In Hulu’s new Korean drama In Your Glorious TimeTwo people are stuck in particular emotional “seasons”, and one in the “summer” will try to get the other out of their “winter”. But that’s not the least confusing aspect of this series.
Opening shot: In a research room, a woman talks on a speakerphone while a student in a hoodie does his work.
Idea: Song Ha-ran (Lee Sung-kyung) is the one who talks far from Seoul; she works a menial job at a fashion company while her boyfriend, Seonu Chan (Chae Jong-hyeop) is a student at the Boston Institute of Technology. He seems to be living in darkness, but he has a beautiful pen engraved with Ha-ran’s name and sends it to her on her birthday.
But when he tells her that he will fly to meet her on a four-day break from work, and tells her that he loves her, something in Seonu makes him run to the lab where he works. When he opens the door, a loud explosion throws him out the window. As soon as Ha-ran leaves the campus, she sees the chaos caused by the explosion. He gets a call from Chan’s sister saying he’s dead – but as we can see, he’s gone.
Seven years later, Ha-ran is the lead designer of Nana Atelier, a company run by her grandmother, Kim Na-na (Lee Mi-sook). He rarely socializes with his employees; His office has automatic shades, and he leaves the pictures before they are gone. Even at her grandmother’s house, she sits and draws in the basement under her bedroom. He spends his free time alone at a coffee shop run by Park Man-jae (Kang Seok-woo).
Physically recovered from the explosion, but with a number of scars and some memory problems, Chan returns to Seoul for the first time; now he’s an animator, and he’s there with his partner Ben (Firas A. Naji) to present an idea to Nana Atelier that the company is designing clothes for one of his characters in a video game. She wears sunny colors, takes group photos of everyone she meets on the plane, and runs around Seoul as a tourist.
At the art exhibition, Chan sees Ha-ran, and when he sees her outside, he calls her name when the scaffolding is about to fall on her. He hears, but he doesn’t know who called him by name.
As Chan and Ben set their sights on Na-na, she runs into Ha-ran and down the hall; he still has the pen he gave her seven years ago. But, for some reason he doesn’t know her. However, Na-na notices that the character Chan designed for her looks a lot like her granddaughter.
The idea of working with Ha-ran for the three months the project will take seems too much for Chan to bear, so he almost quits his salaried job. But she decides to stick around, and the more Ha-ran sees her, the more she thinks he’s the one taking pictures of her and sending them to her office.
What Shows Will Remind You? In Your Glorious Time it gives the same vibes to the series It’s okay to be inactive.
Ours: The idea is to drive In Your Glorious Time that both Chan and Ha-ran are operating in a period of different emotions that don’t seem to last. In Chan’s case, he’s in the summer forever, probably glad he got a second chance and made the most of it. In Ha-ran’s case, it’s a perpetual winter, completely stuck in mourning mode and unwilling to be social or even go on the dates her grandmother set for her.
But we also don’t know much about most if not all of the first episode. For example, it seems like Chan’s death is what sent Ha-ran into this emotional winter, but what we don’t know until the end of the episode is that Chan suffered multiple tragedies at the same time, sending her further into isolation.
In the same way, we have an idea why Chan turned himself in, but a) we don’t know why he was so stressed in the first place, and b) if the explosion was really dangerous or something he knew would happen if he opened that door.
We also don’t know why Ha-ran didn’t see Chan when they meet again in the hallway of his office. Is it because he was old? Dressed differently? Or does he seem to be blind because of the great tragedies that happened when he thought he was dead?
There are certainly a lot of blanks to be filled as these two people try to rebuild their friendship and maybe a relationship as well. We also have to go through the misunderstanding where he thinks he is his captor. How long that will take is unclear.
Performances to Watch: Lee Sung-kyung is a compelling lead as Ha-ran. He is so cute in the final flashback scene when his grandmother meets him at the Seoul airport, already knowing all the bad news that happened that day.
Sex and Skin: Nothing.
Splitting gun: “Seonu Chan, who are you?” Ha-ran asked as they looked at each other outside her hotel.
Sleeping Star: Lee Mi-sook is great as Na-na, who seems like the Korean version of Anna Wintour.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ha-ran has a younger sister Ha-young (Han Ji-hyun) who works for her, but for some reason she insists that her sister call her Ms. Song in the office.
Our Phone: It’s already spread. Like most K-drama romances, In Your Glorious Time develops its love story little by little. But this story has some disturbing holes that we hope will be fixed earlier in the season rather than later.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but he’s no joke: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.
