WYWS is a snoozie Krom w/ some fantasy, some bad guys that need some taking down + some good stuff going down (food) & a director that's wonderful w/ some comedy. Want some?
Out-of-work reporter, Nam Hong-joo, helps her mom run a small eatery. The intro reveals that her dreams are #real - Not every dream, just the ones like visions. They #feel real. Viewers get to experience one: Thru a car window, a man holds a 🚬. She only gets glimpses. His face barely visible, he flicks a lighter, which unveils a bandaid on his hand. The car explodes. Snow falls softly.
She rouses & races to 🖊 all she can recall & re-stations it to her BR window. Copious 📝 predate this recent one - It's HJ's routine. She learns the details & she looks for these victims - since she's been a kid. But she's never saved anyone, not even her dad. Even the few times the date, time & place, were revealed, she wasn't able to save 1 soul. One day, Band-aid-man stops his car right in front of her! She rushes to him, pleading: 'Don't smoke, you're in danger.' Gruffly barking at her to leave him alone, he drives off to his death. ❄ falls.
Devastated. She's devestated. A 'target' stopped right in front of her & the outcome is the same. It's a tenet of her life: She can't alter fate. She's Pandora.
Her father was killed b/c he chose duty over duration. He chose to show a warm 💛 to a troubled stranger, rather than to keep his own 💓 beating. He chose work over family. It's a good reminder for us. He KNEW HJ's dreams come true, yet - He still went to work & didn't leave the 🚌 when a disturbed looking soldier got on. Duty, muscle memory & routine can be a problem if we institutionalize ourselves.🛑& 👁
Current day is yrs later. HJ has a horrible vision of an accident that leads to her imprisonment & her mom's death. Not seeing when/where, she changes trivial things, like her hair, hoping it will buffet fate. Otherwise, she can only ⏳. Fate is fate, but Hong-joo will restlessly work to prevent these tragedies. In order to rest easy, she's compelled to do #something.
Jung Jae-chan's police chief father was shot & murdered. JC😶it all. One of their last discussions was abt JC's future: Dad wants JC to achieve a higher station than his own 9th-level civil servant. JC promises he will. Promises. At the time, JC was being tutored, & it wasn't going well. His tutor's the one to blame. In suggesting they cheat, so they'll look good, he reveals his lousy character. JC said he wouldn't 💭 of cheating, to which the response is: "If you don't, I will & if discovered, I'll accuse #you of doing it," which all came to pass. JC hates his tutor, Lee Yoo-beom. He hated him then, & he hates him now.
It's just JC & his little brother, Seung-won, whom JC has cared for while working+working×working hard - all the time. He's kept his schooling up, kept his grades up, kept his sleep up, & attained #1goal of law school admission. Once graduated, he➡marches to the DA's 🏛. Locking criminals away is his pipedream (+ DA's are over 9th levels). He is determined to save other fathers from dying & making more orphans like him & Seung-won.
"Newbie" is his rank&name at the DA's. There's plenty of razzing, as well as subtle pressure to fit in. Most of the others are, in part, like mirages, playing up what they think & like, to cozen the boss. Newbie wouldn't 💭 of that, either. He doesn't play well w/ others🔜Sickle in hand, he hits the turf hacking out his own path. Ipso facto, his job is never done. The🗂 start🗃piling up, b/c he's going to bring them ALL to justice.
JC has dreams that seem like visions. They feel real. He sees a woman getting into an accident & knows it will ruin her life. His vision reveals the when-&-where: He #knows #when, #where, & #how this woman's life will be #ruined. But it's none of his business...He just got a new job...Besides, he has to care for Seung-won...
Han Woo-tak is a rookie police officer. He's crossing the street when he sees a 🚘 coming right at him. It's going to hit him - why now?, after all the hard work, finally he's living his dream of being a policeman. He realizes: "I am going to die now..."
These 3 will team up, as 3 parts of a whole, & save lives.
That's the set up. The protags & side characters are well written, directed, & acted out - The 'good' ones are likable; the "bad" ones are sufficiently diabolical. WYWS is absent of complexities or deep sleep inspirations, with mostly ⬜/⬛ players; only a couple side characters get a true arc. It's a wind-down-2-catnap type of show.
Here's another Kdrama that features food as fuel for comraderie. As HJ's mother runs a restaurant, folks gravitate to her home & business, as both are equally 🔥.
Evidence of the gorgeous filming in WYWS is in an aerial shot of them in perfectly smooth damp sand, but for 👣 leading to the center, where they're embracing so tightly, from above they look like one person. Two halves of a whole. It's a metaphor, & it's hypnotic.
A few scenes take place in the 🏨. Some feature a little boy who patrols the halls doing spot legal consultations. This hospital-bound lawyer's son daydreams of being well again. There's not many scenes this adorably written & acted out. That kid is spectacular.
The acting is solid. Lee Sang-yeob is perfect as the refined, yet sleezey under-bellied Lee Yoo-beom. Kang Ki-young so often plays a buffoon (To me he'll always be Min-Soo, in Oh My Ghost). He transforms in this role to ruthless killer. Lee Jong-Suk, (JC) is no other word but: Pretty. Slap a wig on him & you get Helena Bonham-Carter - from her "Room With A View" days. He's masculine in the role, despite the beauteousness. Jung Hae-in, as Han Woo-tak, definitely has a dreamy quality. Watching him eat & w/ the others, he seems yummy himself. He'd likely look delicious just sleepwalking. Bae Suzy's always adding to her dreamland resume.
Director, Oh Choong-hwan, evinces his brilliance w/ comedy. He's good. I 😅 spontaneously a few times. A sample, is whilst this pair's awakening to their mutual attraction. They haven't yet confessed it to ea/other, nor admitted it to themselves. After a sedate 🏖 day, they stroll thru a meadow. It's idyllic... BUT FOR an all-cozied-up couple stopping a scant 11ft away. They're completely&nauseatingly lovey-dovey. Ohh. Whaa? Uh-oh👀. JC & HJ grow steadily more uncomfortable. Situational pressure curls them up around attempts to emulate the other duo -awkwardly- until the other couple asks if they'll take their picture? Jae-chan clomps away w/ a brisk: "I #don't want to." The women's look of shock & waking outrage is sublime. Whoever that actress is, she can act. Altogether, it's a 🥇comedic scene.
WYWS has its 'nightmares'. It could be improved upon. Yet again, a cat is killed. Violence against cats is a chronic problem in filmed media. Dogs fare much better. Columnist Anne Billson, addressing this problem, wrote the article: "Why does Hollywood have it in for cats?" Also, hard-hitting reporter doesn't fit HJ at all. She displays her lauded high level logic once only. Her career & behavior are in conflict, dragging down her ill-defined persona.
The worst mistake of WYWS, is a failure to establish rules for this dreamworld & sticking to them. They then shoveled that 🕳 deeper by being wildly inconsistent w/ how it all works. Rules stated in the 2nd part of WYWS violate what had already occurred. Such sloppiness is a major flaw. Really, how #could they? Were they in REM💤 when they did that? Mistakes like this are undecipherable.
Also note that WYWS is a mystical🔮thriller 1st & romdram 2nd, by far.
WYWS sounds alarms on critical issues, esp dom/violence & respect in the workplace. The condescending gossip we listen to about women on the judge panel is straight 1960's. The tradition of absolute respect for seniors gives leave for a sadistic professor to physically abuse his students & to use them as slave laborers. While the idea of respect has largely been dropped in the West, {actually, it's the idea of showing respect that's rapidly being forgotten. Everybody out there certainly wants to be respected - to the extent they have #specifics in mind when they envision proper treatment of themselves} the maxim that a person deserves respect based on DOB is other-end-of-the-spectrum-bad. While 🌐 foundational manners & baseline respect for every human life serve as WD-40 on society's moving parts, the upward levels of respect are not born to, but #earned.
SK was actually a military dictatorship from '61 until Pres Park's assassination in '79. That era saw women routinely, physically & otherwise abused at home, school & work. Police routinely sexually assaulted detainees & women were enslaved in prostitution - a nightmare that is still worsening, 🌎. No recourses afforded, women had few rights. That+the multi-millenia embedding of patrial hierarchy, red-lighted SK's progress w/ regards to uniform rights until the 80's.
The ultimate morality test is in Ep11. They must make a choice between obtaining an autopsy, on a brain-dead victim, to prove a difficult, but 💔 murder case, or allowing his organs to save the lives of 7 patients. Only 2 people in the office know how tragic this dilemma is. We see one character make an agonizing decision. That person's take on the situation is inspiring. It's the moral height of the series.
Are you woke to the fact that, as its rating shows, this is a VG view? Don't dream your life away, but a catnap w/ WYWS will refresh, & It won't put you to 😴.
◽QUOTES◾
The law is always distant, & fists are always close.
When I bet, I don't look at the pot, I look at the probability.
I know in my head I shouldn't, but a person's heart is always so sly.
IMHO...
🎬7.5 🎭7.8 💓6.5 🦋6⚡7 😅8 🤔7.5 🎨8 🔚7 Age 14+
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