[HanCinema's Drama Review] "My Love from the Star" Episode 18

It's back to comedic misunderstandings and devious secrets for the Min-joon / Song-I loveline. Fortunately this time it's at least understandable why Min-joon is staying mum about the difficulties in his life. This would be a heck of a time to start worrying Song-I with problems neither of them can do much a job solving. Especially given there's only a few episodes left and we still have to wrap up all the previously existing plotlines.

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Speaking of which, Hwi-kyeong is still confronting his brother. And we get a real sense of dramatic angst this time with the help of flashbacks, which illuminate how Jae-kyoung was a loving brother while still at the same time having a rather unsettling undercurrent of sociopathy flowing through his personality. Their dad is pretty much no help in the present as far as getting to the bottom of this. Poor Hwi-kyeong. Always having to fight through this stuff alone.

Now, what does this have to do with Min-joon and Song-I? Almost nothing actually. Now that Min-joon's conflict has shifted to the question of what happens if he chooses to stay on Earth, and for the most part Song-I seems to be safe, Hwi-kyeong's struggle against his brother feels really out of place. These characters all inhabit the same drama, but the one is wildly different. Fortunately the contrast isn't that bad- moving between Min-joon's comedic antics and Hwi-kyeong's fears for the most part has no whiplash, since both storylines are well done, for what they are.

After all, Min-joon gets drunk again. And Song-I continues to make silly circumstantial requests based on Min-joon's powers. It's goofy as all heck, but still fairly charming. Pay attention to when the action takes place from Min-joon's perspective versus Song-I's. The stinger this time takes a twist ending off of some previous scenes. I have to admit I like the stingers for this drama. They always shed an interesting contextual light on events that had seemed pretty straightforward during the actual episode.

"My Love from the Star" is hitting all the right notes in terms of basic punchlines and delivery right now. We've got all the right dramatic beats, and the action is moving forward at a steady pace while maintaining just enough humor to keep the general action lively. It's a little difficult reconciling any of this stuff with previous episodes- this drama used to have a love triangle, after all. Still, if fun and fluffy is what's being offered here, I'll take it.

Review by William Schwartz

"My Love from the Star" is directed by Chang Tae-you, written by Park Ji-eun and features Jun Ji-hyun, Kim Soo-hyun, Park Hae-jin and Yoo In-na.