Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Doona!
(이두나! / Lee Doo Na!)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hiya! It got unexpectedly busy the past few weeks and I couldn’t find the time and space to write a review until now, even though I finished the majority of this show within a week. As there was a gap of almost two weeks between the second-to-last and the last episode, I was afraid that I might not remember all the details from the first half of the show, as my memory fades very quickly when it gets occupied with other things. Still, I wanted to write a proper review, even though it took me longer than expected to finish the series. I plan on watching one more show before the end of the year, but we’ll see how it goes as I still have a couple of deadlines as well. Like my previous watch Mask Girl, this show appeared on my Netflix feed and I decided to just watch it straightaway, as I sometimes do in-between my watchlist items. All in all, I found it a pretty soothing and even healing show to watch – until the final couple of episodes, when I completely lost track of what was happening between the main characters.

Doona! is a 9-episode Netflix K-Drama with an episode duration of about 50 minutes. It’s about a college student named Lee Won Joon (played by Yang Se Jong), who moves into a new sharehouse, where he meets his new housemate Lee Doo Na (played by Bae Suzy). What he doesn’t know is that she’s a famous idol from a popular girl group called Dream Sweet who was recently dismissed from the group. Doo Na, in turn, initially takes him for a sasaeng (stalker fan) who followed her into the sharehouse. As they get to know each other better and their relationship deepens, the more complicated aspects of Doo Na’s personality, including the reason why she had to leave her idol group, come to light and start interfering with things between them. Apart from this main storyline, their group of friends from the sharehouse also get individual (be it less explicit) storylines.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to keep my summary so short, haha! I guess it really has to do with the fact that this story is very straightforward. As it predominantly focusses on the romance between the main leads, there is also not much distraction in terms of other plotlines or side character interference. As the show is more character-based than story-based, I think it’ll be best to construct this review through a character analysis. I will start with the main couple.

Lee Won Joon is a very dedicated college student. He is determined to succeed in his studies and since he’s moved away from home he is also very adamant on finding a part-time job, preferably in tutoring, as he is very good at maths. It’s immediately established that he is a very mature, responsible and good-hearted guy. Despite his determination to live on his own, he still feels bad for leaving his sickly sister behind with his single mother, and he wants to earn money quickly so he can still contribute to taking care of his family. He is introduced to the sharehouse by one of his old school friends (I believe), called Gook Soo Jin (played by Joo Yeon Woo). He is nicknamed ‘Gooksoo’ (‘noodles’) as he has his own noodle place. Gooksoo is a major fan of the idol girl group Dream Sweet, and as he always puts on Dream Sweet’s music in his car and restaurant, Won Joon has come to recognize it, even though he doesn’t specifically know the group or its members. When he first meets Doo Na outside of the sharehouse, he is unknowingly wearing a hoodie Gooksoo lend to him, which is Dream Sweet merchandise with their logo on it. Seeing this, he is misunderstood by Doo Na as a fan. However, despite the fact she looks vaguely familiar to him (Gooksoo has her photocard on display in his car), Won Joon doesn’t immediately connect the dots with who Doo Na is and starts his comfortable new life at the sharehouse.
I think Won Joon can be described as a typical boy next door. He’s not one for being in the center of attention, he doesn’t really care what others think of him and he’s generally nice to everyone. The only thing he cares about at the starting point of the story is finding a part-time job next to his studies, so he can keep focussing on his grades and simultaneously make some money to contribute to his family’s financial situation. He is not someone who goes looking for drama, he prefers an easy life. He doesn’t hide his emotions either. When he feels wronged or frustrated, rather than express it through getting angry he will try to put it into words. He might be a bit soft-hearted, but he’s not a pushover – he will still make it very clear when he doesn’t like something, but he’s quick to forgive people. All in all, I found him a very relatable character with a lot of realistic human contradictions.

What’s funny is that we are initially introduced to Doo Na through Gooksoo’s perception of her. This makes for an interesting contrast when we meet the real Doo Na for the first time outside the sharehouse, smoking a cigarette in a jersey tracksuit. Initially she doesn’t even talk to Won Joon until the point where she actually confronts him with her suspicions of him. After realizing she was wrong about his intentions to move into this sharehouse, she warms up to him quite fast and even starts initiating closer contact by continuously inviting him to have a meal together and even visiting him at college. After establishing a platonic friendship, she even starts helping Won Joon out when he’s struggling with his lingering feelings for his first love. From the start, it’s not her intention to seduce him, but she inevitably feels drawn to him more and more. She also keeps showing him more vulnerable sides of herself, and they become really close.
On the other hand, there’s still the matter of why Doo Na was kicked out of her idol group. It’s described as that she got involved in a scandal, but we also get some glimpses of flashbacks suggesting that Doo Na was struggling a lot under the pressure of the idol industry and didn’t get along great with all of her groupmates and producers. These glimpses are never elaborated on and we never get to see the full corresponding flashbacks so we don’t get the whole picture of all the things that happened to her. All we learn is that she collapsed during a concert in Japan, and her manager urged her to take a break. And then she got into a scandal because her own mother (short but classic guest appearance from Kim Sun Young) took advantage of her financial success and defrauded many people of millions of won, resulting in major debt. I’m not 100% sure whether this scandal came out after Doo Na had already been forced to take a break and then that break led to suspension, but the scandal reason was highlighted more than the idol pressure reason, so I’m guessing that was the defining reason for her dismissal. Despite Doo Na’s casual behavior, and no matter how much she tries to pretend she doesn’t care, we see that she is not okay with the situation. While she won’t pick up her mom’s calls, she continuously tries to reach her manager – she even runs out onto the streets barefoot when she suspects him to be nearby. The way she reacted to any sign of contact from her manager made me feel like she did actually want to return to the stage, and this is confirmed later on in the series when her manager finally comes to see her and she ultimately returns to the industry as a solo artist.
All in all, it remains a bit vague what exactly Doo Na’s reasons are for maintaining such an enigmatic persona towards Won Joon when they first meet. She never talks in detail about what exactly happened to her, and Won Joon only finds out about the scandal through the Internet and information Gooksoo provides him with. Doo Na presents herself as a tough girl, smoking and swearing like a sailor, but the glimpses of vulnerability also suggest that she was wounded in some way and needs to heal. She finds an ideal healing partner in the uncomplicated Won Joon, who doesn’t even know who she is and, when he finds out, doesn’t even care.

As I was watching their relationship, I realized that it could be very clearly defined as a typical Golden Retriever boy versus Black Cat girl dynamic. Doo Na is hardened by the idol industry and alert to any kind of (hateful) stalkers around her. She’s seen how society can turn on a person over a scandal that person didn’t even have a personal hand in and she’s become more distrustful of people that approach her. On the other hand, Won Joon is primarily occupied by studying and earning money, and he just follows his feelings where they lead them. It’s in his nature to take care of people and he becomes a source of comfort to Doo Na before he even realizes he has developed feelings for her. Doo Na doesn’t interfere in his transition of feelings from his first love to her, it all happens very naturally and the healing effect the two have on each other is very sweet.

I will quickly go over the main side characters in the story, the group of friends from the sharehouse, before identifying a couple of criticisms (and icks) I developed throughout the show.

Let’s first talk a bit about Kim Jin Joo (played by Ahn Ha Young), Won Joon’s first love. Won Joon meets Jin Joo unexpectedly when they’re both putting up flyers to promote their tutoring skills. From the start it’s clear that there is (or has been) something between them that hasn’t been fully settled yet. We ultimately find out that the two liked each other in high school, but when Won Joon confessed, Jin Joo suddenly took an unexplained distance from him and they grew apart. Now that they’re reunited, it’s obvious to see there’s still some lingering attachment between them – the glances, the smiles, it’s clear as day. However, even after being reunited, the two don’t immediately get together and there’s a bit of a weird back-and-forth push-and-pull thing going on between them. Neither of them will agree or disagree to have feelings for each other, but at the same time their behavior when they’re together speaks volumes. As this ambiguous dynamic continues, Won Joon finds that his romantic feelings are shifting towards Doo Na, and he and Jin Joo eventually settle on being friends, even after Jin Joo herself confesses her overdue feelings for him.
I really liked Jin Joo, and I honestly would’ve supported her and Won Joon as a couple if she’d just been straightforward about her feelings from the start. The way she handled his confession in the past, avoiding him without an explanation (even though she had a pretty valid one) was not the way to go and her own confession came way too late. She missed her chance, simple as that. I did like getting her point of view in the scenes we initially saw from Won Joon’s perspective. I also liked that she never became bitter towards Doo Na even after acknowledging her as a potential love rival. On the contrary, Doo Na and Jin Joo build up a really sweet friendship. That scene where Doo Na came over to Jin Joo’s place and they were sitting together and Jin Joo just naturally leaned in to hug her as she saw that she was silently struggling was really heartwarming. Doo Na was the only one who found out about Jin Joo’s family situation and how her dad terrorized her, and that made her immediately soften towards her.
To mention Jin Joo’s family situation briefly, her dad was horrible. I don’t know what exactly his deal was, but when you start calling your own daughter a ‘useless bitch’, you’re not a father in my opinion. I don’t know if it had to do with Jin Joo and her sister not living up to his expectations or something, but his behavior was unacceptable no matter how you looked at it. I was so proud of Jin Joo when she finally managed to get out of her parents’ house and came to the sharehouse where she was surrounded by warm and supportive people her own age. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a second female lead who remained this genuine and good-hearted even when her feelings weren’t reciprocated, and I loved the relationships she managed to maintain with both Won Joon and Doo Na.

Moving on, there’s Choi Yi Ra (played by Park Se Wan). Yi Ra is initially introduced as kind of a loose cannon: she exhibits quite eccentric behavior that doesn’t typically fit into the mold of South Korean society. This is probably because she returned to Korea after living the majority of her life in Brazil. Won Joon’s reaction on seeing her for the first time immediately suggests he knows her and prefers to stay away from her. As it happens, Won Joon and Yi Ra grew up together. They were born around the same time at the same hospital, where their moms bonded and decided it would be fun if their kids would get married to each other when they grew up. That scenario didn’t play out as envisioned, because Yi Ra grew up to be very dominant over Won Joon, and Won Joon disliked her more than that he felt affection for her. After Yi Ra left for Brazil he’d hoped to never see her again, but now she’s back and once she recognizes him she’s initially bent on claiming him back as her fiancé. Fortunately it doesn’t take long for them to establish they’re both not into each other like that and Yi Ra focusses her attention on Won Joon’s sharehousemates.
While initially being slightly intimidated by Yi Ra’s personality myself (lol), I grew to like her more once she started paying less attention to others and more to herself. She literally caught someone’s attention as soon as she stopped taking the (bothersome) initiative and just started acting like herself. While initially being quite a caricature, it was nice to see her mature a bit in the final episode when she committed to a solid relationship. I wondered what kind of comic relief she was going to bring and how it would link to the main story, but her story kind of became a thing of its own without interfering with the main storyline.

Goo Jung Hoon (played by Kim Do Wan) is one of Won Joon’s sharehousemates. While we don’t get a lot of information about him, he is typified as a guy who doesn’t have a lot of interest in other people. When Yi Ra comes into the picture he is initially appalled by her persistent attempts to get close to him, but at the same time he can’t find it in himself to be too hurtful towards her either. Despite himself, he ends up falling for Yi Ra despite initially rejecting her advances. I really loved the scene where he just went ‘Don’t worry, I like you too’ and kissed her like that. He just accepted his feelings after some consideration and informed her of it, like it wasn’t a big deal (which it wasn’t, I guess). I liked that they also got a proper kissing scene. They made an unexpectedly cute couple in the end.

Finally there’s Seo Yoon Taek (played by Kim Min Ho), the guy who just couldn’t get a girl and then ended up giving love advice to a whole class of women. Yoon Taek was basically the moodmaker at the sharehouse. I get that he was the type who’d always humorously miss out on any romantic action, but he didn’t make too big of a deal out of it so he didn’t become a pathetic person. I did go ‘Aww’ when he missed out on the chance to pick up Yi Ra when she got drunk. Apparently her friends had contacted both him and Jung Hoon, and the latter got to her faster. The way Yoon Taek sat between her friends after arriving too late was both funny and sad🥲.
Both Jung Hoon and Yoon Taek don’t get a background story, probably because both of them have no prior link to Won Joon or Doo Na’s pasts. It was pretty refreshing to have so many uncomplicated and light characters in the show, they created a nice vibe and there was no drama between them. There could’ve been tension between the two guys when Jung Hoon realized his own feelings for Yi Ra while also being aware of how Yoon Taek felt about her, but he didn’t hold back his feelings and Yoon Taek also didn’t get salty about it, so all was well.

I have to admit that when I first saw the opening sequence of this show and the final shot of the whole group of friends on the beach together, I expected a bit more bonding between all of them. They all got along well, and of course couples and friendships were formed between them, but I feel like in the end the supporting characters remained a bit more in the background of the main couple’s storyline. While it was refreshing to have some simple and cute supporting storylines alongside the main one, I still felt like there could’ve been some more bonding, especially with Jung Hoon and Yoon Taek since they didn’t have background stories of their own.

Now that I’ve gone through all the main characters of the show, I’d like to share some opinions of a more criticizing nature. As I mentioned in my introduction, I was enjoying the series up to a certain point, and from there on things suddenly got quite confusing and even icky between the main leads. I’ve seen very positive reviews overall on several drama source sites so I might be stating an unpopular opinion here, but I still want to share it.

First of all, I was confused by the voice-over narration at the end of the first episode. Even after gaining clarity in the final episode I still find it confusing why they structured the narrative in that particular way. The first episode ends with Doo Na visiting Won Joon at one of his college classes and them having ice cream together. The scene of her visiting his class is then repeated, accompanied by a voice-over narration in Doo Na’s voice, saying:

“Every life has its unexpected twists. You once said to me that you and I are from different universes. That though we had been living in completely different universes, we found ourselves sitting side by side at the same station purely by chance. Even though you may be right, I was happy that it was you.”

I remember that this voice-over confused the heck out of me and I even played it again to try and understand what it was about. It came out of nowhere, I didn’t have any clue as to what she was referring and it wasn’t even clear who she was referring to. Won Joon was the most plausible option, but it could’ve also been someone else. It could’ve also referred to her manager, for example, because it’s also possible to interpret as that Doo Na was thinking it at that specific moment. The way it was filmed, capturing Doo Na with a kind of contemplative and even reflective expression on her face, just made the whole thing super ambiguous. In any case, it was impossible to understand the meaning of that voice-over at that point since we didn’t know what was going to happen yet.
Secondly, it suddenly changed the narrative structure of the first episode, making it about events in the past by adding a reflective voice-over narration. I just found it inconsistent to add in a voice-over talking about a real-time scene as an event from the past, especially since that narrative structure wasn’t continued in the rest of the series.
Won Joon ultimately makes the comment of them being from different universes ending up next to each other at the same station in the very last episode, when they’ve already grown apart. It’s only because I remembered my confusion about the voice-over that I went, ‘wait, isn’t this what she was talking about in the first episode?’, otherwise I wouldn’t even have made the link. I found it such a weird connection between the first and final episodes. It just didn’t make any sense to put in the first episode, it just made the whole narrative structure confusing for me, and it only made the ending one big question mark. What would’ve helped, for example, was if there would’ve been a clearer link to the voice-over quote in the final scene. For example, if they’d repeated the final part of the quote (eg. ‘Even though you may be right, I’m happy that it was you.’) over the final scene where they crossed paths and Doo Na looked back at hearing Won Joon’s voice. That would’ve at least given the voice-over comment more clarity and the ending as a whole more closure. Now I was just confused as to what happened to them and if they were even still friends.

Which brings me to my major ick and confusion: the way the relationship between Won Joon and Doo Na suddenly became problematic in my opinion. Honestly, I was enjoying myself. I was enjoying the show, the cinematography, the story, the buildup in the main leads’ romance, their kissing scenes, all of that. But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked the manager turned up.
Won Joon and Doo Na were on a cozy trip together and they were staying at Doo Na’s grandmother’s house where she grew up. They were having a lovely couple holiday away from the city, but then suddenly Doo Na’s (ex-)manager showed up with his car. Up to this point, we’d been given enough background information to know that Doo Na had had a special bond with her manager, and she might’ve even had romantic feelings for him (this is confirmed later on). The way she reacted when she found a birthday gift he’d left at her house and she ran out into the streets in order to catch up with him, that’s not a typical idol-manager bond. In any case, as she and Won Joon had already reached quite a serious point in their relationship, I was unpleasantly surprised by her reaction at seeing her manager there. She literally just let go of Won Joon’s hand and got into the manager’s car without saying anything to Won Joon, and she stayed away for hours without any kind of contact. The fact that she saw the worried look in Won Joon’s eyes and didn’t even reassure him by saying, ‘I’ll be right back, wait for me’ or ‘I need to deal with this for a moment, don’t worry’. She literally just left him there, in an unfamiliar rural area, all by himself, without a single word of explanation. Understandably, Won Joon was upset. I think he also had an inkling of her relationship with that manager and he was hesitant to let her go, but apart from that he so deserved an explanation. I don’t blame him whatsoever for just leaving and visiting his family instead. I’d be like, toodles, I don’t deserve to be treated like this, I’m not gonna stay and wait for you here like a domicile puppy. It would’ve been very characteristic of Won Joon to do so, so I was proud of him to just leave. When Doo Na came back to the house it was already dark (!), and I didn’t even feel sorry for her that Won Joon wasn’t waiting for her. I just went, ‘I bet you expected he’d be waiting, huh? Maybe that’ll help you reflect on how you just left him like that’.
It only got worse after that. Honestly, I was completely on Won Joon’s side here, and I thought he had every reason in the world to be mad, even more so when he met Doo Na back at the sharehouse and she pretended like nothing had happened. She didn’t even apologize, and even started provoking him by asking ‘Don’t you want to know what we did after we left?’ (?!) In the end she ‘justified’ her actions by saying that she went with her manager because she thought that’s where her heart lay and that she only suddenly realized that she wanted to stay with Won Joon when they were on the road. I honestly thought hearing that would’ve only strengthened Won Joon’s anger, because it proved that apparently she hadn’t even been 100% sure of her feelings for him at that point, she left his side in a heartbeat when they’d already slept together and he was into it all the way. But instead he FOLDED. He folded like a BEDSHEET the second she said ‘I love you’. There were still so many reasons to be mad, she still did that and didn’t even feel the need to apologize, she kept turning it back on him for not confronting her with it more, but he folded and then suddenly everything was good again between them. That was the first moment I went, ‘Excuse me?!’. Seriously, in my opinion, that was not the way to resolve this issue. Doo Na just distracted his attention by saying she loved him, and even though she meant it, this resulted in that this issue was never properly closed between them.

My next point of confusion occurred when Doo Na suddenly decided to go back to being an idol. Admittedly, the gap was closed a little bit in the final episode which revealed that they didn’t officially break up when she went back, but at first it seemed to me as if she just disappeared from Won Joon’s life one day, again without any word of explanation. She’d sung at another artist’s concert and this refuelled her desire to start singing again, and Won Joon had encouraged this. The last thing we see before she’s suddenly back at her agency is that she asks Won Joon, ‘And what if they ask me to stop dating you, would you be okay with that?’ to which Won Joon’s face clouded over. So the jump from that to Doo Na’s return to the industry was kind of sudden. I even felt like I’d missed something.

Speaking of Doo Na’s manager, as I haven’t mentioned him in detail yet, Park In Wook (played by Lee Jin Wook) remained kind of a mystery to me. It seemed like his character was a metaphorical demon that Doo Na couldn’t let go of. The way he put her in that sharehouse, allegedly to make Doo Na go through her worst fear of being abandoned also made me wonder what other kind of mind games this guy had up his sleeve. It was like he was aware of Doo Na’s feelings but played on them to bring her back rather than to actually feel for her situation. For him, it was like putting someone in the corner for a while until they’d cooled off and then put them back in the field again, his actions lacked compassion. I was actually curious about what had gone down between them apart from the few scenes that showed how he took care of her after her grandmother died and her parents abandoned her. Overall, I would’ve liked a bit more detail about Doo Na’s time as an idol, I wanted to see the full versions of those flashback glimpses. I feel like I may have come to understand the mavity of Doo Na’s situation better with that extra knowledge. Now, in hindsight, going through that scandal alone didn’t feel like a traumatic enough experience to make Doo Na so vulnerable and scarred. I feel like maybe more was ‘suggested’ rather than actually shown, but we know how I am, I need visual proof otherwise I’m not going to get it, lol.

What icked me the most in the final episode was the breakup. I guess many people felt the heartbreak, but I was just sitting there like ‘🤨??’ From the previous incident with the manager I gathered that Doo Na only followed her own feelings and thoughts, even if that made her realize she should’ve made a different choice. She went with her manager because she instinctively thought she needed to be with him, and only after making that decision she realized that she actually wanted to be with Won Joon now. She always had ways to justify her actions without having to apologize, and she’d gotten away with it so far because of Won Joon’s compliant and accommodating nature.
Honestly, the way they were living in the final episode, literally in two different worlds, was more than enough for me to understand why Won Joon couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t even that he stopped loving her. It was because it killed him that he loved her so much but couldn’t be with her as peacefully as before. The only way to get it across to her was to be straightforward and not fold like he did before. I found this very brave of him, because it was obvious how hard it was for him to do.
On the other hand, what does Doo Na do? She GASLIGHTS him into making him admit everything is HIS fault, HE doesn’t have the balls to date her while it was so EASY for him when she was still unemployed and ‘lost in life’. She literally makes him apologize and express regret about breaking up with her, the way SHE should’ve apologized for leaving him all alone that one time. It was so twisted and unfair. In my opinion, SHE was the one who shook up Won Joon’s life, and he also expressed that himself in the beginning when he asked her not to make his heart flutter if that wasn’t her intention. I was literally sitting behind my screen going, ‘WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE’ 🙉🙉. I couldn’t even feel bad for her because she was only looking at her own side of things. She even had the audacity to assume it was all super easy for Won Joon.
I think what conveyed this disparity between them most clearly was the way they parted ways at the subway station. Doo Na went ahead to the platform, leaving Won Joon standing in the hallway by himself. While waiting for the metro, she looked back a couple of times to see if Won Joon was coming after her, clearly icked by the fact he didn’t appear. Later, we see Won Joon break down by himself on the platform completely. That just made me realize the difference between them. Doo Na kept looking back thinking, ‘he’s supposed to come after me‘, not realizing that if she were to go back to find him or waited for him to come down, she would’ve found him sobbing like that. She didn’t think about how Won Joon was feeling throughout the whole thing, and it didn’t occur to her that he might be suppressing stuff as well. It just made me so angry that she kept saying things like, ‘how is this all so easy for you?’ and ‘why are you so calm about all of this?’ That just made me feel like even I knew Won Joon better than she did, because it was so freaking obvious how NOT easy it was for him and how NOT calm he was under all of it. It just suddenly made Doo Na seem super toxic to him in their relationship. I even got a little mad at Won Joon for agreeing to apologize to her and say that it was all his fault, but I guess he did it to get her to leave. He literally ended it with ‘I’m sorry, it’s all my fault and I’m definitely not calm, this is killing me inside, so will you please leave me alone now?’ 😢 And then they hugged and I guess the ‘I’ve missed you (too)’ came from the relief they both felt that they finally shared their honest feelings about the breakup even though it didn’t mean they’d get back together? Anyways, I interpreted it as that they made up in some way, whether it was as friends or more (I honestly couldn’t tell since they’d ‘made up’ so easily before as well). Because of this vague interpretation it was super confusing for me to see them appear like two strangers in the final scene, as if they didn’t even keep in touch. I just couldn’t keep track of it anymore.

In hindsight, the way this story evolved reminded me a bit of the movie ‘My Week With Marilyn’, in which this young guy has a sort of secret thing with Marilyn Monroe for a week when he’s helping out backstage and then it’s over and she moves on to her next production and he moves on with his own life and no hard feelings whatsoever. It felt like Won Joon’s life was temporarily shook up by Doo Na, this beautiful and mysterious creature, they had their sweet time together, and then it was time to go their separate ways again.

One final thing I wish to mention before moving on to the cast comments is that the whole series was visualized really well. The aesthetic of the cinematography and the beautiful visual imagery throughout were a couple of elements that kept me hooked on watching the series.

It’s cast comment time!

It was nice seeing Yang Se Jong again, I feel like it’s been a while but that’s probably because he just returned from his military service. I did have doubts about the choice of casting him as a college student, and there were moments where he did seem a bit old (he’s 31, the same age as me🙉). I’ve seen him before in Doctor Romantic Teacher Kim (S1), Duel, Temperature of Love and Thirty But Seventeen. I really liked him in this role because Won Joon has such subtle but distinctive layers to his character. It was really nice to see the actor’s acting skills shine through portraying those layers. Because Won Joon was initially introduced as such a carefree character, it hit all the more when he started feeling conflicted and upset, as those were feelings and emotions he wasn’t used to. I think Yang Se Jong expressed the awkwardness with which Won Joon tried to contain and handle his new feelings, both in terms of passion and anger. He showed me new sides to his acting yet again, and that was really nice.

I think this is the first short Netflix show that I’ve seen Suzy appear in. Up until now it was always full-length dramas, so it was nice to see her in a different kind of project for a change. I also liked that they incorporated the idol industry to her character, as Suzy herself is a former idol, so they even made use of her personal assets. It was cool how they had actual scenes during concerts in actual stadium, and how they filmed a music video for example. That just contributed to the credibility of Doo Na’s work field. I’ve seen other idol characters depicted in dramas that only ever talk about their activities but don’t even have scenes that show them while they’re actually on stage performing. I was genuinely disappointed with the shift in Doo Na’s character after that first incident with the manager. I’d actually started warming up to her by that point and then she suddenly started acting like that and it just didn’t sit right with me. On the other hand I think it was good to end with them ending the relationship, because that did give the show a rawer conclusion instead of a typical happily-ever-after ending. I’ve seen Suzy before in Dream High, Big, Uncontrollably Fond, While You Were Sleeping and Start-Up so far. While I have to admit that her acting skills have significantly improved from how she started out, after seeing her in Doona! I realized I think I actually prefer her in more humble roles, lol. I still feel like when she has to portray indifference, she tends to get a little snooty and arrogant in her expressions, and at some point those expressions kind of started pissing me off😅. I do feel like she got to show a lot more emotional range in this series, and it’s not that she acted badly (not at all). I just got the ick with her character, so maybe I’m a bit biased, haha. All in all it was really nice to see her in a different kind of show than I’ve seen her in so far. I’m curious to her next endeavors!

Despite my criticisms overall, I cannot deny that the chemistry between Yang Se Jong and Suzy was incredible. I would’ve never imagined these two to feature as a main couple together, but there wasn’t anything awkward or unnatural about them. I was pleasantly surprised by their passionate scenes as well, the kissing came really naturally and were very exciting to watch😇. It was an unexpected pairing that turned out to work really well!

After checking my drama source websites I realized that I must recognize Ahn Ha Young from her guest appearance in an episode of Extraordinary Attorney Woo, where she played that bride who turned out to be a lesbian! She looks very different with short hair. My first thought when she appeared on screen was ‘Wow, she’s so pretty!’ She has a really clean look, if that makes sense. Anyways, it was nice because even though I hadn’t seen her in a main role before it felt like I did. Her acting was really natural. As I mentioned before, I honestly wouldn’t have minded it if she and Won Joon had ended up together, their chemistry in the flashbacks and as friends was really nice. I’m curious to see her in more projects in the future!

I’ve seen Park Se Wan before in Goblin, School 2017 and I’m Not A Robot. It’s been a while since I saw her in something and it was super funny to see her as such an eccentric character as Yi Ra in this show. Apparently she’s the same age as Suzy, for some reason I thought she was a bit older. Anyways, I initially thought Yi Ra was going to another love rival or something. The way she was introduced was so extra that I expected her to play a more defining role in the story, but she kind of faded into the background after that extra introduction. Not that her character lost meaning or anything, but in the end she appeared less explicitly than I’d anticipated from the way she was introduced. I liked that she and Jung Hoon got together and that it worked out even after they graduated. It seemed like she pulled out a looser side of him and he pulled out a more mature side of her, which was nice. I like seeing actors that I’ve seen in lesser memorable roles before in roles that you can’t get around every so often, haha.

Not me slapping myself in the face after realizing Kim Do Wan was Yong San in Start-Up! I kept feeling like I knew him from somewhere, apart from the fact that he seems to be Kim Min Seok’s identical twin (how do their faces look so much alike??). Apparently he was also in The Great Seducer, but I don’t particularly remember him from there. Honestly, Jung Hoon was kind of my type 👀 I like a cool and less talkative kind of guy, haha. It was kind of predictable that he’d suddenly fall for Yi Ra, but I’m not complaining because that kiss??🫣 I liked that the side characters also got proper make-out scenes, even though they were cut a bit shorter than the main leads’, haha. I just loved that scene, the way Yi Ra half-drunkenly realized what had happened and caught up with him on the stairs to do it over properly, haha. They made a really cute pair. I hope I’ll get to see more of Kim Do Wan in the future! I like him.😊

I see that I’ve seen Kim Min Ho before in Sassy Go Go and The Sound of Your Heart, which is not enough to make me remember him in those roles, but he does have a familiar face. I also see that he’s in a couple of series that are still on my to watch list. Honestly, I would’ve liked to get some more backstory for Yoon Taek so that he wouldn’t have just been the primary comic relief character. He was a generally good guy and deserved a happy relationship just as well as anyone. I thought it was kind of random how he ended up giving love advice to a class full of women, but good for him I guess! I wish I could say more about Yoon Taek’s character except from the fact that he was constantly misreading women’s signs of liking him, but he didn’t really have his own storyline or love story, so there’s not much else to say except that he was the moodmaker of the sharehouse. I’m curious to see him in more dramas because I feel he’s capable of much more!

I haven’t seen anything with Lee Jin Wook before, except maybe the movie The Beauty Inside, but I don’t have any reference of him as a main or supporting character. I kept finding the relationship between Manager and Doo Na a bit shady. It was like he was treating her like a child even though he’d also fed her attraction to him. I get that he was just acting as a manager, it was all just work for him. As I mentioned before I would’ve liked to get a bit more detail about Doo Na’s life as an idol, when she was still close with him. Because now apart from the mention and brief visualization of how he’d taken care of her as a child and brought her into that industry, I could only guess from the way Doo Na responded to his advances how much he’d meant to her. It would’ve been nice to get a bit more insight into his psyche!

Just as a final cast comment, even though he didn’t have a major role, I really liked Joo Yeon Woo. I recently saw him in The School Nurse Files and I might add another drama he’s in to my list as well. It was funny seeing such a sturdy manly man like him get all giddy about Doo Na and Dream Sweet, lol.

As I expected, it didn’t take me as long as usual to finish this review. Sometimes I like watching shorter dramas because I know the review won’t take me as much time, lol. Anyways, I thought it was okay. I really liked the cinematography and the acting, and the characters were all equally interesting. I loved the healing aspect of the story and how different friendships were formed among the sharehousemates. Dramas like this, with simple storylines and not too much distracting additional plots and characters have become kind of a pallet cleanser for me, they’re just really relaxing to watch. Apart from the ick I eventually got from the relationship of the main pairing and the couple of confusions, I thought it was enjoyable enough. I found it refreshing that it depicted a relationship that ultimately didn’t work out, especially since ending a drama series with a confirmation of love (and often a wedding) seems to have become the mainstream in K-Dramaland. It’s as if failed relationships don’t count in the whole spectrum of finding love, even though failed relationships are often very defining for character development. I couldn’t really deny that Won Joon and Doo Na may not have been meant to be in the end, and that’s fine. Let them go their separate ways, live their own lives and find their own happiness and freedom. From that perspective there’s also a positive element to the ending.

I’m going to try my best and finish one more series before the end of the year. It’s going to be a special one, an anthology consisting of freestanding episodes, so I’m going to have to think about how to construct my review. I’m thinking of writing a review on each episode and then combine them in the end, but I guess I’ll see how it goes. Maybe as I’m watching it I’ll think of another way, who knows.

Anyways, see you soon! Bye-bee! x