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.

Just Between Lovers
(그냥 사랑하는 사이 / Geunyang Saranghaneun Sai)
MyDramaList rating: 9.0/10

I started watching this series because I saw a lot of gifsets from it pass my feed on Tumblr and it looked cute so I wanted to see for myself what it was about. I hadn’t seen or heard anything about it from any other drama source sites, but it turned out to be a new series and I was just curious.
In the end, it turned out to be one of the best series I’ve seen so far. Especially when I just got into it, I was so excited about it I really had to restrain myself from just watching it all the way up to where it was (because it wasn’t completed yet at that point). It only finished this week.

I also didn’t know anything about the actors, I only saw gifs about the two main actors and I didn’t know them. They turned out to be more movie actors, so it was nice to see a drama without the typical hyped mainstream popular idols. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find out Lee Ki Woo was in it. Lee Ki Woo was actually the first case of second male lead syndrome I ever had, and also my first K-actor crush (both because of his role in Flower Boy Ramyun Shop). It had been a while since I’d seen him in a drama, and even though his role in Just Between Lovers was quite angsty (and again second male lead), I was excited when I found out during the first episode.
I found out later that apparently the male lead is from Kpop group 2PM, so what I said in the Andante article about my opinion on idols who act in dramas: this was a case in which I didn’t have anything to complain. His performance was great. This is definitely someone who can act.
I could only base my expectations on the things I’d seen on Tumblr, so I thought it would be a simple introverted girl falls for bad boy kind of story. I couldn’t have been more wrong. From episode 1 on, it was BAM: firm storyline, BAM: emotional depth, BAM: great acting, BAM: beautiful cinematic shots.

The story takes place in a city where 10 years before, a catastrophe struck: a department store collapsed due to a construction error and 48 people died. The two main characters, Ha Moon Soo (Won Jin Ah) and Lee Gang Doo (Lee Joon Ho) are both survivors from this accident – they were stuck in the debris for a while, until they were eventually saved. However, they both lost a family member; Moon Soo her younger sister and Gang Doo his father.
Ten years later, they meet again as their work (Moon Soo being an architectural model developer and Gang Doo being a construction worker) collides and they eventually start working together on a project to renew the memorial monument for the victims of the disaster.
It turns out that this disaster is actually what binds everyone in the series, but it has also torn people apart. Somewhere around the end, there is a little part where they imagine how it would be if it had never happened, how they would be living, and we can see that in that case, a lot of people would still be together, both in families as in relationships.
The relationship between Moon Soo’s parents was destroyed after the death of her little sister, her mother turned to alcohol and her father left home to run a noodle and kimbab restaurant by himself.
The romantic relationship between Seo Joo Won (Lee Ki Woo), the director of Moon Soo’s architecture company and Jung Yoo Jin (Kang Han Na), the team leader of Cheongyu, was also ruined, and even though Yoo Jin is trying to get Joo Won back, he doesn’t seem to be interested anymore.

I read this in comments before and I really like this: that the main theme of this drama is ‘healing’. Also, ‘coping’ and ‘processing’ I think. It shows different people who deal with the aftermath of the disaster in their own ways. There are people who forget and move on, there are people who try to forget but are still occasionally triggered, and there are people who can’t move on. Moon Soo’s mother is someone who can’t move on and sometimes she drags Moon Soo with her. Especially at moments when Moon Soo seems to finally move on with her life, her mother has the habit to remind her and almost obstruct her from moving on. Moon Soo is trying to cope, even though she still has nightmares about her little sister dying and she is still triggered sometimes, especially when she’s on the construction site or when entering a department store. Same goes for Gang Doo, also because he actually spend a few days in the debris with a corpse and he sometimes thinks he hears that guy’s voice telling him off for living on like that.
Moon Soo’s father is ‘coping’ through anger mostly, but he doesn’t suppress the memories. He has pictures of both his daughters in his store and doesn’t try to make the pain go away like his wife.

Something I also liked about this drama that it actually gave hope and it didn’t turn to typical Korean drama tropes. The chemistry between Moon Soo and Gang Doo was heartwarming – I haven’t been this excited for a couple since Suspicious Partner – and they didn’t always have to talk. Korean dramas usually include a LOT of dialogue, so it was a relief to see two actors being able to express such love for each other without even saying a word. Because sometimes words aren’t needed.
Also, when halfway through it became clear that Gang Doo was sick, I was so scared that they’d kill him off. Because for a while it seemed like they were this ‘doomed couple’, they were both emotionally damaged and they found compassion and comfort in one another and normally that means that at a certain point something is going to happen to one of them. But fortunately, in the end it all ended well and that was just such a relief, because I was really scared they’d do it. Instead, it just became this love story where two damaged people just ‘found’ each other and that was really heartwarming. Their chemistry was on point, like I said, the build-up to where they finally confronted each other with their feelings was well constructed, everything just fitted.
Also, another important thing that I really appreciated in this drama: they actually TALKED about what they were feeling. Usually I get so frustrated, just like with Andante when someone is sick and they keep it to themselves and start distancing themselves from others: NOT HERE. There was a moment where Gang Doo distanced himself from Moon Soo, but that was purely because he felt like he was not good enough for her. But because she kept pursuing him, he eventually melted. When he was sick, it didn’t remain a secret because either he or his younger sister (who is a doctor) told Moon Soo anyway.
So, a very important thing learnt from this series is that it’s important to talk to others in order to heal and face your problems in order to solve them. In the end, it helped literally everyone. Moon Soo and Gang Doo were united, Moon Soo’s mother went to rehab for her alcohol problem, Moon Soo’s father went back to his old job as a bus driver (which was initially why he wasn’t around when the mall accident happened).
One last thing is that I always appreciate (even thought that might be weird to say) when dramas show a really dramatic disastrous happening in a really realistic way. We’ve seen enough car accidents, and all the other typical tropes from Korean dramas. One of the earlier cases was in Descendants of the Sun, when an earthquake happened and a reactor (I believe?) collapsed while there were still people working on it. The effect of that, and how the medical team was immediately dispatched and the cruel injuries of the wounded, it just gave me goosebumps because it was so realistic.
I was really struck by how they showed the collapse of the building and the scenes where young Moon Soo and Gang Doo were trapped in the ruins, and the other guy whose leg was shattered. It made a big impact on me, more than the stereotypical accidents that usually occur in Korean dramas.
Last but not least, I really enjoyed the way it was filmed. There was something cinematic about it that I don’t see in many dramas, but it made it that much more realistic. It really suited the story and the acting style of the characters. It gave the series as a whole a calm but penetrating atmosphere. And the musical soundtrack was also very nice.

About the actors in particular: first of all, bravo for the acting. Especially Moon Soo and Gang Doo. It was really nice to just see a drama which wasn’t about appearance and exterior things. Won Jin Ah, who played Moon Soo, was really outstanding in my opinion. Because her character feels so many contradicting emotions, even when she smiles there’s this layer. We learn she doesn’t see herself as a good person, she feels bad because of her mom, her parents’ relationship, leaving her sister behind and everything. She feels this guilt and still tries to allow herself to be happy when she meets Gang Doo. Gang Doo is someone who just seems to be cursed. Everything in his life is a mess, he lost his father, his ability to play soccer and fulfill his dream of becoming a soccer player for the national team, he gets into fights, he hears voices of the dead, he also struggles with guilt of making it out and leaving this other person behind. But instead of feeling sorry for himself and keeping it in, he confronts it and when he gets sick he gets really pissed because ‘what the heck did he do to deserve all this’. But finding Moon Soo just literally heals him and makes him focus on the good things he’s done. Even though few, he is surrounded by people who care about him, not only Moon Soo but also the Grandmother, his affectionate friend Sang Man and his mother, his little sister.
Something I also liked was that there was never any true hatred between the characters. Even though Joo Won is initially envious of Gang Doo because he also likes Moon Soo, he never truly despises him. When he finds out they are together, he just tries to move on immediately, without turning into the pushy second male lead who tries to force his feelings on the female lead. Yoo Jin too, even though she seemed a bit pushy in terms of nosing into other people’s relationship, doesn’t form a threat to the main couple. In fact she encourages them to be together.

Speaking of Yoo Jin, the only thing that didn’t really interest me that much was Jung Yoo Jin’s character. I had seen the actress before in Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo and I remember here having these vivid expressions on her face and her acting didn’t bother me at all, but in this series it just seemed like she had ONE expression throughout the WHOLE series. I almost didn’t recognize her because of that. The only moment where I truly felt some compassion for her was when she was crying in her car at a certain point, and it felt like that was literally the only moment where she expressed some apparent emotion. For the rest, I didn’t really get what her true contribution to the story was, except being the second female lead and (former) love interest of Joo Won, even though she still failed getting him back. I would’ve liked getting more information on her in order to get more sympathy for her character, because now she just wasn’t really interesting to me. Also because she seemed a bit shallow to me, talking a lot about extern things rather than showing real emotional depth. When asked what she liked about Joo Won, she only mentioned outward factors, that he’s tall and handsome, looks good in suits and listens to everything she says. That put me off a bit about her because it sounded so one-sided and didn’t talk about his personal traits or his feelings at all.
But in the end she wasn’t an evil person or anything like that and she did become a bit more humble towards her feelings. It might’ve been the actress and her lack of expression, but also her story line wasn’t as deep as the others’.

I want to express a special compliment to the character of Jung Sook Hee (played by Na Moon Hee), the grandmother. I was just so happy to see an actual grandmother in a Korean drama. Usually, the grandmas are either really rich and dolled up or real household grandmas – this was a realistic grandma, shabby and grumpy but warm and devoting her life after her husband’s death to helping poor people and foreigners without health insurance to get medicine. It wasn’t about making her look pretty or whatever things to do so often. Even though she wasn’t Gang Doo’s actual grandma, she was this figure of familiarity and familial love to him that he’d never had after his father died. Her death was really sad, and heartbreaking for him, but that too was something he had to heal from and that’s what pushed him and Moon Soo truly together, because for the first time he had someone to comfort him after losing family.

I really enjoyed this series and I’m sad it’s over. The ending was very simple and happy, and I think it fitted the theme very well. It wouldn’t have made sense to me if they’d let Gang Doo die, a lot of comments also said so. The series is about healing and healing together. It’s important to talk with others who’ve suffered and learn not to blame yourself or think about what might have happened or how you could’ve avoided it – because the accident still happened, and with or without you people would’ve suffered. The renewal of the memorial park was a nice plot line to bind all the people who were directly or indirectly victimized by the accident and the series ending with the completion of it also showed the victim’s relatives finally feeling at ease.
One of the strongest parts I think was when Moon Soo noted that, when Yoo Jin said many people would feel uncomfortable about the memorial renewal because it would remind them again of what they’d lost, it was just about that. Reminding people of what they’d lost, giving them the space to grieve and process and finding others to talk about it. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable and confronting, but that doesn’t mean that it should be ignored and forgotten.

Overall this series is going to score high in my rankings, very well done to the writers and the actors. The story, the structure, the plot lines, the character development of the main actors were all very well written and the acting was really good. For some characters I would’ve liked a bit more input and story line, but still, very good.