Time travelling motive has a special place in my heart for quite some time. And I mean movies, tv series or books, I don’t care, if it involves time travel, I want to see it. I think it says enough that aside of Kairos, I’ve just watched Signal and I am watching Tunnel right now. In span of a month.
Of course one may say that in Kairos there’s no time travel per say, nobody’s travelling in time, but let just include communication between different timelines in the same group here, since it’s such an interesting idea. And between three mentioned dramas, I think that so far, Kairos is doing the best job.
There’s this Hitchcock’s quote that everyone loves to put in situations like that. The one that everyone knows and it’s almost a cliche to mention. But unfortunately, it fits perfectly. Because Kairos starts with an earthquake (not literally) and then the stress continuously increases, basically till the very end. From the first episode, even before anything happens, the viewer is put in a state of constant pressure. We know that something is going to happen, and even when it happens we then know that is not over yet.
I’ve watched Kairos simultaneously with Signal, which is very similar when it comes to the main plot idea. And if you haven’t watched Signal and really don’t want any spoilers, please beware. Signal was for me this mythical series, praised so many times, that I had very high expectations towards it. And honestly, I was let down very hard, since between Kairos and Signal, the first one I liked much much more. And I think it was mostly because how emotionally attached we get to the characters of Kairos. In Signal viewer is distanced from the characters, there’s not much of a emotional bond there. But in Kairos, we get pushed into their lives. Plot is told from a very subjective perspective which gives us opportunity to see the characters lives as they see it. And sometimes it’s the reason why we don’t get the full picture.
Like Seo Jin. At first we see him as this caring father figure, before his daughter is kidnapped. Then we see some scenes when he’s nothing like that, he’s scolding his daughter for something she’s done by mistake. We see that at this point he values the company’s and his image more than his daughter well being. But then again, after some time we see how it really was. How he felt remorse that he didn’t tell Da Bin that it was not her fault. And we get this change of perspective couple of times, towards different characters and this makes the series so unpredictable. We really don’t know who to trust and who’s on which side. And at one point I’ve noticed that nothing in this series is as it seems to be. We explore this drama layer after layer showing more hidden lies.
And we’re spiralling in a very repetitive but not boring spiral. Things get more and more complicated especially that it started off as a pretty simple revenge story. Now it seems that everyone is more or less involved in events that are way above the original plot line.
I like how we have several side plots revealed but they’re clear and don’t really collide with main plot, but rather merge together in a very neat story. It’s actually evolution of past events thanks to which the next ones are explained. We soon discover that they have a deeper meaning and they’re all somehow connected.
And the characters. At first I thought that it would be impossible to manage the same characters in different timelines. I was sure that we’ll soon get lost in who’s when and what’s going on. But on contrary, everything was so well written, that sometimes the clock showing the date was not necessary (although sometimes very helpful, but when the action really sped up).
The characters are well written and very easy to like, even when they’re not so nice. Even bad guys have a good story to tell and their motivations are pretty clear.
This is the series that gets you hooked very soon and does’t let you go till the very end. I think that it was one of better dramas that I’ve watched for a long time.