Overrated
This show has clearly received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with this sentiment. Of course this is my subjective opinion, as all reviews are.So, here is my attempt to express precisely what my problems with this show are:
1) The timeline - The show has a habit of constantly skipping around the timeline. While telling the story in a chronological order isn't strictly necessary, this show just takes it too far. As a casual viewer I was often left disoriented and confused by this. This is exacerbated by the use of the same actors to represent characters for very long intervals of time.
2) The characters - The events of the show span the period of over 50 years, basically covering 3 generations of a family, which naturally comes with a very large cast of characters. This is very ambitious, to put it nicely. It makes keeping track of all the characters very difficult. Even worse, this results in the characters lacking ...well... character. Trying to cram in 3 generations and 50 years worth of story into a 16 episode show results in a distinct lack of character establishing and building moments. When it comes to the main characters, while some of them seem like they could be OK if given more time to develop (like Yang Gwan Sik and Yang Eun Myeong), what little bits we were shown of the main main characters (O Ae Sun and Yang Geum Myeong) did not make them seem likeable at all, and did not make me, as a viewer, root for their success.
3) The story - Due to the problems mentioned in points 1 and 2, the viewing experience of the story was somehow both confusing and boring at the same time. Additionally, it lacked direction. Where is it going, what are the writers trying to tell us with this? I could rationalize it (if I was inclined due to actually liking the characters) as being an artistic choice to invoke a “realistic” feeling (as in, the show is structured as if someone in their old age were just recalling events from their life, as one would whilst going through a photo album), but it doesn’t make for an actually good story. Good stories are told with a purpose and have both a natural flow and solid structure to them. This felt more like just recounting of events without any emotional weight, which is better saved for history books.
In conclusion, I did not enjoy this show. The people who made this were like Icarus - arrogantly trying too hard to make something too sophisticated for them to actually successfully pull off with their skill level. In the end they just burned and crashed instead.
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