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While You Were Sleeping korean drama review
Completed
While You Were Sleeping
1 people found this review helpful
by catherine
May 26, 2020
32 of 32 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 8.5
Story 8.5
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
This review may contain spoilers
This is seriously close to one of my favorites, and it could have been, with a few tweaks. Other than that, the premise is seriously intriguing, the cinematography is gorgeous, the romance was natural, and the plot twists were gut-wrenching.

I think I just wanted a bit more mystery with the criminals. There were some, but the show used a lot of dramatic irony — telling the audience who was at fault before the characters knew. It's a powerful tool for sure and I loved the frustration it caused me, but at the same time it got very formulaic, especially when it came down to The Big One at the end. I think my favorite subplots were the earliest ones — the car accident which was one of the best first episodes I've ever scene, and the domestic abuse one when cop and reporter's dreams clashed.

Going off of that, I think the show did a really good job with the mini-mysteries style. I'm usually not a fan of these because it reminds me of kids' shows where trouble pops up and is resolved in an episode. But WYWS tied them into the lives of our main characters really well and that's why I felt so emotionally involved in every case. Still, I kind of wish that the characters hadn't won pretty much every case they had, because I felt like a loss at some point would've made the antagonist (already a very powerful character) seem more competent.

With that being said, I thought the antagonist lawyer was a really good character but could've used more backstory that was unrelated to the main characters. He did a lot of evil things but at the same time seemed to have a conscience and some disgust towards his clients. He seemed to be really powerful and good at being bad, but because the main characters always seemed to defeat him, I never felt like he was on the same playing field.

I also wish the dreams were utilized more in different ways; I loved it when the question of knowing and changing the future became unclear, and the drama discussed how changing the future doesn't always mean "better." There's a lot of potential in what "the future" entails but the future mostly used it only as a tool for the main characters to get ahead in their reporter/prosecutor adventures.

With all those things being said, however, I still really loved a lot of things about this drama, especially the Investigator plot twist that totally BLEW MY MIND.

The ending mostly wrapped things up with a nice bow, though I have to say I have an aversion to the Vehicle-of-Doom trope despite how they reasoned it. The main characters were really good together and I loved both their personalities (humor was an added bonus), and I think the OST and the aesthetic of this entire drama really completed it.
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