[HanCinema's Drama Review] "My Love from the Star" Episode 7

The drama takes a turn for the repetitive here. I don't necessarily mean in terms of things that we've actually seen, though there is plenty of that. More threats, more danger, more of Min-Joon using his powers in increasingly inefficient, increasingly easy to detect to ways rather than confronting Song-I's looming enemy directly. And Song-I, too, continues to be silly and childish in a way that is really unbecoming to a woman her age.

Advertisement

But there's also reptition in events that we have not seen on-screen before, yet have no doubt factored into the lives of these characters multiple times. Last episode's cliffhanger, with the overly romantic backdrop of the ferris wheel, is no doubt a scenario that Hwi-Kyeong has already tried multiple times. And here, once again, he faces the same predictable result. I fully expect that the man's carousing behavior afterwards is also a common occurence which barely warrants surprise at this point.

I admire the drama on some level for having characterization so strong that I can feel all of this is just a replay of previous events even though there's no direct reason for me to do so. For the most part these people are all stuck in a cycle they can't really break out of, because there's never been any compelling reason to. They're all basically happy enough doing what they're doing that they don't want to rock the boat. At this point I'm pretty sure Jae-Kyoung has killed before too- the guy just knows what he's doing too well.

That's the charitable explanation anyway. Personally I found the lead-up to this episode's cliffhanger rather groan-inducing. This has to factor among the most unnecessarily complicated murder attempts I've ever seen. To some extent this is necessary- Min-Joon's crazy powers are only particularly useful in crazy situations. But I'm not sure the storyline is strong enough at this point to really make me want to forgive the set-up here.

That's the double-edged nature to the skill demonstrated here for the sake of making the drama feel repetitive. Repetition is typically a bad thing in a narrative, even when integrated into part of the greater themes. Thankfully the production values are still quite strong, and the drama is entertaining enough to watch regardless of this potential pratfall. But there's only so much time "My Love from the Star" can spend on cyclical storytelling before it gets totally exhausting, and hopefully our two leads are out of status-quo maintaining escapes at this point.

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.