After months (months? sure) of hearing about how good this drama is I finally decided to watch it.

Admittedly it annoys me sometimes when people are right, especially when they go gushy over something that is playing at the same time that something I prefer is playing and they totally ignore my thing, the jerks. That said, well. People were right. This show was great. I really loved it, and I loved all the ways it tried to challenge ideas surrounding sex, identity, kink, etc. Maybe not always entirely successfully, but the attempt was there and honestly, I loved how it seemed to be pointing out hypocrisy towards women in particular (there are several examples of this, but I am thinking particularly of how Jean was treated after the party vs. how Alex was. I love that the show made a point of explicitly stating how messed up the disparate reactions were, and how unfair. I also liked that despite following Alex as he goes on this journey, the show never attempted to pretend that he was the wronged party in that situation. Neither did Alex himself, which was refreshing). I'm not used to that from my shows, full stop.

I'm also just a sucker for a good time travel trope, and it always amuses me when the mostly decent kid travels and wakes up in this body of a huge jerk and then has to work back how the hell they got there. Watching Alex fumble through figuring out how the hell he landed on the career he chose, let alone wtf happened at that party so long ago, was kind of hilarious. I enjoyed the balance of humor and seriousness a lot. It kept the show from ever feeling too heavy.

One thing I have heard over and over and over again about Jojo is that he gets great performances from the cast, performances that feel authentic and real. I have to say that yeah, I get the praise. You know how with some directors you can see their hand in everything they do? Jojo is like that, I think, but his hand is seen in how little he's present in the overall product. It feels like he hands his cast a script, gives them a general idea, and then lets them do their thing and gives them room to explore their characters in an organic way. I'm sure that there is some management happening, that's his job, but mostly these characters feel lived in in a way that strikes me because so often it isn't there. Maybe it's a mix of his directing style and really good casting.

Speaking of casting, this one was excellent. I really liked everyone, but especially New, Fah, and Jan. New played Alex well - he's a character that I think could easily get annoying, but New managed to make him likeable more oft than not. Even when Alex was doing things I knew were stupid, I was more "oh, honey, no" than I was "you're the worst", so that was nice. Fah as Jean was just all around lovely, she played her so well. You could see the bones of the girl she was before everything went wrong in the woman she became, just a little harder, a little less trusting. But she stayed fighting for people because that's just the core of who she is. Her struggle with her desire to let go of what happened vs. her inability to do so was heart wrenching, and yeah, I guessed the big last secret fairly early on but one thing I liked (that I mentioned above) is that she was never ever once treated like she did something wrong. Oh, in show she got it in the teeth, but the show itself never failed to point out exactly how fucked up that was. Also Fah just did a great job and she's very, very pretty. I could watch her forever honestly. And Jan just continues to be a delight in everything I see her in.

After all this praise, I have to say I did find myself a little bit annoyed by the ending. It felt a bit too pat, especially after everything else was handled with such nuance. It was so weird to have Alex wake up and get to have his Scrooge turnaround because it was still Christmas after all. And some of the ways that he took care of things annoyed me, too. He came across as a little too "I know best for you" towards everyone's problems for a 17 year old kid. Which I get, he had all this knowledge from his messed up future under his belt, but I didn't love it. I did love his determination to be a better brother, though (another thing I loved? The fact that he helped Ice pull his head out of his bum w/r/t Kim's abortion choice in the messed up future. The fact that they had one of the male characters say, in no uncertain terms, that it's actually *her* choice and that being supportive means letting her make it, floored me, as did the fact that Ice actually listened and was fully supportive after his initial selfish freak out (and he admitted it was selfish! I couldn't believe it)).

I also felt like it would have been better to have a less entirely happy ending? Which is weird coming from me, since I love happy endings. But I really liked the message that sometimes there are things that you can't fix, some mistakes you can't take back, and then I felt like the show immediately undercut that idea by...letting Alex go back and make everything right. I think I might have appreciated the ending more had Alex stayed in the future after that last encounter with Jean. Then again I don't think *Jean* deserved having to be stuck that way, so there you go. For her sake, I'm happy it went the other way.

Overall I found this extremely enjoyable, and well, I can't say that I will be sad about Jojo's penchant for happy endings if that means that things go the way I want in other dramas. :D