‘Goodbye Earth’ review: convoluted time-jumps and subplots

Goodbye Earth wastes no time getting into the crisis facing the residents of Woongcheon. As an asteroid hurtles towards Earth and a mass extinction level event seems imminent, the small, sleepy town is thrown into chaos as the residents desperately try to escape the doomed peninsula in a bid to save their lives on a deadline of less than a year.

The show’s pilot builds on the tension beautifully, punctuating tense moments with strained musical scores and pained expressions that contribute to the general sense of doom and unease. Pity that dissipates fairly quickly, as the show soon gets lost in a bevy of confusing time-jumps and convoluted sub-plots that overshadow the larger issue of the world quite literally ending.

Ahn Eun-jin proves her mettle as middle school teacher Jin Se-kyung, who becomes a pseudo-mother to her students in the time of crisis. Se-kyung dwells in the grey area of dubious morality brought on by the trauma of losing some of her students to a child trafficking ring in the early days of the disaster announcement, which sparked unrest and riots all over the country.

Her softer side, as the voice of reason and guardian for her students, is brilliantly contrasted by the steel outlines of a vigilante – she is as capable of murdering as she is of making sure her students have had two healthy meals. And even though the show presumably cut down his screen time considerably, Yoo Ah-in cuts an impressive figure as Se-kyung’s supportive (if secretive) fiancé Yoon Sang-eun.

Goodbye Earth also smartly offsets the heavy, oppressing air of death with small, helplessly human moments. A pair of parents, who’d sent their son and his family abroad for a chance of survival, sit in their living room and reckon that they may never be able to see them again. A couple running a shop decide to feed and take care of a small puppy even as ration cards are implemented and stock is running low. Sang-eun’s friends reunite and break out the “good wine” to celebrate his return.

It’s these moments that make the “Goodbye” part of the show so difficult to accept – as the clock counts down to tragedy, the knowledge of losing these little, yet important moments, hurts more than most. Despite these strengths, however, this K-drama stumbles in how it executes a story brimming with so much potential.

Part of it can be blamed on the frequent time jumps in the first few episodes of the show – as characters are introduced and set-up, we are taken back to multiple different points in time, which gets confusing to say the least. You might have to hit pause and rewind more than once, if only to figure whether you’re still in the past or back in the present.

Even past that, Goodbye Earth devolves into a by-the-numbers crime-thriller that no one signed up for. Much of the story is taken up by Se-kyung trying to save her students from the child trafficking ring that claimed the lives of their classmates, with parts of it entirely dedicated to her exacting vengeance and later running from an unknown ringleader.

Se-kyung’s dedication to protect her students at all costs in the face of unrest is admirable, sure, but prioritising revenge over, well, figuring out how to save themselves from certain death seems more than a little amiss. As emotionally charged as the storyline may be, given the larger picture of the show, it’s hard not to feel like Goodbye Earth had a much stronger story hidden beneath it all.

Goodbye Earth is available to stream exclusively on Netflix