God's Gift: 14 Days

Okay, so this thriller series was so well written right up to the very end. I could have lived with some questions at the end of a very complex story surrounding time-travel and murder, but the way they ended this series was rushed and made very little sense. This series would have been a 10 for me otherwise. I decided to give it a 7 because I still think that it is worth a watch due to the fact that the story is so compelling and the acting is absolutely top-notch from our two main characters.

God's Gift - 14 Days: This is a 16 episode Korean TV drama from 2014. It is primarily a mystery/thriller with a touch of a fantasy element.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Story: A seemingly perfect husband & wife's young child is kidnapped and eventually found dead. The mother is distraught and tries to drown herself, but she fails. When she awakens from her unsuccessful suicide attempt, she finds she has traveled back in time 14 days prior to her daughter's death. Events from the previous 2 weeks start repeating themselves, and she soon realizes she better figure out what's going on in order to prevent the future death of her daughter from happening again.

The initial premise of the show is set up quite well. It's not clear why this woman was sent back in time or why she's the only one who's aware of the events to come. It is apparently due to "God's gift", but this is never fully explained and there are very little religious overtones here. In fact, this time travel plot often gets lost in the scheme of things, except mostly at the beginning of the show, and at the very end; it does pop up occasionally, but this show spends a considerable amount of time focusing on its mystery and thriller elements instead. And surprisingly, there are very few romantic, comedic, or familiar melodramatic aspects to be found at all. It makes sense to not include these standard K-drama motifs in a show like this though; after all, what couple really has time for romance and fun with their costars when their daughter is about to be murdered?

While I appreciate the effort to avoid typical K-drama themes for a change, the absence of these themes does create some problems when you have 16 hours to fill with nothing but one continuing mystery/thriller plot line. As such, this story is often unnecessarily byzantine during its run time; once this show hits its stride, there's a bevy of characters introduced who may or may not be the eventual kidnapper/killer, or who may be connected to the crime in some way. Each week it appears they might have finally caught the actual bad guy(s), only to find one more layer of the onion to peel back in next week's episode. The show is good at keeping you guessing who the culprit(s) is/are, but this rinse and repeat approach to storytelling does becomes tedious when you have to keep it going for much longer than is really practical.

Aside from a few missteps, production values are satisfactory for a K-drama for the most part, though there are a few scenes (and one glaring one involving a car skidding out of control) where the editing and CGI departments didn't quite get the job done. There's only so much these departments can do on a TV show though that airs twice weekly.

Writing is pretty solid, and the writers did pen an interesting & intricate story that they clearly worked very hard on. You'll have to pay attention in order to start connecting everything together down the stretch run, and this isn't always easy when you're a K-drama binge watcher like I am (who also likes to have a few drinks along the way). The story is not really complicated, but I often prefer my K-dramas to require as little attention as possible while viewing, and this is a show that really doesn't afford you that opportunity.

Acting is mostly solid, but there are a few insufferably annoying characters on this show that will make you want to punch your TV. And as usual, you have to view everybody's performances here under the guise & understanding of how these K-dramas roles are typically portrayed. Lee Bo-young is fantastic throughout in the lead role of the desperate mom who'll do anything to save her daughter's life. Cho Seung-woo is solid as the main costar portraying a washed up cop trying to help Bo-young's character & her daughter while also trying to save his retarded brother on death row, heal past wounds, & reconnect with his family. There's various other important starring &/or supporting characters that are too numerous to mention in great detail (i.e. Bo-young's husband, the police squad leader, various potential bad guys, etc), but, I must give some credit to the 8-9 year old girl (Kim Yoo-bin) who plays the young daughter; she's tasked with portraying a number of traits and emotions of a typical girl of that age, while acting opposite adults. Her character is also forever getting kidnapped, threatened, and put in harm's way by a host of menacing bad guys; this would seem a bit scary to me if I were a little girl, but Yoo-bin just rolls with it all like a pro.

And while there is no real humor to speak of, there is one thing (which recurs time and again) that I found particularly amusing; the husband and wife's baffling lapses in remembering that practically everyone in Korea is trying to kidnap & kill their little daughter. They both love and want to protect her, and often go to great lengths to save her, then they just let her wander off again, or leave her in the care of some incompetent weirdo or stranger or someone they know holds a grudge against them. I guess you need some means by which to keep the daughter in continual peril though.

Summary: It's pretty good, but it has some faults and probably should've been pared down to the 12 episode range. I liked it overall, but I would have rated this at least a point lower than I did, if not for how it concluded. You'll have to sit & sift through A LOT in order to get the finish line, so the final payoff better be good when you eventually get there, and it is!

Bottom Line: 7.5 to 8 out of 10 stars. Very Well Recommended (if you can overlook its flaws).

I watched this series because of Lee Bo Young and she is absolutely fantastic in her role of a grieving mother who's trying to save her young daughter from a seemingly predestined death in the hands of unknown kidnappers. We don't know why but she is given a second chance to save her daughter (and herself) by going back in time. The early episodes are excellent as we are thrilled by our heroine's courage followed by despair when it seems like every time the little girl is rescued, another hurdle came along, as though all roads lead to the same inescapable destiny.

Lee Bo Young is one of my favorite Korean actresses and her performance here is flawless. Her costar Cho Seung-woo is absolutely brilliant as well. He saved the show by his rebellious and so endearing character, what charisma this actor radiates even when he's playing a burnout depressive ex-cop! The little girl is so adorably cute that you just want the show to have more screen time with her, her mom and the ex-cop, instead of scenes after scenes of our leads running after one mysterious serial killer after another.

And that's my problem with this show. Without giving away main storyline or spoilers, it seems to me that the script writer equates thrill with the number of serial killers, other bad guys and riddles you can fit into a 16-episode series. How many times can a girl be kidnapped within a story? (More than in 24 season 1 for those who have watched that adrenaline-filled classic with Kiefer Sutherland). Instead of a coherent storyline and a fitting ending (whether it is happy or tragic) we're given a series of riddles and action scenes and an ending that made no sense in terms of providing a logical conclusion that is believable - even within the context of a supernatural thriller. Since this is fiction, I have no issue with the premise of a "second chance". What I am not able to accept is a pseudo-artistic ending where the characters behave in ways beyond any reason with an outcome that's not justified or explained in any manner.

I would rate the lead actors a 10 while the script and direction get a 4. So while I enjoyed the fantastic performance of the trio of actors, I can only commiserate with them to be letdown by such a miserable script which doesn't know how to tell and end a story, despite a very good start and concept.