Review – Tomorrow With You

This is a show about a guy who can jump back and forth between his current time line and the future (until his own death, which isn’t too long in the future so he’s got a limited jump frame).  Anyways, using his ability to pop forward and backward in time via the subway, he’s able to make some great investment decisions and manages a successful real estate company… doing little to no work, showing up in ripped jeans, treating the majority of his employees like douchebags, and being generally an ass to everyone.  Normal CEO behavior, I guess, according to K-World.  It isn’t until he decides to use his amazing time traveling ability to actually prevent a death that his own life changes – and his life gets further tangled with a beautiful photographer’s whom he decides to marry in an attempt to prevent his own future demise.

Since this drama was so insular – so focused on just two characters – it would have been a LOT BETTER if the two characters had been more interesting and/or more likable.  They were just… eh.  Both of them.  They recently played very cool characters in other shows I loved (Shin Min-A in Oh My Venus… adorable! and Lee Je-Hoon was cool as cucumbers as the newbie cop in Signal), which only made it worse.

For a show about time travel, I felt like I was stuck in a time hole watching this.  My God, it just dragged on and on for hours… and for what?

Overall Rating – Final Verdict… abandoned to the K-Drama Graveyard.  Didn’t finish it… don’t care to.

More Musings with Spoilers…

Okay.

I haven’t finished this drama yet.  I will.  Eventually.  But Jesus!  It’s so tedious!  I feel like I’ve been watching it for years already and it’s STILL NOT OVER.  Sigh.  Anyways, here are my thoughts so far…

Small Scale Time Travel.  So, for a time traveling guy, he doesn’t over do his abilities.  He just becomes rich and smug.  I personally don’t understand why he doesn’t have more fun with it.  And… leave the country more?  If you can move back and forth in time, the temptation would be too strong, I think, for anyone to resist.  I suppose there is the risk of being investigated for insider information, but you know they could never prove it.  And if you just pick one or two key things – boom.  I would also have my hands in the lives of other people.  I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.  Especially if my own parents had died in an accident, I would be trying to prevent further accident deaths all the time.  All the time.  Like a secret super hero.

And alcoholism.  I am generally amused and appalled by how this issue is glossed over in k-dramas.  The lead female has a serious, dreadful alcohol problem.  I generally find the cute drunken shenanigans in k-dramas adorable.  Not this drama, though.  This gal is a drunk.  And it’s not adorable at all.  I think it’s safe to call that alcoholism.  Can’t stop with one drink?  Can’t stop until you’re plastered until oblivion?  Frequent black outs?  Frequent humiliating and embarrassing episodes yet you continue to drink?  Hm… check your handbook, sweetie.  That’s alcoholism.  And I don’t care how pretty you are, any man is a fool to tackle that mess without serious reservations.  I can be judgey here because I am an ex-lush and spent the better portion of my youth plastered beyond oblivion and it’s probably a small miracle that I survived it and am sober today.  Maybe that’s why every scene where she got hammered made me cringe a bit more than it should have… but Jesus, it did.  I felt like hiding under the blankets, it was so painful to watch.  I know it’s supposed to paint her as this pitiful damsel in need of saving, but it just took it too far… it was too pitiful… she didn’t need a boyfriend, she needed rehab.  Though magically her drinking problem disappeared after three or four episodes.  Just poof!  Apparently in K-World a boyfriend is a cure for alcoholism after all.  Gone.

Sometimes I am not sure if it’s chemistry or just what happens when two really attractive people get together and smile at each other.  We’ve been fooled by advertising into thinking that is love for so long that our brains automatically process it.  Yet something felt a little disingenuous about this couple.  I don’t know… they were pretty and looked pretty together, but they didn’t blow me away.  And as their romance was the SOLE FOCUS of this entire show, I felt it should have felt a little more intense.  Maybe this magically changes somewhere towards the end, but I kinda doubt it.  It just feels generic to me.  They were cutesy and cute but it all felt like a commercial to me.

And it was so obviously her dad.  From like… what?  Episode two?

Why does the plotline seem so small when we’re dealing with someone as cool as Time Travel?  If the plotline is going to be small – the characters have to be BIG.  My Love From Another Star had a cool alien time twist… and it was very, very small scale.  But it was fun, because the main character (the girl, at least) was crazy over the top and filled up the screen with her shenanigans and personality.  Not to mention the serial killer.  And even the straight laced alien was fascinating in his way.  Neither of the characters in this show are fascinating.

Ugh.

I’ll come back to it.  Eventually.  Right now I’m enjoying Strong Woman Do Bong Soon.  Now there’s a show that knows how to take a cool element and have a good time with it.