onceiwaskingofspain
Lackluster Legal Drama and Thrill-less Thriller with a Lukewarm Love Story
Good Things:
* The cinematography. Unlike a lot of older network dramas, it had a large enough budget to be entirely pre-produced. This allowed for the use of upper-end camera work, editing and effects that make WYWS feel much more recent than it is.
* The hook. Contagious precognition with a butterfly effect factor is an riveting twist to a legal thriller. The first few episodes do an excellent job presenting its premise, and are overall the strongest part of the series.
So-So Things:
* The romance. Fate tells us the leads are Meant To Be and they just shrug and roll with it. There's some cute domestic/daily life moments in between the legal cases and a few pretty cinematic tableaus, but little meaningful relationship building.
* The tone. Despite the murders, dire dreams and tragic backstories everything is light and breezy. It's understandable that people see it as a comfort watch because the entire drama - even moments that should be high conflict - is mostly one note.
Bad Things:
* The 2D characters. The Good Guys are Just Good; they always win and always make the right moral choices. The Bad Guys are Just Bad; they're there to move the plot along and nothing else. The lack of narrative nuance makes them all seem more like archetypes than individuals.
* The MIA main plot. The legal cases don't share any themes or common threads, and they're unrealistically neatly tied up with any loose ends/consequences either ignored or swept away by time skips. They add nothing to the central story, which ends up endlessly sidelined until all the conflict and resolution is crammed into the final few episodes.
Interesting Things:
* Park Hye Ryun also wrote Dream High (2011), I Hear Your Voice (2013), Pinocchio (2014-2015) and Start-Up (2020).
Recommended if you enjoy straightforward, easy-watch dramas and don't mind some rote characters and storytelling. But compared to PHR's earlier thrillers, WYWS is a pretty pastiche of everything that made them compelling without the same heart and complexity in the narrative and characters.
* The cinematography. Unlike a lot of older network dramas, it had a large enough budget to be entirely pre-produced. This allowed for the use of upper-end camera work, editing and effects that make WYWS feel much more recent than it is.
* The hook. Contagious precognition with a butterfly effect factor is an riveting twist to a legal thriller. The first few episodes do an excellent job presenting its premise, and are overall the strongest part of the series.
So-So Things:
* The romance. Fate tells us the leads are Meant To Be and they just shrug and roll with it. There's some cute domestic/daily life moments in between the legal cases and a few pretty cinematic tableaus, but little meaningful relationship building.
* The tone. Despite the murders, dire dreams and tragic backstories everything is light and breezy. It's understandable that people see it as a comfort watch because the entire drama - even moments that should be high conflict - is mostly one note.
Bad Things:
* The 2D characters. The Good Guys are Just Good; they always win and always make the right moral choices. The Bad Guys are Just Bad; they're there to move the plot along and nothing else. The lack of narrative nuance makes them all seem more like archetypes than individuals.
* The MIA main plot. The legal cases don't share any themes or common threads, and they're unrealistically neatly tied up with any loose ends/consequences either ignored or swept away by time skips. They add nothing to the central story, which ends up endlessly sidelined until all the conflict and resolution is crammed into the final few episodes.
Interesting Things:
* Park Hye Ryun also wrote Dream High (2011), I Hear Your Voice (2013), Pinocchio (2014-2015) and Start-Up (2020).
Recommended if you enjoy straightforward, easy-watch dramas and don't mind some rote characters and storytelling. But compared to PHR's earlier thrillers, WYWS is a pretty pastiche of everything that made them compelling without the same heart and complexity in the narrative and characters.
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