Honest to goodness review of The Light In Your Eyes?

I was bored out of my mind for 90% of it.
I also have absolutely no drive to write this review because I’d honestly rather forget the last 12 hrs.

I spent most of the first 80% of this show not feeling sorry for Hye Ja because, in what appeared to be a time travel drama, she always felt sorry for herself despite knowing that the situation she’d put herself in was her fault. She kept whining about being old when she knew the watch increased her age and she knew the cost of using it, and upon saving someone’s life with it, she was shocked at how big the consequences were of that, how much someone’s life was worth. And, remember this is all under the assumption this was a still a time travel drama, whilst they touched on the enormity of this action in the Law of Equal Exchanges and the inevitability of death when Lady Chanel died, I didn’t feel like they ever properly explored how selfish her initial actions were. She turned back time because SHE didn’t want her father to die, not because she thought about the consequences of time travel.

Back in Episode 5 (the dissociation) I kept thinking that everything in this show was not as it appeared. The lingering too long on some scenes, the emphasis on the music box, the surrealness to some characters, like they were fake or not quite whole people, the strange comedic relief, the complete and utter absurdity of that entire exhibition hall plot, and the rescue mission.
Episode 5 and 10 were the worst. I questioned what I was watching and why. I knew there was a twist or two and I knew this had an “atypical” love story, but this wasn’t the kind of abstractness I enjoyed. This was weird and frustrating and trippy. I wasn’t enjoying myself, I was barely entertained.
But because of y’all I kept watching, and kept thinking maybe this feeling, although unenjoyable, maybe this was all on purpose. Because a lot of the shots had intent despite being weird.

And then the twist happened.
To be honest with you all, I legitimately pulled the finger at my computer screen.
However, I guess the director should be given an award for successfully portraying an environment that seems ever so slightly not real to give you clues about actual reality, and making the inside of someone with Alzheimer’s head feel, well, wrong.

On the one hand, I’m not a big fan of the IT WAS ALL A DREAM shit.
It feels like a bit of a cop out to just explain away everything.
It is… Extremely convenient to set up a show that appears to be a time travel drama, and open up the stage for discussion on the thematic issues related to saving someone’s life with travel, and whether or not one should do it in the first place, address consequences of life and death within the drama, and then tell me that the first 80% of the mind numbingly boring show I just watched wasn’t true reality, just twisted memories of reality, and that said time travel theme that I wanted you address for so long, was easily swept under the rug, as it were.

On the other hand, it is clever. Or at least it wants to be clever.

Somewhere around episode five this show started to remind me of the movies I had to watch and analyse in high school English. (That, by the way, is not a good connotation to get from a show. I hated the movies I watched in highschool.)

HS English Sic would talk about this show thus;
“the watch and the music box symbolise time and the unwinding and unravelling of time and how precious time is and wanting more time this correlates to memories and wanting to preserve them and represents her Alzheimer’s and the fading of her memories over time because time equals the distance divided by the velocity and if you go too fast through life you’ll not have enough time”

Cynical Critical Sic, threw the birdy at her computer screen and thinks thus;
“¥#@& you show. Also you never touched on how selfish her initial and now fake act of time travel was but I guess it doesn’t matter because it was all just a big metaphor… -_-
So why do it in the first place then? And why does it feel like being baited into discussing the thematic responsibilities of time travel only to find out that jokes it was about Alzheimer’s this whole time haha aren’t I clever.”

Did someone call this show cocky? It’s kinda cocky. @mary you called it cocky right?

This is cocky.
This is a cocky *analyse me in high school and suffer* drama.
Because the symbolism doesn’t excite me. The themes don’t excite me. The lessons learnt don’t excite me. The messages do not excite me or move me. I don’t want to write about this show. I don’t want to unpack the theories or the characters except for the one thing that they never addressed and wasn’t real anyway. I didn’t care about anyone and now I know why.
This is not a show I want to gush over.
This is not a show I can say I like.

I don’t not like it because I was “tricked” per se by the twist.
I don’t feel tricked; I just feel drained.
Like
I feel like I’m supposed to enjoy this grand expose and exploration of family and Alzheimer’s and time and memory and appreciate the complex metaphor and film techniques through which it’s told.
And instead I just feel like a drink.
I feel like dropping everything and going to a quiet bar that is also removed from reality and drinking 300mls of sake and finding a time watch so I could get back the last 12 hrs of my life.
And that’s not a good thing to feel when finishing a drama.

Watching this show, was not a pleasant experience and I don’t mean in a “this explores uncomfortable themes” way I mean in a “this was extremely draining and boring to watch this and I got nothing out of it despite everything” way.

I wasn’t even ever close to crying either. There were a few moving scenes, but overall I just wanted it to hurry up and end. By the time the final credits rolled I was shouting for joy.

I thought maybe when the twist happened then I’d get interested. But I was still mind-numbingly bored for the majority of the last two episodes, that eventually it began to feel like the first ten episodes, despite their elaborate metaphor, were pointless.
We spent so long in her head, in the Alzheimer’s effected story only to have the last two episodes simultaneously drag and also attempt to fit the actual actions, lives, deaths, pains, pleasures and motivations of deeply complex characters into two episodes.
When it is was revealed that she lost her husband and became bitter towards her son and so her son resented her, and then one of the final resolutions was that she did actually care for her disabled son- I had no set up for that! It wasn’t nearly as emotionally impactful as it could’ve been because prior to this I didn’t actually know anything real about that relationship. I was disconnected from that scene because I hadn’t spent time with these characters outside of a twisted memory.

I also found the last two episodes almost sadistic. They were so gratuitously sad. It was like the director wanted to ram home just how sad being old is, by torturing us with as many scenes of dying old people as possible.
If this was so that when his final message came around, it meant that much more, I didn’t feel it.
The final end quotes felt contrived and clichéd, forced and somewhat empty. I know the message guys. I’m not an idiot. I got your metaphor. Don’t explain it to me. I might not WANT to dissect it, and I might not have personally got anything out of it, but I don’t need to be told what it was either. If you explain the joke, it’s no longer funny. If you explain the metaphor, you’re in danger of making it meaningless.

It’s like that smart good looking kid in high school, who has something unusual about him that makes him sometimes interesting to look at, model like, tall, clever, intelligent, beautiful, but a bit weird but you like weird don’t you yeah but did I mention somehow he’s also really boring? Like just not interesting at all. Also he talks about how clever he is a lot. Because did I mention he’s clever? He’s so clever and therefore he’s a cocky. And arrogant. And annoying as crivite and kind of an asshole to be honest because cleverness and looks don’t mean jack if you don’t have a personality.
And I don’t have to like you just because you think you’re clever either.

*Show: is an elaborate metaphor for Alzheimer’s
Sic: ugh
Also Sic: writes an elaborate metaphor for the show

It’s hard though because I can see why people like this. And I can see the message they’re trying to tell and even like some of the thematic exploration, but I didn’t get anything out of it. Maybe because it did feel like it baited me a little even though I got the metaphor.
I spent so long being annoyed at Hye Ja for being a selfish time traveller, and so long being bored, that I just didn’t care when the metaphor was revealed.
It’s a pretty clever cocky bastard, but a cocky bastard none the less.

And I so have to ask
Why
And what was the point
At all.

Because I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed feel that exhausted and tired after finishing a kdrama.

And if that’s the point of your show then what the Frik man. That’s kinda sadist. Please see a therapist for how much you like torturing me with sad old people.

Ninety percent.

I was bored for ninety percent of it.

The memory is physically painful

I need alcohol.

POST SCRIPT 1:
I always knew NJH was capable of more and that WLFKBJ was not a fluke, and he showed us in this because I was most invested when he was on screen and in his story, in whatever form it came in.
The rest was well acted but I only cared about Joon Ha. Like the entire time. Only Joon Ha.
That may be because he was relatable to me, but I do wish they’d explored him even more, especially depressed him.
“I’m only living because I can’t die”.