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This review may contain spoilers
Great visuals, terrible writing
I was absolutely sat after watching the first two episodes. While “country girl who moved to the city to escape her past but now goes back to her hometown” is a plot that has definitely been done before, something about this one just felt especially raw. The main female lead was carrying a lot of emotional baggage that added this really good heaviness to the drama, and the main male lead carrying a torch for her for so many years promised some really good tension.
As the drama went on though it just got SOOO repetitive. The FL pushing the ML away was understandable at first, but it should not have been 8 episodes of a 12 episode show. Each week, the ML or FL would say something mean to the other, they would separate,\ in anger, and the instigator would feel bad and run back to the other (in slow motion). The episode would end. You’d think that they’d talk it out the next episode but nope, and the cycle would just repeat. This happens so many times where the main leads meet and end up NOT talking it out — even in the penultimate episode — that the entire journey just feels utterly tiresome and pointless.
When the leads finally got together, it did not even feel cathartic, and it felt like they’d barely had one full conversation that was not filled with animosity. As much as I liked the flashback scenes of their younger selves (so cute!) it wasn’t enough of a strong foundation once their present selves had changed so much and weren’t communicating.
The second leads are unnecessary, but I actually did enjoy the smaller side ships — I think this drama could’ve focused less on a love triangle/square that made no sense and instead had more scenes of their friend group and showing more of the town.
The tropes in this show aren’t all that uncommon in dreamland, but for some reason they felt especially frustrating here.
You have the disapproving parent, who had a motive that was so unreasonable it became annoying that the characters didn’t stand up for themselves for so long. And then you have the car accident (two, if you count the one in the past), which is used to dissipate the disapproving parent and make them suddenly empathize (but only for a moment). And then a character having cancer (also two, if you want to count one in the past) and wanting to keep it a secret…leading to our ML still lying to the FL, in the second to last episode.
With all these conflicts, the plot just feels so incoherent. It was particularly frustrating too because we had such an interesting set up in the setting. We had a motel, complete with social stigma and pretty visuals, and then we had an architect lead. Remodeling the motel and dealing with the discrimination from the other townspeople would’ve been an adequate plot so I don’t know why we had to add all that other stuff. It just feels like lazy and unnuanced writing, which is a shame because the leads are really good at showing emotion, and the emotional scenes would have hit me if the writing actually built up to them.
The last episode wrapped things up nicely, but the road to get there felt very bumpy. I also just figured that most people had checked out by then anyway. I certainly did, emotionally.
As the drama went on though it just got SOOO repetitive. The FL pushing the ML away was understandable at first, but it should not have been 8 episodes of a 12 episode show. Each week, the ML or FL would say something mean to the other, they would separate,\ in anger, and the instigator would feel bad and run back to the other (in slow motion). The episode would end. You’d think that they’d talk it out the next episode but nope, and the cycle would just repeat. This happens so many times where the main leads meet and end up NOT talking it out — even in the penultimate episode — that the entire journey just feels utterly tiresome and pointless.
When the leads finally got together, it did not even feel cathartic, and it felt like they’d barely had one full conversation that was not filled with animosity. As much as I liked the flashback scenes of their younger selves (so cute!) it wasn’t enough of a strong foundation once their present selves had changed so much and weren’t communicating.
The second leads are unnecessary, but I actually did enjoy the smaller side ships — I think this drama could’ve focused less on a love triangle/square that made no sense and instead had more scenes of their friend group and showing more of the town.
The tropes in this show aren’t all that uncommon in dreamland, but for some reason they felt especially frustrating here.
You have the disapproving parent, who had a motive that was so unreasonable it became annoying that the characters didn’t stand up for themselves for so long. And then you have the car accident (two, if you count the one in the past), which is used to dissipate the disapproving parent and make them suddenly empathize (but only for a moment). And then a character having cancer (also two, if you want to count one in the past) and wanting to keep it a secret…leading to our ML still lying to the FL, in the second to last episode.
With all these conflicts, the plot just feels so incoherent. It was particularly frustrating too because we had such an interesting set up in the setting. We had a motel, complete with social stigma and pretty visuals, and then we had an architect lead. Remodeling the motel and dealing with the discrimination from the other townspeople would’ve been an adequate plot so I don’t know why we had to add all that other stuff. It just feels like lazy and unnuanced writing, which is a shame because the leads are really good at showing emotion, and the emotional scenes would have hit me if the writing actually built up to them.
The last episode wrapped things up nicely, but the road to get there felt very bumpy. I also just figured that most people had checked out by then anyway. I certainly did, emotionally.
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