Ugh this show. This show was the cliff hanger that kept me nail biting and dying because I had to wait week to week, because of course I had to live-watch it. I have no chill. This cast is literally my dream cast. Lee Junki is at his peak Two Weeks best in intensity. Moon Chaewon is as amazing and brilliant as ever. The chemistry between the two as husband/wife potential partners/ enemies is off the charts. Topping that all off with Kim Jihoon in the latter half of the show is just - well I will never shut up about it I swear.

The writing is generally gripping and intense throughout. I love how dedicated and insightful Cha Ji Won is as a detective, bringing a unique perspective and insight to her cases. I also enjoyed the way the show approached the idea of love not as a feeling but as a choice, actions one chose to make every day, like Hae Soo learning how to show his love to Ji Won. All in all, this show was knocking it out of the park, setting itself up to be one of my top shows of the year. And while I do rate it pretty high I had to knock it down a bit as the last episode tarnished some of my love.

[Spoilers below the cut]

The writer in me appreciates what the show as attempting to do with the last episode (the show as consistently very thoughtful as it dug in deep to the various issues it confronted re: marriage, love, mental illness) as there is definitely going to be some fallout to the things that all the characters endured, the ending just didn’t land. In a medium where amnesia is an overused and tired trope that has become a cringy cliche, a show really has to make its use compelling. I have to watch it and think ‘there was literally no other way to deal with this’. And in this case, I feel the show fell short.

Like I said, there is *going* go be fallout to a marriage that has essentially been built up on a lie. Amnesia feels like a cop-out wiping of the slate to start over in a way that absolves Hae Soo from confronting those lies. The writing also pushes Ji Won into playing “The Cool Wife” who just accepts everything that has happened bc ‘reasons’. Which - for how wonderfully she was written otherwise - felt like a real let down.

Even if she *is* understanding, the brain/ heart don’t flip on a dime. She would be struggling with accepting and trusting him. Instead the amnesia gets to cast him as the victim of all that has happened and while he is a victim, he was no innocent. It centers his pain and struggle while evaporating hers.

It frames the final conflict as her striving for his acceptance when it really should be the two of them equally striving to rebuild what has been broken. It unbalances them when the rest of the show had them always on equal ground. It was disappointing and really killed my love for the show. I wish they’d opted for either really fleshing out that conflict, or just skipping it altogether and giving us a sendoff of them riding into the sunset trusting that they will work it out.