[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Longing Heart" Episode 6

So as expected Sin-woo did, somehow, manage to trigger the time travel again when he dived into the ocean in a hopeless effort to find his mother. There is one important twist to this though, that I'd rather not get into at the moment. The main fundamental information we learn right away is that apparently Sin-woo came back slightly ahead of where he first left, which means that he can still save Ji-soo.

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But any changes Sin-woo might have made to the timeline are indistinct, considering that life as he knows it seems to mostly be the same. Or at least, it's similar enough that Sin-woo's presumably different memories aren't that much of an issue, and he has to struggle for awhile to figure out whether the whole experience was just a dream. For most of the runtime here the difference isn't actually that important, since even if Sin-woo failed to save his mom, he does at least get a second chance at trying to fix things with Ji-soo.

We do get better exposition as to Ji-soo's complex mental state- although there isn't that much explanation. I like how Ji-soo has gone from being boy-obsessed to just sort of frustrated at the idea of men fighting over her, because there's just so much more going on in life. What exactly is going on in Ji-soo's life that's so traumatic remains unexplained. I can only hope "Longing Heart" is finally getting to that point because there is only so much unexplained mystery that I can stand.

The subplots are still good even if they, too, are frustratingly left unexposited. I'm trying to remember if Sin-woo's best friend Geun-deok (played by Lee Joo-hyung) always had this big crush crush on their old teacher Na-hee, or whether Sin-woo inadvertently created the crush by rejecting Na-hee in the past. Either way I like the inherent humor of how "Longing Heart" is now expecting us to root for a creepy student teacher relationship having already expected us to root against a virtually identical one for the same reasons.

There's also something possibly autobiographical in there about drawing webcomics instead of doing a company job. "Longing Heart" was originally based on a webcomic, and I'm just assuming this minor story is autobiographical because otherwise its presence in the story at all is difficult to parse. I'm a little surprised at how slow the pacing in this drama is sometimes, considering how short it is.

Review by William Schwartz

"Longing Heart" is directed by Min Yeon-hong, written by Park Ga-yun and features Lee Jung-shin, Seo Ji-hoon, Lee Yul-eum, and Kim Sun-young.