Alternately chilling and wrathful, Remember looks like it’s going to be one hell of a ride. It reminded me a bit of a mashup of Pride and Prejudice, I Hear Your Voice (the K-drama) and I Remember You, which is fan-freaking-tastic because those the latter two are among my favourite dramas of all time. All our leads are introduced in this episode, which is pretty surprising as most shows usually take a few episodes to introduce everyone, which means that this show’s either going to be very tight ot will succumb to an inevitable drag later. But we’ve a brilliant host of characters so far and I am so pumped to see where this is going to go.
Joon Kwangrul, who played Lee Hyun and Min’s father in I Remember You, is here again, playing a very different father but still manages to send chills down my spine. I can’t even imagine what those cops did to him in order to drag out that confession. Having seen just what a sweet person and father he is, it’s shocking to see him reduced to such a state, cowering, trembling and drained of every bit of identity.
What he said at the start about memory being the most important thing in life hit me so hard, and the fact that he continues to retain that sweet gentle personality in the future is even more proof for present Jinwoo that his father is innocent.
Yoo Seungho is such a babe. We’ve only had a glimpse into Seo Jinwoo’s present character but little appears to have changed. He seems as determined to save his father as he was four years ago and is prepared to do anything to do so. I wonder just how badly life has hardened him these four years though. Yoo Seungho’s bringing it in this role already.
Park Minyoung is as sweet as ever in Lee Inah’s role, and I honestly thought I was seeing Chae Youngshin again (which hopefully changes as the series progresses). There wasn’t as much attention given to her character as there was to the other, which I’m hoping is not foreshadowing for the rest of the series because she can pull out the big guns at times, and this feels like the show for her to do so. She does plucky heroines really well so I’m looking forward to seeing where Inah goes and what her role in this war is going to be.
I’m so used to seeing Park Sungwoong as the tightlipped, pokerfaced leader in Hidden Identity that seeing him speaking satoori and strutting about in flamboyant suits came as a welcome surprise. That is one hot ahjusshi. He’s a sleazy, winky, piece of work but hilariously petulant and childish at the same time. And he definitely seems to have some formidable street smarts.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Someone please give Nam Goongmin a lead role. The man is a fantastic actor and I’m not sure why he’s being relegated to antagonistic roles (unless it’s of his own choice) but he always manages to dominate the screen. His character, Nam Gyuman, is so so bad and I wanted nothing better than to punch that gorgeous face throughout this episode, but he does bad so well! It’s there in every raised eyebrow, ever curve of his lips, the way he slowly blinks, the way his eyes turn flinty as a muscle works in his jaw. Man, if he wasn’t a rapist with severe anger management problems, I’d be all over him.
We see only a brief cut of who I presume is his sister, Nam Yeokyung, who is the girl who outdoes Inah on legal terms in class but I presume she’s a key figure in the story, judging by the fact that she’s on the poster of our key five players. I wonder how Jung Hyesung does it, seeing as she’s also a featurette over on Oh my Venus.
Nearly the entirety of this episode, and (from the preview) next episode take place in the past. While this isn’t a bad thing, I hope that we move to the present soon so that we’re watching present Jinwoo work from his memories of that night four years ago as opposed to past Jinwoo living those days. This is strictly a thriller not a romance so I’m not as torn about the fact that Jinwoo has Alzheimer’s as I should be. It’s going to make for a fantastic show with high stakes, and I won’t have to worry about how on earth he’s going to have a happy ending with Inah. It’s a shame because I do want romance thrown into this as well (I mean you have freaking Park Minyoung, and Yoo Seungho who probably fart pheromones), but it just doesn’t seem possible. Not even a K-drama can cure Alzheimer’s. But hey, if it can kill some and heal some, and reincarnate others then perhaps I can hope?
The Quill and Screen 
Writer Yoon Hyeon-ho: “The thing that lasts the most in life is ‘Remembrance’. Sad, happy or beautiful, the person with the most ‘memories’ is a rich one.”
JW: “My memory is very precise even about trivial things.”
The thing that lasts the longest in life and no one will ever be able to take from you in life is Remembrance, sad, happy, ugly or beautiful memories, you cannot choose to remember what or forget what memories. The person with the most memories of someone he loved is a rich one, whether is it memories of sadness or happiness or trivial matters daily lives memories, as long as he stored it all, he is rich until the moment he died. Because remembering someone is the only rights or luxuries we have, either is it a death row criminal, or a cancer patient, or a aging old man, or a heart broken suicidal person, memories is something that accompany us till our last breathe… Memories is all we have. And Memories is the best things we can leave behind for our loved ones. The Theme of Remember is not about some “wars of the son” nor between some sons, but it just about Remember his loved ones, and how to love his loved ones, when he start to stop remembering them. Remember afterall is not about Thriller as we all thought, it a melodrama, in the genesis mind of writernim.
“What remains in life, is not money not your name, it will be memory. To me, those memories won’t last.”: spoken by JW’s Dad who was a ‘Type’ of JW foreshadow what will becometh of JW. Speaking as an Alz’s patient, that memories being the only luxuries accompanied a death sentence criminals, or a dying of cancer patient, even of one that seeking suicide, but even this is rob from a Alz’s patient. Alz’s is the worst kind of death sentence, worst kind of sickness, worst kind of aging.
(mary of bethany)