"Remember" Episode 4 recap

With this episode "Remember" finishes the introductory phase of the story. We close out back in the present day, with our two leads now established as lawyers. Now that I've seen where "Remember" was going, I really wish the drama hadn't taken so much time with its backstory. I kept watching Jeon-hyeok's case expecting some kind of twist, but it never happened. We see in full detail here how the murder played out, and save for a weird blackout it's pretty much exactly what was originally implied back in the first episode.
There have been several writing flaws in "Remember" that I had been ignoring in the hopes they would be explained. The most obvious of these is just how weak the case against Jeon-hyeok is. The prosecution's theory of events simultaneously requires that Jeon-hyeok both be senile and also a master criminal capable of moving great distances at will and destroying all evidence except for the evidence he doesn't destroy. All for a crime that's completely out of character with his known personality.
The prosecution is able to get around these issues by manufacturing evidence and bullying professionals into lying. But if we're living in a universe where the law can be disregarded this shamelessly, why is Jeon-hyeok even still alive at all? Assuming the death penalty isn't an option the bad guys could just murder him in prison and fake it as a suicide. That's not really any less plausible than anything else we see them do this episode.
Even more glaringly, apparently no one thought to wonder why the victim was wearing a red cocktail dress when in fact she did not own a red cocktail dress. Never mind defense attorneys- a typical reporter could spot the holes in this story from a mile away. These are all very basic questions which simply were not addressed until the last minute as an afterthought. It beggars disbelief that Dong-ho ace attorney would just ignore all this. He does have a reason of course- a not terribly satisfying one, unfortunately.
This episode is grotesque, excessive melodrama. Thankfully Jin-woo's character is mostly unscathed, ignoring how stupid he was not to make his own copy of the video with his cell phone. But as the generic protagonist of a melodrama, Yoo Seung-ho is much less compelling than he was as the young man with perfect memory. I can only hope that post time-skip, "Remember" decides to be more legal thriller and less contrived set-up.
Review by William Schwartz

"Remember" is directed by Lee Chang-min-I, written by Yoon Hyeon-ho and features Yoo Seung-ho, Park Min-yeong, Park Seong-woong, Nam Goong-min, Jeong Hye-seong and Jeon Kwang-ryeol

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