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Lovely Runner korean drama review
Completed
Lovely Runner
83 people found this review helpful
by catherine
Jun 4, 2024
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 6.5
Acting/Cast 6.0
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 5.0

Fizzles out but stays cute

I’m kind of surprised by the glowing reviews on this one, because as cute as the main couple is (and not only are they cute, they’ve got an AMAZING kiss scene)…I really think this is one of those dramas that starts out strong but ends up fizzling out.

The first episode is extremely strong; the heart-wrenching tragedy of the male lead’s death gives our female lead a purpose in her time travel journey, and the added layer of her being able to walk after being in a wheelchair for so many years adds is also great. There’s commentary about disability and inaccessibility, which I really appreciated. I also really loved how we saw Im Sol getting back the will to live.

The next few episodes were still promising; it was the right balance of funny and heart-wrenching, and I was also pleasantly surprised that the FL already went back to a changed future.

The first thing I didn’t really like was the mystery element. The recent trend of inserting a random serial killer into a rom-com drama is something I really do not enjoy, and this was no different; it felt like a lot of the profound commentary we got at the start about living with a disability or depression and suicide became reduced to “actually there was a villain, so our ML was never depressed, and our FL shouldn’t have been disabled anyways.”

As the drama went on it felt like the story focused more on the mystery, with the second lead randomly popping in to fulfill his police officer role, while our main couple also got more repetitive: Im Sol was always sad because she had seen a sad future, while Sun Jae was in a perpetual state of ignorance, or even amnesia. The actual state of the future switched around, sure, but their core characters were always the same.

Ultimately, I think this was still a very cute watch; there are funny, chaotic scenes and the male lead is one heck of a green flag. I just wish it kept all the substance and momentum it had at the start.
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