Drama Review: In Time with You (2011)

Grade: A+

Category

Taiwanese romance

What it’s about

As they enter their thirties, mismatched best friends—he’s an easygoing charmer, she’s an uptight perfectionist—deal with their mutual attraction and struggle with life and love.

First impression

Whimsical and wonderful, this grown-up Taiwanese rom-com seems likely to be a hit with me. I’m even willing to forgive the female lead for being involved in fashion design, because she enjoys raining on people’s parades and demanding that shoes for teenagers be practical. Huzzah!

Final verdict

Although its plot is low-key to the point of being almost nonexistent and it suffers from last-quarter pacing problems, this stylish, sophisticated drama is second in my heart only to Coffee Prince. Everything about it is enchanting, from how it looks to how it sounds to how it feels.

Located in a urban world full of the leitmotifs of airplanes and clocks, In Time With You’s settings and scenery are both gorgeous and cozily lived-in. Its cinematic visual style feels playful and polished. Its sleepy indie-rock soundtrack is distinctive and wonderful. Its characters are simultaneously flawed and perfect, and their relationships feel as genuine and loving as any I’ve seen on television.

In a show full of marvels, perhaps the most marvelous thing about In Time with You is its writing. Maybe it’s because so much is lost in translation, but I rarely come away from an Asian drama remembering any one line; the shows are more compelling to me on a big-picture, emotional level than as a collection of words. But this drama is totally different. Whether the credit goes to the script itself or the person who did Drama Fever’s subbing, its dialogue is sharp and funny, sweet and insightful. I could watch a hundred years’ worth of programs written in my own language and not find as many beautiful turns of phrase and perfectly expressed truths: The female lead is described as a book that’s worth reading over and over again. She herself says that a sign of aging is “having doubt about perfection but believing deeply in imperfection.” (See below the cut for more bon mots.)

Like Coffee Prince, this show’s sensibility is warm and intimate. Its characters are just as likely to be shown sprawling in their pajamas at home as they are to be dressed up and out in the world. Even more wonderfully, ITwY’s characters are drawn with true human depth and complexity. Chen You Qing—its type-A, no-nonsense female lead—might have been a one-note bitch in a lesser show, but here she’s shown as both exacting and big-hearted and supportive. She asks a lot of people, but she’s willing to give them a lot in return; if a friend is in crisis, she’ll drop everything to help. And even the lesser characters benefit from a similarly nuanced, compassionate treatment. Chen You Qing’s mother could have been a clown used exclusively for cheap laughs and broad comedy (as the actress who plays her often is), but instead she’s shown as real person, someone equally capable of the ridiculous and the sublime. And put these two characters together, and you have a tender, affectionate mother-daughter bond unparallelled outside of Coffee Prince.

In other dramas, I tend to get annoyed when the lead couple spends too much time apart. This isn’t just an artifact of me being a chick-flick-loving romance junkie—it’s often caused by a show that focuses so much on its leads as a unit that it forgets they need to be individuals, too. Their lives outside their relationship are so hastily sketched that they feel like a waste of time. But even when they’re apart, Cheng You Qing and Li Da Ran are never less than compelling as both people living their own lives and as component pieces in a romantic puzzle. And what a romance it is—after fourteen years as friends, they know each other inside out and love being together.

I do wish ITwY had followed Coffee Prince’s lead in another way. Its first half is a realistic exploration of friendship that verges on love. But instead of moving the relationship forward and finding other sources of narrative tension in the show’s second half, ITwY draws out the coupling of its leads seemingly forever, relying on a never-ending cycle of will-they-or-won’t-they trickery to give the show structure.

There are still good things in the latter episodes: I like that both self-doubt and the temptations of other loves are factors in keeping the leads apart. Even Cheng You Qing’s misguided attempts to salvage her unsound relationship with an ex-boyfriend work for me—she sees their breakup as a failure, and her natural response to failure as straight-A idealist is to work all the harder for success. 

It’s usually possible to tell how much I like a show by how much chatter it inspires in my Random Thoughts sidebar. If it’s good and engaging (or, in fact, horrible and engaging), I’ll have multiple things to say about every episode. That wasn’t true of In Time with You, because while I was watching it there was no Random Thoughts sidebar; there was only me and a beautiful story powerfully told.

Random thoughts

• Episode 2. There’s something gentle and joyful about this drama, giving it an almost Coffee Prince-ish feel of loveliness. Along with its cinematic look and sound, its quiet tone is pretty much killing me. Here’s hoping for 20 more episodes just like this one.

• Episode 7. I can see why some people wouldn’t like this show—it’s slow to the point of being sleepy and doesn’t have anything resembling a real plot. And yet to me it feels like a treasure: a drama that’s wordy and thoughtful and naturalistic, full of moody voiceovers and emotional sophistication. Maybe it’s just because I’m its target age group, but this show is speaking to me in a way few others have.

• Episode 9. “She’s like a book that makes people tempted to read over and over again.” Swoon. Swoon. Swoon.

• Episode 18. You know what could use more of Nic? This show. You know what else could use more of Nic? My bedroom.

• Episode 18. Clearly I am hallucinating, because YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT, CHENG YOU QING. I won’t allow it.

• Episode 23. Every great show should end with a dog wearing a tiny cowboy hat. No joke.

Watch it

Drama Fever

Sugoideas

(Note that this show’s episodes are sometimes broken up differently—Drama Fever has 23 forty-five minute episodes, while other streaming sites divide it into 13 eighty-minute episodes. As far as I can tell, all are complete.)

You might also like

Coffee Prince, my favorite drama ever, for its realistic portrayal of friends becoming something more 

Direct quotes

• “Fourth Charm of a mature woman: A mature woman knows laughter can overcome her enemies and herself.”

• “Life is not perfect. But that doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful.”

• “My principle is, in this lifetime I’ll never let you leave my side.”

• “Do you know I spent a lifetime to learn one thing. Possession is the beginning of losing. But at the end I still couldn’t learn, I can’t accept that having youth is actually the beginning of losing youth. Having a marriage is actually the beginning of losing the marriage. Having reputation, it can also be lost. Having wealth is also the same. Health is also the same. Even raising a dog is the same. Possession of love . . . losing a loved one is harder to accept. Why is it that everything I pursue in life, I start losing it as soon as I gain possession of it. If I don’t have it, then I won’t have anything to lose.

Now do you know the reason I don't love you? Because possession is the beginning of losing.”

• “Sixth sign of getting old: always putting important things in important places, and then forgetting that important place.

I have lost my self confidence. It has gone to a place I can’t find.”

• “Remember you are not the other choice. You should be his only choice.”

• “Hey, Li Da Ren. Do you ever get the feeling that the happiness of purchasing all the shoes on the rack is far inferior to the joy of finally getting the one pair you’ve long coveted?”

• “What do I do? When you leave waves of longing come flooding in.”

• “Rely on mountains, they collapse. Rely on people, they run away. Best rely on yourself.”

• “This seems to be a rule: The more I don’t want to, the more I love.”

• “Don’t let yourself be someone’s bookmark. Be a book worth reading again and again.”

Quotes from:

Between Wor(L)ds

Quote Me

My Tiny Little World

(A sad note: even when people are writing about how great these lines are on the internet, they usually attribute them to the actors. Not Hsu Yu Ting, the woman who actually wrote them. Must behind the scenes always be so very behind the scenes?)