as a TFF novel and manhua reader, im seriously so satisfied and thankful to the cast and crew for literally bringing all the iconic scenes and dialogue to life ;__; whilst understandably the show's slower atmosphere is a lot more moody and emotionally wracking especially compared to HL or other ~idol dramas~, i actually love the depth of the more triggering topics and also how they managed to balance the heavier scenes with the lighthearted ones without feeling too jarring.
also hello i will eat up every single one of those cliche romance tropes!! like 2nd chance romance, accidental cohabitation, wound tending and my fave: "person A who thinks they're too hard to love and person B who loves them unconditionally like breathing" etc - the tension and chemistry is already great and im looking forward to a lot more playful petty banter between yifan (let me give you all my love my bb girl!!!!) and sangyan (omg whilst i love him too he's v lucky he's got pretty privilege that tsundere petty ass lmao...) both zhang ruo nan and bai jing ting are perfectly cast and are doing a slay job in both emoting and comedic timing which shows their acting chops.
i know its only been 4 eps but you can see TFF rly got that high production budget and im glad it looks like they used it well - this is how u live up to the pressures of an S+ modern c-drama. now hopefully they can keep up this pace for the rest and continue to deliver!!
Love how your user name is "catastrophes" and the fact that this post is all about unravelling all the "catastrophes"…
haha! i def think people are allowed to have their own opinions and there are some totally valid disappointments, but i wanted to try to reason against some of the criticisms bc honestly with the way some are going on about it, it's like they didn't even finish watching the show properly lol
there's definitely an overly defending crusade, but vice versa, there's also some outright negative nancies that are picking on every single thing too lol... hyped media comes with its pitfalls...
anyway! disclaimer: long personal opinion from someone who really enjoyed the show, as i wanted to discuss some criticisms that some people are pointing out:
1/ there could have been some potential ableist debate here, but i think sol returning in time with the mission to solely save sunjae, rather than purposefully trying to recover the use of her legs made all the difference. apart from the hospital breakdown (considering she was still a young teen then, i could understand her initial overt reaction), the show didn't portray sol continuing to think of it as a tragedy, rather just showed how she dealt with discrimination in the real world and how it was just one aspect of herself. yes i would definitely have liked to see them touch more on her disability, or even see her have a happy ending despite trading her legs for sunjae's life for example, but it did make sense in the grand scheme of the final time-line as she didn't get in the accident, nor sunjae having to live his life with the weight of guilt on his shoulders.
2/ valid if you were disappointed in it to think it doesn't deserve 9.2, but people just complaining that it's getting such a high rating purely because it's a rom-com - ?? just because it's not oscars bait doesn't mean people can't rate it highly? there's so many genres out there and you can't really compare a strawberry cheesecake with...idk sashimi lol... e.g. whilst i might rate an intellectual show that debates social issues 10/10, why can't i also rate a show that made me genuinely happy and got me through the day 10/10 too? honestly there's definitely a place for both types of works.
3/ criticism that the soljae relationship was too co-dependent and they only existed for each other: sure they were a clingy couple, but we got a whole epilogue where sunjae puts his marriage proposal on hold in order for sol to fulfil her dreams of becoming a film director?? sunjae in the previous teenage timeline also went through his own journey after giving up swimming, to later learning that he really likes being on stage and writing music which sets up his future career path. sure there were a lot of scenes that showed the persistence of their love for each other (hell, that was literally the premise of the whole drama), but you really can't say that they didn't try to achieve their dreams outside of the relationship. i liked that they helped each other grow and well tbh i CHEERED the fact that this show flipped the patriarchal societal views by portraying the male lead as someone who would have been content to sit in the background and support his (soon to be) successful wife <3 we love house husband ryu sunjae and his adored other half im sol <3
4/ time travel laws were not explained properly/lots of plot holes etc: whilst i wished they did capitalise on sol stopping time by yelling future events or delving further into sol's grandmother's role (though the writer did state she blatantly used her has an ominiscent narrator to pop in on her behalf so no real logic there guys), let's be real, this drama isn't in the sci-fi genre where i have to know exactly how time travels works in this show. it's all fantasy anyway. as the time magazine article put it: LR prioritised heart and emotional logic over plot mechanics in a way that most of us could overlook certain flaws. time travel was just a convenient device to allow me (and to allow soljae) to fall in love through the various eras and be super content in watching them on this journey.
so yeah whilst there were certain things that could have been expanded on in a more succinct manner, i can still see why this show was so hyped as i think everyone who did like it (esp those of us who have been in k-drama slumps lately) really resonated with watching a super heart-felt, heart-fluttering show that could also invoke tears and emotional angst, topped with a fantastical happy ending. and personally, my favorite type of shows are the ones that can take me out of depressing woes of real life even if it it's unrealistic lol
i personally rated this drama 10/10 not because i think it's technically perfect (well, no drama is), but rather, because of how it made me /feel/ - fr, just thinking about all the different emotions it was able to pull from me every single damn episode was enough to help me see past any faults. from making me cry in the first 10mins of ep 1, to smiling so much my cheeks hurt, to blushing and feeling so heart-fluttery with every swoon-worthy romantic scene, and having my heart strings pulled every single direction during the sentimental and touching moments, this drama seriously altered my brain chemistry to allow it to shoot up my fave drama list so fast.
lovely runner was marketed as a silly fantasy rom-com, and boy did it deliver and more. honestly whilst the time travel and thriller aspect added to the fun (and angst), they were all just plot devices to fulfil the main essence of the drama which is sol and sunjae's relationship, so the focus on /them/ made sense. i didn't need to have a reason for why a serial killer behaves the way he does, i didn't need a ton of other scenes focusing on secondary relationships, i didn't need an expansion on how logic works when it comes to bending time and space. i can watch other dramas for that. rather, it was just a poignant and moving story about two people who loved each other so much.
i don't recall rewatching a drama whilst it was airing as obsessively as i did with this one, but it was just an incredible journey: from the beautifully shot cinematography, to the wondrous OST (idol sunjae, praise be!!!), to the acting masterclass of both kim hye-yoon and byun woo-seok, and just the writing genius that is lee sieun who gave us all the poetic parallels, contextual foreshadowing and that final happy ending!!!! thank you to the entire cast and crew!!!
as much as some people may think it's an over-rated piece of work (sure, valid, we can't all like the same things), but man, personally, i believe the hype it garnered is so well deserved. it rom com'd so hard that it's gonna be a standard for future rom coms now - the little drama that did all it could to win hearts and boy has it engraved a well earned spot in my own heart and soul :') <3
also hello i will eat up every single one of those cliche romance tropes!! like 2nd chance romance, accidental cohabitation, wound tending and my fave: "person A who thinks they're too hard to love and person B who loves them unconditionally like breathing" etc - the tension and chemistry is already great and im looking forward to a lot more playful petty banter between yifan (let me give you all my love my bb girl!!!!) and sangyan (omg whilst i love him too he's v lucky he's got pretty privilege that tsundere petty ass lmao...) both zhang ruo nan and bai jing ting are perfectly cast and are doing a slay job in both emoting and comedic timing which shows their acting chops.
i know its only been 4 eps but you can see TFF rly got that high production budget and im glad it looks like they used it well - this is how u live up to the pressures of an S+ modern c-drama. now hopefully they can keep up this pace for the rest and continue to deliver!!
anyway! disclaimer: long personal opinion from someone who really enjoyed the show, as i wanted to discuss some criticisms that some people are pointing out:
1/ there could have been some potential ableist debate here, but i think sol returning in time with the mission to solely save sunjae, rather than purposefully trying to recover the use of her legs made all the difference. apart from the hospital breakdown (considering she was still a young teen then, i could understand her initial overt reaction), the show didn't portray sol continuing to think of it as a tragedy, rather just showed how she dealt with discrimination in the real world and how it was just one aspect of herself. yes i would definitely have liked to see them touch more on her disability, or even see her have a happy ending despite trading her legs for sunjae's life for example, but it did make sense in the grand scheme of the final time-line as she didn't get in the accident, nor sunjae having to live his life with the weight of guilt on his shoulders.
2/ valid if you were disappointed in it to think it doesn't deserve 9.2, but people just complaining that it's getting such a high rating purely because it's a rom-com - ?? just because it's not oscars bait doesn't mean people can't rate it highly? there's so many genres out there and you can't really compare a strawberry cheesecake with...idk sashimi lol... e.g. whilst i might rate an intellectual show that debates social issues 10/10, why can't i also rate a show that made me genuinely happy and got me through the day 10/10 too? honestly there's definitely a place for both types of works.
3/ criticism that the soljae relationship was too co-dependent and they only existed for each other:
sure they were a clingy couple, but we got a whole epilogue where sunjae puts his marriage proposal on hold in order for sol to fulfil her dreams of becoming a film director?? sunjae in the previous teenage timeline also went through his own journey after giving up swimming, to later learning that he really likes being on stage and writing music which sets up his future career path. sure there were a lot of scenes that showed the persistence of their love for each other (hell, that was literally the premise of the whole drama), but you really can't say that they didn't try to achieve their dreams outside of the relationship. i liked that they helped each other grow and well tbh i CHEERED the fact that this show flipped the patriarchal societal views by portraying the male lead as someone who would have been content to sit in the background and support his (soon to be) successful wife <3 we love house husband ryu sunjae and his adored other half im sol <3
4/ time travel laws were not explained properly/lots of plot holes etc:
whilst i wished they did capitalise on sol stopping time by yelling future events or delving further into sol's grandmother's role (though the writer did state she blatantly used her has an ominiscent narrator to pop in on her behalf so no real logic there guys), let's be real, this drama isn't in the sci-fi genre where i have to know exactly how time travels works in this show. it's all fantasy anyway.
as the time magazine article put it: LR prioritised heart and emotional logic over plot mechanics in a way that most of us could overlook certain flaws. time travel was just a convenient device to allow me (and to allow soljae) to fall in love through the various eras and be super content in watching them on this journey.
so yeah whilst there were certain things that could have been expanded on in a more succinct manner, i can still see why this show was so hyped as i think everyone who did like it (esp those of us who have been in k-drama slumps lately) really resonated with watching a super heart-felt, heart-fluttering show that could also invoke tears and emotional angst, topped with a fantastical happy ending. and personally, my favorite type of shows are the ones that can take me out of depressing woes of real life even if it it's unrealistic lol
kudos if you got through this long essay post ~~
lovely runner was marketed as a silly fantasy rom-com, and boy did it deliver and more. honestly whilst the time travel and thriller aspect added to the fun (and angst), they were all just plot devices to fulfil the main essence of the drama which is sol and sunjae's relationship, so the focus on /them/ made sense. i didn't need to have a reason for why a serial killer behaves the way he does, i didn't need a ton of other scenes focusing on secondary relationships, i didn't need an expansion on how logic works when it comes to bending time and space. i can watch other dramas for that. rather, it was just a poignant and moving story about two people who loved each other so much.
i don't recall rewatching a drama whilst it was airing as obsessively as i did with this one, but it was just an incredible journey: from the beautifully shot cinematography, to the wondrous OST (idol sunjae, praise be!!!), to the acting masterclass of both kim hye-yoon and byun woo-seok, and just the writing genius that is lee sieun who gave us all the poetic parallels, contextual foreshadowing and that final happy ending!!!! thank you to the entire cast and crew!!!
as much as some people may think it's an over-rated piece of work (sure, valid, we can't all like the same things), but man, personally, i believe the hype it garnered is so well deserved. it rom com'd so hard that it's gonna be a standard for future rom coms now - the little drama that did all it could to win hearts and boy has it engraved a well earned spot in my own heart and soul :') <3