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.

My First First Love
(첫사랑은 처음이라서 / Cheossarangeun Cheoeumiraseo / Because It’s My First Love)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Before starting a new long drama, I decided to go on Netflix and quickly bingewatch the second season of My First First Love. I’d been postponing it for a while and I was finally in the mood.
For my review on the first season, please check it out here.
The reason I’m making two separate reviews is because I watched the two seasons separately. If I’d watched it one go, I would’ve probably made it into one extended review. However, as I did with the separate review for Good Morning Call’s second season, I found it interesting to write an individual review, as it expresses the best how I felt watching this after it had been a while since I watched the first season.

So, what do we remember from season 1?
Yoon Tae Oh (played by Ji Soo), is a rich boy who for his 20th birthday gets a house from his father and stepmother and due to extenuating circumstances, three friends come to live with him in this big house with many rooms. These friends are his childhood friend Han Song Yi (played by Jung Chae Yeon), his extra aspiring musical actor friend Choi Hoon (played by Kang Tae Oh) and little princess who walked away from home Oh Ga Rin (played by Choi Ri).
Song Yi secretly gets involved with Tae Oh’s other good friend Seo Do Hyun (played by Jin Young) and Tae Oh gets together with popular aan free-spirited aspiring film editor Ryu Se Hyeon (played by Hong Ji Yoon).
Season 1 ended when all six of them went on a trip together to Gangneung, and Tae Oh found out that Song Yi and Do Hyun were dating.
It was the plan for the couple to tell everyone during that trip, but a couple of things happened: Hoon experienced a low moment after failing again for obtaining a role, and Ga Rin accidentally let it slip to Se Hyeon that they, excluding Do Hyun, were all living together at Tae Oh’s place.

Season 2 begins with a very happy couple, Song Yi and Do Hyun, happily spending time together. We can see that Tae Oh isn’t too happy about it (it was already shown that his feelings for Song Yi were changing after he saw them kiss in Gangneung), but for the sake of both his friends, he keeps his dismay to himself and tries really hard to get rid of his feelings for Song Yi.
The couple still has to tell the others about their relationship, though.
In the meantime, Tae Oh tries to patch things up with Se Hyeon, but discovers that she’s not as angry about those people living with him as she is with Song Yi living with him. She gives Tae Oh an ultimatum to save their relationship: make Song Yi move out.
On the other hand, the deep friendship between Tae Oh and Song Yi is starting to bother Do Hyun as well. He keeps missing chances to come to Song Yi’s aid because Tae Oh gets there faster and starts feeling inferior as Song Yi’s boyfriend.
So both Tae Oh and Song Yi are faced with dissatisfaction from their respective love interests in regards to their friendship with each other.
But they find that they can’t deny how much they mean to each other – in some natural way, they just know each other inside out and they always seem to prioritize each other. When Tae Oh is upset, Song Yi feels bad too and vice versa.

In the meantime, there is more development in Hoon and Ga Rin’s relationship as well. Hoon makes a stupid mistake in his despair for money as she keeps failing at auditions and he dials the number from the missing person’s flyer that was given to him by the people looking for Ga Rin.
At the last minute, but already after the money has been wired to him, he decides this isn’t right and still helps Ga Rin get away. However, when he tells her the truth, she gets really mad at him, as does everyone else.
He does keep trying to make it up to her and she is eventually eased by sincerity of his regret.
Just when he gets back his motivation to keep auditioning, Hoon receives a hopeful phone call from his dad – but it turns out to be an unfair way to get him into a promising musical and he doesn’t feel good taking the opportunity purely based on connections. He gets into a fight with his dad, gets slapped by his dad, and when he calls Ga Rin, even though he says he’s fine, Ga Rin can hear that he needs her and she runs to him.
They confront each other there and realize they’ve always been there for each other and there’s this adorable scene where they kiss and from that moment on they’re dating as well.

As this season also only has 8 episodes, the story goes really fast and what basically happens is that both Song Yi and Tae Oh experience a situation concerning their mothers in which the other stands by them. Tae Oh stands by Song Yi as she finds out the whereabouts of her mom who ran away from her and as she confronts her. Song Yi stands by Tae Oh after she finds out his mother has been alive all this time and this has been kept a secret from him for 20 years. She takes him to the address and they meet again.
These moments truly show how deep their friendship is – they both gave up on their respective ‘dates’ because this was a situation that was important to their best friend.
Tae Oh and Se Hyeon are the first to break up, though not on entirely bad terms. Do Hyun gets angry at Song Yi for prioritizing Tae Oh and thinking more than about him than about her boyfriend.
Although this was also because Song Yi was really beating around the bush about what was going on with Tae Oh which sounded to Do Hyun as if she was leaving him for Tae Oh, I have to agree.

In the end, due to the worsening financial circumstances of his dad’s dumpling shop, Do Hyun decides to take up the offer and move away for a while with his dad to get everything back on track.
Hoon finally lands a leading role and Ga Rin becomes an independent entrepeneur (she gets her own building in which people can rent their own spaces to get together for hobby workshops and meet new people with the same hobby’s), they both move out and Song Yi stays with Tae Oh and despite the fact that the switch from friends to lovers is a bit awkward, they start dating.

Okay, so I basically mentioned everything that happened in the series.
I have to say that the main reason I postponed watching this was because I knew what was coming. No thanks to the major spoiler thumbnail on Netflix, thank you very much (the image is of Tae Oh and Song Yi kissing).
When season 1 ended, my friend and I were kind of disappointed because we thought Song Yi and Do Hyun made such a great cute couple that we actually were against Tae Oh and Song Yi ending up together. I mean, it was obvious, but at that point I thought it would feel really unnatural to force Tae Oh and Song Yi together because Song Yi didn’t show any romantic intentions towards Tae Oh.
However, I have to say that after watching season 2, I think they did a very good job building it up. Except for the sudden mutual decision in the end to start dating, I didn’t feel like they were forced together. They both gave each other their blessing in their respective romantic relationships, but they just discovered that they kept prioritizing other people.
Sometimes things are just not meant to be. I mean, for me it felt a bit weird to see Song Yi switch from Do Hyun to Tae Oh. But when looking at their friendship, there were no weird feelings.
As I’ve noted many times before: feelings do whatever they want. If something happens and you want to tell someone, you don’t have any control about who you want to tell first. For Song Yi, that person was always Tae Oh. At least when it came to serious things, and when she was upset.
For things about dates and when she got out of school and ask to have lunch together, of course she texted her boyfriend. But when it came to the important things, she would always call Tae Oh. And Tae Oh always came running. And afterwards he would ask Do Hyun why he didn’t come running, and Do Hyun would just feel bad. But Tae Oh couldn’t help it. Because it had always been that way.

What I really appreciate about this series is that everyone is so real with each other. Everyone talks to each other. When they have a secret or a lie, they never hold it in for long. I loved Hoon for confessing what he did to Ga Rin the minute he got her out of the situation.
And the struggle Song Yi had about telling Tae Oh when she found out about his mother also was really relatable. On the one hand you know he needs to know the truth, but what if he really didn’t want to know? Will it bring him joy or pain knowing the truth? Anyways, I think everyone was very honest with each other and I really liked that.

I just love Kang Tae Oh, he might have had some annoying traits in the beginning, but I just found him so endearing as Hoon. I really want to see more of him as an actor.
I’m also really proud of my bean Ji Soo. His acting became so much better! It feels like I’m watching him grow with every drama and I love it.
I also liked Chae Yeon better, even though she can still improve her acting. But the scene where she confronted her mother and threw a tantrum was really good and heartfelt.
It was nice to see how Ga Rin got this character development, she stood up against her mother for her own freedom, found something she was interested in and started her own organization to bring people together as they were brought together by staying at Tae Oh’s together. It was all wrapped together very nicely.
I enjoyed it when Hoon and Ga Rin finally got together. Because even if they were insufferably cheesy with each other, the true depth of their feelings for each other made it seem like more than just a cute romance, it really came from somewhere. That’s a beautiful thing to have.

Actually it’s interesting to see that Tae Oh and Song Yi were eventually ‘brought together’ by their friends. If it had been for Tae Oh, he would’ve probably gone on hiding his feelings from Song Yi to make sure she and Do Hyun would’ve stayed happy. However, Se Hyeon and Do Hyun were the ones who pointed out to them that they actually liked each other. So in the end, you could say that they were ‘forced’ together, but not by the writers in order to fulfill their trope – because from the start it was clear that they would end up together – but by the people around them. Se Hyeon and Do Hyun accepted reluctantly that they weren’t being prioritized and chose for themselves, even though it hurt.
As for Do Hyun, I had hoped for him to be a little bit more understanding because he had been friends with Tae Oh for a long time as well. And while he was always asking Song Yi to keep him informed about things, he didn’t tell her either about how his family/father’s business was in serious trouble. And there were some cases in which Song Yi did contact him first before Tae Oh, but he still wasn’t able to come in first.

As for Se Hyeon, by the way, it was never explained what the deal was with Se Hyeon and her rumored rendezvous with all these other guys. When she was with Tae Oh it really seemed like she was serious about him, but she never mentioned anything and it was never discovered by Tae Oh. We only ever saw her get into other guy’s cars through Song Yi’s eyes.
I actually wondered what that was about, but it wasn’t explained in the end. Ultimately I actually liked Se Hyeon’s character. She might’ve acted high and mighty to Song Yi, but she proved that she was a good person and not just the bitchy type. She even helped Song Yi with the first clue that led her to her mother’s whereabouts. No one asked her to do that and there was nothing she could gain from it, she did it from the existing goodness in her heart. I like that the characters in this series were all relatable in some way.

Now that I’ve finished this, I do feel content. Although I still don’t completely feel all the way for Tae Oh and Song Yi as a couple, it was undeniable that their friendship outweighed all their other relationships and this was probably the only way to go.

So, I will now start a new longer drama and keep you posted about my future drama watch activities!