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.

Because This is My First Life
(이번 생은 처음이라 / Ibeon Saeng-eun Cheo-eumira)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10

Okay so unlike what I predicted in my last review, this wasn’t 12 episodes but 16 and I don’t think I took longer to finish it than the previous two, but it felt like this took me much longer. Not in a bad way, just because I savored. every. single. episode. and I didn’t want it to end too quickly.

It’s been on my list mostly because I saw Lee Min Ki would be in it and I really like him. Also the female lead is very good and I hadn’t seen anything of them in a while.
I went into it completely unaware that it was based on the Japanese drama NigeHaji (Nigeru no ha Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu) which I saw about 2 years ago. I didn’t know this was the Korean remake. I just started watching and after a while I thought ‘hey this kinda reminds me of NigeHaji’ and then I checked on DramaWiki and it actually said ‘Related shows: NigeHaji’ so yep that’s when I found out.

I have to say that even though it’s probably based on NigeHaji, the Korean version goes way deeper into a lot of topics. NigeHaji is unique because of the way it’s filmed, sometimes it’s like a documentary following the female lead and it takes them way longer to actually get to the real falling-in-love romance part. It takes them longer to admit they’re starting to really fall for each other and the main story is just about their life together.
The Korean version not only introduces a bunch of important side characters with their own romance stories, but it also deals with a lot of critical topics. I was surprised to see how much sexual jokes and innuendos were made, since Korean dramas (as Japanese dramas) tend to hold back on such things a lot and keep it all innocent and pure most of the time. Besides the sexually-related topics, it also dealt very critically with the mistreatment and (sexual) harassment of women on the work floor and in society.
I think this was very bold and I wonder how this was received in Korea by the viewers.

So, for those of you who also haven’t seen NigeHaji, I will give a summary of the story. Of the Korean remake of course, since this review is about this one. But I won’t be able to help making some references and comparisons with the Japanese version so forgive me for that.
Because This is My First Life is about a woman named Yoon Ji Ho (played by Jung So Min), whose dream it always has been to become a writer. However, at the age of 30, she has been an assistant writer for dramas for 5 years and still hasn’t really found her place. She can’t take pride in her work that much and to make matters worse, she is kicked out of her parents’ house because her younger brother knocked up a girl and they get all the prior attention in her family as they are very patriarchal. Ji Ho needs to find her own place, as she won’t be able to live with her brother anymore now that he has to take care of his young pregnant wife.
On the other side, there is the male protagonist, Nam Se Hee (played by Lee Min Ki). He is a application designer at a company that has recently released a new dating application. He is a very stoic person, almost robotic, who handles everything through formulas and doesn’t seem to have any emotional feelings. He only cares about his house and his cat. He is looking for a housemate because his rent is getting alarmingly high for the money he’s earning, but so far he has kicked out all housemates because they couldn’t match his lifestyle.
Through a coincidental course of events, Ji Ho learns about this person looking for a housemate through one of her high school friends. Hearing the name Se Hee, she assumes it’s a woman (since it’s usually a girl’s name apparently and her female writer boss is also called Se Hee) and enthusiastically responds. Se Hee is informed of a certain Ji Ho who is interested in being his housemate and he thinks it’s a guy (since Ji Ho is usually a guy’s name apparently and he knew someone in the army who was also called Ji Ho). So first they start living in the same house without meeting each other. Because Se Hee always leaves early in the morning and returns only late in the evening and in-between Ji Ho only comes out in the hours between that and is already asleep when he comes back. And they’re so polite as not to check in on each other while they’re sleeping.
When they are coincidentally having their respective company dinner/celebration in the same restaurant, Ji Ho finds out that the director she’s been having a crush on for 3 years is seeing someone. Just before that, she has briefly met Se Hee (of course not knowing who he is). When she’s waiting for the bus home and Se Hee sits next to her and starts talking randomly about a cat’s neocortex, Ji Ho feels strangely comforted. In a moment of thinking ‘Why are people only expected to kiss when they’re dating/screw it, if I’m never going to date I might as well just kiss someone’, she kisses Se Hee, comforted by the thought that he’s a stranger and she’ll never see him again anyway.
Of course, they meet in the elevator at home the next day.
Even though it’s awkward at first, Se Hee finds that Ji Ho matches his lifestyle very well. She has the habit of cleaning the house thoroughly when she starts writing and takes out the trash and feeds the cat. Unlike his previous experiences, Se Hee is very satisfied with her. Also, because Ji Ho needs a place to stay and she’s able to contribute to the rent with her income, it’s a win-win situation for both of them.
Then a nasty situation arises at Ji Ho’s work. In a drunken state, her ex-crush director nearly sexually assaults her and refuses to take responsibility. Even her female boss at work is trying to smooth everything out with a dinner. Ji Ho, however, feels terribly wronged, her co-workers only give her the feeling that she’s overreacting and she quits her job. Now, of course, she has no more income.
But because their conditions and values matched so well, they establish a contract and decide to get married for these reasons. Se Hee needs the rent and the household help, and Ji Ho needs the house.

So this intro of how they get to live together is already very different from NigeHaji. In NigeHaji, the female lead is hired as a cleaner at the male lead’s place because he’s out so often, and he is so satisfied with her work that he doesn’t mind her staying, especially since she enjoys this job and needs a place to stay. They get married because it’s convenient for both of them and they won’t have to explain why they’re living together while they’re not actually together.
However, of course, in both cases as they continue living together they eventually do fall in love with each other. In the Korean version, they just added a lot more story lines. Besides the main leads’ friends (about which I’ll write more later), they included more family content of both Ji Ho’s and Se Hee’s families, and they added a sad background story for Se Hee to explain why he was against marriage so much initially.
In the Japanese version, I don’t remember there being so many side stories and background stories, and I thought it was legit because there’s a lot of Japanese guys these days who don’t get married because they’re either too introvert or too consumed by working. The female lead was also very easy-going, until of course she started to wish for more and couldn’t really get it.

Before I go on, I wish to introduce the important side characters in the series.
Yang Ho Rang (played by Kim Ga Eun) is one of Ji Ho’s best friends. They’ve known each other since middle school. She’s the friend with all the drama and emotional outbursts. She has been dating the same guy for seven years and they fight a lot but always end up back together. They love each other a lot, but sometimes Ho Rang’s unpredictable emotions put a strain on him too. She often gets upset about the tiniest things and he’s not very good at reading what she’s getting at most of the time. She has this idealistic idea of getting married and moving in together and tries to make this clear to her boyfriend, but when he doesn’t get it -she also has her age to worry about- she becomes anxious.
Her boyfriend Shim Won Seok (played by Kim Min Seok) loves Ho Rang very much, but he’s in a pinch at work. He’s also trying to develop an app, but he can’t seem to get investments. That’s why he doesn’t have the confidence that he’s going to be able to make Ho Rang happy even if he marries her and that’s why he keeps stalling.
Woo Soo Ji (played by Esom) is Ji Ho’s other best friend, also from middle school. Ji Ho, Ho Rang and Soo Ji are like the three musketeers. Soo Ji is very tall and skinny, and she works at an investment company. Even though she’s the only one of the three with an actual full-time job, she’s continually being sexually harassed by her co-workers at company dinners and just throughout the day. Not physically, but verbally. Little stinging remarks, she overhears people talking about her boobs, her boss keeps asking her inappropriate questions… I honestly found it quite hard to watch.
Ma Sang Goo (played by Park Byung Eun) is Se Hee’s boss, and he also has a good relation with Soo Ji’s boss. However, as he’s drawn to Soo Ji and finds out how she’s being treated, he tries to help her.
Ho Rang and Soo Ji are two completely different people. While Ho Rang’s life goal is to get married and be a housewife, Soo Ji is the kind of modern woman who doesn’t need marriage, and feels the need to be free. Her middle school dream was to become the CEO of her own company, but instead she has to keep smiling and nodding while she’s being made fun of right where she stands. She keeps her frustrations to herself because she needs the job – her mother is handicapped and she’s saving up for an apartment where she can live with her mother. The reason why she only flirts around and sleeps with guys without beginning a relationship is also because she’ll feel guilty if she goes off with someone and has to leave her mother behind with her bad legs.
I think all the different relationships in the series give a very good impression of how different the concept of marriage is for everyone. Are marriage and love necessarily connected? Why do people get married? It places a lot of question marks by these normative standards.
Marriage isn’t just a happy thing, it comes with a lot of responsibility, not only towards society but towards a lot of involved people as well. Even though you should marry only one person, you get this whole package of other people with it whether you like it or not.

Even though Ji Ho and Se Hee start off their ‘married life’ with the knowledge that this marriage is not love-based, Ji Ho quite soon finds herself getting involved in Se Hee’s personal life. She’s taken aback by his use of the word ‘us/our’ (uri 우리) and gets flustered because of that. She comes up with the idea of naming his cat ‘Woo Ri’ after this word and even visits him at work. However, Se Hee pushes her back because he says he feels uncomfortable with her doing that. For him, the contract is still what binds them together and he’s not ready to see past it yet. Slightly indignant, Ji Ho takes some distance from him too, until they both realize there really is something that’s keeping them together.

Here arises another part from the Korean remake that was not in the Japanese one, and I feel this was only used as a plot tool to make Ji Ho and Se Hee go back to each other. Ji Ho meets a guy at her part-time job, Bok Nam (played by Kim Min Gyu), who immediately shows interest in her.
Meanwhile at Se Hee’s company, a guy with the same name and his pictures is registered to their dating application and receives a lot of complaints because of reported stalking.
So, of course, Se Hee thinks that this guy is after Ji Ho now. In the end it turns out that Bok Nam was actually the victim of phishing and he didn’t really have any evil intentions. But they only find that out after Se Hee kicks his over-prized motorcycle to the ground in a fit of distress because he thought he was going to assault Ji Ho.
One thing I did feel was very weird: they made it so that Bok Nam actually overheard them talking on the bus when they were headed to their wedding ceremony and found it weird how they were only talking about distribution of rent and chores. He just so happened to be working at their wedding ceremony as well, even was in the same room as them and he even talked with them and took their picture. With a face like his, he would be near impossible to forget. So how the hell did they not recognize him from the start from their wedding?? I thought they were going to come up with a good way to explain how Bok Nam knew so much about their relationship, but this was kind of unrealistic.

Anyways, after this Se Hee and Ji Ho get back together and then the next chapter starts: their families. I think this drama made a real critical remark about what marriage is supposed to be like and what it should be about. One of the approaches they took was showing the relationship between daughter/son-in-law and parents-in-law.
I think it was interesting what was said about the ‘Good Daughter-in-law Syndrome’. Even though Ji Ho was determined not to be taken by it, she found herself unable to escape it. It reminded me of Valid Love, in which the daughter-in-law had to take care of almost her whole in-law family because it was expected of her. Several characters from this series were sceptical towards the whole ‘taking care of the in-laws’ aspect of marriage.
For example, Ji Ho was pressured by Se Hee’s parents to help with ancestral rites, and even though Se Hee forbade her from going, she went because she still partially felt she had to as a daughter-in-law even though it wasn’t part of her contract with Se Hee. Se Hee wasn’t allowed to help her, she had to do all the chores herself. As a payback, Se Hee went to help Ji Ho’s parents in the countryside with making kimchi, even though it wasn’t expected of him as the son-in-law because Ji Ho’s family was a patriarchal family.
So in their two respective families the expectations of who was supposed to help with what were already very different.
I can understand very well, usually when you marry someone it’s out of love and I mean I wouldn’t really marry someone only to basically marry his parents as well. But I notice that in a lot of Asian countries this comes with it as a matter of fact.

Going on to the next side plot in the Korean remake: Se Hee’s past. It turns out that Se Hee used to be dating a girl from his university and when he incidentally got her pregnant, they were going to get married. However, she was from a poor family and his father just couldn’t accept it. He said it was a disgrace that his son was marrying someone because he impregnated her and they didn’t know anything about being married. To make matters worse, his girlfriend miscarried the child and this only labelled her even more as damaged goods to Se Hee’s father. Unable to deal the behavior of her future in-laws, she broke up with Se Hee, leaving him heartbroken and ever since he’s been shut off and against marriage. He has also developed a very bad relationship with his father because of it.

Of course, Ji Ho meets this woman. She’s called Go Jung Min (played by Lee Chung Ah) and she’s now a CEO for a media company. She’s interested in Ji Ho’s work as a script writer, even though Ji Ho has stopped working. The two women become very close in a short period of time, but Ji Ho quickly finds out between Se Hee and Jung Min’s past and this makes her a bit anxious.
Mainly because of the following scene: they’re talking about love one day and Ji Ho is trying to make clear that she’s in love with Se Hee, so she says something like ‘I think having one love in a lifetime is enough.’ Se Hee agrees with her. However, after finding out that Se Hee has had this experience with Jung Min, Ji Ho starts doubting. She feels like for him, agreeing with her words means that he’s already had this ‘one love’ and he doesn’t need it again.
At this point, I would say that emotionally-wise, they have a lot to talk about. Because both of them just didn’t understand the other’s intentions. They both couldn’t directly speak out what they were thinking, Ji Ho was being annoyingly cumbersome and honestly sometimes I couldn’t help but agree with Se Hee because even I didn’t know what she was getting at (until I would read the episode comments of course, because a lot of people watching are very sharp and clever and they make me go like ‘Ohhhhh hadn’t thought about it like that’).
The next-to-last episode for example, when Ji Ho suggested that they end the contract and she would go away for a while. Everyone just plain assumed that they were getting divorced and she would move out and they would stop seeing each other.
However, that wasn’t Ji Ho’s intention at all. It was her intention to divorce, yes, but not to break up with him. She loved him a lot at that point and she only felt like the contract marriage was in their way. She now wanted to get married because of love. Not even married per se, she just wanted to be with him because of love, not because of marriage.
But Se Hee didn’t understand that either. He just thought she didn’t like it/him anymore and she was going to leave after divorcing. She even packed her bags saying she was going on a long trip somewhere far away.
BUT then there was this moment, right before she left. I forgot to mention this, the two of them are big Arsenal fans and they often watched matches together and sometimes used soccer formulas to compare or explain things to each other. Anyhow, right before she left Ji Ho turns around and asks him: ‘Have you never wondered what soccer players do in the intermission time?’ And Se Hee just answers plainly: ‘Evaluate the first half and making strategies for the second half, I assume.’ And Ji Ho says: ‘I see. So there’s a lot to be done in the intermission, then.’ And then she leaves.
I feel like I missed a lot of these, but this was such a big metaphor she was using and Se Hee just didn’t get it. She was of course talking about their intermission, the things he should do and think about during their intermission.
Honestly I didn’t get it either, only because of the episode comments but then it all suddenly made sense. But I still think both of them should have been more clear about their intentions. Because when Ji Ho suddenly showed up again and Se Hee was like ‘wth I thought you left?? We got a divorce??’ and Ji Ho was like ‘what are you talking about?? You thought I’d leave for good??’ So yeah, definitely some room for improvement in the communication department there.
The funny thing was that they ended up exactly how it started. Since Ho Rang and Won Seok moved out of their rooftop apartment, they individually told Ji Ho and Se Hee about it (Se Hee sold his house after Ji Ho left) and they end up living together in the same house AGAIN. Of course with better results than the first time.

I like how they titled the episodes by the way. The reason why the series is called Because It’s My First Life really made sense at the end. The episodes are all titled ‘Because It’s My First ….. (kiss/marriage/confession/in-laws/intermission etc.)’
Honestly I could relate to Ji Ho so much in the beginning, to a painfully personal level. She was 30 and never had a boyfriend and after finding out about her failed crush she just kind of gives up and accepts that she’ll never have a dating life. And that thought actually inspires her to let it out more, even to the point of kissing a total stranger at a bus stop. Now I’m not saying I relate with that part specifically, but honestly there’s more of us near-30s-single-since-birth people out there. It’s not always easy.

The division of the conservative and the not conservative people in this drama is remarkable. There’s the people who still feel like the wife should just handle the household and bear children, and there’s the people who feel like these standards aren’t important, what’s important is just loving each other without having any conditions or rules they need to abide by. I could really understand Ji Ho’s final decision, even though she should’ve made it more clear with her words to Se Hee, because now all she did was just make people confused.

I’m going to go on with my personal opinions (since I dragged the story summary on a bit too much) about the actors and the characters.
I knew a few of the actors from other series, of course I knew Jung So Min from Mischievous Kiss and Sound of My Heart, but I actually haven’t watched any more of her. I think she’s a good actress and mainly because I think she acts with her eyes very well. Not many Asian actors can pull this off because of their facial structure, but it helped that they put in a lot of close-ups of Ji Ho and Se Hee looking at each other. Their eyes were speaking for them sometimes, and I thought that was very nice.
I have only seen two things of Lee Min Ki as well since he doesn’t do much. I was kind of shocked to find out that the only drama I saw with him (Shut Up Flower Boy Band from 2012, was actually also the last drama he did before this). In SUFBB he was only in the first episode but he was this crazy wacko with untidy hair and eyeliner and I absolutely loved him. It was funny to see him in such a different role this time. It makes me want to see more of him (ahem). I saw one movie with him, Quick, but I have to watch that one again I think since I don’t remember much of it.
Not to mention the chemistry between the two main leads was AMAZING. I haven’t felt this way since Just Between Lovers, where I was just waiting for them to be in a scene together again. Even when they weren’t even in love yet, the tension was sizzling. Also, the kissing scenes were very good. I approve.
I knew Kim Ga Eun (Ho Rang) only from her role in Reunited Worlds, but she was able to display much more acting skills in this role. I’ve seen many roles of Kim Min Seok (Shut Up Flower Boy Band, Who Are You – School 2015, Descendants of the Sun, Doctors, Age of Youth 2) and I think he’s really improving as an actor every time I see him in something. I think that’s great because I wouldn’t necessarily categorize him as the standard handsome guy and he probably won’t get a main lead role (after seeing a lot of dramas and seeing the same person as a side character too many times you can kind of guess), he has been getting more prominent and certainly more challenging roles.
The Ho Rang and Won Seok couple was very lovely, they portrayed a lot of realistic issues for a couple who has been together for ages but just can’t really seem to progress beyond that. And after living together for so long and being faced with things like marriage, you start doubting if your love will be strong enough to hold on through marriage and you start getting insecure about a lot of things.
I have to say Esom might be my new Kdrama girl crush, haha. I only know her from the Drama Special White Christmas which was really special, both in terms of cinematography as acting and story. I knew her face, but I thought I’d seen more of her. I saw on DramaWiki that she mainly did a lot of movies.
I think she is so gorgeous and model-like because she has such a high fashion kind of look and face. Anyways, she was definitely my favorite character in Because This is My First Life. But there were also times when I felt she was a bit contradictory. Because on the one hand she was this badass girl who didn’t seem to care about what anyone would think or say about her, this woman who would occasionally not wear a bra to work because it made her feel uncomfortable and stuffy. But on the other hand it seemed like she really cared about how people saw her, especially at work. She was very anxious that situations would arise where her harassment would become even worse.
When rumors start about her not wearing a bra to work and when Ma Sang Goo starts making moves at her, she pushes him away saying that he will only make her situation worse. When her boss would find out about her dating one of his business associates, it would only result in him harassing her more. If anything would go wrong, all the bad stories and rumors would be about her, not about the guy. She made a point of course, and this was also one of the main critiques of the series, that as a woman you’re way less free to do as you like than as a man, because people will always judge you if you do anything bold. But the moment she told Sang Goo that I was a little bit disappointed in her because I felt that she had it in her to not care about any of those things.
But I guess society does have this kind of pressure on people, no matter how modern they might be.
I didn’t know the actor playing Ma Sang Goo, but his character was very funny. Even though he was the CEO of a big company, he had his morals and even though it might be considered normal for women to be harassed on the work floor, he still couldn’t bring himself to accept it, even though he lost his main investment because he decided to say something about it.

One other funny side character was a girl from Se Hee’s work, Bo Mi (played by Bo Mi from Apink). In the end I wasn’t really sure what exactly her role function was except from being a funny side character. Her down-to-earth-ness was very refreshing though, she may have looked like a fuzzy cute pink-loving girl, but her dry way of speaking made it very amusing. She was one of the few people who managed to have real contact with Se Hee at work and she even (for one episode maybe) became a potential love interest for Won Seok after he broke up with Ho Rang. She showed him a graph from their app to show how well compatible they were.
Maybe that’s another thing the series meant to say. Love isn’t based on conditions. It’s not based on formulas. You shouldn’t love someone just because you’re compatible or your ideals match. In the end it’s about the love itself. If you’re not actually in love with someone, nothing will come of it.

Anyways, it feels like I’ve watched a very long drama even though it’s only been 16 episodes but I liked it a lot. It really drew me in, and I enjoyed the chemistry between the two main leads. Even though it turned out to be a lot different from NigeHaji, I think this version earned some extra points because of their critique of several topics in society which a lot of Korean dramas usually treat as a taboo. I was positively surprised by the sexual references -I even had to look away sometimes because they were so explicit I felt a bit embarrassed. I don’t mean explicit as in nudity or anything like that, but just the kissing and the fantasies Ji Ho started to see as she started falling for Se Hee (zooming in on his lips and stuff like that). But it made the show very contemporary and accessible, because in truth people are like this. Both in good and bad ways.
That’s why I’m really curious as to how this series and the critiques in the series was received by the Korean viewers, especially the parts with sexual harassment on the work floor. Is it still considered a taboo or are people starting to look at it more critically?
Also about the concept of marriage – what it is and why people want to do it. I hope it lit a fire in many people’s minds to think about this more with their hearts instead of their heads. The circumstances are different for every single person, but shouldn’t the first and primary reason to get married be because of love? Should you even get married because of love, because it will mean you get a whole load of responsibilities and expectations with it?
It’s interesting to think about. We tend to assume it’s a normal thing to do when you love someone, but sometimes we fail to really understand what the consequences may be.

A very eye-opening drama indeed, I was not expecting this, but I like dramas that are open-minded and provide a new insight to social issues. A very nice watch.

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.

Go Back Couple
(고백부부 / Gobaekbubu)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

When I started on my season 2017 batch dramas I wasn’t expecting two 12-episode ones in a row. It only takes me a week to watch short dramas like that.
Anyways, this one was also on my list from the same period and it looked like a funny series and the trailer was very colorful and cute. The concept about a married couple that is fed up with each other going back to the time they first fell in love also spoke to me. When I started watching it I actually didn’t really know where it was gonna go, what the message would be. But in the end I think they did a good job.

The story of Go Back Couple is about two university sweethearts, Choi Ban Do (played by Son Ho Joon) and Ma Jin Joo (Jang Na Ra). They met at a mixer party during university and have been together ever since. After graduation they got married and in 2017 they had a sweet little baby called Seo Jin (Park Ah Rin; I have to mention his name because this child is too precious). Actually, at that point Seo Jin might be the only thing keeping them together. A lot has happened between them and all their lovey-doveyness has been drowned in the duties and expectations of married life.
Even though they used to be so in love, they started growing apart after a certain incident in which Ban Do wasn’t there for Jin Joo when her mother died. She hasn’t been able to forgive him and slowly but surely the two of them start despising each other.
After another incident in which Jin Joo gets the impression that Ban Do is cheating on her, they decide to get a divorce over the phone and they both throw out their wedding rings at the same time. And then something miraculous happens.
The next morning, the couple suddenly wakes up in 1999, in their 20-year old bodies. First they think it’s a dream, but they soon find out that this is real. Jin Joo is woken by her mother, which of course causes for a lot of emotion. Their parents and siblings are all exactly as they used to be in the 90s. When they get to school, their friends are there in 90s style fashion.
However, because they have their 38-year old consciousnesses(?), they look around more keenly than they used to. Of course, they’ve come a long way and they remember a lot about what has happened since they left university. They know about relationships between their friends that will go wrong and still have to watch them get together without any knowledge of how much they’re going to hurt each other.
In the beginning, both Ban Do and Jin Joo decided out of resentment towards one other, to each go after their other crushes, determined that ending up with someone else will provide a better future. Ban Do goes after his first love, ballerina dolly Min Seo Young (played by Go Bo Kyul) and Jin Joo approaches the popular guy of whom she heard he used to have a crush on her, Jung Nam Gil (played by Jang Ki Yong).

Up until here, of course apart from the upsetting situation in the beginning where the divorce was issued, it’s all good fun. It’s amusing to see everyone in 90s style, we laugh about the hairstyles and the fashion. And of course, the fact that the two get a chance to revise their 20-year old self’s choices is interesting. They end up changing a bunch of stuff, but not to a dangerous degree.
As a time travel theme fan, I liked what they did with the show. Because the two of them were in truth still adults in adolescent bodies, they couldn’t help but talk in a middle-aged way – Jin Joo was continually ‘Aigoo, aigoo’-ing at everything and everyone, which was funny.
However, when push comes to shove, they kept being reminded of their baby which they’d left behind. It’s all good and well to have fun and enjoy a stroll down memory lane, but you can’t just leave behind all memories of the old and more unpleasant life.
The two enjoy their first day and then automatically think they’ll be back to normal when they wake up the next one – well, no. They’re still stuck in 1999.
As viewers, we have no idea what has happened with the rings. They went up in golden ashes, there was this local earthquake only the couple felt and suddenly the next day: back to the 90s. We also don’t know what has to happen for them to go back again, although I did have the impression it had something to do with the rings, since it was suggested it happened because they threw the rings away.
So that was the information we get, and to reunite the rings, it can be predicted that somehow they have to make up again. So maybe it’s not really a good thing that they both went onto other people… But they find that out themselves as well.
Because 18 years of marriage does something to a person. No, I’m not talking from experience.

Before I go on spoiling any more I want to talk about the cast a bit. There were some familiar faces and some unfamiliar ones. First of all, Jang Na Ra. Who doesn’t know Jang Na Ra, the eternal baby-face princess. The first drama I saw with her was Baby-faced Beauty (of course) which I really liked. After that I saw School 2013 and Fated to Love You, but I didn’t really love these ones because I felt she was acting a bit of the same thing all over again and honestly I don’t really like the Korean remake of Fated to Love You (I liked the original Taiwanese version better *gasp* first time for me too).
Anyways, but she really surprised me with her acting in this drama. I read an article afterwards about how she expressed how this drama restored all her confidence in her acting again and I’m not surprised. I haven’t seen her act this well in a while. It seems like a really tough role, because she has to play a mother, a wife, a daughter and a student all at the same time. She acted really maturely, very naturally and even though she looks so freaking young I could really see her motherly/middle-aged woman side.
Very well done to her.
I didn’t know Son Ho Joon before, so I can’t really make a reference but I think he did well. I think Na Ra outshone him a tiny little bit, but I think the main leads had the most challenging roles overall. Playing an adult in a younger body seems really difficult already, but also combine the joy of experiencing youth again with the anguish of wanting to go back to their baby. And no one around them will understand what they’re worrying about.
That’s actually one reason why I felt sorry for the second leads, because we already knew from the start that it wouldn’t be meant to be. For them it was just a crush, no problems, but they had no idea what was really going on. In the end, both of them weren’t that aggressive and they backed off the moment they really saw where the others’ hearts really lie, so that saved us a lot of drama. But still. I think it was important for them to be there because Ban Do and Jin Joo had to try once if it would work with someone else.
We did get a little backstory from the second leads, but for example from Min Seo Young not nearly enough to really start rooting for her. Nam Gil’s second male lead presence was a lot stronger, but Jin Joo was clearly not into it, and at a certain time I felt a bit sorry because I was like ‘I’m sorry but it’s just not going to work bro she’s going back to her child, probably with her husband’.

Since that was what I thought, it really made sense when Ban Do said that this going back event was like a trip for them. They needed a break, they needed to go on a trip. And during that trip them found each other again. They slowly started clearing up misunderstandings, they finally got the chance to express their real feelings. Ban Do is able to tell Jin Joo why he was held up that time and disabled her to see her mother one last time and Jin Joo tells him how much she needed him during that period of grief. All of that, and they started seeing the good in each other again. They finally saw the effort and the struggles that the other went through. Going back to the past gave them the opportunity to re-establish their values.
Apart from that, they were able to change some other things as well: they brought back their friend who originally disappeared from school without a word, and they dealt with a scumbag who was using a rich girl for her father’s money while playing around with a bunch of other girls – someone who in the future became mostly responsible for Ban Do’s misfortune. They also changed the futures of Min Seo Young and Jung Nam Gil. Ban Do made sure Seo Young found the courage to start doing what she liked instead of following her mother who was drilling her into ballet, eventually causing her to have an injury. Jin Joo encouraged Nam Gil to look around more for people who cared for him and open up to people more, because he wasn’t as alone as the thought.

I knew the actress who played Min Seo Young, she was the mean stepsister in Cinderella and the Four Knights and she also played a minor role in Goblin. I’m sorry, but in this drama I had a hard time looking at her because she looked very unnatural to me. Unnaturally skinny, unnaturally dolly. I can’t really look at these kind of people and think ‘Oh, she’s so pretty~’ I think she looked kind of unhealthily skinny and her face was way too alien doll for me. Sorry if this offends anyone, but that’s just my opinion.
The actor of Nam Gil reminded me a bit of Kim Woo Bin, the same kind of face and broad shoulders. (I like Kim Woo Bin, don’t get me wrong.) I found out he was also in The Liar and His Lover, which is probably where I recognized him from. I found him a little stiff – but that was also his role of course – and I would like to see more spontaneous acting from him. It was all very safe and friendly. But I liked his character.
And then there’s the group of friends that made Ban Do and Jin Joo’s lives so enjoyable.
Jin Joo’s best friend Yoon Bo Reum (played by Han Bo Reum) and Ban Do’s friend Ahn Jae Woo (played by Heo Jung Min) got together in university as well, but in the future where our Go Back Couple comes from, they have just broken up in a real cruel way. So Ban Do tries to encourage Jae Woo not to date Bo Reum because it will only bring him pain in the future. And Jin Joo tries to tell Bo Reum that they’re going to go through a rough path as well.
It’s only until the last episode that we find out through Jin Joo why Bo Reum breaks up with Jae Woo (she finds out she’s infertile) and after this comes out, the two still make up in the future and get married.
I recently saw Heo Jung Min in Another Oh Hae Young, where he was the main lead’s delinquent younger brother. However, I think Jae Woo’s character was a bit similar. So I’d like to see a different kind of character from him. Han Bo Reum appeared in an episode of Let’s Fight Ghost, but I didn’t remember her from that.
And then there was Go Dok Jae (played by Lee Yi Kyung), Ban Do’s other friend who was kind of the clown of the bunch. In the 90s he had really long shiny hair and was always getting himself into trouble. I knew this actor from several other series but I never saw him in such a crazy role, so I liked it.
And Jin Joo’s other friend, the one they brought back from disappearance, Chun Seol (played by Jo Hye Jung). I like this actress, I’ve now seen her in three dramas in total and in all three she looked completely different. She was the best friend in Cinderella and the Four Knights, she was also one of the friends in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (for which she gained a lot of weight, because I first didn’t recognize her as the girl in Cinderella where she seemed a lot skinnier). And here she was a bit chubby as well, but again a completely different look. I love how some people can just transform completely in dramas.

What I also really liked where the many references to Goblin and Descendants of the Sun. Honestly you see references in every single drama these days, but I still like it when I can recognize it. It’s especially funny when there’s people in the series who also played in one of the two.

Okay, I will get back to the story again.
I think when it ended, the most important thing was that this ‘trip’ really symbolized a break between the two. A necessary break they had to take to get back together. For most couples, a break is just a period of time in which they think a lot and reassemble themselves and how they’re really feeling. Ban Do and Jin Joo’s break meant going back to the past for a bit. Portraying a real-life situation through fiction is always difficult, because it still has to feel like there’s a real message and it can’t be just fiction. For example, in Manhole I think they went a little too far. But in this case I think it was just right. Yes, they time-traveled, but there were no little aliens or anything that made them go back. And going back turned out to be exactly what they needed. They needed to come eye-to-eye again and they decided to return to their child as a married couple, as loving parents.
The main obstacle in the end was probably the relationship between Jin Joo and her mother. Her mother (again, the formidable Kim Mi Kyung) passed away before Seo Jin was born, so she never got to see her grandchild. Jin Joo wasn’t able to properly say farewell/see her mother one last time before she died (because Ban Do got into trouble) and this always bothered her. Going back and meeting her mother again, Jin Joo turned into a daughter who clung onto and doted on her mother. She used it as an opportunity to do all the things she still wanted to do with her and treasured every moment with her.
Of course, after Ban Do realized his mother-in-law was still alive when he arrived in the past, he had a lot of mixed feelings as well. He was fond of her, but also felt guilty for some reason. Jin Joo had always blamed him for disabling her to see her mother in her final moments. Seeing Jin Joo and her mother again, he even made a decision to stay in the past, and let Jin Joo live with her mother, even though that would mean abandoning Seo Jin.

I thought this was a very irresponsible thought. Of course Jin Joo was emotional when she saw her mother again, but she was busy processing her grief and finishing her own bucket list so that she’d be able to say goodbye to her mother properly. This was something that she had to do in order to go back. She would never have chosen remaining in the past just so she wouldn’t have to say goodbye to her mother over returning to Seo Jin. Her mother’s death would happen either way, and it was just an opportunity for Jin Joo to deal with her regrets of not appreciating her more and spending more time with her. Because, another important message of the series, you never know what’s going to happen. You have to treasure and cherish the family and friends that you have, be grateful for what they do for you, or you’ll end up regretting it later. You’ll only be able to think ‘I wish I’d spend more time with them’, ‘I wish I’d said ‘Thank you’ or ‘I love you’ more often’. This was Jin Joo’s way of dealing with that.
Ban Do selfishly almost gave up on Seo Jin, a child with a whole life and future in front of him, over a ghost of the past. And that really didn’t make any sense to me.

Luckily, they saw that in the end as well and wrapped up the past nicely in order to go back to the future. After going back some things had changed as well, but not as groundbreaking as, for example, in Back to the Future. They were reunited with their baby and I cried my eyes out because generally family reunions always hit my weak spot. It really ended with a happy ending for everyone except of course the scumbag doctor, who was faced with the ugly truth of the girl he’d used all those years hitting it off with another rich man who generally loved her.
Right, I have to say something about that girl. The rich girl whose father owned a hospital and who was dating the scumbag doctor, Kim Ye Rim (played by Lee Do Yeon). She was the crazy ghost friend in Let’s Fight Ghost who would cling to handsome guys. Overall, I guess you could say she’s not really pretty? In Go Back Couple she was also kind of portrayed as ‘the ugly girl’, which I think is always a bit harsh. In any case, I think she’s a lovely actress and I would like to see her as more than just a comic side role. It’s people like this who might look different but are really good actors that we need to see more.
I actually thought about this as well after seeing the trailer of a new drama called My ID is Gangnam Beauty, in which a girl who is really ugly gets bullied a lot and eventually gets her whole face plastic-surgerized to become ‘pretty’. I still find this a very problematic aspect of Korea, the obsession with beauty. Girls have to be beautiful and pretty and guys have to be handsome. If you don’t fit into that mold, you’re considered unnatural. Or weird, or something not good. In this trailer, I just couldn’t help but think, this young, slightly oversized girl having to play the role of an ousted ugly girl… What kind of effect will that have on her? What kind of message does this convey? That being oversized is ugly? That having large teeth is ugly?
Sorry for the sudden rant, but I probably won’t watch My ID is Gangnam Beauty since the story concept already pissed me off a bit ^^” so I wanted to mention it here as a response to this Lee Do Yeon who might be viewed as ugly but is still a talented actress. And still beautiful, without a doubt.

As a final note I would like to say, in the very last minutes of the series they went through the trouble of putting in some more fiction and show the viewers what was the deal with the magical rings. I thought it was funny, but in my opinion it didn’t have to be explained. I had already accepted that the rings were magical and brought them back together. But it gave a nice last way for a sigh of relief. They showed the main actors as divine beings quarrelling and throwing their rings down on earth in anger. And these were the rings that Ban Do and Jin Joo chose as their wedding rings. Once they took them off, they were send back on a little trip to make up, once they put them back on, they returned to their original lived. Thanks for bringing them together again, divine beings.

In the end, Go Back Couple is a very sweet story about two people who think they’ve reached the line with each other, are forced to take a break, and then realize they still have a lot to work on together. It had the right amount of humor, emotional depth, and a lot of great messages. And also the right amount of cliches, but it wasn’t to an annoying extent. I really enjoyed watching it.

Next up will be the last 2017 batch drama (I’m curious as to whether it’s an 12-episoder as well) and after that I’ll continue with more recent ones. Stay tuned!