Saturday, January 23, 2016

REVIEW: The Time We Were Not in Love (SPOILERS)

File:The Time We Were Not In Love-p1.jpg
Photo from asianwiki.com
This show had all the trimmings of one of the best dramas of 2015. I mean you can't really go wrong with Ha Ji Won as the lead actress, right? Unfortunately, for me, the show fell flat half way through and I had to make myself watch the remaining episodes. Overall, it was an entertaining show with a lot of cute moments but there was a lack of tension and chemistry for me.

In the beginning, since everything was new and I was just excited to see the show, it was a really great ride. L was stirring up emotions and Lee Jin Wook was the masculine and caring male lead that we all love to see. However, there was a major event that shook up not just the characters but the show in general.

So, as much as I love seeing up and coming actor Yoon Gyun Sang in anything, his character kind of ruined the show for me. This has nothing to really do with his acting it's just that his character was really wet blanket. The character of Cha Seo Hoo was supposed to have our male leads battling to the death and our female lead really torn over who to go to, right? Well, what we get is Oh Ha Na being dragged along (again) by Cha Seo Hoo and Choi Won (Lee Jin Wook) fighting a battle all by himself (sort of). It was seriously like one of the hardest things to watch. To me it would have been better if at least Oh Ha Na seemed like she was secretly pinning after Choi Won or something but it felt like her character gave up which basically left the male lead that we were all rooting for in limbo. Ugh!

After that everything seemed like a half baked attempt to patch the original premise of the series back together. I have not seen the Chinese original yet, but since it has gotten rave reviews I am assuming that things were handled much better. If that wasn't enough however when our OTP does finally get together there were no sparks at least not from Oh Ha Na. Like pretty much all the relationships in this show (except Dae Bok and Eun Jung, and Mi Hyang and Park Jong Hoon) seemed one sided. Seriously, like no one liked the person that liked them. It was weird. It was even more weird that our leads who've built up levels of love practically their whole lives had no real romantic moments. I mean I guess you can count the wedding, but what wedding isn't romantic?

Now, it is possible that I am being overly critical/cynical of the show since it just straight up bored me near the end, but I have to say that if you are thinking about watching this show I say don't worry about it. Unless you're a super huge fan of one of the main actors you can pretty much skip it.

Please let me know what you think. 
And please let me know if I missed something that actually made this show magical.

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