There is No 'Light in Your Eyes' for Me
A 2019 k-drama (seemingly) lured me in on the promise of a time-traveling watch — and fucked me over
Either I’m an insensitive asshole, or “The Light in Your Eyes” is one of the worst k-dramas ever made, rivaling “Sweet Home,” and that show really sucked.
I went in thinking it was about a young woman who found a time-traveling watch washed up on the beach. For nine of the 12 episodes, I kept waiting for her to get the watch back and make things right with the young man she fell in love with.
At one point, she had the chance to, but just stood there like an idiot, letting the watch drop on the hard cement with dull, uncomprehending eyes, not even bothering to reach out and grab it.
AIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!
But it’s not that kind of show.
Turns out, and huge spoiler coming…
The show isn’t about time travel at all. That was a ruse to get you to tune in.
“The Light in Your Eyes” is actually about an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s. We’re seeing the world through her dementia, as she mixes up characters from her life, past and present.
The woman isn’t young anymore. She’s a grandmother now, remembering when she was young but in different, what-if scenarios, where she thinks she’s the daughter of her daughter-in-law and son.
Got that?
All the characters are different in her real world. She isn’t out and about, trying to save her dad from a head-on collision. She’s stuck in a nursing home, waiting to die.
Worst of all, the actress playing her is badly cast. That, or, again, I’m an asshole who doesn’t understand what Alzheimer’s looks like.
This older version shows up early on and never leaves! She wanders around with sad, lost doe eyes, dragging everybody down. I didn’t know if the actress playing her was acting badly, or accurately. I kept waiting for the catch, frustration and irritation growing.
I also kept screaming at the TV: “Go away! Bring back the young girl!” I couldn’t stand the old lady’s sunken, pitiful, one-note face, butting in everyone’s business and accomplishing very little.
This whole show seemed like a waste of time.
I didn’t have a problem with the other old people, just her. She seemed oddly out of place, but I guess that was the point.
In the context of the misleading synopsis — a young woman finds a magical watch — the old lady was getting in the way of a good show and needed to go away immediately.
By the 10th episode, when all was revealed, I felt robbed.
They wasted my time for nine fucking episodes, only to pull the rug out from under me, and expecting me to go along with the sentimental PSA about cherishing your youth or some shit like that.
I couldn’t.
Besides which, the lead character, Hye-ja, was a horrible mother who should’ve been up on charges for the shitty way she treated her young, handicapped son. They never had the character address or resolve her reprehensible behavior when it counted, or explained why she took out her grief (at losing her husband young) on the child, who did nothing but live.
We were just expected to live and let live, and forgive her as this tragic figure, simply because she has Alzheimer’s and tried after the fact to rectify her abuse and neglect.
Well, fuck that.
Only a k-drama would self-indulgently drag out what appeared to be a sci-fi fantasy for nine episodes, only to take a dump on cold, hard, gritty reality, with no escape. And I thought the French and Japanese held the prize for obnoxious drama.
If I’d known “The Light in Your Eyes” was about Alzheimer’s, I would’ve passed. I’m 59, going on 60, I don’t need constant reminders I’m old, irrelevant, and going to die.
By the end of the melodrama, I started to believe I had Alzheimer’s and imagined the whole thing…that maybe I was also in that same nursing home, dreaming I was Carol Banks Weber typing this blog.
Maybe I hate the old Kim Hye-ja so much, because … I am her.
Touché.
What a blindsiding mind-fuck.
I need therapy for $100, Alex.