Speaking of Woo Tak, he endears himself to us even more (did we even think that was possible?) in the finale when he forfeits his job as a police officer rather than perjure as a witness, and then reveals just how alone in the world he is, with parents that wouldn’t even care if they learned of his sacrifice. Remember all that talk in the first few episodes about time flowing like water, and the mystery of what would come of the characters altering the flow of time?Īre we meant to think that Choi’s death by car crash is time’s way of making up for the fact that they saved Woo Tak from dying via car crash at the very beginning? Does this mean that somehow the direction to which they redirected time has taken root, and our main trio will no longer face constant mortal peril? It would be nice if the drama offered a clear explanation of this, instead of leaving us scrambling to fill in the gaps. Investigator Choi’s death also makes us wonder if this is the drama’s way, however ambiguous, of resolving some questions that it posed and then largely ignored. Jae Chan talking to a dying Investigator Choi in the present, knowing that the Choi of 13 years ago is/was listening to his words in a dream and has/will live with them in his heart for so many years – and still make the same choices that will ultimately lead to his death, just to watch over Jae Chan – gives a new level of poignancy to the entire arc of the drama. The death of Choi Dam Dong ( Kim Won Hae), so shortly after the revelation that he was the police officer that Hong Joo and Jae Chan saved when they were children, was heart-wrenching in the best of ways. “While You Were Sleeping” really finished strong with its bittersweet yet feel-good finale. Warning: the remainder of the review contains spoilers for Episodes 13-16 What we got was a lot more straightforward, but also more focused on the comedy and the relationships, which I’m not complaining about, because it helped furnish the characters with so many layers, both in the present and in their shared past. In general, this was one of the biggest disappointments in “While You Were Sleeping” – it bestows its characters with this remarkable and interesting power… but then does little to explore the how and why of this power. To break up this pattern, the drama might have benefitted from delving further into the dream abilities. But because this cycle became so familiar, each hazard that the characters faced felt less urgent, so that by the time the drama reached Hong Joo’s big scene with the green umbrella, the situation had lost much of its gravity because we were so used to Jae Chan, Hong Joo, and Woo Tak bailing each other out. Perhaps it’s inevitable that a show in which the characters can see the future is bound to be predictable. The criminals that Yoo Beom defends are more standard villains, and the drama became a bit repetitive when it cycled through one of these bad guys after another, falling into a familiar pattern of our characters dealing with the latest case, dreaming about some related danger, and then saving each other from this danger. The Three Flying Dragons, on the other hand, choose to always diligently to stick to what they know to be right, at times even putting their careers at risk, in their desire to do good. But he’s a good foil for our main characters, and through this contrast the drama shows how the choices people make impact those around them. Self-centered Yoo Beom never cares about how his decisions affect others, and ends up having to lie and fabricate, digging himself a hole that eventually becomes way too deep to climb out of. Yoo Beom is admittedly confusing as a villain it would be a stretch to say he’s full-blown evil, because we do see signs of his self-loathing for defending some truly vile people. Little details can make drama characters come to life, and it’s a credit to the show’s writers that “While You Were Sleeping” is rife with these humanizing elements, like Lee Yoo Beom’s ( Lee Sang Yeob) nervous habit of rolling up bits of paper when he’s thinking. And while none of the characters presented particularly challenging roles to play, the actors were well-suited to their parts in a way that really made them shine. Each and every character added an extra dimension to the drama that made the storyline that much richer.
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