I wanted to love this drama so much. After the first two episodes or so, I was hooked. It was a beautiful, cinematic experience with great actors, characters that I was immediately invested in and a story that I couldn't wait to hear.

Then sometime before we even reached halfway, all of that went 'poof!' and I was left disillusioned, having just wasted over 16 hours of my life.

Before I get into the drama's problems, I want to give it praise for what I feel it did right. The opening episodes were paced so well. They were interesting, they pulled me in, and I eagerly waited for this drama to unfold. The characters of Yeong and Eun Sup were amazing - by the end of it, I was solely watching for their scenes, especially their interactions with one another. Their roles have added Woo Do Hua to my list of actors to watch out for. And, at least to start, I did like the chemistry between the two leads. At the start. Remember that for later, because it's one of the keys to this drama's downfall. Most of the actors did a great job with what they were given and I commend them for it, because I can only imagine what kind of directions they were given when the script was such a mess, and yet they did it. They pulled it off. But I would say that they were the first sign that something was wrong - or Lee Min Ho was, specifically, when I noticed him giving no feeling to the character of Lee Gon. Having seen him act before, I knew he could do better. But I figured, maybe it was just because of the character he was playing. Maybe once the plot revved up, he would show some emotion on his face. With all the comedy towards the start of the drama, his flat tone added to the jokes, so I convinced myself that things would change when the stakes were raised, and I was content.

There is a problem when the side characters to a drama are better written and more immersive than the leads. That was the case for almost all of the characters in this drama, and that was the second bad omen.

It was obvious from episode one that time travel was going to be a factor later in the drama, so I expected it. I'm not someone who takes issue with time travel being included in dramas because so long as it's handled well, the unavoidable logical failings of it don't bother me. I understand that you can't make much sense out of it so provided that the addition of it adds to the story and they handle it carefully, I have no problem with it. Seeing as it was foreshadowed in the very first episode, I was sure that they must have thought it through well. They were confident enough to add it to the start of their drama. That's a LOT of confidence. They had to have given it careful consideration and dedicated a lot of time to mapping out their manipulation of it, surely.

I was wrong.

But the time travel was not my biggest gripe with the story. It's up there, but the worst part of the drama has to be the editing. Episodes jump around from past to future to past again, from one world to the next, and at first, they bothered to add a little note card at the bottom or in the corner to tell you where you were, but that didn't last and the jumps became so frequent that half the time I didn't know what I was looking at. It just got worse with time, not better, and made it very hard to understand the story. Usually, dramas that jump between times or worlds will at least provide some sort of visual or verbal buffer to ground you, something that lets it tell its story without confusing you. I've watched plenty of these dramas and they all do it in a different way. With time travel, they often use a filter or change the colour balance between times. Signal and Life on Mars both gave the past a sepia hue. Circle dedicated the first half of its episodes to the past, then at the halfway mark added a timecard. Between worlds, either both worlds will be different enough to know visually, or the jumps will be acknowledged by the characters so that you know where they are. TKEM decided to include both time travel and alternate realities to their story and yet could only rarely be bothered to give you any direction. I can't enjoy a drama if I can't follow it. I shouldn't have to look through every episode with a fine-toothed comb to figure out what's happening.

The next problem is the leads. I liked them in the beginning, but they quickly fell out of favour when the script stopped respecting them. Tae Eul is a police officer with martial arts experience who, at some points, becomes completely helpless and in need of rescue. There are several--yes, as it more than one, sometimes multiple in an episode--scenes of her sobbing uncontrollably whenever Lee Gon leaves her. When he's gone, either she's assisting with the mess of a plot or she's pining over him. She barely has any agency. And Lee Gon shows maybe three expressions throughout the whole story, all lukewarm. Even when he should be emoting, even when something should be happening inside of him, there's barely anything on his face. I don't know if LMH was directed to act like this, or if he just decided not to act, but his character felt less structured than wet cardboard.

While I haven't seen Mister Sunshine, a lot of the problems with the leads remind me of Goblin, the writer's previous work. Even some of the songs remind me of the Goblin OST. I remember plenty of scenes where Kim Go Eun's character in Goblin would do the same sad sobbing that she had to do here, but I don't remember hating it quite as much there, and I think that has to do with their characterizations and the editing surrounding them. I've noticed the writer just likes to fill her romances with sappy sad pining and a lot of angst that is eventually covered up at the very end. But where Golbin focused mostly on the characters, TKEM started with a promise for a big, grand story and never delivered.

The story doesn't treat its viewers with any intelligence. It gives us rules for these worlds that it freely and consistently breaks, it forgets some things that happen and shoehorns in others, and by the end of it we're left with this lukewarm mishmash of unfinished ideas that don't really mean anything. Others have already gone over how insulting it is to its viewers so I won't go too into detail here. But what upsets me the most is that I watched it all. I finished it, hoping that it would get better, that it would pick itself up in the second half and return to the drama that it was in the first two episodes. But here I am. And my review is this long. And it's all negative.

I will admit there was one scene, one TINY moment in the last episode, that made me feel something. Two characters holding hands, and what it shows while they do. But even there, I was feeling something for the concept, not the characters they belonged to. In the last episode, I didn't care about them. Today I just finished Hyde, Jekyll, Me, a notoriously poorly written trashy drama that I watched during burnouts and I felt more for the characters in that mess than I did for what should have been my favourite story of the year, TKEM. And well, that says a lot. But I can say this.

If nothing else, thank you, Kim Eun Sook, for giving us Jo Eun Sup. I will treasure him always.