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.

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
(사이코지만 괜찮아 / Saikojiman Gwaenchana / I’m a Psycho But That’s Okay)
MyDramaList rating: 8.5/10

(Surprised to find a new layout on WordPress, hope there’ll be no big changes in the actual post)
Hello everyone! It’s time for another drama review. I finally watched this and I knew from the start that it would be difficult to write a review about, haha. But I’m still going to give it a try! Rather than a descriptive summary like I usually do, I think I’m going to write about the overall themes and how (I believe) this series dealt with them.
One of the reasons that I find it difficult to write a review about this is because there is so much more to it than just the story. I’m just worried I won’t be able to construct my words and thoughts properly in one go. But that’s okay, if need be I can even spend more than one day on it, haha. Because it’s worth it. Let’s see how I do!


To start with a short summary: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama, each episode a little over an hour (as seems to be the trend). The main story is about Moon Gang Tae (played by Kim Soo Hyun), who works as a caregiver at a psychiatric hospital. He has an older brother, Moon Sang Tae (played by Oh Jung Se), who has autism spectrum disorder. Gang Tae has been taking care of his older brother his entire life, especially since they lost their mother when they were still children. Although there have been moments where he hated his brother for being handicapped since it limited Gang Tae’s personal possibilities in life, he loves his brother very much and he is willing to take care of him forever, even if that means suppressing himself for the rest of his life. To add some darker background: Sang Tae actually witnessed their mother’s death. She was murdered. Due to a cognitive error, Sang Tae has associated this incident with a butterfly. Ever since then, he has been having recurring nightmares about this butterfly coming to kill him as well. That is why, every year when the spring comes (and with it the butterflies), they move away to live and work somewhere else. They are constantly running away from this ‘butterfly’.
Then there is Go Moon Young (played by Seo Ye Ji), a famous author of childrens’ books who actually has an antisocial personality disorder. She was raised in seclusion by her obsessive mother in a castle and she has been so used to being on her own that she doesn’t know how to interact with other people. In fact, she always comes across as a sociopath – or even a psycho. What’s unique about her stories is that they’re not ordinary fairytales ; on first impression they’re actually quite morbid with grotesque illustrations. Despite the controversy around her books, she is very popular as there is always a deeper meaning behind her stories – and the fact that she’s beautiful herself probably also plays a part in it.

Gang Tae and Moon Young meet for the first time when Moon Young has a reading for the children patients at the hospital Gang Tae works at. As if their first encounter wasn’t bad enough, not soon after there is an incident where a dangerous patient escapes and ruins the reading. When cornering the patient, Moon Young ‘accidentally’ stabs Gang Tae in the hand with a knife when the latter tries to protect the patient she’s targeting.
After this encounter, Moon Young becomes fascinated with Gang Tae, this boy with ‘beautiful eyes’. Gang Tae, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with her. He is appalled by her way of treating people and handling things and wants to keep her as far away from his brother as possible. However, as it happens his brother is a big fan of her books. He’s also very gifted in drawing and he uses the illustrations from her books as drawing practice as well.
When Gang Tae reluctantly accompanies his brother to one of her book signs, they get involved in a row with other people waiting in line and he is confronted with Moon Young once again.
(Just as an in-between comment: this scene made me so angry!! Gang Tae left Sang Tae standing in line for just a moment while he took a phone call, and Sang Tae got all excited when he saw a kid in a dinosaur costume – he loves dinosaurs – and he goes there to examine it. When he starts talking about how much he loves dinosaurs, the kid’s parents literally grab his hair – which he dislikes very much – and push him away, yelling at him that he’s a freak and that he’s harrassing their kid. Moon Young comes down and, in her way of standing up for him, cusses at the parents, who then start pointing fingers at her ‘did you all hear what she called us?!’ and the thing went viral and Moon Young’s reputation blew up etcetera. And I was just sitting there, all like, ‘seriously?! NO ONE is going to say anything about how those parents assaulted a mentally challenged person and THREW HIM TO THE GROUND while he didn’t even do anything? He didn’t even touch their kid, he was talking about his freaking dinosaur plushie. This just proves that, when it comes to someone who is deemed ‘not normal’, people don’t even bother listening to what they’re saying, they just assume they’re a lunatic and point fingers. It was sickening, I felt so bad for Sang Tae.)
Gang Tae is forced to quit his job because of the first incident at the reading, actually taking the fall for someone else. When his friend Nam Joo Ri (played by Park Gyu Young) visits him in Seoul she suggests he comes back to their hometown Seongjin City, as they have an opening at the psychiatric hospital where she works as a nurse as well. Her ulterior motive is that she has a crush on him.
Gang Tae and his brother decide to go back there. Moon Young follows them, leaving behind her very stressed publisher Lee Sang In (played by Kim Joo Heon) and moves back into her own childhood home, the so-called ‘cursed castle’.
Through flashbacks we learn that Gang Tae and Moon Young actually knew each other when they were kids, and Gang Tae even had a crush on her, but because of her antisocial tendencies he got scared and ran away from her.
This first encounter between them is shown at the start of the first episode, in the form of an animation.
After a while, Lee Sang In goes after Moon Young, together with his quirky assistant Yoo Seung Jae (played by Park Jin Joo). This also goes for Gang Tae’s friend Jo Jae Soo (played by Kang Ki Doong), who has always moved along with the two brothers no matter where they went. All of them end up staying at Joo Ri’s house in the end.

Through the series we see how both Gang Tae and Moon Young struggle with their lives. They are both stuck in how they were raised, and unable to escape from their pasts or from what ties them to their pasts. I think the most important thing here was that they are both trapped in a way, forced down by someone or something, raised to believe they could never have an independent life in which they can do whatever they want. And while Gang Tae has his brother, Moon Young has always been alone. As soon as she moves back into the castle, her nightmares about her mother and all of the traumatizing things happened in that house come back to her. The part where her mother’s ghost was hovering above her bed, paralyzing her with fear… yikes.

This is the 3rd K-Drama in a row that I’ve watched on Netflix and also the 3rd that was completely different from what I expected. Again, I didn’t exactly know what I expected, but I was still surprised. Honestly, after the first episode I found myself thinking ‘this is pretty dark… and kinda creepy’. But as I continued watching, I found that it was very unique in its kind. I’ve never seen a K-Drama like this. Even though you might think that the story of two people finding each other and helping each other heal isn’t that original, this series sets itself apart by its way of storytelling. Because at the foundation of it, it’s a story about a story. The story that Moon Young and Sang Tae make together that sets everyone free at the end.

I find the use of fairytales really interesting in this drama, especially because it criticizes them and uses them in such an unorthodox way. Moon Young is a writer, but she interprets classic fairytales very differently than other people and children would. People like to find the romantic and the positive in stories, and Moon Young is the opposite of that. You might call that pessimistic, but it’s also very realistic and down-to-earth. Of course, she is made to think like this because of the mindset based on her traumatic experiences as a child. She has lived a dark fairytale of her own, locked in a castle, her every move influenced by her psychotic mother. After following Gang Tae to Seongjin City, she gets herself a job at the hospital he works at to teach a class about fairytales to the patients. However, the class mostly ends in heated discussions and hurt feelings because she refuses to address the stories as fairytales with romantic messages and happy endings.
There are a lot of stories depicted in this drama. Apart from the storybooks that Moon Young has written, there are mentions of many others, and there are several animated sequences as well. I think they did a really great job in visualizing these. Every single story was packed with deeper meanings and they all had a function within the drama. It definitely put things into perspective and made me think about how they could be interpreted in different ways than I was used to.
Even the animation in the beginning, telling of how Gang Tae and Moon Young first met as children, comes back in the end, as the way Moon Young and Gang Tae are depicted in the animation looks a lot like how they turn out in Sang Tae’s illustrations for the final book they make together.
I also liked how a lot of episode titles referred to actual fairytales and stories (The Red Shoes, King Bluebeard, The Donkey King, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, etc.) and in each case there was a referrance to this fairytale in the episode. They weren’t always a 100% apparent (at least to me), but they were definitely there.
Also, the whole opening sequence is refers to the fairytale-aspect of the series as well, both in imagery as in song.

“There was once upon a time
And all people have stories
Their own

Let her take all she wants
Set him behind
It’s not your fairytale, no

Have him take all he wants
Don’t be afraid
All these are part of you
Of you“

— ‘Sketch Book‘ by Janet Suhh

Looking at these lyrics, I really wouldn’t be surprised if they were written especially for this series.

For the title, I was surprised to see the original Korean title was basically ‘It’s Okay to be a Psycho / I’m a Psycho But That’s Okay’. I wondered if they softened the ‘psycho’ part into ‘not okay’ to make it sound friendlier, but the phrase ‘it’s okay to not be okay’ is actually a slogan inside the hospital director’s office. So I like how they took the English title from there. Also, the word ‘okay’ or ‘OK’ (‘gwaencha (na) in Korean) also comes back a lot, even in the name of the hospital, as it’s called OK (Gwaencha) Psychiatric Hospital. However, I did wonder who the ‘psycho’ in the end referred to. I suppose Moon Young, but she wasn’t really a psychopath. That’ll be interesting to discuss, I think!
One more word play thing: I loved the contrast that was made of the two meanings of the word psyche. When talking about butterflies and trying to help Sang Tae face his trauma, the hospital director tells him the Greek word for butterfly, psyche, also has the meaning of ‘to cure/to heal’. We later see a flashback of Moon Young’s mom telling her daughter that the word psycho was originated from the word psyche/butterfly.
I guess each interpretation just depends on the way you look at the world!

What also set this drama apart was how it shone a light on mental health issues and gave an insight in the daily business in a psychiatric hospital. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it depicted so elaborately in a K-Drama before. Psychiatric hospitals in movies and series usually bring with them a kind of eerie asylum vibe, with flickering lights in dark hallways and people tied to their chairs and stuff.
OK Psychiatric Hospital looked like a super nice play to stay. The interior was light, they had a beautiful garden, lots of place to sit outside and enjoy the beautifuls seaside view, a big cafeteria with good food, friendly staff… completely different from how they’re usually depicted. I liked that they picked a scenic spot like this rather than the busy streets of Seoul as the main setting. The patients in the hospital also aren’t aggressively inclined at all. The only occasional exception being Moon Young’s father, Go Dae Hwan (played by Lee Ul), who has been at the hospital for 20 years because of his dementia. Moon Young never goes to visit him because she has no familial feelings towards him at all. As she states at one point, ‘Isn’t it interesting? My father’s body is still alive but his spirit is gone. Meanwhile, my mother’s body is dead but her spirit is still around’. When he meets his daughter around the hospital one time, he attacks and chokes her, yelling that she should be dead and that she’s a monster. The speculation is that he mistook her for her crazy mother, but he also attempted to choke Moon Young when she was a kid, so it’s not certain.

The stories in this drama don’t just unfold, they also change. In the beginning, we are led astray about certain things and characters. At least this was the case for me. If I had an impression about someone in the beginning, in most cases at the end of the series I felt differently about it/them. We are led to believe something as it’s shown through one person’s eyes, but we’re consistently proven wrong when the whole story is revealed. And this is why I believe that this drama is also about the different truths about people. About the double-sidedness and deeper layers of stories. And about the danger of first impressions.
For instance, we are led to believe from the beginning that Moon Young’s father is a monster. From the way Moon Young treats him from the start as we are introduced to him, we are led to believe that he must have been a terrible father. We are granted one flashback, in which he tries to strangle Moon Young as a child. We are led to believe that he is the evil King Bluebeard who murdered his wife.
But just before he passes away, he is lucid and he tells the story from his perspective and I was so glad that he did. I was glad we got to see what truly happened. Not that it made it better what he had done to Moon Young, but at least I was able to understand him better. I still believe he cared a lot for his daughter, but that he was so scared of her mother and of the influence she would have on her. He was terrified that Moon Young would turn out the same, because she’d already been influenced by her mother too much. I mean, when you see how her mother was, I’d find him foolish for not being even a tiny bit worried, seeing how much time they’d spent together.
By the way, I thought they would just go for a younger actor of Moon Young’s father in the flashbacks, but they used the same actor and the way they made him look 20 years younger/older with make-up was amazing!

Returning to topic, the second example I have is Gang/Sang Tae’s mother. From the flashbacks we see from Gang Tae’s point of view, we are led to believe that their mother really neglected Gang Tae as a child. We see her often scolding him for not considering his brother enough, she keeps leaving him behind while tending to Sang Tae. We see young Gang Tae craving his mother’s warmth and attention and simply indulging in it when she finally hugs him. And when she finally gives him attention, she just says things like, ‘You have to always take care of your brother. That’s the reason I gave birth to you’. Like, what? Would a mother say that to her precious child? Seriously? You can’t help but feel so sorry for young Gang Tae.
However, as it turns out, this really was just Gang Tae’s point of view. He later learns from Sang Tae that their mom would always take them to this restaurant because she knew Gang Tae loved the food there and she would just lay awake and smile at his sleeping face, adoring the heck out of him while feeling guilty about making him feel like he mattered less than his big brother. It was so touching when Sang Tae ultimately told Gang Tae that ‘Mom loved you a lot and she didn’t just give birth to you so you could take care of me’, almost as if he could read Gang Tae’s mind and he remembered everything their mom had said and done to him in the past.
Moon Woo Jin, who played the young Gang Tae, is going to be the next big child actor hype, I just know it. This kid is only 12 years old and he just acts everyone away. He is a star. To be able to portray such dramatic emotions at such a young age is really incredible. We gotta keep an eye out for him, people!!
Lee Kyu Sung, who played the younger Sang Tae, also did an amazing job! Love seeing these young talents!

As for Moon Young’s mother, we are led astray multiple times: who was she? Is she alive? Is she a ghost? Is one of the hospital’s patients actually her mother in disguise? We are led to believe Moon Young’s father killed her, but then it turns out she’s still alive? Is the reason they’re not revealing her face in the flashbacks because she’s someone we know?
In any case, Gang Tae and Moon Young have both been imprinted with a certain image of their parents, and this image has traumatized them. In the end, they both find peace with the good memories they have of them and they are able to let them go, even Moon Young, whose only good memory of her father is when he read her a story one time.

Ill go back for a bit to the hospital and its patients. There was a small group of patients, all with a different reason for being there, who were highlighted one by one. There was an older man with PTSD, a younger guy with alcohol addiction, a girl with depression caused by an abusive relationship, a woman with borderline personality disorder, a woman with DID who had been a victim of child abuse, a manic patient, and a woman with psychotic depression caused by the death of her only child.
Each of them had their own story, and they all had their own purpose in the story. I really liked that they used their encounters with some of these patients in their final story, because each person had, in their own way, inspired them or confronted them with how stuck they were in their lives.
I especially liked the special appearance of Kwak Dong Yeon as the manic patient. This is by far the most energetic role I’ve seen him play, haha. I loved the scene where he ruined his father’s political rally and danced around trying to escape the security guards, and how Gang Tae for a moment saw himself dance like that, free to scream and shout and let it all out.

One thing that stuck with me was the conversation between the PTSD patient and Sang Tae. The old man said that they were both searching for an ‘exit’, a way out of whatever tied them to their past and trauma. For Sang Tae, it was the butterfly, for the old man it was the war he’d fought in. I loved how at the end, this patient received a pair of new shiny shoes from the director, who told him to walk out of the hospital in these shoes and go out there to search for his exit door. Sang Tae also chose to search for his door when he decided he would try to draw butterflies instead of running away from them.
The young alcoholic guy and the depressed girl fell in love and I really liked how mature they were. When the girl was released and the guy was determined to finish his treatment properly so he could be with her for good after he was fully rehabilitated. I was so proud of him when he spit out a drink one time, all like ‘this is alcohol’, and that he told her he knew he wasn’t done with his treatment yet because it still cost him a lot of effort to resist the alcohol. Admitting your own problem is a really big part of it, and it made it so much more worth it when they were reunited at the end.
The depiction of child abuse is always something that makes me nauseous. But the interesting thing about this case was that the issue lay more with the parent who had turned a blind eye rather than the parent who had actually hit the child. It still took on a different angle, which was also good, because people who turn a blind eye often get away with it because they weren’t the ones who actually committed the crime. If you ask me, they’re equally guilty.
I’m glad the series didn’t shy away from these topics, as they are still so very important.

Undoubtedly the biggest storyline in this drama is the relationship between Gang Tae and Sang Tae, or The Tale of the Two Brothers, as I’ll call it in accordance to one of the episode titles. Their relationship in itself is enough to build a story on. It’s beautiful but heartbreaking at the same time. You can tell that they care so much for each other, but when you find out about their past and how they have actually become forced to live together like that, always on the run for some invisible threat, it becomes kind of strained and painful as well You can’t help but feel for them.
The scenes where they fought in particular were very bad for my heart. You could see that Gang Tae was sucking it all up because he knew his brother couldn’t help it and that he would calm down eventually and he just needed to be patient with him. But then that one time when they fight and he yells back at his brother because he finally starts enjoying what it’s like to push back in his life – it was just F E E L S all the way.
The worst thing that happened between them is that, when they were children and they were playing on a frozen river once, Sang Tae fell through the ice and Gang Tae hesitated and even walked away for a bit before coming back to save him after all. He jumped into the water and pushed his brother out. After getting out of the water, his brother ran away and left him in the water. He was eventually saved by Moon Young, who had been watching them from a distance, and this initiated Gang Tae’s crush on her. But anyways, this happened and neither of the two brothers have forgotten about this incident, although they never speak of it. It’s just something that makes their past together so fragile, because it is so much more than just brotherly love. They’ve been through so much together, they hated each other’s guts so many times, but they still end up stronger than ever.

I found Gang Tae a very relatable character. Not that I would know how it feels to live like that, but his character was just explained so well that I could really understand his position, helped of course by Kim Soo Hyun’s amazing acting. He has been keeping the promise to his mother for so long that he’s started to lose himself, the essence of who he is and that he might have another purpose besides caring for his brother. He doesn’t even think about deserving a life of his own, he has already surrendered to the idea that he’ll always have to suppress himself.
Even though he has some deeply buried grudging feelings towards his brother and how his mother neglected him as a child, he’s always reminded of the fact that his brother is everything to him and he could never leave him.
Based on his personality and background, I guess it is both fitting and ironic that he would become a caregiver, because while he does it because he cares, it also shows that he’s literally devoting himself to only taking care of others and it only stimulates how much he suppresses himself.
But what I also loved was how Sang Tae, even though he knew that Gang Tae was taking care of him, kept saying that he was the older brother and that he was supposed to take care of his younger brother rather than the other way around. In the meantime, he learned so much from Gang Tae. One of my favorite parts was when Sang Tae was on a bus with the PTSD patient I mentioned before. This patient receives a day off from the hospital and they end up in the same bus. The old man at one point is triggered by some construction noises and gets flashbacks from the Vietnam War that he fought in. When this happens, Sang Tae copies what Gang Tae always does to calm him and manages to calm the patient down, putting a coat over his head, telling him it’s okay while hugging him.
That was so touching, especially because Sang Tae wasn’t one for hugging strangers, and it really made me realize that he was aware of so much more than people probably gave him credit for. He kept proving that he was able to care for others as well, that he wasn’t just the person who had to be cared for.

At some point when they had just had a big fight, there was a switch in which Sang Tae started turning the tables. It was usually Gang Tae who would check up on him, asking if he’d eaten already, etc. But then he started doing that to Gang Tae. He also allowed Moon Young to become a part of their family even though she wasn’t related to them and started treating her like his younger sister. It just showed that he had learned so much from other people around him and he really was a proper adult. He wanted Gang Tae to know that he wasn’t bound to him forever.
I can imagine it would be very difficult for Gang Tae to let go of his older brother after they had been leaning on each other for so long. But that made it extra touching when Sang Tae told him to let go, to let him go his own way, so that they could both go and find their own exit doors.

The next topic I wish to address is the fact that almost every single character in the series was stuck in their ways at the beginning, and managed to get out / find their door / cut off their leash at the end. It really made the final episode so wholesome to watch.
Besides the three main characters, there is Lee Sang In, Moon Young’s publisher. In the beginning of the series he is just a shallow man concerned mostly with money and keeping up his business and reputation. He knows about Moon Young’s personality and tendencies, but he still is more interested in the books she writes and the money he can make off them. When Moon Young leaves to Seongjin without a word, he goes after her, but when he is unable to convince her to come back and write a new book, he sticks around after meeting Joo Ri, as he is immediately attracted to her. Throughout the series he goes through a major metamorphosis, starting from the outside when he shaves off his moustache. After shaving it off he literally became a different person, haha. Spending more time in the countryside eventually turns into ‘taking a break’ and he comes to really appreciate things and people. He starts caring about Moon Young’s wellbeing more as well, rather than the profit he can make off her. At the end of the series, he decides to stay in Seongjin City to start his own new business rather than go back to busy Seoul and try to fix the mess they left behind.
Secondly, Joo Ri. I wouldn’t describe her as a typical second female lead, but she does start off with that kind of vibe. She’s interested in Gang Tae, she gets him to come back to their hometown and work at the same hospital as her… But Moon Young gets in the way by continuously distracting him. Joo Ri has an initial dislike for Moon Young, as they went through something when they were kids – Moon Young once pit their classmates against her because Joo Ri was her only friend and she didn’t want her to hang out with other kids. This hit hard because before becoming friends with her, Joo Ri was actually bullied, and after this happened she was ostracized again just after she started getting along with her classmates. Because of this past event, Joo Ri is initially stuck in her prejudice about Moon Young being a bitch. After she is rejected by Gang Tae (her acting in this scene was beautiful by the way), she initially falls into a habit of regular drinking to vent her frustrations. But after that she slowly starts accepting the fact that Gang Tae and Moon Young were drawn to each other because of their wounds and she and Moon Young slowly become more friendly with each other again. In the end, even though only Sang In expresses his feelings out loud, it is suggested that Joo Ri reciprocates his feelings.
Jo Jae Soo, Gang Tae’s friend who always follows him and his brother wherever they go, trying to become a part of their family, learns that trying to force yourself into something doesn’t work. He has devoted a lot of time into being a loyal friend to the two brothers, always moving with them and then opening a new business wherever they end up. Gang Tae ultimately tells him that he doesn’t need to keep following them anymore, that he can live his own life just like them, and he obliges by finally calling him ‘hyung’. You could say that Jae Soo was stuck in always sticking with the two brothers, trying to become a part of their family as well, rather than going his own way.
Lastly, in her own dorky way, Seung Jae does the same. She’s quite a mysterious character, you never really learn her true intentions and she also acts and presents herself way younger and less smart than she actually is. From the start, she is, very reluctantly, stuck under Lee Sang In’s regime, she keeps getting pushed around by him and even though we see how much it annoys her, she still sticks by him. In the final episode, she finally expresses how she’s had it with him, which was oddly satisfying.

Before I go on to next topic I need to address a couple of more people.
First of all, Joo Ri’s mother, Kang Soon Seok (played by Kim Mi Kyung). I’ve expressed by love for this woman multiple times already in earlier reviews, but I’m going to do it again. I was so happy to see her appear in this, I didn’t know beforehand she was in this drama. As Joo Ri’s mom, she only had one child but she ended up being literally everyone’s mom, haha. Everyone came to stay at her house and she would make food for everyone. She also took care of the food at the hospital because she was old friends with the director. Their friendship was so funny. She was such a nice presence, so warm, and it was really nice to see her and Kim Soo Hyun act together. When they hugged at the end, it almost looked like Kim Soo Hyun was just thanking her for existing haha. I also got teary-eyed when she got a free copy of the final book and Sang Tae had written her a message saying that he loved her like she was his own mom and she got all emotional #myheart

The director, finally, haha! I’ve already mentioned him several times but I really want to talk about him.
Director Oh Ji Wang (played by Kim Chang Wan) was so great. This actor acted with Kim Soo Hyun before in My Love From Another Star and he is just such a precious being. Seeing him and Kim Mi Kyung act together was a pleasure to watch. I really loved his character here, he was the perfect director for a psychiatric hospital. While you could see he really cared for all patients, he also had this mischievous streak and he used very witty ways to get people to face their traumas. He came up with the idea for Sang Tae to paint a mural in the hospital and then, very subtly, was like… ‘I would like there to be some butterflies’. In the end, this became a successful tool to get Sang Tae to face his trauma, face the butterflies and draw them rather than run away from them.
I really loved the scenes where he would just spy on people and record people on the CCTV, haha. There was this stupid guy who slapped Gang Tae in the face in his office and afterwards the director was like ‘…I caught him on camera’, lol. He constantly cracked me up.

As my bridge to the next topic, I have to introduce Head Nurse Park Haeng Ja (played by Jang Young Nam). She was Director Oh’s most trusted nurse and Joo Ri’s superior. There were a couple of more nurses/doctors that were supporting characters, but she was the most important one. Because she’s not who she seems to be.

I am a bit anxious to write this, but what I’m about to describe is the only thing in the drama that I didn’t like.
As we’ve established, Moon Young’s mother (played by Woo Jung Won in the flashbacks) was a psychopath. She raised her daughter in the spitting image of herself, to remain locked up because she was too pretty to go into the world.
To make matters even worse, she’s also the one who murdered Gang/Sang Tae’s mother, after the latter made one concerned comment about Moon Young’s worrying behavior as a child. After stabbing her in the throat with a fountain pen, she threatened a paralyzed Sang Tae that she’d come after him too if he were to talk. The only thing within his line of gaze was the butterfly broach on her jacket, which caused his cognitive error.
Moon Young’s dad, shocked to see his wife smiling and humming a song even after killing someone, pushes her so hard she tumbles over the railing and rolls down the stairs.
Up to this point in the series we have seen enough of Moon Young’s mother to understand why Moon Young is terrified of her, and even of her memory after she’s gone.
But then, weird things start happening at the hospital. Moon Young’s father keeps hearing someone hum the same song as his wife (‘Oh My Darling Clementine’) and the books that she wrote (Moon Young’s mother was also a writer) keep popping up. We are led to believe that in some way, somewhere, even if she’s just a ghost, Moon Young’s mother is still around, somehow. The next big shock comes when Sang Tae arrives to work on his mural and finds that someone has drawn a huge butterfly over his painting, the same butterfly that he saw the night his mother was killed.
And then it is revealed that the Head Nurse is actually Moon Young’s mother, still alive and with several layers of plastic surgery done to her face. She was also responsible for inciting several patients into doing something for her as part of her plan, including stirring up the dangerous patient in the first episode. Which is weird, because that took place when they were still in Seoul. Did she come to Seoul in order to do that? Also, didn’t Moon Young’s father dump her body in a river? How the hell is she still alive after that fall? It’s not explained. She’s just there, suddenly. ‘Hi, I’m still alive’.
Apart from shock value, I honestly don’t understand what the whole point of it was. It just had a big ‘It Was Agatha All Along’ effect on me (any WandaVision watchers?) and I couldn’t really take it seriously because I found it so far-fetched. It felt like they just really wanted a confrontation where Gang Tae learned why his mother was killed, and that was the only reason why they fit her into an already present character so she could still tell him in person.
But honestly, they already knew she was the one who killed his mom. Telling him the reason why she did it was just to stab Gang Tae even deeper in the heart, knowing that it really happened for no reason at all.
The only other explanation I can think of was that they had to create an event that brought Gang Tae and Moon Young back together, as they were apart at that point exactly because they found out her mom had killed his.
For me, it would’ve been enough if her mother had just remained an evil spirit or memory that Moon Young learned to get rid of. Because it was the trauma that she needed to heal from, not her mom being still physically around to keep tormenting her. It just seemed unnecessary to me. In the end, even after visiting her one last time in jail, it was merely to confirm that although she wouldn’t be able to fully erase her, she could just paint something new over it, just like Sang Tae painted over the butterfly on his mural.
It also didn’t make sense to me because they made the Head Nurse turn into a psychopath overnight, including the wide eyes and manic laughter (because that’s a stereotypical psychopath, right?). The worst part: the whole build-up to the confrontation between Psycho Mom and her daughter and Gang Tae, the whole big reveal and ‘look at me I’m psycho mom and you’re never getting rid of meeee’ – and then she’s literally knocked out by a freaking book and arrested the same day. So much for your big comeback, lady.
Not that I didn’t enjoy Sang Tae hitting her over the head, that was great, what a hero. But I mean, the whole thing with her was just so lame? I was so disappointed with this turn of events, it seemed so weirdly unrealistic and out of place in a series that, up to that point, had been such a deeply realistic portrayal of human healing.
Also, I still don’t get why they went to the whole thing of hiding Moon Young’s mom’s face in the flashbacks. It’s not like she already looked like the Head Nurse there or that we would recognize her from something else. If you’re keeping something hidden, I expect the reveal to have at least a tiny ‘oh my god’ effect. But now, when they finally revealed her face, it was just like ‘… oh. Okay.’
I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I needed to put this down because I can’t lie about how I felt about it. This is just my personal opinion. I’m sure there are people out there who think it was the best plottwist ever. But even though I did have a slight gut feeling that there something up with the Head Nurse, it still wasn’t enough to make it an exciting plottwist for me.
Then again, this really was the only thing I didn’t like about the drama.

Before going on to some cast comments, I wish to make one more remark about the relationship between Gang Tae and Moon Young. I saw some pretty destroying comments of people saying that Moon Young is just a spoiled brat who forces Gang Tae to be with her by using his autistic brother. I don’t agree with that. These people clearly didn’t pay enough attention to what was happening and they didn’t fully understand what this series was about. It sounds like they just got annoyed with how aggressive Moon Young was in her pursue of Gang Tae in the beginning, and then never bothered changing their opinions even when her true character was revealed.
I personally didn’t find Moon Young annoying in the least. On the contrary, she was a very refreshing and unique kind of character. She is funny, sassy, but she also sees through people, she’s smart, she stands her ground, she is strong. She is a child that has seen too much darkness. She is scared. Her fascination with pretty things that leads her to Gang Tae is, in essence, a cry for help. She reaches out. And that is extremely brave for someone standing all alone in the world. Maybe she doesn’t even realize it because she is just instinctively drawn to him. But she definitely chooses to keep reaching out to him because despite her own issues and yearning for comfort, she also sees that he needs help. That he has locked himself up in his shell and is unable to come out on his own. So I agree much more with the people that say she ‘used’ his brother to get Gang Tae out of his shell, to make him see he does deserve a life of his own.
Two people, each with a lot of personal baggage, offering each other help in lifting this baggage. Not as a charity case, but because they can genuinely help each other. In the end, Gang Tae and Moon Young heal each other in multiple ways, they literally provide each other with their respective exit doors / they cut each other loose from their leash.

Moving on to cast comments! I’ve been looking forward to this because if there’s anyhing that made this show for me, it was the cast. Honestly, the entire cast of actors made me so incredibly happy, from the first episode on.

KIM SOO HYUN
I make this no secret, and I know I’m one of many, but Kim Soo Hyun is one of my favorite actors out there. Not just because he’s so good looking, but because he’s a genuinely good actor. He falls in the same category as Lee Jong Suk for me, although I would never go so far as to compare them with each other. I’ve seen a lot of Kim Soo Hyun’s dramas, of which there are less than you’d expect, but this just proves that he chooses his projects very carefully. I believe that I’ve seen everything he’s done from 2011 on. The first drama I saw with him was The Moon That Embraces The Sun, still one of my favorite historical dramas. I believe this is the first review I am writing on a drama with him! This is his first drama since he returned from the army, and I’m really excited about his future work.
I think he portrayed Gang Tae very well in this drama. There are so many layers to his character, he really has a mask on to hide his true face. When he is genuinely hurt by a situation, it seems like he only reluctantly lets the tears out, as if he doesn’t even feel like he has the right to cry. It was really beautiful to see how slowly but surely Moon Young inspires him to look at his own worth and makes him realize that he does deserve to jump out from his vicious circle.
In the meantime, he is also inspired by a lot of people at the hospital. Seeing him struggle with letting himself go was really heart-wrenching but he did it so well. The scene where he punched an abusive visitor in the face for attacking Moon Young and he came to her all smiley like ‘I got suspended! Let’s go on a trip :D’ was so adorable, you could see how good it did him to punch even the tiniest dent in his suppressing shell.
Although I expected nothing less from him, he still managed to surprise me. His awkward laughs, the tenderness in his eyes when he looked at his brother, his tears that made me cry with him every single time… Once again he managed to portray a completely unique and genuinely human character. It was so nice to see his character development.

SEO YE JI
Honestly, I’ve only seen one drama with her before this and that was Hwarang (which I didn’t like that much). I didn’t really have any clear impression of her, but she was amazing in this drama. She was an absolute QUEEN.
In the beginning she reminded me of IU’s character in Hotel Del Luna, this mysterious, bewitching, beautiful, secluded princess locked in her castle, doomed to be alone and pushing everyone away (also, her outfits?!).
She portrayed such interesting layers to the character! I loved how unpredictable she was, how her face could change in a split second and her smiles were extra powerful because her face literally broke with a joy she usually never felt.
She was a spoiled child that got angry whenever she couldn’t get her way, but she was also a heavily traumatized girl with nightmares of a witch she couldn’t escape from. She portrayed the different emotions so well, I couldn’t dislike her even for a second. Plus I thought she had really good chemistry with Kim Soo Hyun. Those kissing scenes?! Damn.
Also: she can read me fairytales any freaking time because her voice is perfection. I’m in love with her voice.
I hope to see more of her acting in the future!

🙏🏻OH🙏🏻JUNG🙏🏻 SE🙏🏻
I believe I already mentioned I really liked him in my review of Touch Your Heart, and I have liked him in basically every drama I’ve seen of him. But man oh man. What can I say. He more than received the Best Supporting Actor Award he got for his role in this series, without a doubt.
Truthfully, I don’t even know if the way he portrayed the autism spectrum disorder is realistic or accurate (I haven’t seen any criticism about his portrayal), but honestly, the way he performed it was just so incredibly endearing.
The thing about Sang Tae is that you just can’t hate him. Even when he lashes out and starts beating his brother and gets mad and hides in the cupboard, he just loves Gang Tae so much and he wants for him to have his own life so bad. A part of him probably always felt guilty that Gang Tae wasn’t able to go to school because of him. He never wanted that for him. In-between watching the same children’s show over and over again and collecting dinosaur figures and drawing, he has always been aware of how their mother neglected Gang Tae. At the end he is actively trying to get Gang Tae to become more independent without him, he gives him and Moon Young space to be together (‘a kiss is better than a fight’), he ends up leaving them alone on their trip, he reminds Gang Tae that he belongs to himself…
The part where I really bawled my eyes out was in the final episode, when Moon Young and Sang Tae publish their collaboration storybook and he goes to read it out loud to their mom’s tree, crying with joy… My god, you could wipe the floor with me right there and then.
Oh Jung Se was absolutely amazing. He didn’t break character once, he never did anything out of character, he was consistent in his acting. There were a few moments where it felt like he became a little comical, but then it would always become clear that that was never the intention of his character.
Seeing the bloopers at the end of the final episode, and the one part where Gang Tae fantasizes about what it would’ve been like to have a normal life and go to school, I was amazed to see how well he switched. He’s definitely going up in my list of favorite actors.

PARK GYU YOUNG
I still cannot believe I never noticed this woman before. She’s in several of my favorite dramas, but I only got to know her in Romance is a Bonus Book. And honestly, if I hadn’t seen her name in the opening credits, it would’ve probably taken me a much longer time to recognize her as Joo Ri because she literally looked like a different person.
Her acting was so natural, she was this really calm and subdued person but she could really act out when she was stressed or frustrated. Despite her simplicity I never found her boring. I really liked her in this drama and I really want to see more of her amazing versatile acting! (After watching this I even started following her on Instagram, lol)
This is only the second drama I’ve seen of her and she’s already becoming one of my new favorite actresses.

KANG KI DOONG
This guy deserves a medal. Also, he’s suddenly in everything I watch, lol. I was so happy to see him and Park Gyu Young act alongside again, they were also the most hilarious couple in Romance is a Bonus Book.
I really liked that even he, as a mainly comical supporting character, had layers. Really, the scene in the final episode when he’s talking with Gang Tae and the latter finally calls him ‘hyung’… his acting there was brilliant, so integer. He is probably one of those actors who (when he isn’t cast as a secretary) gets mostly comical roles while he’s actually a really good actor. I hope he gets lots more chances to show his acting to the world after this 🙂

PARK JIN JOO
I’ve seen many series with her, but never has her character been such an enigma to me as in this one. Honestly, even after finishing I’m still wondering what the real purpose of Seung Jae’s character was. It’s not that I was bothered by her or anything -I loved to see her in this- but I just didn’t really understand what her character was about in the end. However, I liked that they still put some layers in her character, as she was deliberately dumbing herself down to be accepted into the industry better, which was kind of sad, in a way. She’s the kind of actress that gets a lot of cameo roles, so I was glad to see her as an actual character again!

I loved the Choi Daniel cameo! I love Choi Daniel, haha. I saw that the series’ screenwriter also worked on Jugglers, where he was the main character, so maybe that’s how the connection was established, haha.
I am living for these surprise cameos of my favorite actors, keep ’em coming!

Also, random comment, but who knew deer could be such cockblocks??😂😂

I’ve spent most of my day on this by now, but I’m finally nearing the end!
Let me just say this: when I started this series I knew there would be mental health issues involved and I had prepared myself mentally that I was definitely going to cry. In the end, I didn’t cry as much as I expected I would, but I definitely cried. As I mentioned somewhere, the final episode was just so wholesome. Moon Young and Sang Tae finishing their book together, that story about the three of them finding their real faces, them going on a trip, everyone being whole and happy again… I laughed and cried on repeat.
Side note: I started watching this at the same time as Netflix series Behind Her Eyes, which is also quite heavily focussed on the psychological. There were several similar references, such as tapping your own shoulders/counting your fingers/counting down to calm yourself, etcetera. I’m not sure if it was a good decision to watch two quite heavy-themed series like that at the same time, haha, but I survived. Though I am looking forward to watching something lighter again now.

This drama is definitely not for everyone. It deals with heavy emotional issues and it’s not a light watch. I also stuck to watching just one episode a day, sometimes even skipping a day. It may not be your thing, and that’s okay.
But I just want to say make a note here. I’ve seen comments of people saying things like, ‘this drama is so overrated’ and ‘thanks for wasting my time’. People. There is literally an entire ocean of K-Drama out there. You can find anything you’re looking for, in genre, in theme, in story, there is something for everyone.
Just don’t go ruining it for other people. If you don’t like something you watched, that’s fine, but there are people who might still like it. People go on drama database sites like MyDramaList to search for interesting stuff. Your comments might as well scare people away from something they would actually like if they give it a chance. You can always state that you didn’t like it, but you don’t have to publicly throw trash on it as if your opinion is the only one that’s true.
This is why I always make sure to write ‘I thought/ I found / In my opinion’ in my sentence, so it won’t sound as if I’m saying ‘this sucked and no one can tell me differently’.
Because of the heavy theme, I would personally not watch it a second time. It was different than I’d expected and I was surprised by it, but I’m glad I watched it. That’s my opinion.

Now I’m going back to my to-watch list again, taking a break from Netflix. For some reason I find watching K-Drama on Netflix quite intense, haha, almost draining. But I have to admit that the ones I did watch on Netflix were all very unique and one of a kind, so I’ll probably go back to that platform after a little break.
Thanks so much for reading through this long review – it took me an additional day to completely finetune everything and give it one last polish haha – and see you at the next one! ^^