the victims. There are also flashbacks of war and fight sequences. However, what does all this action and have to do with suicide prevention? Maybe instead of these vigilante scenes, they could have shot scenes of the victims going through therapy and update on their healing before moving onto the next victim.

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A Worthy Adaptation

I started reading the webtoon while watching this and it really made me appreciate the drama more. The webtoon was first released over 10 years ago and the drama made updates to tell the story in a more engaging way.

The Good:
They create a contrast in the tone through Kim Chi Yeol's interviews versus the harsh reality that the students are facing. Kim Chi Yeol captures some funny moments of the students at times and in general they have some laid back humorous scenes. However, the worst possible thing happens each episode which immerses us in the students' feelings of being students who want to be playful at times in the midst of adversity. They were supposed to be goofing off from studying for their college entrance exam, not goofing from training to fight a war that literally fell from the sky. They also rewrote some order of events that helped create tension and suspense for the story. In the webtoon, everyone was kind of just going with the flow even when they were faced with a potentially traumatizing moment.

The Bad:
The changes to Bora and Ilha don't make sense to me. I don't get why they were changed to be more bullies. In the webtoon, Ilha seemed more like a class clown which is why he got into the fight that led to the studious Younghoon's death. But here, he's just a bully that is getting screentime without any sort of redemption so far. On the other hand, Bora was fine being a popular girl in the webtoon that redeemed herself by acting upon her sympathy for Aeseol.

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A Story Worth the 2 Remakes Across the World

This show proved itself to me as to why it was remade on both sides of the world from the original. It’s unfortunate that watching one will spoil the others, but the others may still be worth a watch.
First of all, the cinematography is just striking. There were so many times where I paused just to admire the framing. They make a good use of perspectives and how they distort it to express the main character’s mental state. There’s a long take in episode 3 where the scene transitions from a stable insert shot to a handheld long take from the main character’s perspective as he literally starts losing balance. They use the camera to show so much of the character development and it’s all so eye-catching.
Most of the characters served as a reflection of the main character in the context of being in his subconsciousness. Nam Sik is the sense of innocence he lost as a child. He’s the youngest and often gets scolded for making mistakes. Tae Joo is never the one scolding him, though. In the end, he comforts him. On the other hand, Yong Ki is who he doesn’t want to be. In the 1st episode, we get a glimpse of who inspired Yong Ki from 2018. Tae Joo always stands up to Yong Ki and his efforts to do things the old fashioned way. Ms. Yoon is his passion for his work. The Captain is who he could be someday. One day, he will be the outdated guy, but he doesn’t have to be like Yong Ki. The captain may seem to do things the old fashioned way at first, but he surprisingly keeps an open mind to Tae Joo’s more progressive tactics.
Finally, it truly provoked my own introspection at the end. The line “the place where you can smile is your reality” hits so hard for an ending. The main character earned being told that line.

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An Interesting Concept Turned Questionable

I decided to watch this drama because it dealt with the A.I. topic which is currently relevant in 2023. It doesn't exactly hold up in certain technological aspects which led to some plot holes, but it had some charming points.

The Highs:
For a drama that dealt with the theme of the inherent good/evil of humanity, the robot main character Nam Shim III provides many wholesome and hopeful moments. I had a good time watching his scenes in how he interacted with people. It was also an interesting contrast to how we only had the perspective of seeing the human Nam Shin slowly lose his hope in the humans around him, the humans that are supposed to be his family.

The Lows:
I mentioned that the theme is about humanity's inherent good/evil which is an okay concept in itself. However, my problem was that they used way too many characters to show humanity's inherent evils. Most of the human characters did things that made them unlikable from the beginning. For example, in episode 1 the female lead Kang So Bong got betrayed by her so-called best friend who then had the audacity to act like So Bong's sister by acting like she's also close to So Bong's father throughout the rest of the series. If anyone acted like that in real life, most people would cut that person out but they somehow stayed friends.

The Buffalo:
Nam Shin's backstory with Young Hoon reminded me of a BL I saw about a chaebol who care more than usual about his personal assistant.

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A Subversion of the Genre

This drama was just a beautiful subversion of the genre. It consistently did things differently than how it would play out in other dramas that cover mystery/thriller.

The strongest point of this drama is how cohesive it is. Multiple aspects of the production are linked together through details in the same way the main characters have a link. It's a sign of their hard work and thoughtfulness. Things like similar style clothes, matching camera angles for the two leads, and symmetrical backgrounds make for great visual representation of the concept.

As I said in the beginning, this drama subverts its genre. So it's not for everyone. It's for people that want to watch a different type of mystery/thriller romance.

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The Sound of Sunlight Shining Through the Window...

Somehow started this drama with no previews so I had no prior expectations. It's now one of those unique pieces of fiction that I won't be able to stop thinking about. This drama doesn't just think outside the box when it comes to creativity, they open up the box and play with what they found inside. Specifically, this drama plays around the perspective of the main character and how they immerse us in that character's views.

This drama doesn't just have us watching, it creates a way for us to really experience the story in a deeper way. Sound designers aren't exactly the most relatable characters because their passion for sound goes beyond music and trendy content like ASMR. By playing with the aspects of sound design the drama gives us a way to see (or rather hear) the drama's world through the main character's eyes (or rather ears).

Foley. The opening scene is one of the most unique character introductions I've seen. The editing truly highlighted Dokyung's job as a sound designer. Sound Design itself isn't an easy concept to visualize, but the intercutting between Dokyung and Haeyoung's scenes help visually express what Dokyung is doing. It also gives us a glimpse of Dokyung's creative mindset by showing us some unexpected props (the gun for the door) among the expected props (high heels). Above all else, foley works as a metaphor for Dokyung's character arc. His visions are like the scenes that need foley and what he does in between those scenes mimics the creative process. His therapist is like the director/screenwriter he consults to help him understand the scenes and come up with the sounds for foley. Dokyung himself puts a strong emphasis in adding sounds that aren't seen on screen such as sounds from outside an open window. He also emphasizes creating sounds for abstract concepts like sunlight shining through the window. In a similar way, Dokyung focuses on what he can do before his visions come true despite having almost no context for what causes Haeyoung to behave the way she does in the visions. Finally, seeing and hearing Dokyung's work in foley serves as a catalyst for us viewers to notice the foley more. In that sense, we can hear the drama from his perspective and possibly even make our own judgements on it in the same way Dokyung does. For example, I personally liked how we could still hear the foley during the scenes that played the OST because other dramas would usually just drown everything else out and only have us hear the OST.

Dialogue. As someone who relies on subtitles to watch dramas, I don't usually focus on listening to the dialogue. However, this drama gave a great scene that reminded me of the importance of dialogue when it came to sound. On the day Dokyung and Haeyoung first meet, they end up going to a bar. We don't hear anything in the scene except for their voices. Their dialogue is used to imply what they must be hearing: they're both shouting (background noise must be loud), they refer to a bartender we don't see (dialogue), and they ask to turn the music down (music). This scene was a glimpse of what these types of scenes would look like from a behind the scenes perspective. Dialogue is the main sound recorded on set. On the other hand, the lack of other sounds is likely referring to room tone, the other main sound recorded on set. Room tone is the silence we hear in movies/tv because it would sound different if there wasn't any sound in those silent parts. This scene is symbolic of Dokyung being an active listener. In loud places, it takes effort to listen and engage with someone in conversation. It's no mistake that Dokyung happens to find Haeyoung's voice recorded in his office. It also showcases Dokyung's specialty in sound. He's more of a listening type than someone who makes noise like the foley artists on his team. Prior examples are when he criticizes his brother's sound design work after listening. After this we see Dokyung mainly working as a sound recordist where he listens to what he or his team members are recording. An aspect of recording sounds is to also balance the levels so it doesn't clip. This shows Dokyung's perspective in that he listens to Haeyoung more than the other voices talking at him. I did the same and actively chose to not listen to certain characters that tried talking to him.

Backgrounds/Ambience. The thing Dokyung does most is going around and sampling background/ambience of different places. More importantly, he records his office. He is the only character that even cares about these sounds. They are easily ignored, but yet we still hear them in the same way Dokyung heard Haeyoung in his office's background noise recording. He's just someone who really listens and finds the little details that can make the sounds design better. It also takes the theme of not judging based on appearance to the next level because it was just a sound he heard. This shows his main difference with his judgmental mom who even sabotaged him in the past with a sound recording because of how she judged someone. I guess it goes to show that Dokyung has a sound judgement in the metaphorical way.

Overall I liked how this drama incorporated Dokyung's job as a symbol for his character. It was creative to highlight certain aspects of the job while using it in scenes that would show more of Dokyung's character. It worked out really well in showing his perspective, especially in combination with the visions he had.

On a minor note, I loved the reference to Memento because I could see the inspiration the drama took from it. In general, I think the drama captured Christopher Nolan's genre although not deep enough to make me want to rewatch for the details.

However,
I think there was an imbalance of how likable the characters could have been. Yes, we are watching from Dokyung's perspective where many characters are at a low point, but I wish we had more characters to cheer for. The sound team was likable, but they didn't get a lot of focus. Isadora did well as comical relief and it worked well that she was revealed to be a great sister when she confronted the mom on behalf of Dokyung and I wish more characters were likable like her early on. It just took way too long to resolve the main situation and it came off making Dokyung/Haeyoung 1-2 look bad and unlikable for a long time. Taejin's situation being explained make him redeemed early on, but he wasn't that involved in a lot of the story until the end where they made him look bad again.

Overall, it was difficult to watch through when 5/6 main characters are at rock bottom because of mistakes they made or just having a bad attitude in reaction of their situations. But it did make the episodes interesting since none were afraid to do the things they did.

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