Three people can predict the future when they are dreaming. Together, they must work to prevent future crimes and uncover the connection between them. And can you smell what I smell? It’s love in the air! Yeah, baby!
While You Were Sleeping consists of 16 episodes. I think this is one of the most popular romantic series made in South Korea, but I can’t say it lived up to my expectations.
The concept is interesting, and it works for the first six episodes or so. But then I felt the series dragged on; it should have been 12 episodes, not 16. This is a common issue with South Korean TV series—they often feel unnecessarily stretched.
While You Were Sleeping mixes romance, drama, crime, comedy, suspense, and a little science fiction. It sort of works, but the series isn’t tight enough, and there are some really cringeworthy scenes with a terrible score that almost made me throw up from how unbearable it was.
We follow three characters who can predict the future when they dream. The first is a woman, a regular woman who works for her mother, though she was once a reporter. She quit her job after dreaming that she would be killed one day while working as a reporter. The second character is a prosecutor who falls in love with the woman, and she falls in love with him. His job is, of course, to send criminals to jail, and he also tries to prevent future crimes from happening. The third character is a cop who also falls in love with the woman, but she doesn’t feel the same way about him. However, they become best friends and share a common enemy: the evil defense attorney.
However, the most disgusting thing about While You Were Sleeping is the men wearing lipstick. There are so many men with lipstick in this series that it made me nauseous and angry. It’s not cool to see a cop wearing red lipstick, especially when the cop is not a hot woman but a so-called man. It’s revolting. It’s like watching a freak circus where the freaks keep attacking you, and you can’t do anything to fight back because you want to watch the series to the end.
Another problem is the atrocious clothing many characters wear. The outfits in this series are laughable—especially the ugly clothes the so-called men wear. It’s as if they’ve been let out of an asylum, with their obsession with short pants and ugly coats. Why in God’s name do people still wear coats? The only person allowed to wear a coat is Chow Yun-Fat.
Watching While You Were Sleeping made my eyes bleed, thanks to the red-lipstick men and their hideous clothes.
The actors also disappointed me, especially the one playing the main prosecutor. He is stiff and unnatural, clearly not a good actor. They should have switched him out with the actor who plays the cop. He is better-looking and a much better actor. So I’m not sure what they were thinking. I also didn’t like that the cop character wasn’t involved as much toward the end of the series. I felt he was a vital part of the story, but suddenly, they pushed him to the sidelines.
As for Bae Suzy, we all know she’s not a great pop star nor the greatest actress, and while she was decent in Vagabond, she’s not great here. Emotional scenes where she cries are painful to watch—her crying feels fake and fails to convince the viewer she’s hurting emotionally. Worse, there’s no chemistry between her and the prosecutor. The connection that should make their relationship shine just isn’t there; they don’t create the magic you’d expect. But you can’t deny that Bae Suzy is a cutie who melts hearts. If you don’t agree with that, you can F off because you and I are not friends anymore, and you need professional help.
The court cases were so unrealistic they made my brain hurt. The same can be said about the evil defense attorney, who is a bad seed and could be a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He is the main antagonist, and while he is incredibly irritating, the actor is pretty good in the role. You will love to hate this character.
I understand why While You Were Sleeping is loved, especially by teenagers or viewers under 20. But the series has too many episodes, the pacing is off, and the last episode was pretty disappointing. It’s not a TV series for older viewers who want a deeper connection to the characters and demand real chemistry between the actors, not the superficial chemistry we’re offered in this series.
What While You Were Sleeping offers is your typical South Korean genre mixing, focusing on love for your friends, family, and romantic partner. It does deliver some suspenseful scenes, but for the most part, you know our heroes will stop bad things from happening. However, there are moments where the series’ rules around dreaming and predicting the future are hard to understand, making some situations confusing.