Sadly not for me
Everybody seems to love this show (as shown by the very high rating on here) and based on the premise it had EVERYTHING I love and thus it should've been perfect for me.Sadly I didn't love this show.
Firstly, let's talk about some of the things that I personally loved:
● The deaf representation I thought was wonderfully done imo and they also didn't fall into some clichés that I personally despise.
● I loved Yi-chan, his relationship with his grandma and the band.
● Cheong-ah storyline was my favourite and I loved her character.
● I think they handled the themes of depression and suicide quite well and I was impressed by some of the conversations that were being had.
● Also I thought they way generational trauma was hanndles in the show was really nice.
● Tge parents relations in the present and in the past was the cutest and I love it, I genuinely would've loved a mini series just on their original timeline story.
Now let's mention some of the things I didn't enjoy:
● For almost the whole show I just couldn't stand Se-kyung, I was constantly annoyed by her and just couldn't find her likeable at all. As I said I did enjoy some of the themes that were explored through her character but because I was just so annoyed by her for more than half of the show, it became hard to enjoy the show itself when she's one of the main characters.
● After a while I just stopped being interest in the story and the characters, it just didn't manage to keep my attention. The plot itself to me just felt a bit too predictable and like many other time travel stories we've seen a thousand times so it was the characters job to keep me engaged, however, past a certain point, the characters and their relationships and stories just weren't strong enough for me to care.
● I personally hate the ending. I don’t want to spoil anything but yeah, just didn't like the rout they decided to go with.
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ignore my rating I just love lee rang too much
I honestly don’t know how to feel about this kdrama, I have many mixed feelings and that’s because I absolutely loved Rang but I also loved Yeon, Yoori and Shinjoo, however I couldn’t care less about Jiah and her relationship with Yeon. One thing that made me keep watching kdramas was the fact that they made me love romance again, after middle school I started almost hating even the hint of romance in books and tv shows and movies, I always either didn’t care for the couple or hated it, kdramas broke that curse and made me even straight up giggle (GIGGLE) at romantic scenes. This specific show on the contrary made me feel absolutely NOTHING when it comes to the main couple. I didn’t giggle, I didn’t cry, my heart didn’t flutter or break for them. I simply didn’t care about them in the least. Maybe it’s because the build up, the slow burn, the way they got together wasn’t given enough care and depth, we were just supposed to believe that they were meant for each other, that they loved each other deeply and that we should root for them. Later on in the show we were given many nice and heartwarming moments of them together but by then it was already too late for me to start caring because they didn’t make me feel the yearning and the stages of actually falling in love with each other, which for me are the most important part.Secondly: Jiah. Just like her relationship with Yeon she also felt really bland to me, she didn’t have any distinguishable characteristics that made her stand out, she just felt like the classic and bland YA protagonist that I used to find and not care for in books and shows when I was younger. I didn’t hate her and din’t find her annoying, I simply didn’t care about her.
The plot of the show itself wasn’t anything new, I’m sure I’ve read this story before, but if I had cared about Jiah and her relationship with Yeon I’m sure I wouldn’t have minded in the slighted however exactly because I didn’t care for her and her relationship I was less invested in the story because the plot itself revolved around those two thighs.
Now let’s talk about the reason why I’m having such a hard time rating this show: lee rang. It’s been years since I fell so hard for a character and a side character at that. Another thing that kdramas managed to do was make me fall for the main characters while in the past I used to fall for side characters, this drama managed to bring me back to my old ways. I honestly loved him in ways I haven’t loved a character in a long time. I cried and cried and cried because of him, from beginning to end. His relationship with Yeon and his relationship with Yoori and then his other relationships were all extremely well done and well written, they had depth and nuance to them, in a way it kind of shocks me just how well written his relationships are when yeon and jiah relationship felt so superficial to me.
Both him and Yeon aren’t necessarily new and original characters that we’ve never seen before, just like with Jiah, however I still loved both of them, they still had heart and depth and their own original things that made them stand out and that made me love them.
Talking about Yeon: I absolutely loved him in the beginning, he’s fun and funny and cool etc etc but from halfway through the show I started to care less about him because much of his character is strictly connected to Jiah. I still loved him of course but not as much as I thought I would have.
So here’s where my dilemma comes from. I honestly can’t decide what rating I should give this show because I LOVED to bits Rang and then also Yeon, Yoori and Shinjo, their relationships and their stories but didn’t care about what was actually the main focus of the story, so how can I say that loved the show when I didn’t really?
I’ve heard that there’ll be a season 2 so I’m 100% going to check it out.
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I was bored
I loved the ML, both the actor and his acting and the character himself, it weren't for the fact that I didn't enjoy this drama he would 100% be one of my favorite MLs. He's sweet and funny, a pushover when it doesn't matter but never when it does, he's a little weird and overall lovable. I enjoyed his storyline regarding him and Wooshik and everything else regarding track and his family. However I just couldn’t care less about the romance in this drama, I found it boring, uninteresting, unsatifying and plain. I also personally didn’t care about the FL at all, just like the romance she was also plain and overall just not an interesting character to follow. I tryied really hard to push myself to finish this because I really did love the ML but alas I just couldn’t.Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
I hate Jinah with a burning passion
I cannot describe the amount of pure rage that I feel for this drama. I started it and I was LOVING it, I was sure I was going to rate it between 9 and 10. The first half was honestly really good, the relationship was one of the most heartwarming ones I’ve seen in a while. It was a really good set up. I highly enjoy angst so I was ready for the drama and the troubles and a bit of heartbreak, I’m not mad that it wasn’t all sweet or that we had sad stuff, I’m mad that it became an absolute shit show by the halfway point.(Spoilers ahead from this point on)
First thing first: you know how they tell you that when you read a story you have to suspend your disbelief? Yeah, I couldn't with this story, I don’t know if it’s just cultural differences or bad writing but I just couldn’t believe that Jinah would simply let herself be treated like a 16 year old highschool girl in love with the bad boy. I understand respecting your family, I understand wanting to make them happy, I understand wanting to respect their wishes and all of that but there is a certain limit to all of that, there are some lines that once crossed there is no going back and Jinah’s mother crossed those lines again and again and again. It doesn’t matter how much I love, respect and want to honour my mother the moment she belittles, slaps and humiliates the people that I love I will stop trying to make her happy.ì and respecting her wishes. She’s a financially dependent woman with a full time job and still she acts as if she’s a 16 y/o who needs to live under her parents’ roof because she has no other choice. Girl, get your stuff and leave. There is obviously no reasoning with that woman, when her son told her how her behaviour was one of the factors that made him contemplate suicide not once but twice so she shouldn’t act ike that towards her daughter and she didn’t stop it’s the moment she should’ve realized that there was no point in trying to please her because she was never going to change her mind. So what's the point of trying to please her?
I liked Jinah at the beginning and by the last episode I was just furious with her and hoping that Joonhee could just find someone worthy of his love.
“I love him more than he loves me” she said once previously in the series and what a fucking joke that was.
I would take the “I won’t move to the US just for you because I have a life here” in any normal situation but honestly, honestly, what life does she have there? Does she have super close friends? A great job that she absolutely loves? A loving family that she doesn’t want to leave behind? What does she have? Nothing, and even when the time passes we see her with the shitty job and shitty boyfriend and no real friends. She even leaves the job and move to Jeju island for fuck sake. Why could you now move away but couldn’t before when your boyfriend just wanted for you two to start anew without all the drama and toxicity that you had to experience until now? I’m honestly so baffled, I honestly absolutely cannot understand her reasoning for not moving to the US with her boyfriend AT ALL. And then she has the balls to ask him to be like how they were before and tell him how bad she had felt the whole time. Oh no you felt bad as a consequence of your own actions? Poor you.
Even before that she just kept making one awful decision after the other.
The one that absolutely infuriated me was when she met his father behind his back and then got upset when he got mad? When he kept telling her to stop making him look immature for not wanting to meet his father, she got mad at him for saying that?? I was absolutely ready to punch her. In no way was he acting immature and yes she was making him look like a child throwing a tantrum when he had all the rights to feel like that
In general I hated the way this show dealt with parents. Joonhee’s father and Jinah’s mother were in their own way absolutely awful but the show also wants us to sympathize with them, wants them to be forgiven because they are family?All shows do this, american or korean it doesn’t matter, they all do it and I’m sick and tired of it. That man was nothing more than a sperm donor; he was in no way shape or form a father. End of story. That woman was a shitty mother even though she believed herself to be a great mother who only cared about her children's future. At best she was toxic at worst she was borderline abusive.
I’ll stop here or I’ll continue forever because this show just gets me so heated. I was so sure that I was going to LOVE LOVE LOVE this show but it’s the worst korean drama that I’ve seen so far.
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Left me with a sense of indifference
I was expecting to love this drama, I like the main leads and I love the premise of the story plus everyone seems to praise this show and the main leads chemistry, however I ended up just being indifferent to it all, which really sucks. When you hate a show at least you have that strong emotion of annoyance or whatever towards the show, indifference is worse because it just makes you not care about it.(I watched the version divided into 16 episodes and not 32)
I really enjoyed the beginning, the first 5 episodes in particular were extremely good and I was really shocked that I could enjoy a show that much even when the two main leads had barely no interactions at all. In general I really enjoyed what took place in 2006 and 2015, I liked the characters andI liked the relationships.
However the first and probably main problem that I had with the show is the main couple. I know people loved their relationship but I simply wasn’t invested in it at all, we get a little glimpse of them starting to like each other when they were younger (and even then we didn’t get too much of them actually falling for each other) and then in 2018 they were already in love (in like?) with each other, we didn’t get to see them falling in love again, we didn’t get to see them rediscover each other after having spent 12 years apart, we didn’t get to see them fall in love with each other again regardless of how different they might be from their 16 year old selves. This is the same problem that I had with Tale of the nine tailed, where, because they were in love before, they must be in love now too. While it’s true that my favourite part of kdramas is the getting to know each other and falling in love, the getting together stages, I can enjoy shows where they are already together, for example I loved Flower of evil, I just simply didn’t enjoy the way their relationship was developed in the show, there’s no particular reason why, I simply didn’t get involved or attached to their relationship.
That’s not to say that there weren’t any good moments or nice scenes between them, I just simply didn’t care because I wasn’t invested in their relationship: they weren't a cute butterfly in the stomach kind of couple, they weren’t a badass power couple, they weren’t a hot couple and honestly they weren’t melodramatic enough to be a heartbreaking, soul crushing, tear jerking couple.
Regarding the “masterful plot” that people talk about: I thought it was boring, I’m sorry. There wasn’t any mystery or anything really that kept me hooked, things just happened and I went along with it. I never really felt the tension or suspense or anything really.
Here’s a list of some of the things that I enjoyed the most:
Dojin and his mum relationship
Dojin and hi sister relationship
Dojin and his his brother relationship
Hyunmoo and his mother relationship
Hyunmoo and his sister relationship
Hyunmoo story
Kiyong acting
Joonho acting
Kiyong in a police uniform
That scene during Dojin graduation
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A perfect blend of story, characters and relationships
I absolutely adored this drama.One great feat of this show is that it managed to perfectly blend story, characters and relationship. Oftentimes shows will have too much plot and not enough characters and relationships development making it heavy to watch or they’ll have too much focus on the characters and relationship and just barely any plot. Healer in my opinion blended all of these aspects perfectly.
For me to fall in love with a show I need one of two things: at least a character that I absolutely love or a great plot that leaves me breathless. If the plot is meh but I love at least one character I can keep watching and if the characters are just fine but the plot is mind blowing I can keep watching.
In this case the story wasn’t mind blowing, however it also wasn’t mediocre, it was extremely interesting and I always wanted to see where we were going and what was going to happen next, not once did I find myself feeling bored of it and wanting to just skip ahead. (a bit of a lie, I did skip through during the last 2 episodes, but I don’t think that’s the show’s fault, I’m honestly just impatient and have a short attention span).
What I really fell in love with, however, was our main character “Healer”. I really liked him from the beginning but by the middle of it I was completely in love with him and I kept begging the people in the show to please just give him lots and lots of love (and a reliable father figure). He’s the perfect blend of badass and reserved, but not in a macho bad boy way: he will kick the bad people’s asses but he’s not a rude asshole, he’s reserved for sure, but in a “I don't know how to act in social situations” way. Listen, I don't know how to explain this. I just know that I love him and I’ll be founding a campaign to find him a new father figure.
Does it deserve a 10/10? I don't know, but I also don’t know how to rate things so I’ll just give it because I feel like it.
(gave the music a 6 because nothing really wowed me but also there was nothing bad with it,. I honestly can't remeber one single piece of music that I heard)
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wasted potential
First of all, in my opinion, the music was just phenomenal. I immediately added breaking down by ailee and love sight by tomorrow x together to my playlist because I absolutely adored them.The acting was really good, no one really blew me away with their performance but everyone did a great job nonetheless.
As many have already said the drama had a great premise and also a great start, however it then became really boring, so much so that for the first time in my life I actually got more interested in the side couple than the main. With our main characters nothing that grabbed my attention really happened and while I obviously wanted for them to have a happy ending at some point I just became bored with their storyline. The conflict just didn’t pull me in, nothing seemed that exciting, nothing kept me on my toes.
Surprisingly, as I mentioned, I actually really enjoyed the side love triangle we had going on, it was nothing original, new or fresh, it was pretty basic, but in my opinion it was really well executed and instead of being annoyed when the focus wasn’t on the main characters (like it oftentimes happens)I was actually sad when their scenes ended and we had to go back to our main couple.
Overall the concept and beginning had me hooked but as we went on they just couldn't develop the story into something interesting, so while I’m not mad at the show and I had a nice time watching it I can’t help but feel extremely disappointed.
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