REVIEW: Memories of the Alhambra
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 1 out of 5 stars
Synopsis
*partially taken from DramaList*
Memories of the Alhambra tells the unique and suspenseful love story of Yoo Jin Woo and Jung Hee Joo.
Strong-spirited Yoo Jin Woo (Hyun Bin of Secret Garden) is the CEO of an investment company with a degree in engineering and a knack for developing video games. He has an adventurous and competitive spirit. Suffering after his best friend betrays him, he takes a business trip to Granada, Spain, in search of the mysterious inventor of an innovative augmented-reality video game. He ends up at a hostel that Jung Hee Joo owns.
Hee Joo (Park Shin Hye of Heirs, Heartstrings, Pinocchio, Doctors) is a former classical guitarist who came to Spain to further her studies. After the death of her parents, she takes on various jobs to support herself, including running the old hostel.
They are both drawn into a series of strange and unexpected events.
Rambling
*beware of spoilers*
This had so much potential. I wish that it delivered on all its promises and lived up to all that high-budget gloriousness that blew me away in the very first episode. I think pacing issues totally screwed up this show, and more than anything, a refusal to adequately explain any video game phenomena. Plus, that ending... -_-
EXO's Chanyeol was the biggest tease. This show exhibited the Chris Brown Effect (that is, just like Chris Brown's character in Stomp the Yard): Chanyeol's character mysteriously disappears in the first episode and is presumed dead for much of the show.
He dramatically reappears at the end of episode 14, after Jin-woo finishes his quest in the game. Apparently, Jin-woo's suspicions were all correct. Chanyeol (aka Se-joo) was somehow sucked into the game Jumanji-style and was stuck there until somebody rolled a 5 or an 8—I mean, until Jin-woo leveled up enough to receive a quest, then until Jin-woo leveled up some more, traveled to Granada, almost died, traveled to Korea, almost died, and then gave Emma the stinkin' key to simultaneously self-destruct the game and release Chanyeol.
Chanyeol, meanwhile, is suffering from PTSD over his own game, afraid to even leave the house and scared shitless of thunderstorms ::cue classical guitar intro:: For hiring such an in-demand K-pop star, they barely used him. And on top of all this, they seemed to have given his character crippling shyness. Or maybe his character was on the autism spectrum? That would explain why he was such a savant for video game design...
Anyway, the visuals on this show were stunning. I can't stress enough how much money must have gone into producing all the CGI effects, the entirety of the AR gameplay that overlaid the real world. Super believable and high quality.
It seems all the money went into effects and didn't go to the writing team. They cooked up a stinker of a drama between CEO Jin-woo, his best friend-turned-enemy CEO Hyung-seok, his cheating ex-wife Soo-jin, and let's go ahead and throw in Hyung-seok's dad Professor Cha and Jin-woo's second wife Yoo-ra. All of these people were at each other's throats for huge chunks of the show, and you know what? I didn't care.
I only liked the plot point revolving the recurring video game bug—assassin Hyung-seok. That was crazy AF. I will say that the best betrayal was when Professor Cha premeditates murdering Jin-woo by setting up the back-up plan of opening the game server only at the hotel and filling it with high-level NPCs (non-player characters) before dropping by Jin-woo's bedside. I quite enjoyed that sequence. The Professor cornered into writing a damning, totally true confession of all his misdeeds - Jin-woo watching as he puts pen to paper - the Professor locking himself in the bathroom to "make a call" to his lawyer - and then all hell breaks loose. The Professor's death was very satisfying to watch, with his NPC assassin son turning up and not responding to any of his pleas. Cha even says something like, "I did this to avenge your death!" when really he just wanted to save face, protect his honor, keep his reputation.
A quick note here: This show basically had no villain. There was no puppetmaster, no man behind the curtain. The culprit for all the deaths was the faulty game itself. It's not as if Se-joo programmed the game in such a manner. The show made it seem as if the game lost its shit as soon as this Marco fellow stabbed Se-joo with a real knife in real life while they were still logged in and playing the game. To be honest, this wasn't the villain I was looking for ::waves hand like Obi-wan::
I'm still sort of reeling from all the time jumps and flashbacks (which were constant throughout), but I'm pretty sure the most compelling part of this show was the subplot with Secretary Seo. OMG, I almost cried when he showed up in the dungeon as an NPC ally. Damn, what a reveal! I really thought that was the better romance. Forget Hee-joo with all of her blubbering and tears, and give me more Secretary Seo! Still mourning for that saintly secretary-turned-BFF. <3
Lastly, turning my attention to the ending. ::sigh:: In short, to reboot the game Jin-woo must hand over the key to Emma and let her stab him in the heart, effectively killing him as well. WAHT. This was too stupid. Why does Jin-woo have to die? Why did the game consider him a bug like all the other game victims-turned-NPCs? I literally shouted when they showed Jin-woo's little pile of white dust. You've gotta be kidding me, right?
~But wait! There's more!~ Well, in the last 5 minutes of the show, Se-joo goes into more detail on a place(?) he called the "instance dungeon"—something he mentioned right after he returned to Korea in one piece. He apparently created this virtual invisibility cloak to hide from enemies in the game, a sort of Room of Requirement for only the user called Master. And since Jin-woo became Master when he completed the quest, he could be alive and surviving in the game, just like Se-joo did for more than a year.
Well, folks, that's when I checked out. Because this dang show ends with Hee-joo running to where another random gamer saw a helpful high-level user with ::looks around to make sure no one's listening:: a gun. 0_0 The silhouette of Jin-woo is there, shooting up NPCs and helping out total newbs playing the game. Hee-joo's voiceover says something about how even though everyone else thinks he's dead, she'll still believe.
Play—I mean—watch at your own risk, people.
Did you watch Memories of the Alhambra? Tell me what you thought in the comments below!
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