Kiruha-Chou
First I'll write about what merited it an overall score slightly leaning towards the positive side:
The Light in Your Eyes shows a lot of the contempt and belittling that old people receive. The story deals with this often in a wide array of situations, trying to reflect what it feels like to be old, and at times how age becomes a sole reason to be disregarded.
Even more interestingly, it gets to show it from an audience perspective as well, and that’s really infrequent in pro-youth, always glamorous K-drama. I saw lots of comment from people who were just waiting for the old version of Kim Hye Ja to go away (seeing all she did as wrong) and the 25-year-old to return, refusing to believe that the “grandmother” is the main character (and also despite the fact that Kim Hye Ja is a better actress than Han Ji Min. I do not intend to take away from what Han Ji Min does, but the skill from the older lady really shows).
In fact, after it seemed her old version had done all she could for the story, even I was eager for the protagonist to go back to her younger self so that all the characters could have a better life. It’s a pretty sad symptom, but it’s good that Dazzling is able to bring it out clearly.
As it happens there is a lot the drama wants to bring out—on the sad side. Scamming, solitude, neglect, bitterness. It communicates these aspects of real life well enough that one can actually learn something from it, despite the inconsistencies visible in the plot if one looks away from it as separate, isolated scenes or cases and sees it whole.
And there are many inconsistencies.
Dazzling is unredeemably slow. I thought it was about to pick up after episode three, but it didn’t. And this happens with a lot with many things in the drama. When a character is about to make sense, something happens that changes them and it’s as if we didn’t know them at all. When it looks like the plot is going to progress at last… the turning point never comes. The episodes throw one bait after another to make you look forward to a scene, or tell you “this will solve it!” and it never comes, it doesn’t work out like that. “Bad guys” get away as they please and do what they want, the good characters are certain comic relief at times but often don’t do more than that.
Neither the changes of pace nor the connection between one event and the next are well done in the slightest, and it really hurt my patience to find out things such as a couple of episodes being spent on a “lost” dog to then find out that after that dramatic problem was “solved”, the dog was just never brought up again.
Examples like these are later pushed aside due to more important events, but it makes the episode-by-episode watching frustrating nonetheless.
Summarising over the categories, in “Story” it’d be helpful to be able to differentiate between premise and execution, because in a case such as this one I’d definitely use that. The soundtrack doesn’t stand out at all, and on the other hand the acting is great and for many characters it gets better and better as it goes on (Han Ji Min’s which I mentioned above, for instance). And I’d never think of re-watching this drama.
Overall, this drama is strange. The premise isn’t the reason as much as the uneven, tremendously hole-filled plot of inconsistent tone, content and pace. It’s especially weird because most characters do earn a place for themselves and are sensitively defined even among all those fragrant issues.
I would decidedly not “recommend” The Light in Your Eyes because it’s actually really hard to watch. It takes constant patience, it’s tremendously boring every few scenes (it brings your interest back up in-between so that you still watch) and often I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t just plainly wasting my time, and there’s something that will test even the most tolerant viewers. (Something which I’m leaving out entirely in this review and that would change the context of some things I’ve written entirely.)
However there is good in this story as well, some of it rare and a lot of details very worth-watching. And depending on how you take the plot-choices, watching it whole might actually make you love it more, rather than less.
The Light in Your Eyes shows a lot of the contempt and belittling that old people receive. The story deals with this often in a wide array of situations, trying to reflect what it feels like to be old, and at times how age becomes a sole reason to be disregarded.
Even more interestingly, it gets to show it from an audience perspective as well, and that’s really infrequent in pro-youth, always glamorous K-drama. I saw lots of comment from people who were just waiting for the old version of Kim Hye Ja to go away (seeing all she did as wrong) and the 25-year-old to return, refusing to believe that the “grandmother” is the main character (and also despite the fact that Kim Hye Ja is a better actress than Han Ji Min. I do not intend to take away from what Han Ji Min does, but the skill from the older lady really shows).
In fact, after it seemed her old version had done all she could for the story, even I was eager for the protagonist to go back to her younger self so that all the characters could have a better life. It’s a pretty sad symptom, but it’s good that Dazzling is able to bring it out clearly.
As it happens there is a lot the drama wants to bring out—on the sad side. Scamming, solitude, neglect, bitterness. It communicates these aspects of real life well enough that one can actually learn something from it, despite the inconsistencies visible in the plot if one looks away from it as separate, isolated scenes or cases and sees it whole.
And there are many inconsistencies.
Dazzling is unredeemably slow. I thought it was about to pick up after episode three, but it didn’t. And this happens with a lot with many things in the drama. When a character is about to make sense, something happens that changes them and it’s as if we didn’t know them at all. When it looks like the plot is going to progress at last… the turning point never comes. The episodes throw one bait after another to make you look forward to a scene, or tell you “this will solve it!” and it never comes, it doesn’t work out like that. “Bad guys” get away as they please and do what they want, the good characters are certain comic relief at times but often don’t do more than that.
Neither the changes of pace nor the connection between one event and the next are well done in the slightest, and it really hurt my patience to find out things such as a couple of episodes being spent on a “lost” dog to then find out that after that dramatic problem was “solved”, the dog was just never brought up again.
Examples like these are later pushed aside due to more important events, but it makes the episode-by-episode watching frustrating nonetheless.
Summarising over the categories, in “Story” it’d be helpful to be able to differentiate between premise and execution, because in a case such as this one I’d definitely use that. The soundtrack doesn’t stand out at all, and on the other hand the acting is great and for many characters it gets better and better as it goes on (Han Ji Min’s which I mentioned above, for instance). And I’d never think of re-watching this drama.
Overall, this drama is strange. The premise isn’t the reason as much as the uneven, tremendously hole-filled plot of inconsistent tone, content and pace. It’s especially weird because most characters do earn a place for themselves and are sensitively defined even among all those fragrant issues.
I would decidedly not “recommend” The Light in Your Eyes because it’s actually really hard to watch. It takes constant patience, it’s tremendously boring every few scenes (it brings your interest back up in-between so that you still watch) and often I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t just plainly wasting my time, and there’s something that will test even the most tolerant viewers. (Something which I’m leaving out entirely in this review and that would change the context of some things I’ve written entirely.)
However there is good in this story as well, some of it rare and a lot of details very worth-watching. And depending on how you take the plot-choices, watching it whole might actually make you love it more, rather than less.
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