Melting Me Softly

I'm trying to love this drama. I love the lead actor who impressed in Healer but appart from the romance with the lead actress, which is quite cute, the story plot is completely unrealistic and each episode moves sooooo slowly. Nothing really happened till now.

Won Jin-A plays Go Mi-ran a student who is working on an entertainment programme as an assistant and is in a shallow relationship with a fellow student. Ji Chang-wook plays Ma Dong-chan who is a tv producer at the same station and is in a serious relationship with a newsreader. Circumstances means that the two leads are to be frozen for twenty four hours in a tv programme exclusive, sadly it all goes awry and they end up not being frozen for a day but for 20 years. It is a clever idea and as a romantic comedy it is enjoyable because the actors do a convincing job of making the feelings between them believable. Some interesting side characters and stories which I think should have been explored to make it more interesting. Overall a good story but too many things going on and little background or depth given to any of the stories apart from the romance.

At first, it was very interesting with a great plot line but as getting towards the end, i felt that they were rushing the end.. The acting was a 10/10 and i love how Ji Chang Wook portrayed his character but the ending was a little unfair comparing to the acting skills.

This series suffered from a common problem that I see in a lot of the Asian dramas...Bad genre-bending. What is "bad genre-bending"?....Put simply, this show had way too much going on, genre-wise. There was the central romance (the only good thing!), Science Fiction (flawed but interesting), Slapstick Comedy (ugh!), Mystery/Thriller (plot holes), Memory Loss/Medical Drama, some weird Russian(?) Mafia side-story (wtf?), Family Drama...you get the picture. There's just no way to cohesively tell *that* many stories at once. To be fair, I do enjoy a moderate amount of genre-bending but they need to trim 2 to 3 side-stories off this genre-monster. I finished it because I really liked the central couple, but I wouldn't recommend it. To anyone looking for a good Kdrama to watch I'd say, watch Healer instead.

The premise of the story was good and felt a bit more unique than typical drama concepts. However, if it didn't have Ji-Chang Wook in it I don't think I could have finished it. While I appreciate a good she falls first, he falls harder trope - it almost took him so long that by the time he did it felt a bit insincere and I just didn't see much chemistry between the two leads. There was a bit there where I couldn't see how he'd leave his original girlfriend for Go Mi Ran.

It felt really lopsided at times at what genre or "trope" of sorts it was going to be. Sometimes it was incredibly goofy, then super serious action political scheming, and then the science side of it all. I did really love the scenes where he's so worried about Mi Ran though, those were always sweet.

That being said, I would've let most of the above go if it didn't have such a mid ending. While it was "happy", I'd almost rather it end in her dying or something incredibly sad if they didn't want to go all out on a good ending. It was way too rushed in the end and super slow at times in the beginning and middle. Poor planning is most likely why, since a better ending would've needed more than the allotted episodes. Maybe I'm just picky because I love a good basic get married have a family ending - but come on... don't bait with the "he bought the big house so he's move back to it married" and then ten minutes later she's absolutely denying wanting to get married.