SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Drama Special: If We Were a Season
(우리가 계절이라면 / Uriga Gyejeoriramyeon)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hello everyone! I took the opportunity of a national holiday to watch this drama special and write a review about it. I’ve watched a drama special before, and I find that they are often just as much worth watching as a multi-episode drama. They feel more like short movies and I just like to occasionally add them to my watch list as a kind of pallet cleanser in-between more lengthy dramas. Anyways, I guess this was on my watchlist since it had Chae Soo Bin in it, and I really like her as an actress especially in romance genres, and this looked cute. I wasn’t sure what it would be about, I just thought it was going to be a cute romance story between two childhood friends, but it went in a slightly different direction and that actually made it more realistic than a typical romance K-Drama (special) where you just know that the main leads will eventually end up falling for each other. I’ve read a lot of very emotional and praising comments online, but I have to admit from the start that when I just finished it, I was hella confused. It wasn’t until I took a shower and went over it a couple of times in my head that I came to the arguments of this review, so I hope this will be a useful contribution to the debate about this story.

If We Were a Season is the 1st episode from KBS Drama Special Season 8 (2017). It’s about two childhood friends, Eum Gi Seok (played by Jang Dong Yoon) and Yoon Hye Rim (played by Chae Soo Bin). They were born on the same day and have been next-door neighbors their entire lives, so they literally grew up side by side. Their bedroom windows face each other and they have this cute bell on a string that connects their rooms via this window. This system of pulling the bell on their side to make it go off in the other room to let them each other know they wanted to talk was established when they were kids but even when they grow older they keep it. During their teens, they start avoiding each other a bit, as friendships between a teenage boy and girl can get a little awkward, I guess, but then they reconnect when they end up in the same class in high school. They’re so comfortable with each other that they even seem like a married couple at times, and everyone just expects they’ve already kissed at least once. For Gi Seok, it’s pretty clear that he likes Hye Rim at this point. He even gets defensive when he sees her interact with other guys and it’s like he just assumes that they are basically already together, even though neither of them have ever spelled it out to the other. Hye Rim doesn’t act like a jealous girlfriend to Gi Seok per se, but she’s the most herself around him and it’s clear that she cares for him a lot as well.
But then, there’s a new student, a boy called Oh Dong Kyung (played by Jin Young) that transfers to their class. He immediately seems to be interested in Hye Rim, and Gi Seok really doesn’t like this. Hye Rim isn’t necessarily interested in Dong Kyung at first, but she also doesn’t avoid him (I mean why would she, he’s just a friendly classmate). Hye Rim and Dong Kyung meet a few times outside of school when Gi Seok isn’t there, and there is some kind of connection between them. After coincidentally meeting when Hye Rim is following her father and Dong Kyung is following his mother to see if they’re seeing each other in secret, they end up hanging out together for the day and they have quite a fun time. However, for some reason, while Dong Kyung is quite straightforward about his intentions, Hye Rim keeps trying to avoid saying how she feels out loud and she also realizes she feels weirdly guilty towards Gi Seok for not telling him about how she’s becoming closer with Dong Kyung. The more Hye Rim realizes that Gi Seok’s feelings for her are growing, the more uncertain she becomes about her own feelings. Is she really in love with Gi Seok or did she just get used to the comfortable relationship between them? Is she attracted to Dong Kyung or is she just caught off guard by him because he makes her heart flutter while she’s not considered anyone besides Gi Seok before? And then when she finds out that her dad really is seeing another woman, will she be able to deal with her feelings for either of these boys, all the while scared that their relationship might end up the same way?

The series deals with very realistic, confusing emotions and dynamics between people. I admit that I’ve read a few comments and reviews from other people before I wrote my own thoughts down, because I always find it interesting to see how everyone interprets a story’s message differently.
Personally, when I finished the special I was really confused about Hye Rim’s true feelings. To me it felt like she was clearly leaning towards Gi Seok from the beginning. Neither of them ever defined their relationship, but it felt like that wasn’t necessary, it was just there. But when she first meets Dong Kyung and then later finds out about her father’s affair, Hye Rim pushes Gi Seok away. The timing was pretty unfortunate, admittedly. Gi Seok asks her to meet him at the park one night, and that same night she finds out about her dad and also bumps into Dong Kyung and her feelings are probably all mixed up, especially because she already anticipates that Gi Seok is probably going to confess his feelings to her when she meets him at the park. She actually goes there to see him waiting for her, but decides to turn around and texts him that she can’t make it. The next day at school she suddenly ‘admits’ that she has had feelings for Dong Kyung from the start, but this didn’t feel like the truth to me. I mean, she rejected Dong Kyung before and there were no signs that she started dating him after she told Gi Seok this, so I was just confused about why she would lie about it. I also didn’t think it was right of her to keep Gi Seok, her best friend who also got her back in any kind of situation, who cared about her more than anyone, out of everything that was happening with her. I’m sure he would’ve been able to understand why she wanted able to give him an answer. It made complete sense why at that moment she had too many things going on and she wasn’t able to focus on whether she wanted to start a romantic relationship with Gi Seok after all those years. She was just confused and hadn’t figured out how she felt about everything yet. But I still think she shouldn’t have lied to him, because it also caused Gi Seok to become more petty and pouty. Since she wouldn’t say anything, he just assumed that she was rejecting him for Dong Kyung and that only made him more jealous. He eventually starts ignoring and avoiding her again, saying he can’t look at her face anymore, hurting her feelings in return, and then they got stuck in that vicious circle.

I wondered about a few things, including the title ‘If We Were a Season’, because I first interpreted it as the beginning of a question. Like ‘If we were a season, what would we be?’, and I couldn’t find an answer to it. Yes, the seasons are shown to pass by throughout the special and there’s one scene between Hye Rim and Dong Kyung where he says his birthday is in winter and Hye Rim’s is in spring. But other than that, there wasn’t actually any talk about seasons. I just thought that it was a thematic thing, that it showed Gi Seok and Hye Rim through the different seasons as their relationship changed.
However, after thinking it over, I came to a new theory. Maybe it’s not the beginning of a question to determine what seasons they would be, but that what happened to them is here symbolized as a season. So what I mean is that, like a season, any season, their relationship changed. In any season, the weather can suddenly turn around, the wind can turn and a sunny day can turn into a rainy one. Their relationship as pictured in this special had a lot of ups and downs, and they could be the most comfortable with each other one day, and avoiding each other’s gaze the next. So I thought that maybe it was just to illustrate that their relationship in itself was like a season, with all its unpredictable twists and turns.
As for Hye Rim’s feelings, I guess I can get behind the idea that she always just assumed that she was in love with Gi Seok and would end up with him since he was the only boy her age she felt so comfortable with. But then when Dong Kyung showed up and he made her heart flutter with his cheesy remarks and his straightforwardness – in contrast to Gi Seok, who also never spoke out his true feelings – she suddenly started to waver. Was she really in love with Gi Seok or was she just taking her feelings for him for granted? In the end, I feel like she didn’t have real feelings for either of the boys, or at least she just wasn’t there yet. Even if she did like Gi Seok, she needed more time to fully acknowledge that within herself, and the way it happened in the story just really didn’t come at a good time for her.
I have to say that, although I saw the thing that happened with her dad as something that was just really upsetting for her, something that she first needed to deal with before she could go on with her own (love) life, but I hadn’t interpreted it like other people as that she rejected Gi Seok because she immediately became afraid that they would end up like her parents. I hadn’t made that far connection and I’m not sure if I feel that way. I just thought that phrase her dad used, ‘I couldn’t help myself’, echoed within her, but I wasn’t sure how she interpreted it, exactly. I first thought that it was going to be the other way around, that she was going to tell Dong Kyung that she tried, but couldn’t help being more attracted to Gi Seok, but then it suddenly looked like it was going the opposite way. Suddenly it was like she wanted to tell Gi Seok that she really tried having these feelings for him but realized Dong Kyung made her heart flutter more. In any case, I saw a lot of comments saying that this phrase resonated with her because she immediately became afraid that the incident with her dad cheating on her mom would also happen to her. That that was her biggest fear at that point. But I personally feel like that’s a bit farfetched. I mean, it’s not like she was considering his marriage proposal, they were still only thinking about dating. She shouldn’t have to get so scared already about him cheating on her in the future. So I personally wouldn’t go for that theory. I personally think the phrase ‘I tried to stop myself but I couldn’t help myself’ just added to her confusion about her feelings for both Gi Seok and Dong Kyung. She wasn’t sure what she truly felt about either of them anymore, and the upsetting situation of discovering her dad’s affair just came along at that same sucky time. But I was also thinking that the phrase resonated with her specifically because she did feel something for Dong Kyung, it may not have been strong enough to immediately make her fall for him, but he did awaken something in her that she’d never had before. He was very straightforward about his feelings, while she and Gi Seok never used to talk about their feelings. So I guess she wanted to be honest and tell Gi Seok that she couldn’t lie about that she did feel something with Dong Kyung, but the way she did it was just… I mean, she didn’t have to use the exact phrase that her father used there, because she really made it sound like she was choosing Dong Kyung, even though she wasn’t choosing either of them. So I didn’t really understand why she would give this explanation to Gi Seok, she knew it was going to break his heart and she could’ve just as well been honest with him, that she wasn’t sure how she was feeling and that her family situation was a mess. But instead she pushed Gi Seok away quite harshly, and it did feel like a bit of low blow to me.
Especially because when he starts avoiding her afterwards, we see how much it effects her. She misses him a lot, she really cares about him. And then I thought, maybe she was just trying to preserve their friendship. She didn’t want to make a hasty decision to become his girlfriend when there’s a chance their bond may be ruined in the future and they can’t go back to being such close friends as they used to. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to risk it in that moment, which is fair. But I still feel like she didn’t handle it that well.

It also ties together with something that Gi Seok tells her later. Hye Rim is initially busy studying and preparing herself for a couple of things like basketball and entering a college of education. Gi Seok already tells her in the beginning that being a teacher is not her call, but she keeps doing her thing.
After the whole emotional rejection went down, they talk one more time through their windows and Gi Seok tells her that he knows that she can’t keep on doing stuff she doesn’t truly love. That she might be able to keep it up for a few years, but won’t be able to keep doing it for the rest of her life.
When we fastforward to a few years later, Hye Rim is moving to Seoul (I’m not sure where they were living in the beginning but it wasn’t the big city), and Gi Seok unexpectedly turns up at the train platform to bid her farewell. There Hye Rim tells him that she indeed gave up on basketball and the college of education because it wasn’t for her, like he said.
But then I started thinking, what if this also applied to her feelings towards Gi Seok? What if she had been dismissing the fact that it might not be what she actually wanted? What if she just went along with it because it was comfortable, and then realized she wasn’t a 100% sure about it after all when she got into that situation? Maybe him telling her that was what she needed to gain more clarity about her own feelings as well, about her future but also about her feelings.

I liked the ending because it was quite open. In the beginning of the story, Gi Seok is actually trying to come up with a strategy to kiss Hye Rim since his friends had put ‘having a passionate kiss’ on his year assessment form as a joke, not aware that it couldn’t be changed. But then while watching a movie together, Hye Rim says that she prefers a movie or story to end with a tight hug rather than a kiss. A kiss is always so final, while a tight hug is just as warm and comfortable and it allows for a more open ending, as if the story isn’t over yet.
So when Gi Seok comes to bid her farewell when she leaves for Seoul, he gives her the ending she wanted. He gives her a tight hug. I read that many people interpreted this accordingly, that their story wasn’t over, that it wasn’t a definite ending of their relationship yet. Maybe it really is about Hye Rim needing more time to figure herself out more before being ready to accept his feelings. And that’s completely fair, of course.

So yeah, while one might say this drama special doesn’t give the viewer the closure that they want – funny how closure in K-Drama usually has to do with two people ending up together, isn’t it? – I do think that it was a very realistic depiction of human emotions and relationships. I was vaguely reminded of Valid Love, in which the female lead had just gone along with her first love and married him before ever experiencing any other type of relationship and then gets swept off her feet by a new attractive stranger. Of course, this would be the high school version of that, it wasn’t yet about marrying, it was just young love, but it already got quite emotional. I really think that Hye Rim did love Gi Seok, but that the timing just wasn’t right and that she got confused when she got flustered by another guy, which is also normal. I’ve mentioned this before, I believe also in my review of Valid Love, but we can’t help our emotions, they do as they please. Even Hye Rim’s father proved this, he literally says that he tried to stop himself, but when she told him there was something she really wanted, he just found himself wanting to give it to her.
Of course our feelings can get in the way of situations, and they can get in the way of other people’s feelings, especially when they’re not reciprocated, but principally we can’t do anything about that. It’s not good to force ourselves to feel a certain way when we don’t, to keep pursuing something we’re actually not passionate about. And you can’t keep always considering other people, sometimes you just have to choose for yourself first, get your own facts straight before continuing your relationship with another person. In hindsight I think that this might have been a message of this drama as well, and that’s what made it very realistic. It set itself apart from regular romantic comedy genres because first and foremost, the girl doesn’t pick a guy in the end, she chooses to focus on herself first, no matter how sad it makes her to not be able to respond to her best friend’s feelings right away. But at least Gi Seok understood in the end, he apologized for his behavior and the tight hug may just as well mean they’ll get together in the future, when they’re both ready.

Let me just finish off with some cast comments.

Chae Soo Bin is such a doll, I really love her and I love that she’s now become a lead actress rather than the side character or second female lead. I’ve seen her in Sassy Go Go, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds, Shopping King Louie, I’m Not a Robot and in the movie Sweet & Sour. She just has this sweetness about her, and I can barely remember how in Sassy Go Go she actually played the ‘bitchy’ character. I wish she would get more characters to express her versatility in though, because I do feel like she’s typecasted as the bubbly girl more and more often, which suits her, of course, and I always enjoy her performances. I really want to see more of her acting in the future, and I’m sure I will.

I’ve only seen Jang Dong Yoon in School 2017 so far, but a few of his dramas are still on my watchlist. I think he acted really well in this series. I remember him being quite timid in School 2017, but here he showed a wide variety of expressions, and I could see that he is a pretty good actor. I liked that his character showed clear growth, he portrayed Gi Seok very well, it was nice to see his young pettiness grow into maturity. I am curious to see more of him!

I had to do my best to not just type ‘Jin Young’ instead of Dong Kyung the entire time I was writing this review, because even when I was watching it, he was just Jin Young to me, haha. It’s weird because I’ve only seen him in Moonlight Drawn By Clouds and My First First Love, but it feels like I know him from much more. Maybe it’s because of variety shows or something, I don’t know. Anyways, I love him. I liked how fresh his character Dong Kyung was, he was really down to earth and straightforward about his feelings, creating the perfect contrast with Gi Seok. I wish his character had gotten more closure though, now I just felt bad for him that he was rejected. I do wonder though, who it was that Hye Rim was talking to on the phone saying that they’d see each other in Seoul. When Dong Kyung transferred they said he’d come from Seoul, so a part of me wondered if they did end up together, but it was never indicated. Anyways, I liked his character mostly because I feel like he was the trigger that finally tested the relationship between Gi Seok and Hye Rim and that’s what they needed to take their relationship to the next level.

Of course since it was only one episode, the cast wasn’t very extended.
There was Jung In Ki (Secret Garden, Flower Boy Ramyun Shop, Doctor Stranger, Pinocchio, The Girl Who Sees Smells, Who Are you – School 2015, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Bride of the Water God, Manhole, Come and Hug Me, My Absolute Boyfriend) as Hye Rim’s father, and I will always love this actor because he’s always the sweet father, even though he allegedly cheated on his wife in this story. Nam Ki Ae (Oh My Venus, Descendants of the Sun, Another Oh Hae Young, W, My Secret Romance, Suspicious Partner, Just Between Lovers, Encounter) was Hye Rim’s mother, a piano major who had her own piano studio and sometimes wasn’t home for longer periods of time. She’s an actress that’s typically always gets cast as one of the main characters’ mom, but she’s played pretty snooty moms as well. Here she seemed like a really nice mom, although she may not have been home a lot.
We actually don’t see Gi Seok’s parents at all, but there were his two school friends Seo Min Joon (Ahn Seung Gyun – School 2017, Andante, My Mister, Thirty but Seventeen and Gyeryong Fairytale) and Lee Jung Ho (Kim Min Gyu – Oh My Venus, Gogh The Starry Night, Fight For My Way, I’m Not a Robot, Gyeryong Fairytale and Clean With Passion For Now). It was funny seeing the latter as a high school student, especially since the last time I saw him in Gyeryong Fairytale I was really wondering how old he might be, lol.

As I conclude, I’ll just say that I liked how this drama special played with human emotions, and how they can sometimes mislead or confuse you. What’s also fun is that it starts off mostly with the perspective from Gi Seok’s side and then really subtly changes over to Hye Rim’s side. They played with perspective and dynamic and even though the episode ends with that one hug, I really hope that beyond this realm, Gi Seok and Hye Rim find each other again and that they’ll both be ready to make the next step in their relationship. Or not, if that’s not what they want anymore, of course. The most important thing to remember is that, like the seasons, human emotions and feelings, and even relationships, can be very whimsical and inexplicable at times, and we have to roll with the punches of those seasons, metaphorically or not, our entire lives.

It was nice watching a simple and light drama special before I move on to the next Netflix K-Drama that has been pending, I’m finally finishing my 2019 Netflix K-Drama batch and I’m really excited about the next one, all the more because I’ve heard very varying reactions to it. I wonder how I will feel about it!
You will hear from me again next month, probably. Bye-bee! ^^