Chicago Typewriter has a really promising and interesting story premise but unfortunately it was not executed very well.

The beginning is really good and you get hooked because you want to know what happened in the past. It is really lighthearted with a few good comedy scenes and the small dramatic scenes that are dropped in between prevent it from being boring.

But the series drops in quality after the exposition. It seems as if the creators had a really good idea but didn't expand it enough. After you have seen the idea the series has nothing more to offer. The whole middle of the series feels really stretched and filled with useless scenes that don't advance the story nor the characters very much. I have the feeling that the romance aspect of the show was supposed to be subtle and in the background but because the actual story wasn't really fleshed out they had to fill in the blanks with romance. This is not bad per se, but the relationship between the couple doesn't go anywhere. Their relationship doesn't get deeper and most of the time don't even feel like a couple.

The characters are not bad, but their characterisation is not very stable. When the creators of the show didn't know what to do, they just let characters act dumb and against their initial character traits just to advance the story and make it more dramatic. However this has the opposite effect and keeps you from being immersed in the story and empathizing with the characters.

For example, it is established that the characters in the present have the same traits as their past life counterparts. So Han Se Joo should be very clever because in his past life he was the head of the resistence, made perfect plans and was always cautious of the enemy. But when Baek Tae Min calls him and wants to trick him, he plays dumb goes to the place and then acts as if he knew that he was tricked all along. Then why go there in the first place and not call the police or something? That is just one example of accute dumbness.

Then it seems the writers just threw in things that don't make sense at all. When Se Joo falls down the roof the ghost Yoo Jin Oh possesses him, which isn't the problem, but why can he make Se Joo float and cushion his fall? Yoo Jin Oh can't even float by himself, so why can he float when inside another body? I hope you see what I mean.

And sometimes there are flashbacks, which are repeated throughout the series to waste time. All in all what I want to say is that the pacing of the series is really bad and you can clearly see where the writers put in extra stuff to stretch the runtime of the show. They should have made a mini series or fleshed out the story more, but in this state it feels like an unfinished prototype of a good show.

I really liked the part where they are sent back in the past by the ghost and explore the past. They should have told more of the past in this way or let the characters remember parts of their past after experiencing something emotional that triggers their memory. Instead almost all of the past story is told in episode 14 or 15 in one piece.

I really can't understand why it has such a high score here. I was really interested in this show after reading the summary and seeing that so many people liked it but unfortunately it really isn't all that great.

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