[HanCinema's Drama Review] "My Love from the Star" Episode 8

The disinterest Song-I and Min-Joon exhibit in regards to the murder attempts on her life has gotten rather absurd. Although, I don't know, maybe Song-I actually believes that she checked herself out of the hospital, drove off to a cliff in the middle of nowhere, and that her brakes by sheer coincidence gave out at the exact same time she regains consciousness of what's going on? I mean, it's possible. It just sounds really dumb.

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If Song-I was at least under the assumption that this entire event was a dream sequence, her apathy regarding the situation would be somewhat understandable. But I can't even give the drama that much credit. Song-I even goes as far as to visit the doctor, who promptly explains that the reason for her strange visions of Song-I apparently teleporting are just the result of stress. Stress brought on by, you know, repeated death threats and murder attempts. That thing we're apparently not discussing, since there's wacky comedic antics to be had.

I don't have anything against scenes of Song-I screwing things up at Min-Joon's home. It's just difficult to take the script's joking tone seriously when it comes on the tail end of a murder attempt. This drama has a bad habit of creating these dangerous crisis points and then just ignoring them so we can do more romantic character building. If "My Love from the Star" was constructing and connecting its two storylines I wouldn't mind this. But it increasingly feels like this drama's narrative takes place in completely different universes.

The main bright spot here is Se-Mi. She's putting together the various recent events in her life in better perspective, and the guarded way she avoids dealing with them is quite sympathetic. We get a flashback involving her past with Hwi-Kyeong, and I really love the sad way young Se-Mi regards Hwi-Kyeong's announcement. It's a recursive cycle- again the drama's strongest thematic point. But it's really weird to see it best demonstrated in the subplot.

As for the romance of our main characters...I'm honestly not sure. The whiplash from serious to silly is too harsh for me to come up with any particularly fair assessment of how these two are progressing as characters and whether it's believable. But if I had to say it right now- I'm not convinced. There's not enough of a spark to really justify the way these characters are acting. More alarming, there's not much reason to root for them, either, since it's not clear what their plan is long-term. Maybe that's the point of all this, but I'm reluctant right now to give "My Love from the Star" the benefit of the doubt.

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.