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.

The Light in Your Eyes
(눈이 부시게 / Nuni Busigye)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Ha! Surprise! I was able to finish one more drama within July after all!
I didn’t even know that I would be able to, but when I saw this one was only 12 episodes, I thought I might. And I went through it pretty fast, so here we are! Going on with my original to-watch list, this hidden gem from 2019 has been waiting for me and boy, was it a surprise. It’s been a while since I’ve been so impressed with a final plot twist in a K-Drama.
I’ve known about this series ever since I saw the promotions of the two main leads, and these two main leads were a big reason for me to put it on my list. I really hope I’ll be able to make this a worthwhile review as I very much want to defend this drama. As I was watching I saw a lot of negative comments about it, and I just want to prove these wrong because this drama is so much more than its pace and lack of romantic comedy, at least in the way that most people are probably used to in K-Dramas. It deserves to be acknowledged for its unique profoundness.
Okay, so, without further ado, let’s get started.

I say without further ado, but I actually really have to think about how to explain the story, because there is just so much to it that’s only explained at the very end. I will try to construct this review in the way of how I processed it while watching. If that makes sense.

The Light in Your Eyes is a 12-episode K-Drama series with episodes of about an hour each. The protagonist of this drama is 25-year old Kim Hye Ja (played by Han Ji Min). She lives with her mother (Lee Jung Eun), father (Ahn Nae Sang) and older brother Young Soo (Son Ho Joon) in a small town. Her mother owns a small hairsalon. Hye Ja is in the bloom of her youth, but she is struggling with what she wants to do with her life. She keeps changing paths and career choices as she keeps realizing it’s not what she wants to do for herself – her current ambition to become a news anchor has been her choice because of a senior she liked who is studying to become a reporter and because she’s often told that she has a nice voice. However, when she meets her senior’s friend and fellow reporter-to-be Lee Joon Ha (Nam Joo Hyuk), and he confronts her by asking why she wants to be a news anchor, she realizes again that it’s not her true dream. Hye Ja keeps running into Joon Ha as they live in the same neighborhood, and they develop a mutual though subtle interest in each other. However, just as it seems like they might soon become a couple, something very drastic happens in both their lives, basically on the same day.

Hye Ja has been the owner of a beautiful old golden watch that she found on the beach as a child. She’s realized that with this watch, she can turn back time. She’s used the watch several times as a kid, just to give herself more time to sleep or study, but as a side effect it has caused her to start looking older than her age. At the age of 10, she’s already taller than all the boys in her class and so she stops using the watch. However, one day, Hye Ja’s father gets into a fatal car accident and passes away. Unable to accept it, Hye Ja desperately uses the watch and does a 100,000 attempts to wake up early enough that morning to stop him from getting into the accident, until she finally manages to reach him just in time. When she wakes up the next morning and her dad is still in the kitchen, she can’t be happier – but her family members all look at her very weirdly. Why? Her excessive use of the watch has caused her to turn into an 80-year old lady overnight.

Joon Ha is living with his grandmother (Kim Young Ok, breaking hearts as always), but he has a very bad relationship with his father (Kim Seung Chul). His father pops by sometimes, but he always just makes trouble, gets drunk, threatens Joon Ha and granny, and Joon Ha just wants him to disappear from their lives forever. One night, when his father imposes on them again and won’t leave, Joon Ha goes so far as to maim himself with a rock and report his father to the police for allegedly abusing him – it’s the only way to get him away. However, his grandmother can’t live with the lie and goes to the police to tell them that her grandson falsely reported her son. The night after she does so, she passes away. Joon Ha finds her and completely breaks down as she was the last remaining relative that ever treated him warmly. Then he also gets arrested for falsely accusing his father of abusing him and things just basically go all the way down for him within one day. The only person that was able to comfort him lately was Hye Ja, but she has suddenly disappeared into thin air overnight and now this strange old lady claiming to be her great-aunt starts bothering him.

So both main leads end up going through a drastic change overnight. Hye Ja has to come to terms with her new physical conditions – luckily her family and her two best friends believe her immediately when she tells them what happened. Joon Ha is thrown into the dark, with no one left to support him. He throws away his reporter ambitions and starts working at an Exhibition Center turned Nursery Home for elderly people that basically scams these people into buying fake supplements and insurances just so they can catch the payouts when they die. The guy who runs this scheme, is the only ‘friend’ that stood by Joon Ha when his grandmother died, and so Joon Ha feels like he has to repay him by joining him in this job he so graciously bestowed upon him in his darkest moment.

Hye Ja (now played by Kim Hye Ja, yes, the actress has the same name as the character) initially wants to figure out what’s happened to her by trying to fix the watch, but the model is so old that no watchmaker can repair it anymore. Especially when she sees Joon Ha again and realizes he’s been struggling so much in the meantime and she can’t help him, she gets desperate on many occasions. But she eventually has to start accepting that this is her life now, she can’t go back. She gave up her youth to save her father’s life. She has to deal with everyone referring to her as her brother’s grandmother and her parents’ mother(-in-law). When she hangs out with her two best friends, she’s perceived as their grandmother as well. Reluctantly, she agrees to start spending time at the Nursery Home and finds Joon Ha there, much to her surprise, as a cheerful-looking host and caretaker. As she goes about her way to figure out what’s happened to him, she meets some people in the center that she gets closer to. She gets used to making new friends ‘her own age’ and starts relating more and more to all the aspects of being old. This includes reprimanding her young friends when they make thoughtless comments, because ‘they don’t know how it feels to be old’.
At one point, Hye Ja comes across a man in the Nursery Home who is stuck in his wheelchair and never speaks, but he has the exact same golden watch on his wrist that Hye Ja used to have. No matter how much she tries to talk to him, he won’t budge and he won’t say anything that might give her any more information on the watch.

In hindsight, throughout all these events, we are already given some hints about the truth of the situation. We just don’t realize it yet. At one point, Hye Ja sees a young man with the golden watch and somehow immediately recognizes him as the old man in the wheelchair in his younger years. At that point, she doesn’t seem fazed by it, because she just assumes that he also changed between being young and old by using the watch’s powers.
When people in the streets comment on her walking with her father, she automatically adjusts her story that yes, indeed, this is her son, or when she’s walking with her mother, that this is her daughter-in-law.
Her father in particular starts acting strangely after Hye Ja turns into a granny. At first it seems like he just can’t get used to the fact that this has happened to his daughter, but it’s still different from how the others react to it. I kept wondering why it took him so long to deal with it, why he kept so silent and distanced and just looked at her with the same strange gaze. Also, ever since Hye Ja changed, he’s had a prosthetic leg and is limping. We’re initially led to believe that in the accident that was supposed to have killed him, this is now what he was left with instead, but even if that were the case, it’s still strange because there was no time leap in which Hye Ja might have missed that. So when did he suddenly get a prosthetic leg? That must have been quite a big happening, and yet Hye Ja is absolutely shocked when she walks in on her dad taking is leg off at one point.
Also, whenever the old man in the wheelchair sees Joon Ha at the Nursing Home, he starts screaming at him, almost as if he recognizes him but is scared out of his mind by the sight of him.
Again, these are all things that we realize in hindsight, after we figure out the truth of the whole story.

Besides Hye Ja’s and Joon Ha’s private lives, there’s also the stories of Hye Ja’s friends Lee Hyun Joo (Kim Ga Eun) and Yoon Sang Eun (Song Sang Eun). There’s the story between Young Soo and Hyun Joo, and their tucked-away-but-still-harbored feelings for each other.
And then there are the people at the Nursing Home, such as Mrs. Chanel/Choi Hwa Young (Jung Young Sook). At first she’s a very irritable lady who seemingly dislikes to be at the Nursing Home and looks down on everyone else, but Hye Ja is able to break down her walls and the two become friends. Mrs. Chanel (nicknamed for her sophisticated appearance) has a son who left for the States two years back but she hasn’t been able to contact him ever since. Joon Ha has been her contact person for keeping in touch with him, but what she doesn’t know is that Joon Ha also has no idea where her son is. All the letters and packages she’s passed on to him to be sent to her son are kept in the Nursing Home’s storage room. She’s being lied to as much as the other elderly people who are led to believe that the Nursing Home is just a fun hangout place for people who don’t have anyone left to care for them.
Mrs. Chanel eventually finds out the truth and Joon Ha, who by then has made up his mind to quit his job at the Nursing Home, helps her find her son who apparently has already been back in Korea for a while. She’s able to meet with her son, but it’s obvious he’s trying to keep her away from his family for some reason (still don’t understand why). After meeting with him, Mrs. Chanel accompanies Joon Ha to the airport as he’s planning to go away, and the next day she’s found dead by the river. She took her own life, apparently. Initially Joon Ha is arrested on the suspicion of murdering her, but they ultimately find her final note and he’s cleared. The worst thing is that Joon Ha’s ‘friend’ (Kim Hee Won) and his partner at the Nursing Home actually don’t even care about what happens to the elderly. When Mrs. Chanel dies, all they care about is whether they can get their hands on her insurance payout, and this finally drives them to the most inhuman plan: to send all the people that signed their insurance deal on a “picnic” with the real intention of orchestrating a tragic bus accident, and then to catch ALL their insurance payouts. In the meantime, they also catch Joon Ha, beat him up and lock him up in the basement of the Nursing Home so he can’t stop them. Hye Ja, along with the handful of people who haven’t signed the insurance scheme, come up with a plan to get all the elderly people out of the Nursing Home in time (which, in my opinion, was probably the best episode of the entire series).

But then, when that whole action plan has been finalized, that’s when we are hit by the biggest plot twist of all. Hye Ja, the real old Hye Ja, has Alzheimer’s. She has been staying at the Nursing Home for a while now. The man who we were led to believe was her father, is actually her son, and her mother her daughter-in-law. Her grandson Min Soo is the spitting image of her brother Young Soo, that’s why she’s been calling him Young Soo (it’s also the same actor). She’s starting to forget more and more, but what she can’t let go of are the memories of when she was 25 years old, of when she met her husband Joon Ha, and how they got married and had their son together.
In the final episode, the truth about Hye Ja’s real life comes to light. As happy as she and Joon Ha were in the 70s when they met and got married, Joon Ha was taken from her at a very young age. He was arrested for a reason that’s never explained, and he allegedly died in prison because of sudden pneumonia. After that, Hye Ja lost all her brightness and she even started being incredibly harsh on her young child, who’s had a limp from a car accident when he was really young (see the parallel?).
The old man in the wheelchair with the watch was actually an officer at the public relations office in charge of Joon Ha’s arrest, who selfishly stole the watch after Joon Ha passed away. He recognized Hye Ja in the Nursing Home after she tried to get the watch from him, but as he was no longer able to speak properly, he never got this across to her. Not that she would’ve remembered.
There’s a doctor at the Nursing Home, Kim Sang Hyun (also Nam Joo Hyuk) who is the spitting image of Joon Ha. The reason why the old man in the wheelchair keeps snapping whenever he see him is because he recognizes him too, as the man he once unjustifiedly locked up in prison in the 70s.

So basically, the entirety of the events in the series in which Hye Ja believes she is a 25-year old turned into an 80 year old lady because of the watch, is all a false reality created by the Alzheimer’s. At times, she’s lucid without even noticing it, when she refers to her father as her son and to her mother as her daughter-in-law for example. But we don’t find out until the final last couple of episodes. Only then the pieces are slowly fitted together. I have to admit that there are still several parts of the story that I’m not sure of whether they really happened or not, but in general it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the final message and hidden plot of the story. Hye Ja even says it herself when the plot twist is revealed: ‘I’m not sure if it was my 25-year old self dreaming about being old, or the current me dreaming of my younger days’.

All in all, I believe the story to be about life and the time that you are given. That it’s the most important to live in the present without lingering onto the past or worrying too much about the future. To enjoy all the time that you have in the moment that you’re living it. Hye Ja’s time partially stopped after she lost Joon Ha, and she’s been clinging onto the happy days of the time when he was still alive so strongly that those happy days started to blend into her current life. She saw her young self turning old overnight, feeling like she lost all her time in an instant. She thought she was looking for the watch to try to get her time back, but in reality it was the final remaining thing she had left from her husband who was taken away from her too soon.

There are a lot of very touching moments in this series, even during the parts where we’re not even aware of what’s actually going on yet. There are so many depictions of life imbedded in the story, in both the young characters as the old ones. Some of my favorite moments were when Hye Ja broke down Mrs. Chanel’s walls by reminding her of her precious memories of Prague, the city that she’d visited with her husband, and the scene in which brief window reflections showed each elderly person’s younger self as they were making their way to the ocean after escaping the Nursing Home.
I thought these moments were so beautiful because they express the message of the entire series before we even figur it out. It really isn’t just about Hye Ja, it shows stories of life and youth from the perspective of all the elderly people, all their memories and lingering attachments. This is why it now makes sense to me why we were given the back stories of Mrs. Chanel, and even of the kleptomanic lady at the Nursing Home when she had to deal with the passing of her eldest daughter. Because that’s exactly what it was about. For elderly people, what they leave behind may be so much more important than what we care to acknowledge. The things they get to pass on to the next generation, getting to watch their children grow up and start their own families, all the things that make them feel like everything they had to go through in their own youth was worth it, their legacies.
Everyone grows old, and it can feel like it happens in the blink of an eye. In this series, Hye Ja relives her youth in the form of a dream (or nightmare) in which she literally loses all her time in one night – because that’s what it must have felt like when she had to keep living after losing her husband. She’s lived on, but was never able to fully let him go.

So yeah, it’s actually a very DEEP drama series, and definitely not what I’d expected. As I was watching it, I kept wondering where the story was going. I’ve also seen several comments of people that are halfway through the story who aren’t sure whether to continue because they can’t see where it’s going. And when the plot twist was revealed, initially I also didn’t understand it AT ALL. I’m glad those two final episodes were there to put the pieces together, but it was definitely a VERY unpredictable thing. The writers really took us all the way through a story that was already touching and heartwrenching from the start, and then just suddenly spun us around to show their true colors to make the whole message even more profound.
I feel like I can now throw all the in-between comments I jotted down in the beginning out of the window since that wasn’t even remotely what the series was about in the end. Things like why Hye Ja’s approach to stop her father from getting into that accident was so unpractical (she literally tried the same thing 50,000 times, how are you supposed to get a different result then?), seem so insignificant now. When it becomes clear that it was all in Hye Ja’s mind and that she got her parents mixed up with her son and daughter-in-law, the minor impracticalities really didn’t matter to me anymore.

As I’m on the topic, I want to make a special point of something, because some people on DramaCool were really hating on this series and I don’t think it’s fair. So there was this one user who kept posting negative comments about how it started out like a fun romantic comedy but then suddenly became super boring and depressing AND (this aggravated me the most) how the main actor’s skills were WASTED on this drama. I will give more detailed cast comments later as usual, but I just really found this unfair to say. It just seems to me that this person may not have even finished the drama and just based their opinion on the fact that all they cared about was a cute romance story. Having your own opinion about a series is good and legit, but to write it like that, just stating that it’s SO bad, that it’s the WORST series you’ve ever see, that it seemed as if the writers didn’t know where to go with the story — honestly, if you watch the last episode, EVERYTHING is explained, so I guess these people didn’t even finish it before making these comments. To post these kinds of things without even acknowledging the real message of a series, even if you’ve missed it yourself, just makes my blood boil. At some point, yes, it turns pretty dark and gloomy, especially when Joon Ha is thrown into hell. But that doesn’t immediately make it a bad drama. And it most certainly wasn’t a waste of the actor’s skills, because HECK, I’ve never seen Nam Joo Hyuk act like this before. He was INCREDIBLE. If he did anything, he showed that he had MORE skills than he’s showcased so far in ANY drama. Basically all he’s done before are romantic comedies. So I’m just mad at this person for commenting such ungrounded and misplaced negativity about this series. It deserves better. It deserves to be acknowledged. Just because it’s not your favorite genre doesn’t mean that it’s a bad series. Same goes for series that don’t end with a final kiss or other kind of ‘seal’ to confirm the relationship between the two leads. I think it’s such BS to base your negative review on things like that. I always try to keep an open mind with new series and this has allowed me to see positive things, even though it might not be my favorite genre.
In short, if you don’t like something, why force yourself to watch it just so you can post negative hate comments online and ruin it for the rest of us who actually do like it? You can just stop watching and keep your opinions to yourself if you don’t have anything nice to say. Sorry for this harshness from my side, but it just pissed me off how short-sighted these comments were – this series really deserves more than that.

Other than this, I’ve also found some really positive and inspiring theories and reviews which have opened my mind to even more possibilities. In the final two episodes, we see how Hye Ja and Joon Ha meet in the 70s. However, even though in the beginning we see both Hye Ja’s and Joon Ha’s stories separately, in the actual flashbacks of the 70s, we are shown everything only from Hye Ja’s perspective, and she is always expecting more from Joon Ha. She’s waiting for when he’ll kiss her, when he’ll propose to her, and even when they’re married and have a kid together, she keeps expecting him to do more, care for the child more, act more like a dad. I read a review from someone that suggested that this meant that Hye Ja always put herself and her own expectations first before actually considering Joon Ha’s feelings. We don’t get to find out why he doesn’t kiss her sooner or why it takes him so long to propose, or why he feels awkward with his son in the beginning. The whole story of his arrest is fishy as well since Hye Ja ends up not knowing ANYTHING about it. Through her eyes, her husband is suddenly arrested and when she visits him in jail he’s been beaten up, the detectives treat him like a criminal, and still no one tells her anything about what’s going on. Joon Ha even dies without her knowing, they just receive a Death Notification at home and that’s it, she can come collect his stuff. As far as we know, Joon Ha may have had a whole thing going on, something that had been weighing on him for a long time that may have caused his absent-mindedness and hesitation to start a family with Hye Ja. We don’t know. But the thing about the theory I read is that it suggested that Hye Ja, in her hallucinations, may have been trying to make up for this as well. In her fake reality, she cares about Joon Ha a lot and we get to see his entire backstory of what’s happening with his dad and his grandmother. So within her hallucinations Hye Ja may not have been just yearning back to the old days of when she was happy, she may have also been trying to save Joon Ha before it was too late. After all, in her imagination, she IS able to save him when he’s beaten up and locked up in the basement of the Nursing Home. She IS able to save him from hurting himself to frame his dad. In her false reality, she keeps him from harm and cares about him, in a way she hasn’t done in real life. The watch may have been the trigger for the regrets she’s had for not caring for him enough while he was still alive. If you consider this theory, then there’s a whole other layer of sadness to their relationship.
I actually know of a play in which a wife cares for her Alzheimer husband and repaints their whole history to him to make him sound like this wonderful person even though he used to be an absolute jerk and their life has been one rocky road from the start. It may have been a similar concept as that. I think this is a very interesting theory!

What’s also interesting is that, as I mentioned before, the backstories of the seemingly minor characters such as Mrs. Chanel and the kleptomaniac lady with their children are just different examples of child-parent relationships in terms of dependence. We can see it even in how Young Soo is depicted in Hye Ja’s youth. He’s the oldest son, but all he does is lazy around the house, he doesn’t have a job and he’s always just asking his mom to bring him food. Apparently this isn’t an uncommon thing to happen in Korean society, the oldest child continuously leaning on his parents while it should be the other way around.
In Mrs. Chanel’s case, her son never leaned on her again after first going to the States and then coming back after his business there failed. He never got back in touch with her and he doesn’t even feel guilty for walking away from her after she passes away.
In the case of the kleptomaniac lady, we find out that her eldest daughter is in the hospital with cancer. The daughter has been the one who did the most, even for her two younger brothers, but now that she’s sick, the two younger brothers come asking their elderly mother at the Nursing Home for money. They don’t even care to think about their older sister, no matter what she’s done for them, they only care about the money that their sister now won’t even be able to use anymore. The scene in which the ghost of the daughter comes to visit her mom for the last time and tells her that she’s all better now and that she should give the money to her brothers, was so touching. The way the lady slowly realized that her daughter’s appearance wasn’t real was killing.
Looking at these individual cases, and seeing all these different ways in which children and parents depend on each other (or not), only gives this series an even more meaningful layer.
This is why I enjoy reading other reviews, because they always open up even more possibilities than the ones I have and even though they might just be subjective, I always find it interesting what other people manage to get out of the story. I’m happy to see that there’s still a lot of people who think of this series as meaningful and worthwhile and who are critical towards people who post negative comments about it.

Moving on, I found it rather interesting that Hye Ja managed to have a dream within her own dream. In her dream of becoming an old lady, she actually dreams that she turns young again for a couple of days. She returns to a day or so before her father’s accident, before Joon Ha gets into trouble for reporting his dad. She manages to stop Joon Ha from hurting himself and gets him to briefly live up again as she is able to stay by his side. Although I did find it weird that, even in that dream, no one even remembered that she’d turned into an old lady – it was just as it had always been before she changed and she was the only one with the memory of turning old. So it wasn’t like she actually went back in time again to change some events from happening, which I thought at first. It was really just a dream within her already ongoing dream.
Another interesting thing is that we get to watch whole storylines unfold without Hye Ja even being directly involved, even though it still happens within her hallucination. For example, the whole story of Young Soo and Hyun Joo slowly reconnecting and Sang Eun’s career path towards becoming a singer. All these things happen in the respective characters’ own storylines while Hye Ja isn’t even there, but they are still part of Hye Ja’s imagination. In real life, Hyun Joo and Sang Eun are still the same age as Hye Ja, they’re old now as well, Hyun Joo married Young Soo and Sang Eun became a trot singer.
By the way, I did wonder about one thing. As I mentioned in the beginning, her family and two best friends immediately believe her when she tells them that she’s Hye Ja who turned into an old lady. Of course they did, because it was her imagination in which everyone believed her. But she never even tried to tell Joon Ha. In the beginning I found myself thinking that, if she’d told Joon Ha and used some topics they’d talked about to prove it was really her, he would’ve probably also believed her. But for some reason she never even bothered trying to tell him what had become of her, she just kept telling him that her great niece Hye Ja had suddenly moved to Germany and wouldn’t come back. She kept asking him if he missed her, but she never went so far as to confide in him about what had happened to her, even though he knew about the watch and everything. In hindsight, could this have been because in her subconscious, she didn’t want Joon Ha to know that it was her trying to make amends with him? That she was fine helping him out and saving him while he didn’t know who she really was? Could that have been a reason? It just baffled me in the beginning why she wouldn’t even try to convince him that she was Hye Ja, but referring to previous theories of other people, this might be a plausible explanation of why she chose to keep a distance and tried to help him from afar.

Another peculiar thing about this series, although this isn’t per se about the story itself, is that part of the cast actually got to keep their own names in the show or names that are similar to their own. Besides that, its feeling of authenticity for me also really stemmed from the people in it, and then I mostly mean the elderly people. Honestly, they didn’t even feel like actors to me. It really just felt like they might have been a bunch of neighborhood grandmas and grandpas that got to participate on this project. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, they were just different kinds of people from people that are clearly ‘casted’ as elderly people. For example, the three ladies that frequented the hairsalon had a different feel to them than the three grannies in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha to me, because the latter seemed to be really ‘casted’ as and made to look like typical grannies. I hope I’m explaining my point well, but I just mean to say that using the actors’ own names and including all these elderly people that didn’t seem out of place at the Nursing Home at all just added to the authenticity of the series.

All in all, this series has made me much more considerate of the elderly, especially as it makes you realize that they have to deal with so much negativity in society. They’re viewed as a nuisance and easy targets, and we forget to consider that they’ve lived full respectable lives themselves and that they’ve seen incredible and horrifying things in their own youth.
Two scenes that made my jaw drop in disbelief because of the disrespect that younger people showed to the elderly were when Hye Ja was with her mother/daughter-in-law at a department store and the fire alarm went off. She got onto an elevator with a bunch of other (younger) people, and when the maximum capacity was reached, everyone just looked at Hye Ja to get out. Of course this all happened in Hye Ja’s imagination, but at the time I was shook that all these young people immediately turned on the elderly woman to leave the elevator, to make more space for the younger people.
The other scene, which was also a very satisfying scene in a way, was when Hye Ja and Mrs. Chanel went to a consultation at a plastic surgeon. There was a very disrespectful young couple there that just started making fun of them as soon as they entered. The guy even started taking unconsented pictures to make fun of the two elderly ladies. Hye Ja then proceeded to give the youngsters a finger-snapping speech and this was an amazing moment. The speech in itself was so powerful and meaningful. I found it so ridiculous that these young people would judge an elderly person for getting a consultation, especially since an older person would need it even more than they would at their young age. It just put in perspective how much disrespect there still is between different generations, even though we should’ve all been raised with the habit of respecting our elders. Especially in a society like Korea, where even a one-year difference already impacts the way you’re allowed to speak to someone… This was unbelievable to me.

What starts as a seemingly cute love story with the fantastical event of the main female lead suddenly turning into an 80-year old lady, actually spins out to be a story about living your life to the fullest, but also about holding onto the past. It’s about dealing with regrets when getting older, being aware of losing time. Hye Ja, initially depicted as a bright and sweet girl, finds herself confronted with her own youthful selfishness when she’s older, and attempts to make up for these regrets in her subconsciousness as she’s nearing the end of her lifetime. At the end, Joon Ha is waiting for her to come join him at the ocean, and she jumps into his arms, never to let go again.

Finally I just want to comment on how Hye Ja managed to mix up all the people in her life and made them fit into her hallucination.
Her false reality takes place in modern times, while her real youth took place in the 70s.
In her false reality, her mother owns a hairsalon in which Hye Ja occasionally helps out, but in reality Hye Ja was the one who used to be a hairstylist and her daughter-in-law helped her out.
In the false reality, her brother Young Soo spends his days streaming mukbangs and sleep rooms from his bedroom, whilst in reality her brother was busy with radio broadcasts as of course these modern-day stream platforms didn’t exist yet. She has mixed up her brother with her grandson who looks just like him, as he is also shown vlogging when he visits her at the Nursing Home – she also calls him Young Soo on several occasions, so that was already a sign in itself.
She remembers Hyun Joo and Sang Eun exactly how they are, as Hyun Joo is still making deliveries for her family’s restaurant and Sang Eun has become a famous singer.
In her false reality, she mixes up her son and her father, she stops her father from getting into a car accident, while in reality it was her young son who got into a car accident, which caused him to get a prosthetic leg, which caused him to always get bullied for the way he walked.
She mixes up Kim Sang Hyun and Joon Ha as they look so much alike.
She doesn’t fully realize she recognizes the old man in the wheelchair, even though his younger version literally appears to her in the false reality and she’s immediately able to see that he is that man, but at that point she still thinks that he also lost his youth due to the watch. She doesn’t realize she recognizes him as the officer that locked up her husband.
In her false reality, Joon Ha’s ‘friend’ and the other employees at the Nursing Home represent the people that take advantage of the elderly, and most importantly, the people that have taken her husband away from her, the bad people that have to be stopped, that she has to save Joon Ha from. In reality, they are just normal, caring employees at the Home she is staying at.

I hope I was able to convey the story coherently enough up to now. I was no exception to the mind-blowing effect of the plot twist and I’ve found myself reading other reviews to make sense of it as well before writing my own thoughts down. It’s such a strange experience trying to write a summary whilst knowing that it’s based on a false reality, so I really wondered how to go about it. Anyways, I hope my construction for this review makes sense, haha. I would now very much like to move on to my cast comments before concluding.

Han Ji Min is seriously growing on me with every drama I see of her. She’s so good. I’ve seen her before in Rooftop Prince, Hyde, Jekyll, Me, and Wife I Know, and with each series I feel like I see a new side to her acting. She always manages to pull me in. I think so far her role in Wife I Know has been my favorite, but in The Light in Your Eyes I wasn’t any less impressed with her. I love how she managed to portray the two sides of Hye Ja, the one she herself chooses to remember in her imagination, and the one she seems to regret in her actual flashbacks, the one who failed to see what her husband was going through, and who was harsh to her child after losing him. I’m looking forward to some other dramas with her that are still on my to-watch list. I really enjoyed her performance in this drama and I loved seeing her paired up with Nam Joo Hyuk – their age gap of 11 years didn’t even stand out to me (she was 36 when this drama aired while Nam Joo Hyuk was 25). I can’t believe she’s almost 40 already! In so many ways it feels like the drama was written for these actors specifically, as they even created an explanation as to why she looked older than her age, although of course it wasn’t caused by using the watch to go back in time. She was the perfect casting choice for young Hye Ja, she was funny, touching, raw… she just showed so many different sides. I thought she was amazing.

It feels like only yesterday that I first saw Nam Joo Hyuk in Who Are You – School 2015 when he was only 21 years old and I remember thinking what a cute little puppy he was – and now he’s here, nearing 30 and acing every main role he’s getting. It was SO great to see him in such a mature role and not the typical ‘male lead in romantic comedy’ that he usually gets. He’s finally grown out of the student typecast! I’ve seen almost every single drama he’s done so far. He’s been in Surplus Princess, Who Are You – School 2015, Cheese in the Trap, Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Bride of the Water God, and Start-Up. The School Nurse Files and Twenty One Twenty Five are still on my to-watch list. So yeah, as I’ve mentioned before I got angry at this comment for stating that this series wasted Nam Joo Hyuk’s acting skills because this has got to be one of the best performances I’ve seen of him so far. He’s only proven that he’s a more versatile actor, this drama has only accelerated his talents! It was really nice to see him here, because in hindsight it really feels like he played two different characters. It was also interesting to see a glint of despair and evil in him as he was defending his job at the Nursing Home while being fully aware of what they were doing. All in all, he was excellent in this series and I won’t take any other response to his performance.

Kim Hye Ja, the woman that stole everyone’s heart in this series. It’s only fair that she got to keep her own name, because it kind of felt like it was a hommage to her herself in the end. I haven’t seen her in anything before, but I see that she’s in Our Blues, which I really want to watch as well, so I’m looking forward to that! Even though there may have been some minor frustrations with her character, like impracticalities or things that she was clumsy at, it only just added to her credibility as a real layered person. I love how she portrayed Hye Ja, and how there were different sides to her. On the one hand she was the main character and she had to lead the action, but then at the end there was something mysterious about her as well. As she suddenly became a main character with an element of incredibility (because of her Alzheimer’s), we never fully get to know her honest thoughts. We get to assume that she may have had regrets when it comes to her past with her husband, but she never affirms anything herself. All we can understand is that, for one reason or another, she’s been clinging onto her youth, onto her husband, and it seems like finally obtaining the watch and the apology of the man in the wheelchair to find closure. It isn’t until the very end that we discover the true profanity of Hye Ja’s character, and it just makes one feel for her even more.

I just realized that Son Ho Joon is the main male lead from Go Back Couple! I was wondering why he looked so familiar. It was funny to see him in this drama, especially since he was the comic relief character here. I hadn’t really considered him to be a typical comical actor, but I think he did really well. As Young Soo in Hye Ja’s imagination, he really was a good-for-nothing son who did nothing useful with his life but also didn’t mind living like that. He was always trying to earn money by streaming from his bedroom, whether it was mukbangs or 48-hour sleep rooms. He shamelessly used his sister-turned-grandmother and ex who still had feelings for him as tools to get more stars on these streams, but every now and then we got to see a little bit sensitivity from him, exaggerated or not. As Min Soo, Hye Ja’s grandson, he seemed to at least be a bit more mature, although he still did the streaming thing.

I have seen several dramas with Ahn Nae Sang before, he’s quite a familiar face. Amongst the drama series I’ve watched, he was in Sungkyunkwam Scandal, The Moon That Embraces the Sun, Kill Me, Heal Me, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds, Just Between Lovers. A lot of historical dramas, I believe, and he always plays a father (figure). I found it very interesting how his character got such a twist at the end. All the while I was wondering why he started acting so weird after Hye Ja had changed, but now I know he just became her son after that. The whole character of Hye Ja’s imagined father from when she was still 25, was false, her real parents were two completely different people. So that was interesting. It was nice that his character also got some closure, as he’d always partially resented his mother for neglecting him as a child after his father died. Even he, as a grown man, had things to process and let go of when it came to his mother. It was very powerful to also add in his side of the story at the end.

Lee Jung Eun is one of my favorite Korean actresses because she ALWAYS manages to touch me. In this series, it was no exception. What an incredible actress. I’ve seen her in a bunch of stuff before, like High Schooler King of Life, Who Are You – School 2015, Oh My Ghostess, Jealousy Incarnate, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Tomorrow With You, Fight For My Way and Wife I Know, and then I’m excluding a couple of cameos. And of course, Parasite. I believe she also played Han Ji Min’s mom in Wife I Know! I LOVED her in this series. As a mother in Hye Ja’s fake reality she was so tough and down to earth, but she also showed such a fragile side, especially when she turned out to be Hye Ja’s daughter-in-law. The part where she realized Hye Ja didn’t recognize her anymore was just heartwrenching. And how she was determined to keep her marriage to Dae Sang going, she didn’t accept that he was willing to let her go because he thought it was going to be too much for her to keep taking care of his mom. Lee Jung Eun was, once again, incredible. I want her to play my mom just so I can hug the heck out of her, honestly.

It was so cool to see Kim Ga Eun as a tomboy character in this series! I barely recognized her at first! I’ve always just seen her as the typical girly best friend, so it was really nice to see this other side of her. So far I’ve seen her in I Hear Your Voice, Reunited Worlds and Because This is My First Life. I liked Hyun Joo’s character, because I could really relate to her feelings. You could see that she was bothered by her feelings for Young Soo but she also realized she couldn’t ignore them no matter how hard she tried. Being in love with someone that you know is a loser and an idiot can’t be easy. I guess Hye Ja just kept pushing them together in her false reality because she knew that they loved each other, as they’d gotten married and had a kid together in reality. By the way, I loved how old Hyun Joo was played by Son Sook and that she was still delivering food at the age of 80, haha.

I was so surprised to hear Song Sang Eun’s voice in this drama! I recently saw her in Abyss, and I don’t think she talked like that there! That’s a real skill, especially to keep it going throughout the entire series and also in song! But now I see that she’s a musical actress as well, no wonder her singing is so good! Her typical “Waah~ romantic hada~~” will echo through my head for a while, haha. I liked that, even though she didn’t have as much of a storyline as Hyun Joo, her goal to become a singer was taken as a serious aspect of the story and we still got to root for her in that. It was funny how they made it so she would change her stagename to Bok Hee, I didn’t even know the real singer but the way that she said it immediately made me think, Aha, that must be real singer. Just like how the little boy in the kitchen of Hyun Joo’s family restaurant that was teaching Young Soo how to cut onions introduced himself with the name of a famous chef. They made this tiny references to real people, which was nice. Anyways, I liked her character in this show, she was really cute! It was also very cool that they got the actual singer Yoon Bok Hee to play her older version, it just all fell into place, haha.

Kim Young Ok, I can never fail to mention her even though she had a really minor role in this as Joon Ha’s grandmother… Once again, she stole my heart. Just wanted to mention it.

Kim Hee Won was another example of someone who got to keep their own name in this series. I’ve seen him in Oh! My Lady (ages ago), You Who Came From The Stars, and apparently he had a cameo in Drinking Solo and Let’s Fight Ghost, but I don’t remember that. Anyways, he looked familiar to me. While he initially seemed to be a good friend to Joon Ha, and the only one backing him up after his grandma died, getting his father off him during the funeral and even setting Joon Ha up with a new job, he turned into such a nasty person – in Hye Ja’s false reality, that is. In reality, he was a super sweet and sensitive caretaker at the Nursing Home and submissive to his partner, whilst it had been the other way around in the false reality. I’m glad Hye Ja’s representation of him was false, because no one should be as bad as that, willingly able to orchestrate a bus accident to kill a bunch of elderly people just to collect their insurance payouts. I guess this series gave the actor a good opportunity to showcase a duality to his acting as well!

The old man in the wheelchair looked SO familiar to me and when I looked him up I realized that it’s Prince Boo Young from The King: Eternal Monarch!! OMG!! I loved him so much there and I remember being SOOOO mad when he was killed!! T^T How could I not recognize him sooner! Anyways, his performance here just showed a completely different side to his acting, even though he didn’t actually get to say much, he still managed to keep me intrigued and I had so many theories about who he was in the end! It was cool how they eventually made him fit into the whole picture and how even he got to atone for his deeds in his own way.

Okay! So, to conclude this review: it was a WILD ride. I didn’t know what to expect, but this was definitely not it. And I mean that in the best way possible. It totally made it worth my wondering about where the story was going and how it was going to end. I love how it was a happy ending, but not in the traditional kind of way. There was a lot of sadness and regret imbedded into it, so it was more of an inevitable happy ending. An ending in which there was no other way than to move on, because it didn’t do to linger onto a past that you couldn’t change. Hye Ja ended up changing her past subconsciously through her Alzheimer episodes, and in doing so, she enabled herself to let go of her regrets and move on. In the end, all the antics and events that happen in the beginning aren’t even that significant or important to anyone besides Hye Ja. They only hold meaning for her because it’s her way to cope, both with growing old before she knew it and with the loss of her husband. We are swept along in her two realities combined into one ideal reality, one in which she gets to spend more time with the love of her life before the rest of her time is taken away from her. I think the way it was constructed by the writers was amazingly clever, and in hindsight, everything made sense. If I were to now watch it again from the top, knowing that the beginning is all false reality, I’m sure that I’ll be able to see right through it. But the way we are kept within the same confusion and desperation as Hye Ja when she convinces herself that she lost all her time because of a time-turning watch was just geniously played out. It really kept me wondering all the way through until the truth was dropped like the mind-blowing bomb it was.

I’m glad I got to watch this hidden gem of a drama, it’s truly one of a kind. I would strongly suggest people watch the whole thing before they come to a conclusion about how they interpret it, and don’t start turning up with comments about how ‘boring and depressing’ it is, because that just shows that you haven’t given it a real chance. If you’re only interested in funny and light romantic comedies, this might not be for you. But if you want to give it a chance, at least give it a fair one and don’t judge it on factors that don’t even apply to its genre. I, for one, am glad that I gave it a chance. It really surprised me and it has a very touching message that we can all learn something from.

Well then, that was officially it for July! I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back with a new review, but I’m not going to rush anything. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish my next one within August, but who knows what will happen! To make one final reference to this series, you never know what’s waiting for you in life and how much time you’ll be able to commit to something. In any case, I hope this has been a worthwhile review and I will be back soon.

Bye-bee!!

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.

Backstreet Rookie
(편의점 샛별이 / Pyeonuijeom Saetbyeoli / Convenience Store Morning Star)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hi all! Just popping up to share my final review for July! With summer holidays coming up in a few weeks I’ll probably not get to watch much but I’ve already decided on my next drama so I’ll try to finish that one in August.
Before that, let’s look at this “Morning Star” of a drama! I’ve been hearing so much about this, and it’s been ages since I saw the teaser and thinking YES NEED TO WATCH THIS. I mean, Ji Chang Wook and Kim Yoo Jung in a drama together?? Of course I would watch that! But then some years passed by and I still didn’t watch it and I also heard there was even a kind of controversy around it, so I got a bit nervous to start on it. On the other hand, I really wanted to see what this was about for myself so I finally got to watch it and I think I can make this a good review discussing both sides of this series. I can see where the controversy comes from, but on the other hand I was also surprised by how much it sets itself apart from ‘regular’ K-Drama and I can’t wait to share my thoughts. Leggo!

Backstreet Rookie is a 16 episode drama (or a 2 times 8 back-to-back episode drama) that centers about a convenience store. The store manager, Choi Dae Hyun (played by Ji Chang Wook) used to work for the headquarters of the store branch, but now his family runs the store. He may be the manager, but he doesn’t have any employees so he’s basically on his feet 24/7, leaving him completely exhausted. His family members are sometimes able to take over the store for a short time while he gets some rest, but they all have their own jobs and things to do, and since he’s the main person in charge of running the store, in the end it all comes down to him. That is until his family starts urging him to take on a part-timer because not only is Dae Hyun turning into a hot mess, the sales are also not going up. Dae Hyun’s handsome face is an advantage, especially since it helps promote goods to the regular group of high school girls that visit the store after school, but the truth is that they don’t care about the promotions – they just want to get a picture with the cute store manager. While Dae Hyun keeps convincing himself that everything’s going great with the promotions and the store, he knows that it’s not true.
On the other hand, there’s Jung Saet Byul (played by Kim Yoo Jung), a high school dropout who’s had to fend for her and her younger sister ever since their father passed away a couple of years earlier. Their father was a Taekwondo instructor and taught his kids how to defend themselves, and even when she was still in high school, Saet Byul has used these skills to get back at street delinquents. However, one day this causes her to be expelled from school and ever since then she’s been part-timing all over the place. She’s a hard worker, she’s strong and has a knack for dealing with customers, so she also does well. In the meantime, she’s still trying to make sure her younger sister Eun Byul (played by Ahn Sol Bin) doesn’t get in trouble…. which she does, repeatedly.
How do these two characters get involved with each other? Actually, Saet Byul has been in love with Dae Hyun since she was a kid. He used to come to her father’s dojo and one time he saved her from getting injured. It was love at first sight for little Saet Byul. In the first episode, that takes place when Saet Byul is still in high school, she sees Dae Hyun again and when he tries to reprimand her and her friends for smoking, she brazenly kisses him on the mouth. Another three years later, the starting point of the story as we’ll follow it, Saet Byul suddenly appears at Dae Hyun’s convenience store and applies for the part-timer job. Dae Hyun is initially bent on proving that she’s not to be trusted, but has to eventually agree that she’s the best part-timer he could wish for.
As Saet Byul slowly makes her way up to a regular employee and more, Dae Hyun gets to deal with even more drama on his side; his girlfriend Yoo Yeon Joo (played by Han Sun Hwa), who still works at the store’s head quarters, isn’t very appreciative of Saet Byul working there and starts to interfere between the two of them.

There’s actually a bunch of interesting storylines in this series. Besides what’s mentioned above, there’s a lot going on in both Dae Hyun’s family and Yeon Joo’s. On Saet Byul’s side there’s a whole storyline about Eun Byul becoming an idol trainee whilst still under the influence of a couple of nasty delinquent girls.
And there’s also the storyline of Dae Hyun’s eccentric friend Han Dal Shik (played by Eum Moon Seok), and Saet Byul’s friend Hwang Geum Bi (played by Seo Ye Hwa) who travel their own enemies to lovers path. In-between there’s a lot of chaos, comedy, guest appearances and references to other shows that you might not understand if you haven’t seen those other shows (like me).

Let me start by acknowledging the controversy about this drama, and mainly about the first episode. Honestly, for me it was all right until Dal Shik got introduced, but there’s definitely some issues that have understandably put people off. First of all, the age gap between the two main characters (and the actors). This drama is from 2020, two years ago, so Kim Yoo Jung was 20 years old while Ji Chang Wook was 33. I have read a lot of comments about the surprise people felt that these two actors even agreed to this show. Apparently, this drama was adapted from an R-rated webtoon of the same name, and netizens were just determined to hate on it from the start because that in itself was already ‘problematic’.
In hindsight, the reference to the original webtoon has been put into Dal Shik’s character, as he is an artist for adult webtoons and throughout the story he’s working on something called ‘Her Reggae Boy’. When he is introduced in the first episode, he’s basically arousing himself while he draws his webtoon, making all kinds of noises and movements behind his drawing table. To me, this scene in particular was very nauseating and it made me really uncomfortable to watch. It just immediately made me cautious of his character because he just seemed very dirty and suspicious. Which leads me to the next point, again tied to Dal Shik – many people have criticized his character for being very racist. Not only does he look like he’s impersonating a typical ‘reggae’ person with his dreadlocks and clothing, singing typical reggae songs all the time, but he also gives off a very non-sanitary impression. There’s flies buzzing around his hair all the time, he lives in a tiny dirty appartment, he always seems to be wearing the same clothes… admittedly, it’s not a great way to represent a certain culture, and all the more since he, as a Korean, doesn’t even belong to that culture himself.
Then there was also the issues of minor Saet Byul kissing adult Dae Hyun on the mouth like that in the first episode, showing heavy physical violence between teenage girls, and the low camera angles that were used in the karaoke sessions of Eun Byul and her friends, as they were all wearing pretty short skirts.
So yeah, from the first episode, I definitely agreed with these comments. I was a bit nervous to continue to watch it as it all suddenly got a kind of inappropriate feeling to it. Also, I was kind of amused that they’d BLUR the cigarettes whilst showing heavy street violence and blood streaming down people’s faces was completely okay. Seriously, if you’re going to censor stuff, at least be consistent.
However, to me it felt like after that first episode, the problematic aspects were reeled in A LOT. I actually don’t think I felt truly uncomfortable at all after that first episode, it was almost as if they’d learned from the comments on Ep 1 and then proceeded to make things okay again. And truthfully, even though in the beginning everything and everyone was a mess and an extreme charicature, as the story progressed I think every single character matured in a way. They even refrained from an actual makeout scene between the two leads at the end, even though they got together, and to me that felt like they did consider that showing a kissing scene between two people with a huge age gap would make some people uncomfortable. I actually thought that was quite original, in hindsight.

You can say a lot about this series, but you can’t deny that it stands apart from regular K-Drama. Not just in the aspects that I’ve mentioned above, but I was also very interested in how they chose to build up the story, and mostly the romance between Dae Hyun and Saet Byul. Of course, Saet Byul is in love with Dae Hyun from the start and we find out that she definitely has an ulterior motive when she applies to work at his convenience store. But until episode 11, there’s actually no mutual romance building between the two.
That’s because the drama with Dae Hyun’s girlfriend Yeon Joo takes a VERY long time to resolve itself.

Dae Hyun and Yeon Joo have already been dating for three years, ever since they worked at the head quarters together. Dae Hyun quit the HQ at some point to run one of their convenience stores by himself, but they’ve not stopped dating. But there are some very distinctive differences that should have already caused alarm bells in their relationship way before it started getting rocky between them.
First of all, while Dae Hyun is the most dedicated boyfriend ever who would do everything for Yeon Joo, Yeon Joo hasn’t even told her mother about Dae Hyun. In three years of dating, she’s never mentioned him to her family and that’s why she keeps putting off the moment where she introduces him to them. Everyone at work knows about it, but for some reason Yeon Joo hasn’t told her mother. We later find out that this is because she doesn’t want Dae Hyun to know that her family is actually one of the main shareholders of HQ. She doesn’t want him to look at her differently. Lame excuse, if you ask me, but okay.
In every aspect, we can see that Dae Hyun is way more invested in their relationship. Yeon Joo has to literally keep reminding herself of reasons why he’s a great guy and why she wants to be with him and she also even lets herself get swayed. Her childhood friend Cho Seung Joon (played by Do Sang Woo) is clearly out to woo her and keeps trying to get her to stay with him rather than see Dae Hyun. We find out later that he is actually the one who convinced Dae Hyun to leave HQ because it would be bad for Yeon Joo’s reputation and he shouldn’t stand in her way.
Anyways, Yeon Joo doesn’t seem to be too affectionate with Dae Hyun, even their scenes together seem like they haven’t actually been seeing each other for that long. Honestly, in their first scene together I thought she was just going to be a character for two episodes as a woman that Dae Hyun went on a date with, but who wouldn’t actually be an actual threat to his romance with Saet Byul in the end. The way he got all super nervous when he thought she was inviting him to a hotel and she just took him to the gym to work out together, that didn’t scream “intimate 3-year relationship going strong” to me.
But AS SOON as she got wind that Dae Hyun’s new part-timer was a woman, and AS SOON as she saw Saet Byul, she immediately went all jealous gf on him and it had me shook. She literally forced him to fire Saet Byul, just because she was intimidated by her. Saet Byul was an amazing employee, she even became Employee of the Month and she worked her way up to Assistant Store Manager, but no, that wasn’t a reason that she should stay, she was still eyeing Dae Hyun too eagerly and that made her a threat.
And here we got to the point that annoyed me the most. I even made some in-between comments about this part so I would remember my feelings of frustration towards Yeon Joo when I’d get to writing the review.

If you don’t mind, I’ll now proceed with referring to Yeon Joo as *Miss Audacity* in this review. I don’t think I’ve been so aggravated by a character in a long time, but Yeon Joo is definitely on the list of most hypocritical K-Drama characters ever. Seriously, WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH HER. She literally treated Dae Hyun like trash, she didn’t want to introduce him to her family, she claimed she was fond of him but still she took every single misunderstanding between them to make things awkward and Dae Hyun was always the one who had to come crawling back to her with an apology. In the meantime, she freaking CHEATS on Dae Hyun with Seung Joon, she makes Dae Hyun fire Saet Byul against his while because it will ‘appease’ her and as thanks she just treats him like he’s nothing. She’s not willing to ‘talk’ about anything, and whenever they get an opportunity to talk, she walks away 2 seconds after they meet.
In the end, in episode 11, she breaks up with him without explaining anything; she invites him to dinner, says ‘I want our last meal to be the way you like to have it’, and then just leaves without even having the meal.
The way that she just couldn’t make up her mind about what to do about Dae Hyun, then chose to let him go, then decided she still wanted him back because she realized ‘she let herself get swayed and he was still such a great man’, then proceeded to make him crawl back to her again because she happened to walk in on him while he was being goofy with Saet Byul, causing yet another misunderstanding… just the way she had so much more to apologize for but kept turning all the misunderstandings onto him was so selfish. She kept telling him that HE was the one not being honest, while she was literally hiding his existence from her mother and she never told him she made out with Seung Joon. She made me so mad, honestly, and in hindsight I don’t understand why the writers let this go on for so long. It should’ve just been dealt with halfway through the show. Now it only ended in episode 11 or 12, and there was only 4 episodes left to suddenly make Dae Hyun switch his romantic interest to Saet Byul. Which, by the way, wasn’t done in an unnatural way, but still, there should have been a more established build-up between the two. And then of course, after they broke up and Dae Hyun went through a crisis to let her go, Yeon Joo suddenly decides it’s totally okay to just come back to him after she finds out he gave up his HQ job for her – because yes, that event from the past was suddenly enough reason for her to give him another chance. SERIOUSLY. I was really glad that Dae Hyun set his boundaries straight after that, that whenever she made a new attempt he was like ‘Nahh, we’re just colleagues now, bye’.
Also, Cho Seung Joon was just poking his nose where it didn’t belong. I believe he was the Director of HQ and his father was the Chairman. He got between Dae Hyun and Yeon Joo from the start by getting Dae Hyun out of HQ, and then he also encouraged Yeon Joo to cheat on her boyfriend with him. He even went so far as to sabotage Saet Byul’s other promotional part-time job she had outside of the convenience store, like who the heck gave him any right to meddle so much in other’s affairs just so he could get Yeon Joo for himself? Unbelievable!
Lastly, to finish the trio of most aggravating characters, Yeon Joo’s mom. Yeon Joo’s mother (played by Kyun Mi Ri) is the typical rich lady mom who seemingly has the best interests for her daughter’s future, but also doesn’t hide what her true intentions are. She wants Yeon Joo to be happy, but not with Dae Hyun. She wants her to marry Seung Joon. In the end, she literally pulls a ‘reverse Parasite’ on Dae Hyun’s entire family – she hires his parents individually as her chauffeur and insurance agent to embarass Dae Hyun and show Yeon Joo that she’s better off without such lowly people. It was disgusting to see how she treated people she believed to be below her, seeing them get all excited for getting such a good job offer while she was just openly using them to her advantage. She even had the audacity to basically tell Dae Hyun’s mom that her daughter deserved more than her son. I was beyond proud of Dae Hyun’s mom in the final episode when she told Yeon Joo’s mom off for being an uncaring parent. That was gold.

So yes, moving on to the next part: Dae Hyun’s family. As established above, Dae Hyun’s family is considered to be quite poor. His mother Gong Boon Hee (played by Kim Sun Young) sells insurances but doesn’t have a lot of success, his father Choi Yong Pil (played by Lee Byung Joon) doesn’t have a real job, and his older sister Choi Dae Soon (played by Kim Ji Hyun) is only out for the profits she can get and only visits her family and the store when her husband is away. On first glance they are not a very tight family, mother Boon Hee is quite violent towards father Yong Pil, and we also learn that Yong Pil is secretly yearning back for his first love ‘Jang Mi’ who now lives in China. Especially in the beginning, I found myself wondering a lot how these two even got married and had two children together. However, as I mentioned before, Dae Hyun’s parents also mature A LOT throughout the story. I think the biggest cause for this happens when they find out they’ve both been hired by Yeon Joo’s mom to embarrass Dae Hyun. There’s a scene where Mom and Dad are sitting at the dinner table together and have a heart-to-heart talk and this was an amazingly strong scene. I don’t remember which episode it was, but I remember that this was a really good episode altogether. The actors suddenly showed such great and serious acting that it had me really impressed. Here, they finally started to become a real family and thei values towards each other also really came through. Boon Hee went ahead with selling the double insurance plan to Yeon Joo’s mom, because it would still give her a really big raise at work. She knew what Yeon Joo’s mom was doing, but she grit her teeth and sold it to her anyway because her family needed the money.
All in all, even though there were moments where her constant screaming made her a bit obnoxious to me, Gong Boon Hee was a really great character. She took in Saet Byul when the girl lost her home to a scam of her real estate agent, and she cared for her like it was her own daughter. She stood up for her son against Yeon Joo’s mom because she wasn’t going to let her pride be wiped away by the likes of her.
When she started encouraging Dae Hyun to get closer to Yeon Joo again, she did reflect on her behavior afterwards and beat herself up over hurting Saet Byul’s feelings. You can say a lot about her character, but her heart was definitely in the right place.
Even Choi Yong Pil pulled himself away from his ideals on his first love. He chose not to take the trip to China and when Jang Mi suddenly visited him in Seoul he also kept showing her the door. It was a fun plottwist that Jang Mi was Boon Hee’s friend who had disappeared without a word when they were kids – Jang Mi actually came back to Seoul to find Boon Hee to make amends and I believe this eventually also mend something between Boon Hee and Yong Pil, because Boon Hee probably always thought he still wished he’d married Jang Mi over her. In the end, all’s well that ends well between them.

Now let’s move on to Saet Byul’s side of the story. As mentioned, she faces a lot of issues with Yeon Joo as the latter basically threatens her to quit the convenience store in order to ‘not get in Dae Hyun’s way’. She gets scammed out of her house and then Eun Byul suddenly runs away with all their money to audition to become an idol trainee and Saet Byul is basically left alone, after everything she’s done for her sister. She’s taken in by Dae Hyun’s mom and starts living at his house, but at some point she feels like she can’t bother them for too long. The real estate scam is eventually resolved and she manages to get her deposit back and even though her relationship with Dae Hyun is starting to bear fruits by then, she decides to go after what she wants to do first. She takes the GED exam to finalize her high school graduation and starts earnestly thinking about her future, and not just her initial intentions with Dae Hyun. I think this was really mature of her. When Dae Hyun finally came to her with a love confession, if it had happened in the beginning of the series, she’d have jumped on the opportunity at once, but when it happened she actually took a step back and told him to wait for her until at least she passed her GED. I think that was a very mature thing to do, and it also showed her growth as a character.
While it was a bit selfish of Eun Byul to just disappear with all that money, it’s clear that her objective came from a good place. She may have been quite the troublemaker, but she wanted to pay Saet Byul back for all she’d done for her and that’s why becoming an idol just couldn’t wait for her, she had to debut as soon as possible so she could help her sister. I’m glad the two sisters were able to work out their issues in the end, especially since they were both pretty headstrong.

I also want to mention Kang Ji Wook, since he had a special guest appearance here. Kang Ji Wook (played by Kim Min Gyu) was Saet Byul’s childhood friend, as a child he’d also been under her father’s Taekwondo lessons and Saet Byul always called him ‘Puppy’ (‘kangaji’) which is also a pun on his name, as in her phone she saves him as ‘KangaJi Wook’. Ji Wook is now a celebrity actor, and he helps Saet Byul by keeping an eye out for Eun Byul and how she’s doing at her agency since he has connections there. He’s in love with Saet Byul too, and hopes that they might cross the boundary of the friendzone, but it’s obvious to him too how much she’s into Dae Hyun. Still, he attempts to get between them once or twice. One time, he’s part of a promotional action from HQ by participating in a challenge to take over the convenience store as the manager for 25 hours. During this shoot, he actually goes so far as to tell Dae Hyun to back off, which I thought was quite daring. In my opinion, he needed to watch his boundaries more, because at that point, Dae Hyun wasn’t even actively pursuing Saet Byul yet, so this came kind of out of nowhere for him. Seeing her together with Ji Wook did awaken his jealousy, yes, and after that he did kind of start ‘competing’ with Ji Wook, but still, there wasn’t even a real competition there; Saet Byul was never getting over Dae Hyun. Ji Wook had no other choice but to give up after a few attempts. Even so, he remained a loyal friend to Saet Byul, and although he even got involved in a scandal with the two sisters because of those annoying delinquent girls who were still on Eun Byul’s back, he made sure to clear everything up properly and Saet Byul managed to give this reporter all the information she needed to set everything straight, so that was wrapped up nicely as well.

Finally, I need to talk a bit about Dal Shik and Geum Bi, because this was pretty wild.
Ever since high school, Hwang Geum Bi and Cha Eun Jo (Yoon Soo) have been Saet Byul’s best friends. They got into trouble together, they got beaten up together, they hang out on street corners together, and they always got each other’s backs. All three of them were initially quite violent, but Saet Byul was the only one expelled from school permanently. Geum Bi, being from a rich family, was allowed to come back to school after a few years, so she’s now a 22-year old in a class of youngsters, and Eun Jo is working at a hair salon. Geum Bi gets more storyline than Eun Jo in the end, but Eun Jo is still always there to catch her friends when they fall, the three remain very close until the end.
So initially, Dal Shik and Geum Bi LOATHE each other. Geum Bi has beaten up Dal Shik on several occasions, and has insulted his appearance, calling him ‘caveman’ and ‘monkey’ – kind of insulting to his already culturally inappropriate appearance. But they keep meeting, and without knowing it, they’ve already gotten involved with each other in a way. As it turns out, Geum Bi is a huge fan of Dal Shik’s webtoon and she’s always the first one to leave a comment. At one point, they even exchange phone numbers and it’s like having met their soulmate. But then the time comes that they agree to meet in person and all hell breaks loose when they realize who the other person is that they’d admired so much. After wallowing in their own misery for a while, Geum Bi ends up helping Dal Shik get new inspiration for his webtoon and the two finally come to terms with how they truly feel about each other – they manage to put their first impressions of each other aside to find that they are in fact each other’s soulmates. I think that in setting aside their prior judgements of each other, Dal Shik and Geum Bi also matured a lot.
Honestly, I thought that mostly Geum Bi completely switched character. She used to be this scruffy too-old-to-be-in-high-school delinquent girl, but then at home she was suddenly this lovely ‘agassi’ who wore frilly dresses and flowers in her hair. When she got together with Dal Shik, she really became this person for good, she didn’t even dress the way she did in the beginning of the series and she became way less violent, too. I guess LOVE took away all of her violent tendencies as well.

Altogether I saw a very big shift in the growth of almost each character in this series, and this still made it a very entertaining drama to watch for me. It was really different from regular K-Drama in the way it was built up, but also in how the characters were placed together, the dynamics between everyone were very original and even though they put several storylines into the show, everything was wrapped up neatly and nothing felt too forced or rushed. The story comes full circle when Dae Hyun, who was briefly promoted to consultant back at HQ, decides to go back to running the store again, and falls back into his old routine of being on his feet for 30+ hours straight. Saet Byul, who had been away for a while to work on a farm taking care of flowers (she initially wanted to become a florist since she loved flowers and knew all the meanings of the ‘flower language’) then returns in the exact same way as she entered the store in the first episode to apply for the part-timer job. When she finally agrees to be with him, the two get close to kiss, but at the last minute they both turn to the camera with mischievous grins, and it ends with a zoom-out to where the actual drama crew is shown as they wrap up the last scene. The last part is narrated by Dal Shik, as he mentions that ‘Backstreet Rookie’ is going to be his new webtoon. He and Geum Bi agree on the name ‘Backstreet Rookie’. The original title literally translates as ‘Convenience Store Morning Star’, and the ‘morning star’ part is a direct a pun on Saet Byul’s name. It also refers to the convenience store being a beacon of light for people in the dark night, like a lighthouse, as Dae Hyun himself also mentions at some point.
The romance build up was very unique and original for a K-Drama, because even with a slowburn, this usually starts about halfway through the story. In this case, there were literally 4 episodes in which Dae Hyun finally realized his feelings for Saet Byul after Yeon Joo was (finally) out of the picture, and even in these final 4 episodes, there wasn’t any sudden switch in his behavior. It wasn’t like he suddenly became aware of his feelings for Saet Byul, I guess he realized that they’d been there before but now he was able to follow his heart without any restrictions. The age difference was also never mentioned at any point, so that also wasn’t a reason to keep his feelings to himself. It just kind of happened naturally in the end, but I still thought it might have been better to start this build-up between the two main leads a little earlier. Now it just seemed as if, during the entire period up until Yeon Joo dumped him, Dae Hyun never even saw Saet Byul in a romantic light, it was just suddenly mutual after he officially got over his ex. And the good thing is that he also didn’t become petty, he didn’t even go to extreme lengths to avoid Yeon Joo, but he was firm enough to block her last attempts to get back together, and in that way he also became much stronger than before. In the beginning, he would also come crawling back to her when she gave him an opening, but he really learned his lesson, especially after finding out what Yeon Joo’s mom had been putting his parents through and how Yeon Joo had never even mentioned him to her family before.
I still think it had a pretty satisfying ending. There’s always people being salty when there’s no final kiss between the leads, but I don’t think it’s fair to judge a series on that alone. As I mentioned before, I feel like omitting a final makeout scene after they confirmed their mutual feelings had to do with smoothening out the controversy of their age difference. I don’t think I would’ve minded seeing it, to be honest, because the chemistry between the two main actors was really nice and I wasn’t even thinking about how much they differed in age – it also didn’t seem to matter between the two of them, so who cares? But I can live with the ending as it was, they showed enough affection through their hugs and hey, they were shown kissing twice in the show anyways! One time in the first episode and one time in Saet Byul’s fantasy! So there you have your kisses, go sleep on that.

I think I’ve mentioned most of what I wanted to say! I hope it was worthwhile to read, because I did make some remarks about this as I was watching. It always feels good to be in the “zone” when writing a review when I know exactly what I want to discuss. So moving on to some cast comments!

As I mentioned, the two main leads were my foremost reason to watch this drama.
Ji Chang Wook has stolen my heart in Suspicious Partner and I’ve been following his dramas ever since. So far I’ve seen him in Healer, Seven First Kisses, Suspicious Partner, and more recently in Melting Me Softly and Lovestruck in the City. People may have been surprised to see him in this drama, but I actually really enjoyed seeing a different side of him. He’s always casted as the typical handsome successful guy, but to see him now as an underdog character, seeing him being a complete and exhausted mess was very refreshing. It just proves that he’s so much more than just a handsome face. I really enjoyed his performance in this drama, and I really liked his chemistry with Kim Yoo Jung too, it never felt even the slightest bit awkward. Dae Hyun is a really good guy who proves how much he cares for the people closest to him, even to the point where he makes a fool out of himself when the other person doesn’t treat him back equally. In the beginning with Yeon Joo it makes him a bit naive, but I was glad that he recognized the truth of things well enough in the end to not give her another chance to take advantage of him. I really want to see more diverse sides of his acting, this was a good example!

MY BABY YOO JUNG. Honestly, I’ve watched her grow up through K-Drama and I was so happy to see her in this role. It was definitely not a typical casting choice, but I really liked her as Saet Byul. The first thing I saw her in as a child was The Moon That Embraces The Sun, along with Yeo Jin Goo and Kim So Hyun, all my babies have grown up to be their own main characters now T^T I’ve also seen her in Moonlight Drawn By Clouds and Clean With Passion For Now (in which, mind you, she had an even bigger age difference with her co-star and A LOT of makeout scenes). I also really want to watch Lovers of the Red Sky. I have to admit that at the beginning of the show, I was a bit scared that she would be sexualized in a way, but I think that it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. All in all I was really glad to see her in this role because she also showed me a new side to her acting, she wasn’t the deer in headlights that she plays so often, she really was her own independent, strong young woman. I’m so proud of her and I hope she gets even more opportunities to grow as an actress, she’s growing up so pretty, I have to stop myself from getting emotional. And as I’ve mentioned, her chemistry with Ji Chang Wook was so natural and nice to watch, I really liked them together. Saet Byul may have seemed a bit obsessive about Dae Hyun in the beginning, but as things got more serious and she got involved with his family and went through all the stuff with the scam and her sister’s scandal, she really grew up and started putting more value to her own future, not just to being around Dae Hyun and waiting around for him to fall for her as well. I loved her.

I’ve seen Han Sun Hwa before in God’s Gift – 14 Days (apparently? OMG SHE WAS JENNY?!) and School 2017 (right, the police officer!), and she also had a cameo in 20th Century Boy and Girl, but I don’t really remember much of that. She did seem familiar to me from the start, but it’s probably because of the first two series I mentioned. I never really saw her in a big role like this before. Anyways, yes, what can I say, I don’t think it’s ever easy playing the second female lead, especially when she becomes a very disliked character. But as I like to say, when a character sets your teeth on edge, it just means that the actor is doing a good job. That’s what I’ll keep it at, haha. I still feel like the whole thing with Yeon Joo shouldn’t have been dragged out for 11 episodes in a 16-episode drama, it could’ve ended much earlier and that’s what was a bit annoying to me. Also, when after that whole ordeal she thought she could just walk back into Dae Hyun’s life and he would immediately agree to getting back together, like, seriously? Did she have ANY reflective skills? She just didn’t deserve Dae Hyun, is what it came down to. And she also never saw any real fault in her own actions, like in the end she only apologized for her mom’s behavior, she never even apologized for how she’d treated Dae Hyun and how she CHEATED on him. So yeah, the hypocrit definitely learned her lesson.

Apparently, Ahn Sol Bin is an idol in real life, she’s in the group Laboum (I’ve only heard of the name). She has a familiar face, and when I look her up I see she was in Reunited Worlds and even had a cameo in Itaewon Class, but I don’t remember her from either of those. Anyways, she had a pretty wild character here. She was as hot-headed as Saet Byul, but just a bit more immature. At first I doubted her intentions a little bit, but it became obvious how much she cared about her sister and the whole ordeal with her running away to become an idol in secret to pay her back came from a good place. She also came to Saet Byul for help when the annoying delinquent girls started sabotaging her new idol career, and in doing so they managed to resolve the whole thing, so I’m glad that the sisters’ relationship ended on a good note.

Kim Sun Young is such an icon. I was so excited to see her in this show. I’ve seen her before in many things, like Shopping King Louie, Legend of the Blue Sea, Lookout, Because This Is My First Life, Romance is a Bonus Book and Crash Landing on You. There’s a still a lot of her dramas on my watch list, too. I love how she’s just not afraid to show all different kinds of sides to her acting, from hysterical and exaggerated to comical to serious and heartfelt. I think she showed multiple sides in this series. I have to admit that in the beginning, when all she did was scream and beat up her husband, Boon Hee was a bit obnoxious to me, like I remember thinking ‘why can’t she just talk normally??’. But then her character made such a switch and she showed such vulnerability despite NEVER going out of character. You could really see that she was a mother, even to Saet Byul, and that she would gladly stand up for her family and pride against some rich bastards like Yeon Joo’s mom. I think she was a good representation of how people grow up differently, and how they are still wise enough to see what’s going on, even when they’re being manipulated by people who are ‘better off’ than them. She represented her neighborhood but never lost her values. Again, I ended up loving her.

I’ve also seen Lee Byung Joon in several dramas before, like Secret Garden, Dream High, Me Too, Flower!, I Hear Your Voice, She Was Pretty, Another Oh Hae Young, Hwarang, Sensitive Boss, Go Back Couple, I’m Not a Robot and What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim?. I don’t think I ever really saw him in a very big role as the main lead’s father like in this series. I liked that the writers gave him some backstory too, and also found an opportunity to show how his character developed and grew in his own way. He also came face to face with being embarrassed and this caused him to completely devote himself to his wife and kids, and to stop yearning for that faraway first love in China. I don’t think I’ve ever liked his character as much as here before in previous shows, he was a good guy.

I thought I recognized Eum Moon Seok at first, but I actually don’t think I’ve seen any dramas with him before! So he was a new face to me. On one hand I am pretty curious what the actor has to say about Dal Shik’s character, especially after the whole controversy. It must have been a whole experience walking around in that attire. He occasionally switched to the hairdo he had in The Fiery Priest in a fun, inside cameo kind of way, but nothing was ever explained about why he’d chosen to live his life as he did and why he chose to walk around with this look. On the other hand, it did show that he had made his choice leaving behind his family’s rural land and living by himself in Seoul like this, he didn’t seem to have any shame regarding how he dressed or presented himself, so he must have had a certain confidence in that aspect. His character started out as the most problematic to me, but he became more bearable throughout the series as it’s established that he is a very loyal friend to Dae Hyun and overall a good person with a very romantic heart. I could’ve seen it coming that he and Geum Bi would end up together, but I still found it amusing that they did.

I haven’t seen any of Seo Ye Hwa or Yoon Soo’s dramas before, so they were both new faces to me too! While at first they seemed to be like Saet Byul’s irresponsible street friends, as we get to know them better we also find out how loyal they are and especially Geum Bi shows us a whole different side to her character and life. From her first appearance, I would’ve never guessed that she would be the friend who managed to get Saet Byul in that super deluxe hospital room, it went against her initial image so much!
But I both liked them, and maybe I’ll see them again in another drama one day!

So yeah, with that I think I can conclude this review! I had a good time watching this, and I’m glad that I gave it a chance despite the controversy. I was surprised by how different it was from the usual K-Drama in terms of characters and build-up. Both the start and the ending weren’t typical for a K-Drama in my opinion, but they managed to pull it off and as a result the drama was at times very bizarre, but that in turn made it pretty interesting for me. I like when writers suddenly seem to change course and head in an unpredictable way but still manage to wrap up the story without making the change too random.
In the end I think they succeeded in creating a story about family, or maybe just the feeling of family, surrounding this convenience store. The convenience store was the true main character. It stood at the center of the majority of the events in the series, it became the place in which Dae Hyun and Saet Byul finally came together, it even became part of the family, you could say. Even if the neighborhood was a little shabby, it was still a community, and the convenience store really was the beacon at the center of it.
Having a place like that in a neighborhood like that, I think, is very special and important.
I’m glad I gave this drama a fair chance, as I did end up enjoying it.

So now I’m going back to my watch list for a bit, to some more series from a couple of years ago. I will be going on holiday in a few weeks so I hope to be able to finish the next review within August, but we’ll see, because I also don’t want to rush anything.
Anyways, thanks for reading again and until next time! Bye-bee!

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.

Our Beloved Summer
(그 해 우리는 / Geu Hae Urineun)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying the summer period wherever they are. It’s been a bit stressful for me the last few weeks because of work-related stuff, and I’ve really had to make compromises when it came to taking holidays, but I feel like I’m finally getting back on track. In the meantime, I’ve been watching a couple of other Netflix series alongside this one, so it took me some time to finish it. This summer drama from last year which was pushed up on my list because I simply couldn’t be patient anymore. I was already planning on watching it since I was just finishing the webtoon when it came out, but after people started recommending it I knew I couldn’t let it slide. And now that I’ve finished it, I see why! I’m glad I got to see it now because, like the previous one, it just fits into the current season so well and it really made me nostalgic of previous, more careless times. Even though there might not be a very eventful storyline, I think this drama is a very reflecting and healing drama. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Our Beloved Summer is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama with episodes of about an hour long. It tells the story of Choi Woong (played by Choi Woo Shik) and Gook Yeon Soo (played by Kim Da Mi). When they were in high school, they were part of a documentary featuring them as the first (Yeon Soo) and last (Woong) ranking students. Ten years later, this documentary suddenly starts trending again. The lightness of the youths depicted in it is reminiscent of those nostalgic summer high school days and this attracts a lot of people to it. The producer of the documentary then comes up with the idea to make a sequel documentary, to show the viewers what has become of these two characters ten years later. Sounds like a fun idea, right? But what the viewers don’t know is that in the last ten years, a lot has changed between Woong and Yeon Soo. The two actually dated for 5 years and then broke up in quite a painful way, so they’re not exactly on speaking terms anymore.
Woong has always lived a carefree and unambitious life. He’s been incredibly spoiled by his parents and left to do whatever he wanted. His parents (played by the heartwarming combi Park Won Sang and Seo Jung Yeon) own a restaurant chain named after Woong and they’re doing very well in the neighborhood, so Woong has never had to worry about money. He’s always claimed that he wants to live a peaceful life in which he can fall asleep under the sun by day and under a lamp by night and that’s all he needs. He’s the kid who’s always sleeping in class even though he’d definitely rank higher if he just put a little effort in his studying. One talent that he does have, is drawing. It’s the only thing he can get himself to focus on completely. Ten years later, he has become a famous yet anonymous artist under the name Go Oh, praised for his great attention to detail in the buildings he features. He doesn’t draw people.
Yeon Soo is the complete opposite of Woong. She was the highest ranking student in school and has always seemed quite indifferent when it came to maintaining social contacts. She’s more focussed on her studies than on hanging out with friends in her free time. She lives with her grandmother and they are actually quite poor, so Yeon Soo feels like she’d better focus on taking care of her grandma than play around by herself. She is initially aggravated by Woong, as he seems so carefree and spoiled. She gradually opens up to him throughout the documentary, but in the beginning it seems like a miracle how they got these two polar opposites to work together. Ten years later, she is working at a small company called RUN that organizes events and collaborations between artists and foundations and such.
So yeah, the documentary they featured in as teens is a huge success and ten years later, the producer at the time, Park Dong Il (played by Jo Bok Rae), comes up with the idea to make a sequel. This time he won’t be producing it himself, though, he hands over the baton to Kim Ji Woong (played by Kim Sung Chul). Ji Woong has been Woong’s best friend since childhood, and he was a part of the original documentary as well since he was friends with the two protagonists. After the documentary ended, he expressed interest in working behind the camera and Park Dong Il took him on his team after he graduated. Now, Ji Woong is the one standing behind the camera filming his friends, knowing fully well that this is not going to be easy.
As far as main characters go, there’s also NJ (played by Noh Jung Eui), a celebrity who develops an interest in Go Oh’s drawings and ultimately develops feelings for Woong himself as well.
The two main supporting characters are Goo Eun Ho (played by Ahn Dong Goo), Woong’s manager, and Lee Sol Yi (played by Park Jin Joo), Yeon Soo’s best friend who just started her own bar.
So the story of this series starts with Woong and Yeon Soo coincidentally meeting again through work, before they’re purposely brought together again by Ji Woong’s initiative for a sequal documentary. Although they both end up accepting mostly to spite each other, during the recordings they are inevitably drawn back to one another until they officially can no longer deny that there’s still something there. In the meantime, Ji Woong and NJ’s storylines are explored further and all in all we learn that there’s a lot more to all the characters than meets the eye.

I don’t think this will be a very long review since there’s not a lot happening in terms of action or plot, it’s really just a story depicting the relationships between a group of people, with focus on Woong and Yeon Soo as they find their way back to each other. I think I’ve already established the setting of the story and its main characters well enough in the above paragraph, so let’s get straight on to analyzing.

So first of all, as I mentioned, I’d been reading the webtoon of the same name and I wanted to finish that first before starting on the drama series. At first
I just assumed that this would be an adaptation of the webtoon, but actually
it’s more like a sequel – exactly like how in the series they are making a
sequel to the original documentary. The drama series starts where the webtoon
ends. The webtoon only depicts the period during high school in which they film the OG documentary, and it ends when the filming ends, when Woong and Yeon Soo first develop feelings for each other and decide to date, and when Ji Woong tells Park Dong Il that he might be interested in the work he’s doing. So that in itself was pretty refreshing. The fact that it wasn’t a literal adaptation but the series took the creative liberty to continue the story like that, I think that’s a pretty original way of adapting and of course it also created new expectations. If it had been just a literal adaptation, it would have taken some of the thrill away for me because I’d already know what was going to happen since I read the webtoon. But creating that twist from the start, the fastforward to ten years later, immediately made me go 👁👄👁. And they did so much more than just create a continuation of the original webtoon. They created an opportunity to dive even deeper into the characters’ backgrounds and storylines than the webtoon did. We find out so much more about the characters,
where they come from, what struggles they’re dealing with.
We find out that Woong is adopted, that he was abandoned by his father when he was really young and that Mr. and Mrs. Choi took him in as their own son after losing their own child.
We find out that Yeon Soo has a crippling inferiority complex that caused her to break up with Woong in the peak of their relationship because she felt like she didn’t deserve to be happy and carefree by herself as she was struggling with financial problems plus the care for her grandmother.
We find out that Ji Woong was (emotionally) neglected by his mother as a child and that’s caused him to emotionally distance himself from other people, even his closest friends. We also find out he’s been in love with Yeon Soo since the first time he saw her.
We find out that NJ is really lonely and doesn’t have any friends. She tries to keep up her reputation as well as possible but keeps slipping up and causing her management team problems when her true feelings keep coming out.
I guess you could say that the four main characters are all struggling with a certain type of loneliness/sadness. On a positive note, at the end of the series, they all learn to overcome it.

Let me dive a little deeper into the characters for starters.
Choi Woong. Where to begin with him. I find him a pretty complex character, actually, because he has way more layers than you’d expect. At first glance, he seems to live a life of leisure, he’s always been coddled by his parents as a kid, he’s been allowed to do whatever he wants and doesn’t have to worry about anything. He grew up being quite privileged, and all because the right couple found him. If he’d ended up somewhere else, his background might not have given him so much favoritism. I kept wondering how Woong truly felt about his upbringing, especially since he was aware of the fact that he was adopted. He never really talked about his feelings, not as a kid or as an adult, but it must have definitely left its invisible marks on him. From the outside, he seems so carefree and light (maybe a little socially awkward), but you wouldn’t guess that he would be carrying that kind of sadness with him. On the other hand, I find him quite mature as well. He’s very observant and you have to give him credit for being aware of so much more than he shows. Of course he also has a clumsy side, especially when it comes to romance and relationships, which makes him very relatable and likeable. But I just got the feeling that, even though he may have appeared indifferent, he knew exactly what was going on with everyone.
One problematic characteristic I found with Woong was that he put other people’s feelings before his own too often. For example, in the second to last episode, he got a harsh review on his exhibition, and Yeon Soo didn’t show up either so he felt really down about that. But then Ji Woong suddenly told him that he’d found out his mother was dying, and he found Yeon Soo crying on his doorstep asking him to comfort her because she was upset about her grandmother who had to be hospitalized. You could just see on his face that he wanted to tell her that he was also having a hard time, but he ended up just hugging and comforting her, putting her first. He never put his own feelings on top of everyone else’s if he deemed the others’ feelings heavier than his own.
I also feel like his lack of ambition, even as an artist, is an important part of his character development. He’s always just lived doing what he likes and drawing what he wants, but it still seems like he lacks a certain confidence in his work. He definitely enjoys making art and also puts in effort to organize exhibitions on occasion, but he still doesn’t truly see himself as all that. When he receives that review and also when his former art classmate now turned rival artist Nua (nice cameo by Kwak Dong Yeon) openly criticizes him for not actively going after him when he stole his work and accused him of plagiarism, Woong realizes they are right about him. He doesn’t even get angry, he doesn’t even stand up for himself, but you can just see the shocked realization on his face. It’s a really painful moment since you can just see his whole being crumble in uncertainty. Honestly, I found it a bit complicated to pinpoint what exactly his feelings towards drawing were, or if he even really wanted to be an artist. He seems to be struggling with this during the entirety of the series, even though he tries not to make a big deal out of it. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that he wants to attend a university in Paris where his favorite architect teaches, so I guess he does have a certain urge to learn more about architectural design and wants to get better at drawing and designing buildings. He may have felt himself being pushed into becoming an artist as it was the one thing he excelled at, even though during their dating period in high school he told Yeon Soo that he was planning on keeping his art as a hobby.

As for Yeon Soo, it seems like she struggled a bit with Woong’s lack of ambition as well when they first started dating. He didn’t have the plan to go to college or really start a career, while the main thing she was worried about was how to thrive economically. I guess the fact that they were polar opposites didn’t only pose a challenge for them to open up to each another when they first met, but it also kept creating wedges between them and Yeon Soo was definitely more conscious of this than Woong. In hindsight, I feel like she just really wanted him to find something that he genuinely wanted to do, because that’s also why she supports his decision to go to Paris. 
The reason she broke up with him after 5 years of dating had more to do with her own situation than with him. She was financially struggling and going through a rough patch and instead of including Woong in her worries so that he may have helped her, she decided to just let him go. I still don’t think it was fair of her to do it like that, not giving him any reason and just leaving him hanging. Of course she did tell him the real reason, but it was over the phone and Woong was drunk, plus he missed the important part, so it wasn’t a very successful make-up conversation. Anyways, so while I don’t agree with how she did it, I can imagine where she was coming from. She reflected on herself and acknowledged that it was because of her own lack of confidence and she didn’t want Woong to suffer along with her. This is also very typical of Yeon Soo, of what she’s always been like. Independent, not wanting to rely on others too much. The care for her grandmother had always been her number one priority, and she didn’t care if she had to give up her social life for that. With Woong things got more serious of course, but she still made her choice.  
She first meets Woong again after 5 years when her job requires her to get artist Go Oh on board with a collaboration and she visits his house. For the first period of time after they’re involuntarily reunited, the two treat each other with disdain, but it’s clear as day that both of them have lingering attachments. 
It was really touching to see how much Yeon Soo actually allowed herself to smile when she got back together with Woong, all those feelings that she’d been suppressing just came bursting back out and she finally allowed herself to accept all the love she was receiving. 
I think the most groundbreaking moment for Yeon Soo was when she had to decide whether or not to go to Paris, either with Woong or for her own work. Everyone kept telling her to just follow her heart and go live the life she wanted, but she realized there and then that that’s exactly what she’d been doing all along. While her mind had tricked her into thinking that she’d always been alone, she was actually never alone at all, she’d always been surrounded by supportive people. By reflecting on that, she was able to break out of her own (imagined?) loneliness and that’s also how she finally realized what she wanted to do. 
When Woong and Yeon Soo both break out of their cycles, it’s like they’re finally free from invisible chains. Everything suddenly seems possible again and they even make their long distance relationship work. 

Kim Ji Woong made a 180 degree turn from what he seemed like to me in the webtoon. While I did suspect there was something about the way he eyed Woong and Yeon Soo, especially after they started dating, but he never caused a scene and never said anything about it so I wasn’t sure what it was about. I do feel like the writers chose the more predictable option of making him in love with Yeon Soo.
Ji Woong is one of the most interesting characters to me since, even as the male lead’s best friend, he doesn’t always appear to be very sympathetic, per se. He seems very emotionally closed off from other people, even his closest friends and colleagues, and he also shows a sharp, sarcastic side at times.
He bottles up his feelings the most out of everyone, and at one point it became a bit frustrating to me. So many people reached out to him, but he never accepted any help. I’m glad he was able to resolve his whole situation in the end, even with his mother, but it certainly took him a lot of internalizing and shutting himself off from everyone else to get there. I kept wondering why he would do this to himself, filming Woong and Yeon Soo, even though part of him must’ve subconsciously wanted to keep them away from each other. He knew there was tension between them, but he also knew there was a chance they might make up again. I’m not entirely sure what his intentions were, if he was planning on shooting his shot with Yeon Soo himself or not. I did feel very sorry for him when he found out that they were dating again because it CRUSHED him. It was so painful to see Yeon Soo trying to cheer him up and not being aware of anything, while you could see it was killing him inside because he really needed some time to get over her and he couldn’t even tell her what was going on. That was really rough. 
In general, I think Ji Woong’s personality is justifiable when you take a look at his upbringing. His adapted habit to emotionally distance himself from people was undoubtedly caused by his mother. She basically ignored him throughout his childhood, she always came home late and would then scold him for staying up to wait for her. When he wanted to talk about his day, she’d just shut him up by saying she was tired and eventually she even told him that if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be living ‘such a pathetic life’. She blamed her own misfortune on her child. Now we don’t get the whole picture, we don’t know what happened to her, what kind of life she was living or how Ji Woong lost his father, for example. Maybe being a single mom took its toll on her? Anyways, the way she treated him, especially as a young child, was not okay. And then, not only does she suddenly come back to reconnect with him, she out of the blue tells him she’s dying. Not only that, she wants him to film her because she doesn’t want to die without leaving a mark. I mean… I get that that really messed with Ji Woong’s head. She hadn’t been there his entire life. Because of her absence, he’d felt like he was different. He didn’t have something that all the other kids had, and even other classmates with only one parent seemed to still be really close with that parent. He just couldn’t understand why it was different in his case, all the more when he saw how Woong’s mom treated him. He became more like a son to Woong’s family than to his own mother. Although I understand his resentment towards her and how his upbringing has made him so reluctant to express his affection to others, I was glad that he eventually talked with his mom and decided to feature in her documentary, as his mentor Park Dong Il took over the production.
In Ji Woong’s production team there’s also Jung Chae Ran (played by Jeon Hye Won), who also works on the documentary with him. She’s quite straightforward in her communication and the running joke is that she’s becoming a lot like Ji Woong in personality. Chae Ran has a crush on Ji Woong and is very hurt by seeing how he gets in his unrequited feelings for Yeon Soo. She’s the main person that keeps worrying about him, keeps reminding him to eat and sleep well, even though he usually just waves her good intentions away. However, after Ji Woong finally resolves all his stuff with his mother and gets over Yeon Soo for good, Chae Ran confesses to him quite casually and even though he doesn’t give her an immediate answer, it does seem like he appreciates it. 

NJ is to this point still a bit of an enigma to me. She wasn’t in the webtoon, so her character was created specifically for the drama series and I keep thinking about her character’s true purpose. She’s a celebrity, although now that I think about it, it’s never actually specified what kind of celebrity she is (an idol, an actress, etc.). We just see her in backstage situations where she’s allowed to take a break and have her own thoughts. However, she has no one else to share these thoughts with. She becomes fascinated by Go Oh’s drawings and as she’s just bought a building (or more?) herself, she wants him to draw her building. As she keeps approaching him, she falls for him, but when it turns out not to be mutual, she doesn’t become petty. On the contrary, she really tries to reel herself in and when she does slip up and makes a petty remark, she immediately reflects on it humorously. In her solo scenes where she’s alone at home thinking about Woong and why he’s not calling her back, she acts like a normal K-Drama girl in love. It’s quite endearing to see that ‘normal’ side of her. Other than that, we don’t really get to know much about NJ in terms of how she became a celebrity or how she grew up or anything like that. She’s just a celebrity, and a slightly problematic one, from what I gather. She is dealing with a lot of rumors and scandals and her agency team keeps getting thrown around for things she does and says, but I think it’s a good thing that she speaks up about these things. For example, that part where she organized a volunteer trash-picking event for people that posted nasty stuff about her on the Internet and she overhears them talking about her behind her back even though they’d all been sucking up to her to drop the charges – these people were shameful and when she confronted them they kept turning it all back onto her. It’s crazy that people can act like that and say harmful things to a celebrity, but as a celebrity you just need to suck it up. You can never act the same way and you’re not even allowed to confront disrespectful people that spread nasty rumors about you. NJ has completely accepted that this is her life, that she is not able to have any friends because of her line of work and that she’ll never have a ‘normal’ life in which she can do or say what she wants. But she does go out of her way, heck she even skips schedules, to go see Woong and when an article is published claiming that the two of them are dating, even though she critiques her agency for not putting an immediate end to the rumors (they think it’s good publicity), she doesn’t go out of her way to help the rumor out of the world either. 
All in all, just like with Ji Woong, even though NJ was definitely not a bad person, I still had some trouble finding her 100% sympathetic at times. I think it just has to do with the fact that I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly her intentions were, either. On the one hand she seemed to be friendly enough, but there was something about her, something she was not saying, something that went deeper than the surface that we didn’t get to fully explore. So that’s why I’m still calling her an enigma, she’s still a bit of a mystery to me. 

The point I want to make about the above four main characters is that they all had similar issues. They all had double layers, double intentions and they all had a habit of hiding how they truly felt and keeping quiet about what they really wanted to do. Which makes for an interesting, but also complex group dynamic.
Looking at it like that, I’d say Eun Ho and Sol Yi were definitely the most uncomplicated characters of the series and they succeeded in lightening the mood for the others as well.
Goo Eun Ho was Woong’s junior in art school (if I remember correctly) and he also regularly helped out in Woong’s parents’ restaurants. He’s kind of a comic relief character in the show, he’s very open with his emotions and in that way he stands in very stark contrast to Woong and also to Ji Woong. When the series starts ten years later after the OG documentary, Eun Ho is probably the person closest to Woong as he is in his house a lot of the time. Eun Ho is a big fan of NJ, so he keeps fanboying over her and begs Woong to do more collabs with her too. He’s also the one person worrying about Woong after the review comes out, the one person expressing that Woong is the one that needs to be comforted the most. 
Lee Sol Yi went to college together with Yeon Soo and they’ve been close friends since. I loved that, when Yeon Soo realized that she’d never truly been alone, in all of the flashbacks she had, Sol Yi was there. She’s kind of a tough love ‘eonni’ to Yeon Soo and even to Eun Ho, as she’s older than them both. Through their contribution to the new documentary, Eun Ho and Sol Yi get more involved with the protagonists, there are more meetings at Sol Yi’s bar and Eun Ho even starts helping her out with her business. In the end, the two of them start dating each other as well.

I would like to give another special mention to Woong’s parents, Choi Ho and Choi Yeon Ok. Because seriously, this drama just set the standard for the perfect parents HIGH. They were SO incredibly warm and loving, and I loved their silliness together as a married couple. Even when it turns out that his mother knew all along that Woong knew that he was adopted, she never treated him any differently because to her, he was her real son. This again forms a paradox with the parent-son relationship that Ji Woong and his mother (Park Mi Hyun) have as he wasn’t even treated like her real son even though he was. But yeah, Woong was definitely very lucky to end up in such a good household. 

Yeon Soo’s grandmother (Cha Mi Kyung) was also a nice supporting character in the show, and I’m glad nothing too bad happened to her before the end. I found her interesting because she also wasn’t a one-dimensional character. She had a lot of worries about Yeon Soo and she wanted her granddaughter to not only live for or like her. I liked that she’d just immediately taken Yeon Soo’s side in the breakup, and then after Yeon Soo told her she was the one who broke up with Woong, that she’d been the one to hurt him, she was still kind of tsundere about it, haha. I loved the scenes where she and Woong were alone and Woong was just a puppy on edge to every single movement she made. Of course she would always stand by Yeon Soo, but I’m glad she didn’t let it cloud her judgment too much, you could tell she secretly liked Woong and she was rooting for them. 

Lastly, I wanted to mention some final minor characters that I liked, namely Yeon Soo’s colleagues at work (Heo Joon Seok, Park Yeon Woo, Yoon Sang Jung and Cha Seung Yeop) and Im Tae Hoon (nicknamed ‘IMtern’ by Ji Woong), the intern at the documentary team. Imtern (Lee Seung Woo) really stole my heart, haha, I felt so bad for him that he got on Ji Woong’s team as he was having NONE of it. 

Before I go on to my cast comments, I want to briefly say something about the relationship dynamic between Woong and Yeon Soo. I wanted to make a special mention of it since in my last review of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, I was thrown off by how much the characters’ personalities seemed to change as soon as they confirmed their feelings for each other and started dating. After that I guess I just started paying more attention to it, lol. In this drama, even though the two main characters definitely became brighter when they got back together, I never once felt like they were acting out of character. They were honestly so adorable together. The way they reconnected was just really natural and cutely awkward, especially considering they’d been a couple before. I think it poses quite the challenge to act like you’re getting back into old feelings for someone that you used to have a 5-year long relationship with, but when it happened there was no doubt in the world that they’d never truly given up on what they felt for each other. So in this case I would say, mission accomplished, relationship dynamic approved! 

I believe I have mentioned most of what I wanted to discuss regarding the main characters and the story, I’m not sure if it was too short but if I remember more I’ll add it later. Now on to the cast comments before I conclude with some final remarks.

Honestly, Choi Woo Shik outdid himself in this role. Apart from Parasite I don’t think I’ve seen him in a main lead role before, but this role was MADE for him. It made me see him in a completely different light. He balanced the different sides of Woong so well, and I was really impressed with his unexpected ability to change his expressions so subtly yet so significantly. During the scene where Nua told him that he pitied him, at some point there was this sudden change in his gaze and it gave me goosebumps. At first I thought he was getting angry, but it turns out that that was a look of unmistaken but still shocking realization that he experienced. Anyways, I really loved him in this series, he was amazing and so was his chemistry with Yeon Soo’s actress. Other things I’ve seen him in include Rooftop Prince, Fated to Love You, Fight For My Way and The Package and yeah, Parasite. To think it’s been 4 years since his last drama, though! He’s been doing more movies lately, apparently.

I’ve only seen Kim Da Mi before in Itaewon Class, and these are the only two drama series she’s done so far. I was wondering how she would be since her iconic performance in Itaewon Class, and I have to say that it was very nice to see a brighter side to her, but also to see her portray multiple layers. I remember not really finding her character in Itaewon Class very sympathetic, to the point where I wasn’t even feeling the ship of her with the male lead, but in this drama she occasionally melted my heart. She’s so cute and her face is so tiny!! I liked how she managed to balance those different sides, and with that her character’s development from stern and serious high school student to a more mature adult who was able to reflect on her own behavior from the past. I really liked her performance here.

Not me realizing that Kim Sung Chul is Ipsaeng from Arthdal Chronicles! I love seeing actors I know from Arthdal as modern-time people in other series, haha, it creates such a weird paradox. Other than that I haven’t seen him in any other drama series yet, but who knows when I’ll get to see more of him! Compared to Ipsaeng, Ji Woong was like the total opposite kind of character. He was serious and detached and as I said, at times I wasn’t really sure if I 100% liked him or not. But I think most of it really had to do with his neglectful upbringing and he turned out well enough in the end. It was interesting to see him act so differently from what I’d seen of him before! 

I haven’t seen anything of Noh Jung Eui before, I just see she was Park Shin Hye’s younger version in Pinocchio, but that’s too long ago for me to remember. She seemed so familiar to me, though, I really thought I knew her from something else. Anyways, as I’ve mentioned, I still have some question marks around NJ’s character. She was definitely just as multi-layered as the other characters, but in her case I never really became certain of her intentions. On the one hand it seemed like she was struggling with her life as a celebrity, but on the other hand it also partially felt like she was imposing on herself the ideas that she couldn’t have any friends, because even if you’re a celebrity, you can still have friends as far as I know, it’s not against the rules or anything, right? Anyways, she hid her loneliness mostly with humor, especially towards Woong, so it wasn’t always clear how serious she was being. In the end, I believe she also made up her mind to start following her own heart, but I’m not sure what exactly that meant to her in terms of actual plans. I’ll keep saying it, she’s a bit of an enigma!

I hadn’t seen anything with Ahn Dong Goo yet either, but some of his dramas are still on my to watch list. I guess he’s only been starring in drama series starting from 2019, so he’s quite the new face! I liked Eun Ho a lot, he really brought in a fresh breeze and always made the people around him feel comfortable. His dynamic with Woong was also very funny, as they had such a stark contrast. I liked that, even when he seemed like a fool to Sol Yi in the beginning, he did eventually prove himself to be really reliable and cool, without even changing anything about himself. It just takes getting to know someone, I guess! 

At this point, Park Jin Joo is just a classic addition to any drama. She seems to be in almost every Netflix K-Drama I watch these days! I know her from The Girl Who Sees Smells, Jealousy Incarnate, Reunited Worlds, While You Were Sleeping, Encounter, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, Lovestruck in the City and she’s also done a lot of cameos. She still hasn’t gotten rid of the ‘best friend’ role curse, though, I believe it should be time for her to become her own female lead – she’s such an icon. And even though I’ve already seen her in so many different series, she still surprised me here. Like, I still feel like she showed something new and that’s pretty impressive.

Park Won Sang always gets the friendly father role as far as I know, I know him from Dream High, Healer, W – Two Worlds, Fantastic, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Wife I Know and The King: Eternal Monarch (honestly, who WASN’T in The King). But he was a really funny and loveable dad in Our Beloved Summer as well, I loved how he and his wife never even blinked or shared a look as they thought back on adopting Woong, it was just meant to be for them. 

As I’ve mentioned in many a review before, Seo Jung Yeon has become one of my favorite middle-aged lady actresses. She just ALWAYS delivers, from minor to main role. I keep repeating the list, but she appeared in Valid Love, She Was Pretty, Descendants of the Sun, Moonlight Drawn by Clouds, Bride of the Water God, Come and Hug Me, Melting Me Softly, The King: Eternal Monarch, Run On, and a whole bunch of stuff I still want to watch. I couldn’t help but love the heck out of her as Woong’s mom in this drama. That scene at the end when Woong realized she knew that he knew about the adoption and there was nothing but pure love in her eyes as she looked at him and they ended up just bawling it out together T^T I just love her.

I haven’t seen anything with Jo Bok Rae before, but he also seems very familiar to me. Maybe I will see him in another drama in the future. Anyways, I liked how they kept his character on the side in this series, because of course he had a much more apparent role in the webtoon. I like how he became more goofy, as I remember his character from the webtoon being a bit more worrying about everything mapping out the way it was planned. But I liked that he became a real mentor to Ji Woong, even though he acted a bit silly sometimes. He was initially the person that kept him on the team no matter how many complaints they got about Ji Woong in the beginning when he was still inexperienced, and he was also one of the people reaching out to him when it became clear he was struggling with something. I think it was a nice gesture that he ended up shooting the documentary about Ji Woong’s mom so that Ji Woong himself could also be in it. 

I really liked Jeon Hye Won in this drama, Chae Ran was like the voice of reason that Ji Woong tried to block out for a long time but then couldn’t ignore in the end. It was really refreshing to have such a straightforward female character in the background who didn’t get too emotional but just remained practical until the end. Apparently she was in Because This Is My First Life, too! I’m also going to see her again in some other shows in the future, so I’m excited for that! 

I haven’t seen a lot of things with Cha Mi Kyung either, but I do see a couple of drama titles that are on my list. She also does a lot of movies, apparently. Anyways, I liked her as Yeon Soo’s grandmother. She wasn’t a typical grandmother who just approved of everything or who was just always nice to everyone. She had multiple layers as well and I really liked the dynamic between grandmother and granddaughter as well. They loved each other deeply, but Yeon Soo was definitely more affectionate towards her. Grandmother would frown and scoff but you could tell how much she loved her as well. She was a good judge of character, too. 

And of course I want to mention Kwak Dong Yeon AND Kang Ki Doong for their continuous iconic guest appearances. Kang Ki Doong’s appearance as Sol Yi’s ex-boyfriend was extra funny because we know that they are really close friends in real life. It just made for a very enjoyable moment. For Kwak Dong Yeon, I’m actually used to more eccentric roles from him, so it was interesting to see him as a very serious guest actor for once. These guys will just never disappoint.

Oh, before I forget! There was this guy that Yeon Soo was working with in the beginning, the person who urged her to get artist Go Oh on board. I actually initially thought he would get a much bigger role. I even thought that he would become like a love rival or something, but he just disappeared after two or three episodes. I was just reminded of him when I saw the cast list and I was like OH RIGHT THAT GUY. He was played by Lee Joon Hyuk and he also looked really familiar to me. And then I found out he was in Are You Human, Too? and I remember that I indeed wrote about him in my review that I hadn’t seen anything with him before. Well, now I remember him from something! 

Closing remarks! So yeah, I’m glad I finished this drama. It wasn’t a very spectacular series in terms of events and action, as I mentioned before, but that just gave more space to explore the main characters more deeply. I can personally place this drama in the same kind of category as Run On, mainly because of its healing message. All the characters were very humane and had good and bad personality traits. The typical thing was that they all took on their issues all by themselves without asking for (or even accepting) help and that they had to learn that it was okay to share and reach out. I thought it was nice how all of them managed to break free from their own invisible chains at the end, because it made such a big difference. I also liked the main couple, their chemistry together was really cute. It’s the kind of drama that not everyone will like, probably, but I did enjoy it. It may not have been the most thrilling thing I’ve seen, but I can still appreciate it for its simple and strong message. I would say it’s about letting go, as well as about letting people in at the right time. About dealing with loneliness/sadness and about not ignoring what the heart wants. 

This was for now the last drama that I pushed up on my list because I couldn’t wait to watch it. From now on I’m going back to my original watch list, which also includes some more Japanese and Chinese series, so I’m excited to mix it up again! Gotta love K-Drama, but sometimes it’s also nice to have a ‘change of scenery’, so to say. In the meantime I’ve also been watching multiple other non-Asian stuff on Netflix, so my watch schedule is tight!
Can’t wait to start on the next drama on my list. 

I’ll be back~