Skip to main content

Maybe Skip Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a television series that has an excellent cast and probably the most heart-wrenching storylines I've ever watched in a k-drama. Because of the latter it took me a while to finish watching the series.

Choi Jun-woong (Rowoon) is a young man who keeps trying to land a corporate job but has been unsuccessful. After trying to stop a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge, and falling into a coma, Jun-woong becomes half-spirit and half-human; as his body lay in the hospital on a respirator his spirit lands in Jumadeung, which is a business version of the souls who deal with human afterlife. The Director of Jumadeung offers Jun-woong a bargain: work for her as a Grim Reaper for six months, after which he'll wake up immediately from his coma, or wait three years to wake up naturally.

Jun-Woong agrees to work for the Director, and is assigned to the Risk Management Team, run by Koo Ryeon (Kim Hee-sun) and assistant manager Lim Ryung-gu (Yoon Ji-on). Instead of collecting souls to escort to the afterlife, however, the team tries to stop people from committing suicide. While seemingly cold and unemotional about their work, both Ryeon and Ryung-gu have tragic pasts of their own, and have yet to completely deal with them. Adding to the dramatic mix is Park Joong-gil (Lee Soo-hyuk), the grimmest of reapers and the top manager of Jumadeung, who disapproves of the Risk Management Team and wants them to stop meddling in human affairs.

All the actors did a wonderful job, and I finally understand why Rowoon is so popular. I admired Kim Hee-sun for her understated performance; she was perfection. Yoon Ji-on is definitely an actor to watch, as he handled a tricky role with elegance. Lee Soo-hyuk is as wonderful as always, and I was glad to see he was allowed to show more emotion with this character. He often gets cast as a cold or inhuman guy, but there's so much more to him than that (watch Doom at Your Service if you want to see that side of him.)

While there is occasional humor, this series is very, very intense. Every episode deals with brutal, suicide-triggering subject matter, and does that so well I think that should be a clearly-posted warning in the opening intro. It's hard not to despair and cry along with the suicidal characters, and I often reacted so much and so strongly I had to stop watching it for a while. If nothing else you definitely come away with a better understanding why people kill themselves over things you might consider trivial or easy to resolve, like their weight or dealing with bullies at school. This is why I think the series is very good, because it will educate the oblivious.

That said, I felt some of the episodes went too far in portraying the reasons for those motives for the sake of drama. I think it might be too much for some people who are still dealing with their own tragedies. Please keep this in mind if you decide to watch. Available on Netflix.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.
Post a Comment
Read more

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to
Post a Comment
Read more

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more