Signal / 시그널 / Sigeuneol

Plot: 
A young criminal profiler's life spins out of control when someone from the past contacts him via a broken police radio and tells him that they have been working together across time to solve crimes or to stop them before they occur.

The OST is gloriously haunting and perfect.

Main Characters:

Park Hae-young {Lee Je-hoon} ~ Hot-shot profiler who receives (and sometimes deserves) quite a few kicks to the shins while refusing to learn respect or compromise for stupidity and corruption, in power though it may be. Passionate, caring, and good at his job while still clearly with much to learn, I loved the combination of hot-headed youth and utter sweetness. Also I loved his relationship with his team leader, which held so much respect and honor all the way through, while his relationship with Lee Jae-han {my best friend whom I have never met} nearly brought me to tears multiple times. 

  

Cha Soo-hyun {Kim Hye-soo} ~ Her Awesomeness the Cold Case Team Leader. With the twisted timeline of the drama, we see her both as the Rookie, unable to drive a stick-shift and trying to navigate a crush on her partner while learning how to go after criminals, and as the hardened Team Leader, who has seen and learned and loved and lost, and who knows when to knock her young profiler back into line and when to use his skills and show him how an experienced cop breaks rules. She is that glorious dichotomy that dresses in all pink on her days off but who can kick criminal rears like nobody's business when the situation requires, and I completely loved her. 

Lee Jae-han {Cho Jin-woong} ~ That rare, rare thing that is a righteous man. He has a perfectly beautiful soul, though it's slowly that his awesomeness appears. He's no genius, no specialist...just a homicide detective, as he is mockingly reminded, time and time again. But he doesn't care, and that's what makes his story incredible. Stubborn and persistent and doggedly capable, he will fight for what is right no matter the cost to himself.

Kim Bum-joo {Jang Hyun-sung} ~ The devil incarnate. Or rather, the devil's lackey. For the sake of spoilers, I'll just say...augh. There was a splendid set-up for a second season at the end, but I'm not sure where you find a Bigger Bad than the one who calmly murders a child for the sake of expediency. 

Cautionary Notes:
The genre is fantasy crime, and crimes in the drama range from child abduction/murder to rape. The biggest warning would be that some of the murders that occur onscreen are somewhat graphic, and skeletons and bloody crime scenes make frequent appearances. 

It's definitely not an easy drama to watch, but that is more because of the emotional anguish it shows than because of gruesomeness or narrative issues. 

Favorite Scene:

Everything. Though when Jae-han figured out who profiler Lieutenant Park was in his own timeline...I fell in love with everything 100 times more. 
Or when the young profiler spoke across time, telling his team leader's previous sunbae (Jae-han) to encourage her because he knows she had a horrible time back then, while guessing that she had a crush on him way back then...it was just gorgeous. So sweet and perfect.

Random Quotes:

Hae-young: "Can cops do that??!?!?"

Soo-hyun, as she breaks into a suspect's house: "Of course you can't. Only old cops like me can. You can come back tomorrow with a warrant."

Hae-young: *looks helplessly around, horrified, before charging in after her* 

~

Hae-young: "You wrote it down in your notebook!" 

Jae-han: "What did I write? How did you get my notebook?!"

The time-twistyness of it all just makes me squeal. XD

~

Hae-young: "He probably didn't even realize he liked that woman. No one ever taught him what those feelings were. He probably could not kill after that. And that's why he tried to commit suicide. If he can't kill...he has no reason to live. Do you think that he's just a 'crazy piece of trash' too?"

Soo-hyun (team leader): "Even if his childhood was hard, he still killed 11 people. I don't have any sympathy for him."

Hae-young: "There are those who are born monsters, but there are also those who are made into monsters by people. If someone...if just 1 person had reached out a helping hand...he and the dead victims could all have been saved."

Overall:
I love Signal. So very, very much. The aura is painfully beautiful and the quiet kind of addicting that just sneaks up on you. It is intense, thoughtful, tightly written, and carefully plotted, and the present affecting the past and the future and the over-arching mystery is just awesome.

Completely random things I liked include the fact that the the coroner/forensic pathologist is this pretty lady who isn't creepy and weird like every autopsy person in every American show ever. She just does her job and seems like a normal nice person. XD 

Also...this might be the single movie or tv show I've ever seen where they showed an accurate response to losing somebody's pulse. Even to the correct placement and position of hands for chest compressions. That right there would put it high on my list of favorites. XD {Even though the scene itself slaughtered me.}

There are moments where they're working across time to solve a crime and then time starts collapsing...It is absolutely slaughtering. I had to literally pause the drama at times because it is so horrendously gut-wrenching. It hurts. It's...the kind of story where you think they've twisted your emotions to the furthest pain and then they wrench it further. Worse, the crimes are based on real ones...and some of them are really, really horrible. So there's always the added pain of knowing what you're watching actually happened.

Basically, though, it's one of the most consistent, carefully written dramas I've ever seen, and that's despite the fact that we're talking multiple timelines and the glorious ability to rewrite the story repeatedly (which they used to absolute perfection). The ending was an absolute roller-coaster, and the amount and variation of emotions I went through while watching it was insane. This is the way to do a drama.

Amazingness.

Verdict: 5/5
Go watch this right now. XD It's hard to describe the storyline without spoilers {which storyline do you want, the original past, the past being changed, the current time, or the current time that's been re-written...}, but this is a beautiful, haunting, thoughtful kind of thriller, and I loved it.

I was too engrossed to get a picture of a black hat while watching.
That's how good this drama is.

I won't give up. I'll go all the way, no matter what. I have to right the real wrong, so that I can change the past, and the future too.

Lee Jae-han

All is possible. If we don't give up, there is hope.

Park Hae-young