Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.
About Time
(어바웃 타임 / Eobaut Taim)
MyDramaList rating: 5.5/10
Hello again! Back with another review. I have been trying to get my act together again after being prematurely sent away from my new job but I managed to and I even got a new job only a few weeks later. I will be able to combine this with my hobbys more so I’m feeling lucky and this means I have more time to watch my needed dose of drama again as well!
This series was on my list for a while as I’m a big Lee Sung Kyung fan. Each and every drama I’ve seen of her so far, she shows a completely new and different side of her and she’s also stunning and a total style icon. My favorite up to date of course is Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo in which she also didn’t shy from portraying a female character that was not included in the standard category of ‘pretty popular girl’.
It was the first time I saw a drama with her in which she played the typical sweet girl heroine, and it was also the first time I was seriously annoyed by the character she portrayed. But more of that later.
First of all, the story.
About Time is a 16-episode drama about an aspiring young musical actress named Choi Mikaela, nicknamed Mi Ka (played by Lee Sung Kyung). She has had a special ability since she was a child, which is that she’s able to see people’s ‘life clocks’. Somewhere on their bodies, everyone has a digital clock ticking down the time they have left to live and Mi Ka can see these. Not too long ago she also suddenly became able to see her own life clock – she herself has less than a year to live (about 104 days) when the story begins. That’s why she’s determined to make her dream of becoming a musical actress a reality and has been drowning herself in auditions one after the other. The only one who knows about her special ability is her best friend Jeon Seong Hee (played by Han Seung Yeon), who works at a musical agency. She has been supporting Mikaela, especially since she gained the ability to see her life clock.
On the other hand, we have Lee Do Ha (played by Lee Sang Yoon), the director of a company that manages musicals (I think?). He suffers from an anxiety syndrome and isn’t really the affectionate type. He has been attempting to propose to Bae Soo Bong, nicknamed Beth (played by Im Se Mi), a good friend and business ally, but she has been playing coy and hasn’t accepted a single proposal yet even though she calls him ‘Honey’ and it seems like they’re dating. It’s suggested that they are practically engaged, anyway.
One day Mikaela is on her way to an audition and gets into an accident when Do Ha bumps into her with his car.Eventually she makes him drive her to her audition. The director currently searching for competent actors to star in his new original musical, Cho Jae Yoo (played by Kim Dong Joon), comments on Mi Ka’s audition that while she captures the excitement of the character, she lacks the emotional empathy of someone who is in love.
She boldly steps up and kisses Do Ha, who is in the hall, to prove to the director that she at least has the guts, but he is still not impressed.
Mi Ka and Do Ha meet a couple more times, and Do Ha increasingly gets more intrigued by Mi Ka, as she sometimes seems all happy and careless, and sometimes gets this really sad look in her eye.
When they happen upon each other again -Do Ha has to meet a Chinese investor and make a good impression so they go diving in the ocean to please him and Mi Ka is coincidentally asked to accompany them as a diving instructor – Do Ha almost drowns and Mi Ka saves his life.
In this moment, she suddenly realizes that her life clock (located in her case on her left wrist) stops when she’s near Do Ha.
In the weeks that follow this discovery, Mi Ka tries to seduce Do Ha, or at least tries anything in her power to remain close to him in order to stop her own ticking time.
The story of course results in the two falling in love, but then the life clocks reveal a cruel hidden trait as Mi Ka discovers the reason why she’s been getting extra time is because she’s been gaining Do Ha’s time. When they get intimate, his time starts ticking down real fast as hers accumulates.
Will they be able to figure this strange twist of fate out?
To drop the bomb, I have a lot of frustrations and criticisms about this drama but as I have done before, I will try to keep it nice.
I would like to start with these criticisms before I end on a positive note, because there certainly was a good message at the end.
First of all, what surprised me from the start was that the build-up in the relationship between Do Ha and Mi Ka was very fast. Normally, it takes about 10 episodes to get to the point where the male and female lead finally confront each other’s feelings and/or kiss. In About Time, when Do Ha tells Mi Ka he’s in love with her, it’s episode 3. It went so fast that I actually remember saying to my computer screen, ‘slow down people, it’s only episode 3’. But yeah, in episode 3 Do Ha has already been mesmerized by Mi Ka. Mi Ka, on the other hand, after actively pursuing him, at this stage has chosen to keep her distance and she initially takes a step back.
I have to admit I found his confession quite premature and I didn’t feel like they were both on the same page yet.
But all in all, I found the development of their relationship very odd. Because in the beginning Mi Ka was all like ‘damn I gotta get close to him, I need him so that I’ll have more time’ (quite a selfish reason), but then when Do Ha suddenly starts falling for her she’s like ‘oh now wait a second’. But the next moment she suddenly liked him back. It was a bit confusing for me to follow.
Anyways, they were already together within the first 5 episodes of the series, so I thought ‘great. if their relationship has been established so early on, it can only go down from here.’ And it did. It really did.
Until this point, Mi Ka has not been able to spot Do Ha’s clock. That’s the first puzzling thing. In the beginning he doesn’t seem to have a clock, but when he’s near her her time stops and when he touches her (holds her hand or something), her time increases. He doesn’t seem to be aware that he has this effect.
However, when they are at a point in their relationship when they’re living together (Mi Ka has become Do Ha’s personal driver) and they are doing happily well, one time when she fixes his tie she suddenly sees his life clock, located in his neck. And then she suddenly sees his time rapidly decreasing from the 60 years he has, and her own time rapidly increasing, adding extra days within several minutes.
And the way she chose to handle this, was my biggest frustration of the drama. Honestly, I haven’t been this frustrated since Switched.
Before I go on to jot down all my frustrations, I first want to mention my favorite characters. I don’t want this review to be only negative comments and frustrations, so I’ll try to mix in some things and people I thought where nice and funny and good.
Most and foremost, KIM HAE SOOK. Ladies and gentlemen, Kim Hae Sook is a treasure of the Korean acting industry and I hope she keeps on acting until the end. What an incredibly talented actress. I just wish she was my next-door neighbor who would bring me cookies everyday.
She portrayed Madame Oh So Nyeo, an elderly lady in the hospital Mi Ka used to volunteer at. She seems like the typical lovely middle-aged lady who still had a youthful glint in her eye and a love for mischief, but we find out later that she too is able to see life clocks. Once the viewer discovers this, in-between Mi Ka and Do Ha’s relationship troubles, there are occasional scenes of Madame Oh comforting other people in the hospital and teaching them about life and how important it is to enjoy as much of it as possible within the time we have.
She briefly dates an elderly man she also met at the hospital and their romance was just so endearing. And it stung, because we see from the beginning through Mi Ka’s point of view that he doesn’t live as long as Madame Oh. Despite knowing this, Madame Oh enjoys their relationship as long as it lasts so to have no regrets. As she’s aware of her own impending end, at one point she pulls a prank where she sends a message informing of her obituary notice, which brings people crying to her house expecting a funeral – only to find her there very much alive with a prepared party.
One of the scenes I enjoyed the most was the one where she met up with some old friends and they reminiscined and apologized for whatever lingering feelings of resentment there were from the past. Madame Oh’s character was filled in by Kim Hae Sook so beautifully and warmly that I just wanted to hug her every time she had scenes. Whenever she’d appear, I’d find myself smiling. This woman is the best.
I have seen several other roles portrayed by Kim Hae Sook (I Hear Your Voice and Pinocchio), and the drama Room No. 9 is also on my list. I look very much forward to watching her shine there as well.
Furthermore, I really liked Do Ha’s older brother Lee Do San (played by Jung Moon Sung). He was a bit of an outcast in the family because he had a different mother than Do Ha and his other brother. He liked to travel and write stories. He walked with a limp that he acquired during childhood when the mean brother pushed him down the stairs once.
Mi Ka finds out one time that he has less than a month left to live and urges him to go to the hospital. When he does, he finds out the disease he’s been diagnosed with before but of which was said it wasn’t spreading too fast, indeed had suddenly been spreading so much that he didn’t have much time left. I just loved how sweet he was to Do Ha. Besides Do Ha and their sister-in-law, he was the only nice person in their family. I had feels when he passed 🙁
By the way, Do Ha’s family is worth describing a bit. He was the youngest of two brothers, Do San and Do Bin (played by Min Sung Wook). Do Bin is married to Kim Hye Young (played by Kim Sa Hee), but their father has never really approved of her and keeps criticizing her or ignoring her. I felt bad for her too. I felt bad for her that she was married to Do Bin, he wasn’t very nice either.
The father, Lee Sun Moon (Jung Dong Hwan) only cares about the legacy of his family and urges Do Ha to marry Bae Soo Bong because she’s from a wealthy family and they need to keep up appearances most of all. Do Ha isn’t really close to anyone in his family, he only had Do San to talk to so it was really sad that his most trusted person had such an unfortunate fate waiting for him 🙁
I’m going to go back to my story for a little bit, trying to mix the frustrations with other topics I can talk about. The main thing I wish to talk about is my frustration about the incredibility of Mi Ka’s character. This expressed itself in several different aspects, I will categorize them in two little chapters: ‘Mi Ka the Musical Actress’ and ‘Mi Ka’s Way of Handling Things’.
1. Mi Ka the Musical Actress.
It was a nice extra addition to include the trials and tribulations of a small original musical in-the-making, even though it was probably only to create a place where Mi Ka and Do Ha would be forced to meet on a regular basis. Putting them in the same workspace was needed as a plot tool.
From our first meeting with Mi Ka we see that she loves singing, she’s all about taking auditions and she wants to be on stage. However, I still can’t help wondering about the choice for casting Lee Sung Kyung, who isn’t a professional singer, in a role that needs to prove she’s a good singer. Because, and I know this sounds awful, and maybe it was because of the acoustics of the rooms she practiced in, but on several occasions I didn’t actually enjoy her singing.
There’s one point in which she becomes the understudy for the main female lead, the actual role being performed by Kim Joo Na (played by Kim Kyu Ri), Do Ha’s first love, who is brought in by Beth in order to sabotage Mi Ka and Do Ha’s relationship and put extra tension between the three of them. Kim Joo Na’s singing was really good, and I was a bit taken aback when Mi Ka would suddenly criticize her – because in my opinion Kim Joo Na’s singing was way better than Mi Ka’s. Mi Ka eventually acquires the leading role when Joo Na chooses to step back because her vocal condition isn’t up to par and also because she’s done with Beth using her as a revenge tool to break apart Mi Ka and Do Ha. I liked Joo Na’s character, she was real and she stood up for what was right, even if that meant being an occasionally strict mentor.
Anyways, I didn’t believe Mi Ka as a musical actress. Not just because of the singing – and let’s look past the cutesy little songs and dances she’d perform during practice, she only sang the two same songs throughout the series as if she didn’t know anything else to practice – but also because of what happened when she was cast as the understudy.
Now, okay, I have done a lot of acting and musical myself, so maybe it will sound arrogant, but as excited as she was to be the understudy, she didn’t seem to have a clue what it meant. During script reading and other rehearsals, she literally just sat there. When someone asked her what she was doing – because the understudy needs to be able to perform the leading role if the leading actress is unable to, she would just blink her eyes and look all confused and I was like, does she not know what an understudy is? You can’t just sit there and think ‘oh, this doesn’t apply to me, I don’t need to practice this’. Uhm, guess what, you DO. The director would ask her questions about what she thought about the lead role and Joo Na and she’d be just like ‘oh I don’t know, I think she did well’, and the director actually had to point out to her that she had to pay attention as well. Also, for someone whose dream it was to star in a musical, she didn’t look all that excited to me during rehearsals AT ALL. I was seriously wondering if she even liked being there. It seemed like she was this naive girl with a dream of being a musical actress because she liked singing, but when it came to it, she actually fell on her face. I just found it such a waste that Lee Sung Kyung, the QUEEN of facial expressions, just fell flat expressing her emotions as Mi Ka. Honestly, each time she was asked a question, she would just look back at that person with a blank expression, not even answering. Such a shame, I know Sung Kyung can do so much better. Maybe it was just badly written, I don’t know.
Anyhow, those were aspects that made me question the choice of putting Mi Ka in the story as a musical actress, because it seemed like she hadn’t even heard of what being an understudy entailed. Whenever she got a clear compliment she got all happy, but whenever someone gave her some feedback to work with, she was just like ‘Oh wow these people really know their stuff’. Girl, the point here is that YOU know your stuff.
There was this one moment where Choi Jae Yoo complimented her on not just focussing on the song lyrics but actually reading through the lines and expressing the emotions behind it, and she literally looked at him like ‘???’ and when he walked away, she whispered to herself, ‘ “Reading between the lines”? …Wow, he must be a real genius…’ GIRL. It’s not rocket science. It’s the basic thing to know about singing – conveying a message, not just singing prettily. If you don’t even know this, how are you going to do this?
It just wasn’t realistic.
2. Mi Ka’s Way of Handling Things.
As I mentioned, I was very frustrated with the way in which Mi Ka dealt with the discovery that she was taking Do Ha’s time away to add to her own all this time.
This is what happens: she takes it upon herself to stop Do Ha’s time from spilling into hers, and she does this by suddenly, out of the blue, declaring to him that she can’t stand him anymore and wants to break up. She doesn’t explain anything, she just decides to stay away from him.
Do Ha, of course, is confused. One night they’re cuddling, kissing on the couch, she even tells him she loves him – the next she’s suddenly gone and when he meets her she tells him she doesn’t like him anymore. Initially he doesn’t believe her and keeps trying to talk with her and confront her, but every time it only results in her pushing him away even harder.
And the most angering thing was this: He already knew about the life clocks. Mi Ka had already told him that she needed him because he made her time stop. He already knew about it.
They’d also just had the whole arc with Do San in which she informed him of his brother’s decreasing time and that he had less than a month to live. Do Ha knew about the life clock phenomenon, so he would’ve probably also grasped the situation if she’d told him the problem honestly.
‘I can finally see your clock now and I discovered that all this time I’ve actually been taking your time away from you. The time that’s been added to my life is coming from yours. I can’t let this happen because I love you too damn much. How do we face this problem?’ < this is how it should’ve gone. It was their problem, something that had to do with both of them. But Mi Ka took it on as her own, not even telling him. And sure, it was to “protect” him, she did it to “save” him from herself. But the way she went about trying to accomplish what she wanted (I’m not sure what it was she wanted to accomplish because it made zero sense to me) was just wrong.
After she just plain lied to him about why she wanted to break up, when he confronts her again, she lies to him again saying that she discovered HER time was suddenly decreasing and it was because of him. Heck, she tells him he is going to kill her if he stays close to her. She literally guilt-trips him into staying away from her, she guilt-trips him into believing he’s an actual physical danger to her. She never once shows any intention to tell him the truth. Even though he would’ve believed her, he would’ve been informed about the severity of the situation and he would’ve done everything in his power to figure something out somehow BY HER SIDE. But no.
Instead of trusting him and telling him the simple truth, she just piled up a lie on top of another lie, making things worse and worse.
And here’s where I lost all respect for Mi Ka’s character. She acted so incredibly selfish. While maybe she thought she was doing it for him, not once did she think about how this would make him feel. That didn’t matter. She was actually causing more damage than necessary.
One time she said something like, ‘I’m just so terrified that one day I’m suddenly going to be gone and he’ll be so hurt.’ Uhm, excuse me? The way she treated him instead was way more hurtful and damaging than any of the ‘what might’ve been’ scenarios.
It just wasn’t fair to Do Ha. He deserved to know the truth. He deserved to know what was happening, at least. It wasn’t just her problem, it wasn’t just her secret. Do Ha kept proving again and again how much he was willing to do for her and she still kept running away whenever things got a little complicated, never confiding in him once.
I pitied Do Ha a lot. He just wanted to know why his girlfriend broke up with him all of a sudden, he had the right to an explanation. And instead of just giving him the truth, she kept making up lie after lie. I mean, it’s not like she’d have to explain the whole life clock phenomenon to him from the beginning. It just didn’t make sense to lie.
The only two people aware of Mi Ka’s situation were Madame Oh and Mi Ka’s best friend Seong Hee, but Mi Ka made them lie for her as well. Do Ha went to see the two of them multiple times for answers, but all they said to him was things like, ‘All you need to know is Mi Ka actually still loves you very much’. How the hell does that help? That made it even harder for him to understand why she broke up with him. Mi Ka went about telling everyone else how much she loved him, but in his face she would just push him away and tell him she didn’t want to be near him anymore. How is that taking care of things?
I mean, she even made Seong Hee lie to her family. She was so caught up in disappearing from Do Ha’s life that she didn’t even stop to think what might happen to her own mother and brother after she’d leave. Honestly, do you really think you mean so little to your friends and family that you think it’s okay to just decide by yourself to disappear and die quietly in your own time without notifying anyone?! What the hell was she thinking, I really couldn’t figure out what Mi Ka was thinking.
And although I loved Madame Oh the most out of every single character in this drama, I honestly wished she would’ve been the one to cut the crap and just tell Do Ha what was going on, but even she only gave him abstract advice. The greatest one was when she told him to ‘find the answer within himself’. Wow. How the hell do you expect him to do that when literally no one wants to tell him what’s going on?!
In the end, it actually takes for Do Ha to semi-figure it out by himself. He figures out that it has to be something to do with HIM, not Mi Ka. And even when he confronts her again with this, and when we finally think ‘Ah, now she’ll have to admit it finally!’, she STILL pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about. Girl. He’s literally spelling it out for you, he figured it out by himself because YOU wouldn’t spare 10 seconds to do so. And you’re STILL not going to be honest with him?! He gained the most damage out of this whole process, she was only worrying about how hard it was for HER to stay away from him. All the other people just had to deal with their own feelings.
And then finally, in the last two episodes, after Mi Ka successfully completes her musical adventure, they ultimately decided not to worry about the time they’ve got, they cover their respective life clocks and get together again and enjoy their time together. As Madame Oh had been telling her from the beginning, don’t worry so much and just enjoy the time you have together. They finally do that, they spend the night together, and he leaves the room for one second and I said out loud to my screen, ‘yep aaaaand she’s going to look at her clock’. Aaaand she looked at her clock. She panics, and the next chance she has, she sneaks away. Literally, they are in the supermarket together, they are briefly separated by a trolly, and she takes her chance and sneaks away without saying a word. Leaving Do Ha in panic and worry to look for her. In the meantime she just went to Madame Oh and is having a calm conversation with her while Do Ha is worrying sick. Like, what is wrong with this girl? Does she really have no notion of the fact that you can’t just sneak away without an explanation? Especially in the case where you’re with someone else who’s going to wonder where you went?
This is what I mean by selfish. She just made matters so enormous in her mind while she could’ve stayed calm and asked for help. But no, she keeps lying, even about the fact that she still looked at her clock even though they promised not to. She just kept running away from things, and when people finally found out (never through her honest personal explanation, tho), she would suddenly be the bigger person and comfort the people she would be leaving behind. Honestly, Seong Hee seemed more upset than Mi Ka about Mi Ka’s situation.
Mi Ka actually comforted Seong Hee saying stuff like, ‘take care of my family and yourself, eat well, be healthy, live a good life and join me later on’. Like, WHAT? You think it’s in Do Ha’s advantage that you’ll disappear but you don’t stop to think about how your mother will feel about you dying in a couple of weeks? What is wrong with you, Mikaela?!
I will keep it at that for my frustrations regarding Mi Ka’s character. I would like to lastly talk a bit more about Beth and Seong Hee.
On a general note, except for Madame Oh, almost all the women in this series displayed traits of selfishness.
First of all, Beth. Beth is the second female lead character in the series, so I have to cover her no matter what. Beth is a very whimsical and interesting character, not to mention slightly twisted. I think it’s easy to say that she’s been a princess all her life, daughter of a rich family and used to getting her way. She has been playing coy to Do Ha’s proposal attempts, but when Mi Ka enters the picture and Do Ha’s attention switches to her, Beth realizes she should’ve accepted his proposal when she still had the chance.
Instead of admitting her defeat, she uses (or abuses) the influence and power that she has to create situations that will be hard on Mi Ka. She sends people by Mi Ka’s house with a suitcase of money to make her family persuade her to stop seeing Do Ha (the classic Hana Yori Dango move), she buys Mi Ka gifts and tells her she can have everything she wants if she just stays away from Do Ha, she brings in Do Ha’s first love as a tool to create tension between them, and ultimately she starts sabotaging the musical production to get her revenge. She literally tries to force marriage onto Do Ha, even until the point where their parents meet and everything. She became very childish in her greed. She was a little girl that didn’t get the doll she wanted so badly and so she wanted to make sure that no one else did. She resorted to trying to break Do Ha as a way of revenge and when he officially rejected her, she suddenly didn’t know what to do anymore and just headed for the rooftop. She couldn’t handle a single rejection, and that alone already made her want to commit suicide. I say dramaqueen. And when she was crying her eyes out afterwards all I could think was, get over yourself girl. This is not the end of the world, not the only doll in the store, and definitely not something you should even consider taking your own life for. Have some more self-respect. She seemed like a strong enough character, I mean, the lengths she went to? She even managed to manipulate Do Ha’s father into threatening his son into marrying her. She learned her lesson the hard way. And then, in the last episode, she suddenly saw the light I guess, and she came to see Mi Ka’s performance and afterwards she was like supernice and I was just like… only one episode ago you literally threatened to ruin the lives of every single actor in the musical and now all is forgiven and forgotten? People are being forgiving to an unrealistic degree. Anyhow, her selfishness first seemed to come from an innocent place, because she genuinely didn’t know any different than to use her wealth to treat people. But after Do Ha fell for Mi Ka, her selfishness came purely from her jealousy. She just had to have Do Ha, and I don’t know why because I didn’t even feel like she was actually in love with him. So there were some twisted moments there.
Secondly, Seong Hee. Seong Hee got herself an upgrade from just being the female lead’s best friend when Mi Ka’s younger brother starts expressing romantic interest in her and she gains her own love story. However, even though it’s clear she has the hots for Choi Wi Jin (played by Kim Ro Woon), she keeps denying it and she keeps pushing him away as well. In the end it apparently only had to do with the fact that he was younger than her and didn’t have a job yet, because as soon as he got a job she was all like ‘let’s do this’. Anyways, she acted quite selfishly without a clear reason. Why take so much time to waste it on irrational worries like ‘I can’t fall in love with this person’. Dude, if you fall, you fall. You can try to stop it, but you can’t. That’s how feelings work, they do what they want.
I did find Seong Hee and Wi Jin cute together, I actually rooted for them more than I rooted for Mi Ka and Do Ha at a certain point.
One last frustration concerning Mi Ka and then I’m going to conclude my review.
At a certain point it occurred to me that it could be considered unfair for Mi Ka to have this power. She can see other people’s remaining time but she never tells anyone, while at the same time she knows her own time and is able to fully organize her life so that she can have no regrets before her time runs out. Isn’t that kind of selfish as well? I mean, of course, people maybe wouldn’t like to know what time they have left, but the fact that she had this power and had the power to decide what to do with it herself, seems kind of unfair to me in retrospect. Why not give other people the chance to plan the last couple of days/weeks/months before their time runs out?
One particular example lay with one of Mi Ka’s fellow actors in the musical. She was running against this lady in the auditions for the understudy and she won, even though Park Hye Ran (I think that was her name) was a better singer in my opinion. At a certain point Mi Ka spots Hye Ran’s clock and sees she only has 29 days left. However, she doesn’t do anything with this information, she doesn’t even tell Hye Ran to go be checked out at a hospital or to take a break – she just looks at it and then just goes on smiling as if nothing’s wrong. All the while leading up to the main performance, and especially when Hye Ran is cast as Mi Ka’s understudy, I was wondering what was going to happen to Hye Ran. Her time must be running out, why is Mi Ka not bothered by this. It almost seemed as if Mi Ka forgot about it or something. We even meet Hye Ran’s adorable little daughter who also mentions that her mother has been going to the hospital a lot.
On the day of the first performance tryouts, Hye Ran passes out on stage and is brought to a hospital… and that’s it. Apparently she just died like that.
Afterwards we only see Mi Ka walking home saying things to Do Ha like, ‘yeah, I knew she had little time left but I at least thought we’d make it to the performances together’ as if it were NOTHING. I’m sorry, was it just me or did Mi Ka show ZERO empathy for Hye Ran after she suddenly passed away? Compared to how her character was established in the beginning I thought at least she would be worried about Hye Ran throughout the rehearsals, but she did nothing and even after she’s gone she’s like ‘oh well’.
It made even less sense to me because in the end, after Mi Ka loses her ability to see the life clocks, she tells Madame Oh about the ‘positive’ sides of seeing the clocks. She says, ‘they enabled me to comfort people in their last moments’ or something. Well, while that might’ve been a positive and joyful experience for you, I can assure you the people dying had no idea you were comforting them, and I think it didn’t have real value to them either because they were in shock and panic. And this power she had to ‘stand by people in their last moments’ didn’t seem to occur to her in Hye Ran’s case. I don’t know, sometimes there were these weird unrealistic moments that completely went against the characteristics of the characters in my opinion.
The only thing I liked about this was when Hye Ran’s husband and daughter came to see the performance and the little girl saw her mother’s spirit dance along with the other actors, smiling happily.
The only moment that gave me watery eyes in the series was the flashback at the end which explained how Mi Ka and Do Ha’s fates got entertwined. Mi Ka’s grandmother passed away protecting young Mi Ka from getting hit by a car, which turned out to be Do Ha’s father’s car. Do Ha was in the backseat. From this moment on, Mi Ka became able to see people’s life clocks and she became able to see her own after unknowingly being bumped on the street by Do Ha in a crowd of people before they officially meet each other.
Anyways, little Mi Ka crying her eyes out about her grandmother and little Do Ha crying with her, apologizing and holding her hand was very heartwrenching. It gave me the most feels out of anything else that happened in the whole series.
I want to give a special shoutout to Kang Ki Doong, who played Do Ha’s assistant. I’ve seen him before in Moonlight Drawn by Clouds, Tomorrow With You and Fight For My Way, and I really like him. He was kind of victimized by Do Ha in this drama, though, poor guy. But I had a lot of sympathy for his character.
Lastly, a shoutout to two underrated characters of this show: Do Ha’s doctor friend Park Sung Bin (played by Tae In Ho) and Mi Ka’s mother Jin Ra Hee (played by Na Young Hee).
First of all, Doctor Park didn’t have a lot to do in this drama and I genuinely wonder about the meaning of his character. He was shown as Do Ha’s doctor in the beginning, but after a couple of episodes we never really heard about Do Ha’s ‘anxiety syndrome’ again (until he collapses from shock after Mi Ka pushes him away for the fiftieth time). Honestly, he didn’t have a real purpose in my opinion. And one time I questioned his credibility as a psychologist when he just picked up the phone because Do Ha was calling him, even though he was in the middle of a session with a severe case patient. Like, I don’t think you are allowed to do that as a professional? And even though he knew this patient was borderline, he still didn’t anticipate he would snap? Like, it was obvious to ME in one glance, but not to the person who had been treating him for who knows how long?
Just another little badly written thingie.
And I wished Mi Ka’s mother would’ve had a little more priority in Mi Ka’s life. I actually liked how she was portrayed as a spoiled woman who had to figure out how to survive by earning her own money and taking care of her two grown kids like that. I felt sympathy for her as well and she also didn’t deserve to be treated less by Mi Ka. I mean, one time she found Mi Ka’s bankbooks and she got all sentimental, thinking that Mi Ka had been saving up money for them and she spent a little of it to treat her as a thank you. And Mi Ka just lashed out at her. Of course, she saved that money for after she was gone, but how the hell was her mom supposed to know that? She didn’t have the right to scold her mother, if so she should’ve told her from the start. And in the end she was even going to just disappear from her family without even saying anything and it was Seong Hee who couldn’t bear keeping the truth from them. Quite the daughter you are, Mi Ka.
You think what you are doing is the best for everyone, but you don’t stop to actually ask them what THEY think is best before you make a decision. Taking it on yourself can sometimes be considered courageous, but in this case I just found it cowardly and selfish. Making these kind of decisions about your LIFE for god’s sake, it’s not something you should be allowed to do without considering other people’s views, especially the ones that are closest to you and care about you the most.
One more thing I have to note, the use of product placement was no joke as well. I know Lee Sung Kyung is the new face of Laneige beauty products, but to actually showcase them so obviously like this really started to stand out. Sometimes when using the product they would even emphasize ‘Oh, what’s that new product?’ ‘Oh, my skin feels so soft and hydrated after using it!’ as if it were an actual commercial. Holding these moments against the already weakly story, it just made it worse for me.
Anyhow, what I did like about the drama was that the title was very well chosen. ‘About Time’. Despite all the dramatic events that occurred, the story was generally about time. About time, and how to spend it.
The message to me was conveyed the strongest when Mi Ka lost her ability to see the clocks and returned to being on the same page as everyone else: we don’t know how much time we’ve got left, and it’s up to us to spend it wisely and enjoy every minute of it. The mysterious thing about time IS that we don’t know how it works. It’s a very relative concept and we fill it in as we choose. I would consider it unfair if there were people who knew about everyone else’s time, I don’t know if I’d want to know about my own life clock. So it’s best to keep it hidden for everybody. That’s the thing about life, it’s special because we get to decide how we fill it up ourselves. The fact that everyone has their own view on time and how to spend it is what makes it so special.
I hope to be able to write more honest reviews from here on and I hope, despite the occasional frustrations and criticisms, my reviews will continue to be insightful and relatable. If you disagree with me, feel free to leave comments but let’s please respect each other’s opinions 🙂 I’m not here to quarrel or anything, just to share insights and opinions.
I will still keep watching Lee Sung Kyung’s dramas because I know she’s a great actress and she can do way better than this! Stay strong, queen!
On to the next one!
