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.

Clean With Passion For Now
(일단 뜨겁게 청소하라!! / Ildan Tteugeopge Cheongsohara!!)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Helloooo and welcome back to a new review! If I hadn’t held myself back a little I would’ve probably finished this way sooner, but in combination with my new job I am trying to discipline myself a little and limit my drama watch activities mostly to my off days.
This series was on my list because it looked cute and I knew both main leads. It turned out to be a very cute romantic comedy, it grabbed me from the beginning and after the slight anticlimax my previous drama gave me, it was a nice refreshing series to watch.

The story is mainly about two people. On the one hand we have Mr. Jang Seon Gyeol (played by Yoon Kyun Sang), the director of his own cleaning company called Cleaning Fairy. He is suffering from severe mysophobia, which means he can’t touch anything or anyone without having to thoroughly clean it first. This makes it hard for him to be in places with lots of people or enjoy daily life activities that are common for ‘normal’ people. He has been this way ever since he was a child. His grandfather was slightly OCD and when Seon Kyeol’s mother left him for a while to go to the States, he was constantly pressed to keep himself clean, otherwise his mother wouldn’t come back to him. This has resulted in how he is today.
On the other hand, we have Gil Oh Sol (played by Kim Yoo Jung), a messy but bright and energetic girl who gave up being an athlete for trying to find a job and live a stable adult’s life. However, life hasn’t been so kind to her, as she lost her mother in a construction accident 9 years earlier and she can’t seem to land a proper job. As mentioned, she is a bit messy and doesn’t really take care of her appearance except for her mother’s death anniversary, when she cleans the entire house and dresses up nicely to show her mother they’re living on well and clean.
Seon Gyeol and Oh Sol meet a couple of times by coincidence, and Seon Gyeol is initially digusted by her – someone so dirty in how she acts, eats, and presents herself. However, after Oh Sol ends up working at Cleaning Fairy since she aces the physical test, he feels drawn to her more and more. Oh Sol is attracted by him as well and after a few pushes and pulls, they get together.
On the side, there is Mr. Choi Ha In (played by Song Jae Rim), a doctor in disguise who becomes Oh Sol’s rooftop neighbor but turns out to have more connection to both her and Seon Gyeol than he reveals.

As I mentioned in my introduction, this drama grabbed my attention from the first episode on. Right from the bat it was funny, crazy, cute. I was positively surprised by Kim Yoo Jung’s growth in acting, I’ve seen her grow since The Moon That Embraces The Sun and Moonlight Drawn By Clouds. Actually I’ve only seen these two historical dramas of her before, so it was very nice to see her as such a modern young lady. She handled the role very well, although sometimes it was very obvious that she was a lot younger than Yoon Kyun Sang. They differ 13 years in real life. Kim Yoo Jung is only 19 years old(!!), yet she pulled off a mature young lady trying to fit in adult society. As for Yoon Kyun Sang, this was the first leading role I saw of him. I did see a couple of his dramas before, such as Pinocchio and Doctors, but he was always a side/secondary character so it was nice to see him as the lead for once (I mean, he has had other leading roles so I guess it’s not ‘for once’, but for me it was).

I think it was a very interesting idea to highlight cleaning as a main topic. At first I was afraid it would be focussed to much on the practice of cleaning, but they managed to keep it as a consistent theme while the romance between Seon Gyeol and Oh Sol played out. I’ve seen other dramas that at a certain point just let go of their theme as the romance took over, and that’s a pity because it’s usually an important asset of the series. For example, in Jugglers, when they made the fear of fire so important for the male lead in the beginning and then after the romance started it was never mentioned again until the last episode and everyone was like ‘oh right, he was afraid of fire, totally forgot about that’. In this case, Seon Gyeol’s mysophobia remained consistent to his character so that was good. It also seemed natural to me that while he tried desperately to get better when he fell in love with Oh Sol, he relapsed after they broke up and it became worse than before. This somehow reminded me a little of I’m Not A Robot, where the male lead’s allergy also had to do with lack of trust in people and once betrayed again, it would come back stronger than before. It almost felt like that with Seon Gyeol as well. Once he fell for Oh Sol, he cared less and less about her messiness and tried to deal with it.
On the other hand, Oh Sol’s character changed a lot. At a certain point, in the latter half of the series, she no longer was that messy girl from episode 1. She started cleaning herself up more, dressing more nicely, behaving more politely… While in the beginning she was a walking mess. She would get completely drunk at night, she would occasionally bother Seon Gyeol and invade his personal space etcetera. But her whole attitude towards him changes when she finds out about the severeness of his mysophobia and immediately tries to adapt to it. In some way I found this a shame, because I really liked her character in the beginning. She went through a similar kind of change as the female lead in Radio Romance – in the beginning there is this unique, individual kind of style to her, and halfway through she kind of remodels/restyles herself to a typical drama female lead.

Also, and this is one of the few things I disliked about this drama – the way Oh Sol treated Seon Gyeol when she found out his family was partially responsible for the accident her mother died in. They were in a solid relationship at that point, they adored each other, and I just found it really hard to believe that she wouldn’t talk to him right after she heard. Because he didn’t know about it either. I was really frustrated by how she handled this on her own. She just told him that she wanted to break up with him because suddenly ‘she was sick of everything’ and refused to talk to him. In the meantime, Seon Gyeol didn’t know shit (pardon my language). Nobody would tell him anything. Everyone suddenly turned on him and he didn’t even know why. In this moment I just felt really sorry for him because he genuinely didn’t deserve to be treated like that.
I found it really unlike Oh Sol to suddenly start acting like this. When you’re in a relationship like that, and you find out something like that, wouldn’t be normal to first confront your partner, see what he knows/has to say about it? It was so obvious from his reaction that he didn’t know anything about it, and I found it really unfair that they would blame him for that.
But I guess that’s how dramaland works, some truth about someone’s family comes out and then automatically the entire family is to blame for it, even the people who weren’t even personally responsible or didn’t even know about it. Anyways, that frustrated me a lot. She just threw him aside, wouldn’t even tell him the truth, and then, worst of all, used his mysophobia as an excuse and a lie to break up with him, just as he was starting to get better. Someone else had to tell her ‘but you know it’s not actually his fault and he’s suffering a lot too’ before she calmed down.
In short: the whole reason for their break-up was invalid and I just couldn’t understand why she kept lying to him and kept holding her feelings back from him even when they’d already made amends. There was no reason at all for them to break up. So the whole drama between them in the last few episodes felt a bit over the top for me, even for a K-Drama. It just wasn’t realistic for me. When you find out something like that of course it puts a strain on your relationship, but that’s exactly why you should talk to your partner and try to figure things out. Using the tactic of instantly and selfishly breaking up just makes me question their genuine feelings for each other. It shouldn’t be so easy to break up with the love of your life. Try to work things out first, please. Don’t just break up, talk to each other and try to figure it out. Because when you do, you’ll find your love is strong enough.

I would like to point out a few characters and their storylines, both to show compliments and critiques.
First of all, Oh Sol’s father Gil Gong Tae (played by Kim Won Hae). He also played the female lead’s father in my previous drama, but in this drama the bond between father and daughter was much more loving in my opinion. For instance, in the issue I mentioned above, Oh Sol’s father’s reaction seemed very legit to me. You find out the family of the guy that’s dating your daughter is connected to the death of your wife, your first reaction would be to tell your daughter to stop seeing him. For some reason, thinking from a traditional mind, I can see that this would happen. But the truth is, everyone just needed time to process it. I think that her father also knew that Seon Gyeol wasn’t to blame and that he was a good guy, but in that moment he was connected to that family and that was all that mattered. But he really did calm down after a while, he still saw how much Oh Sol missed Seon Gyeol and in the end, after consulting his wife (loved this part), he allowed her to start seeing him again. And this is when it becomes clear that the only thing holding Oh Sol back from Seon Gyeol was the permission of her family. I was wondering the whole time why she was still forcing herself to lie that she didn’t like him anymore, but it turns out she needed her parents’ blessing, and mostly her mother’s.
In any case, I really liked her father, he was a really nice guy and he cared really much about his kids.
Oh Sol also has a little brother, Oh Dol (played by Lee Do Hyun), who is a promising taekwondo practicioner who’s striving to make it to the national team. He loses credit one time when his father is attacked and in his anger he punches the assailant, leading to nervewrecking disciplinary meeting which initially goes wrong (it’s also AG Group that’s responsible for this). However, in the end he doesn’t give up and keeps practicing taekwondo and ultimately qualifies for the national team. I liked how Oh Sol encouraged him with her story of how she always regretted giving up athletics.
I also liked Oh Sol’s best friend and later Oh Dol’s girlfriend Min Ju Yeon (played by Min Do Hee). She was a really interesting character. She seemed casual about a lot of things but really cared about her friend’s family and she had good advice. I loved how one time, when Oh Sol spent the night at Seon Gyeol’s she had to lie to her dad that she spent the night at Ju Yeon’s and when calling her Ju Yeon automatically confirmed her story without even knowing what this was about. #friendshipgoals

Now I will switch to the characters connected directly to Seon Gyeol’s cleaning business Cleaning Fairy. I think the concept of this business was that it was a group of good-looking young people who came to clean your place and that’s why it was very popular.
The three guys that Oh Sol becomes close with at work are Lee Dong Hyun (Hak Jin), Hwang Jae Min (Cha In Ha) and Joon Young Shik (Kim Min Gyu), the latter being also a friend of Oh Dol. Dong Hyun is kind of a mysterious character, and this is being stressed by the fact that he sometimes gets phone calls that make him all serious and he needs to take the call somewhere by himself. However, and this was a bit of an anticlimax to me, in the end it turned out he would get calls about his grandmother who was in the hospital. Seon Gyeol had helped him take care of his grandmother after Dong Hyeon was mistakenly arrested and put in jail for a while.
Now there’s nothing wrong with this backstory, but the fact is that this backstory was only a plot tool to make Oh Sol aware of what a good person Seon Gyeol was. Because the story of Dong Hyun’s grandmother wasn’t used for anything else. After hearing how Seon Gyeol helped him out, Oh Sol is suddenly like ‘omg he really is a good person’. So it didn’t really contribute anything else to the series, just to bringing Oh Sol and Seon Gyeol closer together – and there were already a lot of things that were bringing them together.
Hwang Jae Min was kind of the clown of the group, because he was always second-best to Dong Hyun but he still worked his butt off to become an actor and ultimately achieves this goal. Even when being made fun of in the beginning, he keeps going until he makes his dream come true.
Young Shik was also the typical loyal friend who always had Oh Sol’s back.
And then, and this was one of my favorite characters from the series because she was just so humane, Seon Gyeol’s secretary Ms. Kwon (played by Yoo Sun). For years she has been a loyal companion to Seon Gyeol, the only person who was able to handle his mysophobia. In the end it turns out that her own son has a case of OCD and she met Seon Gyeol’s grandfather at a lecture about treating children with OCD. They got to talking and after Seon Gyeol’s initial nanny passed away, his grandfather asked Ms. Kwon to work for Seon Gyeol, which she did. When Oh Sol appears in Seon Gyeol’s life, she tries to bring them closer. When the truth comes out about how the redevelopment accident connects the two of them, she feels genuinely sorry. I don’t know why, but I just found her an incredibly sympathetic person. I couldn’t get mad at her for keeping things from Seon Gyeol, also about his company being secretly funded by his grandfather, because it was clear that she never had any ill intentions toward him.
I did wonder why they only revealed her son’s OCD and her connection to the chairman in the very last episode, up until that I just thought her child was a bit sickly.

On that note, there’s another thing. The Redevelopment Accident in which Oh Sol’s mother died. I’m not sure why, but it’s never explained what exactly happened. They just talk about it in a way as if it’s common knowledge to everyone what happened (which I guess, in the series it is). But I would’ve liked to know what happened exactly. What was going on with the demonstrations Oh Sol’s mother participated in and what exactly was the accident, did something collapse. I mean I don’t even know what the ‘accident’ was. I could only guess. They showed a couple of flashbacks in which Oh Sol’s mother was protesting with some other people, probably protesting against the redevelopment of some building (no idea why or what) and at a certain point, to make a deadline, the chairman sped some things up which led to a collapse and Oh Sol’s mother became badly hurt because she went inside to get her daughter’s medal to safety. This is what I got from different people’s stories about it, but I still would’ve liked more clarity. Because now it really seemed like Seon Gyeol had nothing to do with it. If they could’ve at least clarified something to show that Seon Gyeol was in some way involved, okay, but now? I was just wondering what all the fuss was about.
Also, especially when he discover that Choi Ha In was one of the construction workers at that time. I was confused by this. He refers to himself as ‘one of the assailants’ in the end, so that must mean that he carries feelings of guilt towards Oh Sol’s family as well. Yet he doesn’t say anything about that, he only jumps in when Oh Sol blames Seon Gyeol. He tells her the truth about a lot of things, even the fact that he knew her before and that was the reason why he moved to their neighborhood – but that he was participating in the redevelopment, he lets that part out. Which seems convenient.
But this is why I have mixed feelings about his character. Because he seems like a nice guy who means to do well, when Oh Sol falls for Seon Gyeol he accepts it, even though he still tries to troll Seon Gyeol with forcing his therapy on him and turning up at his place and stuff.
But at the same time, it seemed like he immediately took his chance back when Oh Sol breaks up with Seon Gyeol. He was there to hold her as soon as she was alone, and I couldn’t help but feel a little suspicious about that.
Because he was also one of the people who could’ve helped Seon Gyeol by telling him the truth about why Oh Sol suddenly took her distance -he knew everything that was going on- but he didn’t. Everyone was just like ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you’ while Seon Gyeol had the most right of everyone to know what was going on because he was suffering the most. It had to do with HIS family, HIS relationship, HIS trust.
I’m sorry, I really can’t get over this, lol.

One last comment about Seon Gyeol’s family, first his mother, Cha Mae Hwa (played by Kim Hye Eun). This actress was also in my previous drama but here she was a much more likable character. I really liked her attempts to make amends with her son, including the awkwardness she had because she didn’t really know how to treat him as she had always left his mysophobia to his nanny. She did leave him for a while, but now that she’s back she really tries to make it up to him and her happiness when Seon Gyeol comes back cured from the US in the end was really heartwarming.
Also, I can’t end without saying something about Seon Gyeol’s grandfather, played by Ahn Suk Hwan. Even though he seemed like the typical evil grandfather chairman who only cared about his legacy and wanted his grandson to follow in his footsteps even if that meant going to the lengths of making his grandson’s girlfriend suffer to stay away from him, the fact that they ended his illness as a tool for urgency and the fact that he hid his guilt and sadness about the tragedy of the accident behind his pride made him a character worthy of at least SOME empathy. And especially when he did come around and took the occasion to formally apologize for the accident (though 9 years late) showed maturity and responsibility. In the end, he wasn’t so much a bad guy as a figure who never dared to face the emotional consequences of his actions before. I don’t know, even though I still didn’t like him that much, he still seemed human enough to take responsibility for the things he’d caused in the end and show how much he actually cared about his family.

The very last thing I will say is about the kissing scenes, because I’ve seen a lot of K-Drama kissing scenes and some are really good and some are really awkward, but WOW. The kissing scenes were actual kissing scenes. I approve. No dry fishes pressing lips together, actual kisses. I was kind of anxious because Kim Yoo Jung and Kim So Hyun are on the same level for me when it comes to child actresses I’ve seen grow up and that now start having their own lead roles – I was underwhelmed by Kim So Hyun in Radio Romance but I was very impressed with Kim Yoo Jung in this series. Even though sometimes, especially when they were standing, she had to bend back her neck so much it almost looked painful, the kisses were definitely convincing. I’m proud.

Overall I enjoyed this drama. It was nice to have another typical 16-episode romcom to watch with a refreshing theme and interesting characters. It really highlighted how underestimated cleaning is as a job, but at the same time how much fun it can be. Of course, if it’s not your thing and you’re not interested in cleaning, I can imagine this part to be of less interest to you.
This was the case for me with Oh My Venus, I wasn’t really interested in the whole healthness theme, so that part of it made it less interesting to me. And I’m not even that interested in cleaning, but still this drama was interesting enough for me because the cleaning theme continued in the background while the rest of the story unfolded. In Revolutionary Love for example, the cleaning theme was present so much that it made me less interested because it was more about the cleaning than the storyline.
I just mean to say, the balance in which they kept all the themes of the series was very well kept. It was about cleaning, and at the same time it combined really well the romance story that developed between the two main leads. There were some typical things that were a bit of a downer (I will never get over sudden selfish break-ups and people not talking to each other when they really should), but I guess I’ll have to accept that that is a drama trope that will always be there.
I think the story was also about acceptance and striving to achieve your goals, even when life kicks you down. Find your moment to get back up and try again. Maybe even take Oh Sol’s story about the hurdle obstable course as a metaphor. You always have to get back up to get over the next hurdle in life.
I will keep an eye open for more dramas with Kim Yoo Jung because I really like watching the progress of the child actors turning into their own lead actors and actresses. It really feels like I’m growing up with them as they advance and develop their drama skills.

I’ll be back with another review soon! Until then!