Letter #83: A Time Called You
Good morning, Erin.
Time travel. Soul mates. Jeon Yeo-been. These are a few of my favorite things.
Need I say more?
…look, we both know I’m going to say more, whether I need to or not.
For example, do I need to tell you that I saw a shooting star, the other night? No, I don’t. But I’m going to. Because, Erin, I saw a shooting star, the other night. Just zipped across the night sky as I was staring up at it, walking back to my car.
I froze, wondering if I’d been mistaken, if I’d been fooled by a streetlamp reflecting off my glasses—but no, I realized, I’d stumbled into something wondrous. Fleeting, of course, as wonders so often are, but real. I’d seen a shooting star—or, to borrow a phrase, potentially the destruction of a Chinese satellite. But I made a wish all the same.
Was it a wish that the K-dramas I end up watching of my own volition turn out to be good rather than disasters that reinforce how much of a broken dowsing rod my instincts are when unguided by you? No. Goodness no. If only I’d thought to wish for something so sensible.
Anyway.
Ready to talk about A Time Called You? Of course you are!
1. Watching this show was like finally getting a date with a girl I’ve been pining for for months and months: an exciting buildup that quickly gives way to the realization that I can’t have nice things.
1A. In other words: I hated this show with a fiery, vengeful passion and struggle to think of ways this could have disappointed me more.
2. Or, here: one of my earliest notes mentions that the premise (once it reveals itself) feels very much like a Makoto Shinaki story—that is, the writer/director of your very favorite anime film, your name. So, that it starts at that kind of vibe might be enough to let you know that, if fanboy me eventually couldn’t truck with what was happening, just imagine how you would feel about it from the start. (Or, for those of you who prefer to see the world through the lens of the RM reading list: this was Murakawa in all the wrong ways. Or, well, maybe just in all the normal “Murakawa” ways, which I always think are wrong.)
3. Then again, maybe you’ve seen it and loved it. The series is getting a lot of love, at the moment, and there’s even more praise for the Taiwanese original, so maybe I’m a frowning island unto myself with this opinion. But, honestly, even if this wasn’t a good adaptation of the original, I cannot imagine the original dealing with the issues I had with this version in a way that wouldn’t also have left me bored and frustrated. Maybe I’d like it better. Or maybe it’s even as good as everyone says. But will I give it a shot after having sat through A Time Called You? Nope.
4. That said, the premise reveal totally worked for me. Like, as a premise. I still thought the first episode was too slow.
4A. And, if memory serves, the great irony of this is that the first episode is only, like, 45 minutes long! It’s way shorter than all the subsequent episodes!
5. I mean, this show managed to make Jeon Yeo-been—posterchild for charismatic extroverts and relentless stage presence—boring. I don’t know what fell magics they invoked for such unthinkable tragedy to befall us, but…it happened. Explain to me how there is any good to be found in a script that manages to stalemate Jeon Yeo-been’s ability to bring something extra to the table.
6. And, yes, it’s the script (and/or the director), not her. Because there is a stretch towards the very end when she gets to actually dig into something meaty and act. And she’s as great as she normally is. Or, well, she’s as great as she can be with so little to work with, but the powerhouse in her shines through, is the point I’m making. (We could argue about whether she was miscast, but…I don’t know who you cast that would be better suited to dealing with this script.)
7. Of course, I should have known things weren’t going to turn out well when I saw that Jeon Yeo-been wasn’t playing a character named “Ms. Hong.” So, maybe she was miscast.
7A. “But you liked Night in Paradise, and her last name was ‘Kim’ in tha—”
THERE’S NO TIME, ERIN!
8. I recognized a Church from some of the walking-around-Seoul YouTube videos I watch.
9. I’m 90% sure the overpass from Episode 2 is the same one used in 18 Again, but I did not care enough to check. I’m perfectly fine being tunnel-racist, here.
10. But I am 100% sure that THEY USE THE SCHOOL FROM EXTRAORDINARY YOU as the high school in the 1998 section of the story. Which turns out to be my favorite thing about the show. Because it reminded me of a show I actually enjoyed.
10A. No, really, I kept yelling “Haru-ya!” every time we entered a scene. It just felt right.
10B. And then he actually showed up! No, seriously, Rowoon has a cameo as a totally unnecessary character in a completely extraneous segment of the story. Which sucks, in that sense, but it just felt right that he was there.
10C. And, no, even the “hot girl” in the school wasn’t as pretty as Dan-oh. To me. Since I know you’re keeping score. (Not that she isn’t really pretty, as well.)
11. I swore Min-ju’s bus stop was the one from Twenty-Five, Twenty-One, but…maybe I just wanted it to be the case so I could have a reason to get excited again. Because this show was a draaaaaag.
12. But y’know what could be exciting? My list of people I recognized!
Ms. Hong from Vincenzo as our female lead(s)
Mr. Archaeopteryx from Business Propsal as the Extrovert Friend
“Laurie” from Little Women as the Introvert Friend
the pawnshop-owning wife from Vincenzeo as Jun-hee’s best friend (Mini-reunion! Woo!)
the mom from True Beauty as Min-ju’s mom
the shaman from Behind Your Touch as Min-ju’s uncle
Young Stewardess Bully from The Glory as the hot girl at school
Mun’s grandmother from The Uncanny Counter as Introvert Friend’s grandmother
Dr. Camellia’s jerk boyfriend from It’s Okay, That’s Love as Jun-hee’s college boyfriend
Ha-ri’s cute coworker from Business Proposal as the cute class rep (Mini-reunion! Woo!)
12A. It legitimately took seeing a clip on YouTube comparing a scene from A Time Called You to one from Business Proposal to get me to realize the male lead was the same guy in both. And that was around Episode 8. Of 12.
12B. I kept wanting Jun-hee’s best friend to be the best friend from Bo Ra! Deborah, but it wasn’t.
12C. Oh! One of the girls in the blind date scene was a minor character in Extraordinary You. I didn’t recognize her by any means, I just thought it was amusing, given the school was used for both. (Look, gimme this one. There was so little to be amused by.)
12D. Oh, gosh, I had forgotten how many times I’d written down that I wished the show was about the cute class rep instead of the protagonists. Oof. I mean, she doesn’t have very much to do in the story, I was just really, really bored by everyone else. And she was cute.
12E. Wait, she’s in a short YouTube series that features an episode where she goes on a blind date with my favorite male cast member from Transit Love 2? Well, that’s going on the ol’ watch list right now!
13. I have yet to see Jeon Yeo-been give a solid on-screen kiss. Or an off-screen kiss of any kind.
14. I am stretching back into the recesses of my memory to remember whether or not cassette tapes were still being produced in 1998, and I’m having a tough time. I assume they must have, but I feel like, if even I was listening to things on CD, at that point, everyone was.
14A. Not that I was listening to much new music, at that time. Lots of They Might Be Giants, though. Because it was cool. And because I had a crush on a girl who also happened to like them (coincidentally, in this case), I was desperate to memorize ALL of their songs, just in case she started singing one of them and gave me a chance to join in.
14B. There’s an embarrassing amount of “because I had a crush on a girl” stories like that in my repertoire. Which should not surprise you.
14C. …but back to audiocassettes: I cannot believe the number of slides and buttons on Min-ju’s Walkman. I think I was over the moon when I found out my Walkman had a bass boost switch. Hers looks like a full soundboard. Absolutely ridiculous. Or normal. I was poor. Maybe my Walkman was the bottom-tier kind.
14D. That said, I’m not sure if they wave away the reality of how her Walkman works so that they can (at one point) have her listening to it all night while she sleeps, or if she had the nifty “loop” function that would allow the thing to automatically switch which side of the tape played when it reach the end of one side. Because, again, I had a Walkman, so I notice these kinds of details. And also because I am the world’s greatest detective. Of course.
14E. My walkman worked at least into the latter part of 2000. Because I remember frequently listening to the mixtape my girlfriend-at-the-time’s made me. Which, to push the point, was literally a cassette tape.
15. Fun fact: the jacket for the cassette tape they use employs the “lorem ipsum” placeholder text, and I bet they thought I wouldn’t notice. But I did. (World’s greatest detective, blah blah blah.)
16. In a fun twist, this show gave people different haircuts as a way of cluing the audience in to where/when we are in the story, and it totally worked. Like, for me. (I know, right? I was shocked.)
17. I think my hottest take for the series was that I thought the “iconic moment” was stupid and forgettable, regardless of how significant it may or may not have been to the overall story.
18. There’s a neat parallel moment involving the giving of a box of belongings to a loved one left behind by another character’s death between two analogous characters…which the show totally undercuts by loudly telling the audience how neat of a parallel it is.
19. The time travel mechanic in this series is absolute nonsense. I mean, yes, there’s an oddly supernatural layer to it—which in and of itself is fine—but that’s not the part I take issue with. My problem with it is that they never do anything to explain it. And I don’t mean to tell us why it happens or even explicitly how it happens. We get an idea of the conditions that must be met for it to happen but never anything about why it matters to the storytelling on a thematic level that this is the mechanic that was chosen. Like, there’s plenty of implication about why it would happen in, like, a poetic or spiritual sense, but the story is also utterly utilitarian about it when it suits its fancy. So, it gives us something that strains credulity but justifiably feels like it’s appropriate…but then it also uses it without any of that justifiable feel that allows you to ignore that it doesn’t really make sense.
19A. Relatedly, I totally worked out how the story should resolve itself right before we hit the final third of the series. It would be a beautiful tragedy. And then the show was like, “Nah, bro, we got something that makes way less sense in mind!”
19B. No, seriously. Not only does the time travel mechanic get abandoned in favor of making things up for the sake of the ending, the ending itself begs a MASSIVE question, if you give it any thought at all—the answer to which is at best weird and at worst very uncomfortable.
20. This show has one of the worst-acted limps I’ve ever seen.
21. I know we haven’t gotten to Behind Your Touch, but because I first knew the guy playing Min-ju’s uncle as the shaman from that series, I found it very hard to take him seriously. I was just primed for everything he said to be something I was meant to laugh at. Which is not his fault, of course, I just wanted it on the record that this was the case.
22. A lot of the story’s weight relies on us liking/caring about Extrovert Friend. And I did not.
22A. In fairness to him, though…I didn’t care about any of the protagonists. I was just especially indifferent to him.
23. I have never wanted to know Korean more than with this show. Okay, well, apart from seeing cute Korean girls I’d want to flirt with, I’ve never wanted to know Korean more than with this show. Because I don’t think there’s been a K-drama I’ve watched that needed me to able to half-listen to what’s happening while playing with my phone more than A Time Called You.
24. I mentioned the box-giving parallel that gets unnecessarily loudly noted by the show, but it doesn’t hold a candle to how loudly and unnecessarily it shouts about the little girl in Episode 5. I mean…yeah, show, I know. I know what you meant with that scene. It was already stupid as f***; you didn’t need to put a button on it and make it even dumber.
25. Is it a coincidence that Min-ju’s birthday is October 13th—the same day as Chris Carter, creator of The X Files? Particularly given that the premise is so very much something you’d find on The X Files?
26. And is it a coincidence that both Nana and Jeon Yeo-been, stars of 2022’s Glitch—a show you know I absolutely loved—would star in shows I was totally looking forward to in 2023 but then ultimately found myself infuriated by?
26A. Speaking of: I’m still trying to decide whether Mask Girl or A Time Called You was worse. I think I was angrier and more revolted by Mask Girl, but it also wasn’t as long. Hmm.
26B. Hmmmmmm.
27. One of the core writing flaws in the story is its inability to make use of dramatic irony. That is, it lets the audience know information before the characters in the story do, but the audience knowing that information doesn’t elevate the tension in any way. In fact, it matters so little that we know things ahead of the characters that the story wants us to be excited by the characters figuring things out themselves later on—like, as if they were discovering it at the same time we are! Which is just…so bad.
28. I found this interesting: apparently T.G.I. Friday’s employees in Korea get American names to wear on their shirts. Our leads were called “Kevin” and “Sunny.” Because…sure. Why not.
28A. Oh! Both A Time Called You AND Mask Girl have significant scenes set in a T.G.I. Friday’s! So it’s not a coincidence after all!
28B. #WorldsGreatestDetective
29. Jeon Yeo-been pretending to be good at basketball is 100-times better at basketball than I have ever been.
30. Fun fact: it’s hard to not be in love with someone you’re in love with. Unless you’re like me and have had to do it multiple times! Then it’s…well, still hard. Just a whole bunch sadder.
30A. And, yes, this is relevant to the show.
Which…yeah, let’s call it there.
Oof. What a slog. Do not recommend. Do not pass Start. Do not collect $200. Just watch Behind Your Touch. And Heart Signal 4. And then After Signal. Or pretty much anything that isn’t this.
Next up is…well, it’s a race between my new K-drama crush and another show I’m dreading having to finish. I don’t know who’s going to win. Well, you, obviously. But how do I choose which show to—
No. Wait. It has to be the one I’m dreading. Because it sets up a joke for the other one.
Dammit. I really can’t have nice things.
Oh well. At least it’s Fall, now. Time to break out the Batman books. And maybe do another round of Over the Garden Wall.
--Daryl
P.S. – I’ve gotten my friend to watch The Uncanny Counter, so he’s obviously now crushing on Kim Se-jeong pretty hard—which means he’s probably vulnerable enough to push him towards watching Business Proposal. I’m not sure it’ll work, but I’ll do my best.
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