Today God’s Gift: 14 Days wrapped up in what amounts to a giant slap in the face to its small but loyal group of viewers. This drama never garnered ratings but generated a good amount of buzz due to the best thing about it – the performance and character of male lead Jo Seung Woo. The unnecessarily twisty and turny plot was actually its crutch but was made bearable by the sheer pleasure of watching Jo Seung Woo blaze a path through the drama filled with plenty of other good actors like Lee Bo Young and Kim Tae Woo. I loved the first gripping episode but it went downhill fast for me once the plot overly relied on red herrings, shock tricks, and plenty of Lee Bo Young doing stupid things. Her leading lady character was godawful, a workaholic mom who turns into a raving mother hen lunatic once she gets a second chance to save her daughter Saet Byul.
It didn’t help that I also found Saet Byul beyond annoying, not saying even dramatically I wanted her character to die because she’s done nothing wrong, but goodness half the problems in this drama would have been avoided had Saet Byul obeyed her parents and used her brain before running off all the time. I kept watching because it was easy to watch once I stopped taking the story seriously and just wanted to see how the time-travel back twist got resolved and also see the bad guys get their comeuppance. In the end it was thoroughly deflating with a side of “let’s cram all the final exposition and revelations into ten minutes and thnxbai suckers!” I spent the last ten minutes with an expression best described as a cross between “da fuq is this?” and “you gotta be kidding me!”. This post is devoted to venting about how bad this drama ended without delivering any narrative satisfaction. My takeaway is Jo Seung Woo and a stinging reminder that K-dramas are not to be trusted until the very last credits roll.
How does the drama end? Jo Seung Woo’s character Ki Dong Chan commits suicide for no reason other than some fortune teller lady claiming that “one must die for this cycle to end” and he figured it had to be him. Turns out Dong Chan was Saet Byul’s killer in the original timeline after being set up to think his mom killed her and thus he tossed her body in the river much like his brother Dong Ho was set up. Then Dong Chan was tossed in the river by gangsters at Ji Hoon’s orders to avenge Saet Byul’s death. This was being repeated in the current timeline except Saet Byul managed to move in the last second and Dong Chan realized she was still alive. Then there was a huge plop in the river and cut to black as Dong Chan decides he needs to die. Come again, Dong Chan? Plus we don’t even see the heart and soul of this drama actually die? WHUT? In a super quickie ending, the President reveals all of his families and subordinates crimes and Dong Ho is released from prison while Soo Hyun and Saet Byul happily walk by the river. If the drama has any legitimate reason for Dong Chan to die then it needs to be damn straight about it because his ending smells like crap to me. Ugh, this drama was already just middling but the ending vaults it into raging inducing pile of shit territory. Feel free to vent here until you can wipe the bitter taste from your mouth.
Poor Dong Chan! *sobs* I’m not upset his character died, cinematic death is part and parcel for dramatic impact and narrative payoff. Except here it had zero impact since we didn’t experience it and there was no narrative payoff because it made no sense! That is why I’m mad. Once I get over my rage I’m sure I’ll settle down to reach the calm conclusion that it was totally worth watching this drama just for Jo Seung Woo’s perfect and darling Ki Dong Chan.
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I guess no drama right now would compare to Bride of the Century in terms of OTP, narrative, time travel and plot. At least in BotC it was worth spending 16 hours of my time watching a good decent well written drama.
I agree! Bride of the Century was so satisfying to watch....from beginning to end!
totally
Single and Sly again is another awesome rom-com currently airing and it's thanks to the two leads!
Yeah..you are right. I Love BOTC and You're Beautiful..
That's why rom-coms are the best.
Yeh tell that to those who watched Prime Minister and I and waited for spectacular ending kiss to bound our OTP again. What we got was a handshake. A freaking handshake ughhhhhhhhhhh.
and then there's this drama called Marry Him If You Dare. No one got married, no one dared. absolutely nothing happened in that drama.
This. It started out as a happy happy romcom, complete with slapstick and ended up praising zombie wives and with the epic "passionate handshake". Not even rom-com is safe in dramas anymore.
The writers/channels/whoever is doing it think they are being cool if they don't finish what they started and just leave it all open and ridiculous. Pretentious to the max. Someone should knock them down a peg and tell them their medium is not fine art to begin with, let alone if they keep ruining the only things they *can* do well.
hahahaha i'm laughing to keep from crying because that drama's ending body slammed me.
Haha.., you guys are funny...esp reyna and the author of this article too.., 'vault into raging inducing pile of shit territory' had me rolling..
I thought I missed something and went back to re-watch the last 10 minutes! The ending was sh*t!! I have to say tho that I salute to the actor JSW for bringing the role of Ki dong chan to life!!
Thanks Captain Koala for this forum. I too am baffled by the ending. When Saet Byul moved and I thought Dong Chan noticed it, I thought he would then abandon whatever he was planning to do, and everyone gets a happy ending. But instead we get ??? Was there an editing snafu that deprived us from understanding what happened to Dong Chan? Was the writer/director trying to be too clever? Hmmm...Too bad.
Oh tell me about it! They should atleast have showed him dying so that I could stop second guessing his status in k-dramaland and now all we're left with is a 5% chance that he might just have lived from the rear-end of someone standing beside Young-gyu when Dong-ho got out of prison. I hope they clear it up with us in the drama special.
Thanks for confirming the crap ending because I was so confused by it and didn't / couldn't believe that Dong Chan died in the end. There was no reason for it at all. If there was some "cosmic" something or other, and maybe if the Loch Ness monster appeared and demanded a sacrifice and would only allow one person to leave the lake / river (whatever!), then I could have accepted that Dong Chan chose to die.
In this case, it was more like WTF?!
So in a moment of clarity (Dong Chan's not ours!) - we are to believe that Dong Chan decided to run backwards, drop Saet Byul, then continue his walk into the river because he thought there needed to be an exchange?!!! Why did Soo-Hyun not stop him?
If in a moment of flashback he realised that he was Saet Byul's killer in the first instance, then it would have made perfect sense for him to redeem himself by saving her this time round. But no, our hero goes to drown himself?!
Then again maybe Dong Chan decided to drown himself because the ending was so stupid and he couldn't take it and it was a case of "kill me now" for him! =(
crap ending!
I have been refreshing all sites just to find a place to vent. Unlike, some other people, despite the crazy of the plot, I really liked this show. It kept bringing surprise after surprise in a genre that does not surprise me nearly enough. And I love Jo Seung Woo. He has IT. I have been known to say (only have jokingly) that I'd leave my husband for him, but that is another story.
I really feel that the ending failed his character and the depth and redemption that his character deserved. I would have been sad at his death, which I thought was coming, devastated even if there has been any narrative sense to it. And there were many ways there could have been narrative sense (as I said, I thought he would have to dies and was dreading it); however, suicide and no closure and to show Seat Byul and her Soo Hyun walking happily by the river? In what future is this? They were all too bonded to not have some reflection as if they have just forgotten all about him.
Sigh, this is not the first time I have been outraged by a drama that I liked up until the last couple of minutes--I'm talking to you Iris!), but I am still not used to the taste of bile.
I totally agree about the ending not doing enough with his death. It's supposed to come off as a noble sacrifice but lands with no impact, and worse, seems a little silly even. I think it was always going to end up with him making this choice, but whoa, it's either a time/editing/directing fail that made it seem so unsatisfactory. I have no problems with his death if that's the way the drama wanted to go, but don't undermine it by being wishy washy. I guess that's what irks me the most--we don't even get to see him die in some stupid attempt at fanservice seeing as how popular his character was.
I can't believe I invested so much of my emotional energy into this drama only to be smacked in the face at the end. I spent the whole evening yesterday yelling 'screw you, drama' at my screen. Much calmer now.
The only thing I'm grateful for is the character of Dong Chan. I don't think I've fallen in love with any character in a long time like I did with Dong Chan. I don't know if I'm projecting the character onto the actor but jo seung woo is such a beautiful man and I don't mean just his looks. It was a pleasure watching him play this role.
I didn't watch the drama but I followed along with reaps and loved every minute of it until the last episode. WHAT THE HECK. Are you kidding me? You can't KILL the male lead off. that's...just wrong no matter WHAT type of kdrama this is rom-com or action or drama. And yes, I agree, Dong Chan was the SOUL of this drama, and you just get rid of him? That's just wrong...kdramas lately have been SO flat and ruining endings it's like people went to writing classes and and weren't taught how to write endings...instead just told well fuq the ending do whatever you want, kthxbye...UGH. I keep getting burned by kdramas I'm turning to kentertainment shows instead.
whoops recaps*