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.

Something in the Rain
(밥 잘 사주는 예쁜 누나 / Bap Jal Sajuneun Yeppeun Nuna / Pretty Noona Who Buys Me Food)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hi everyone! Summer is almost over and here we are with a new review. I actually meant to finish this one in August, but with my holidays and especially how crazy busy it got once I got back to work afterwards, I wasn’t able to. So unfortunately, no reviews in August! But on the other hand, this felt like a perfect drama to end the summer and to start the autumn season with! I was going to start on a newly hyped series first instead, but since it wasn’t completed yet, I decided that in the meantime, I would continue on with my list and this was also one that kept piquing my interest. I’m glad I finally got the chance to watch it, because it was certainly something! It has been on my list for a while, and I didn’t know anything other than that it was about a relationship between two people with an age gap, but there are definitely multiple things to say about it, so I’d say let’s get started!

Something in the Rain is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama, with each episode lasting about one hour and a half. The story is about Yoon Jin Ah (played by Son Ye Jin), a 35-year old woman who works at a chain coffee company. The company, called Coffee Bay, basically manages several coffee stores throughout the city. She’s a supervisor, which means that she has several stores under her supervision that she has to monitor and occasionally inspect in case there’s a decrease in sales or when they receive any complaints. She still lives at her parents’ house with her mother (Gil Hae Yeon), her father (Oh Man Seok) and her younger brother Seung Ho (Wi Ha Joon), a college student who prefers to spend his time gaming. Her best friend Seo Kyung Seon (played by Jang So Yeon) works at one of the coffee shops that Jin Ah owns. The two of them are like sisters, always meeting up after work, drinking together, taking care of each other. One day, Kyung Seon’s younger brother Seo Joon Hee (played by Jung Hae In) returns from the US branch of the game developing company he works at. Jin Ah and him have also known each other since they were young, and they get along very well. After meeting again (he works in the same office building as Jin Ah and lives on the same floor opposite Kyung Seon so they walk into each other a lot), they start hanging out more after work as well, getting dinner together, walking home together, etc. They’re not using any words to describe their relationship, but it’s pretty obvious to see that at least Joon Hee has a crush on Jin Ah, probably already had it for a while. Jin Ah is a bit more restrained at first, but it’s undeniable how comfortable she feels around Joon Hee. Everything just clicks so well between them, and it also doesn’t take that long for her to confirm the feelings between them.
What follows is the story of a heartwarming relationship between a younger guy and an older woman, who just really look like they’re meant to be together, but aren’t given the chance to silently and peacefully enjoy each other’s company once people start finding out. Especially Jin Ah’s mother becomes a very big nuisance, and of course the relationship also puts a strain on Jin Ah’s friendship with Kyung Seon. In the meantime, Jin Ah also has to deal with a couple of other annoying situations, such as a persistent ex-boyfriend and a sexual harrassment situation at work.

When I finished the first episode of this series, I was pretty mindblown. I thought it was SO good. I really just sat there thinking, ‘Seriously, how is it already THIS good?!’ And this opinion lasted until about halfway through the series. I’m not saying that it all suddenly went downhill for me or anything, but from some point on (from the point that people started finding out about their relationship and the real drama started), the ridiculousness of the situation took away some of the joy for me. The drama was dragged out and just became frustrating. I just couldn’t understand why people were making such a big fuss about Jin Ah and Joon Hee’s relationship. All the more because I just found out that they were literally only FOUR years apart. From people’s reactions in the show I thought there must’ve at least been a 10-year difference or something, but people were seriously judging them because she was only four years older than him?! This just confirms to me how ridiculous the whole thing was. Of course I’m going to go into much more detail, but I just wanted to have this explained from the start. My ranking after the first few episodes was a bit higher than what it is now after finishing the entire series.

When we meet Jin Ah in the first episode, we immediately get to see that she’s dealing with several annoying things. We see her get dumped by her boyfriend for not ‘exciting him anymore’. We see her get blamed at work for something that actually happens because a male director forgets to look into it and doesn’t admit to his mistake. We see her get pushed around and touched by male seniors during work dinners and karaoke parties. We see her get nagged by her mom as soon as she gets home. She doesn’t have it easy, but she also doesn’t go against it. It’s like she just doesn’t have the energy to fight it, so she just kind of rolls with it without addressing the real issues. She seems pretty easygoing, but in these situations, she’s a bit TOO easygoing. Honestly, in that sense, Jin Ah can be seen as a bit of a pushover. When her ex-boyfriend starts bothering her, she keeps agreeing to meet and talk with him, even though she should’ve known that it was only going to make things worse. When she finally decides to fight back against the sexual harrassment at work, she comes face to face with the fact that she’s been going along with it for about ten years. In the beginning it really seemed to me as if Jin Ah wasn’t as strong and independent as she initially came across as. She’s a 35-year old woman still living at her parents’ house, she can’t say no to people (especially toxic people), she can’t rebel against injustice even though she’s aware what’s going on. The only moments we see her be truly at peace is when she is with Kyung Seon and Joon Hee.

After their mom died and their dad abandoned them, Kyung Seon and Joon Hee have always been welcome at the Yoon house. Their parents knew each other, as friends of acquaintances (I’m not sure), and Jin Ah’s mom felt partially responsible for taking care of them after they were left alone. She would always cook for them when they’d visit and referred to them as her own ‘other’ children. Jin Ah and Kyung Seon are best friends, Joon Hee and Seung Ho are friends, they’re all like one big family and that’s how it has always been. So of course, when Jin Ah and Joon Hee start dating, in secret at first, that’s one thing to consider. Also, people at work would start looking at them different… Things would just change. Jin Ah seems to be a bit more occupied with this than Joon Hee. When they’re together, everything is perfect. When they’re around other people, Jin Ah definitely tends to care more about what other people are going to think. Admittedly, Joon Hee manages to persuade her not to think or care too much about it, for example when he takes her on a trip to meet his friends, who also don’t make a big deal about it. But still, there’s a duality about Jin Ah’s feelings towards her relationship with Joon Hee that I still can’t quite put my finger on. Even though it seems like she wants everyone to just leave them alone, she wants to just show her mom that she can’t force them apart and all that, it still seems to be a thorn in her side that she can’t get everyone to just be okay with her and Joon Hee’s relationship. And this eventually leads to a conflict between them in which it’s brought up that, after all, Joon Hee might be more ‘immature’ than her in the sense that he doesn’t (want to) care about this stuff while she finds she’s unable to fully ignore it. Whether this truly has to do with maturity, IDK, but that’s what it came down to.

Let’s talk a bit more about their relationship, starting from the beginning. Honestly, I thought it was a nice twist from the start to find out the two leads already knew each other. It wasn’t established from the get-go that they were acquainted, so when they met for the first time -as shown in the series- (that beautiful scene of him riding his bicycle in circles around her and her just bursting with laughter), it really felt like a nice and comfortable reunion between two old friends that hadn’t seen each other in a while. Even when they’re not together yet, and let’s be clear: Joon Hee REALLY respects her boundaries while they’re still figuring stuff out, we get to see that even though they’re not trying to get too involved in each other’s business, they do throw sideway glances when they hear the other is going out with another guy/woman. They’re not stopping each other but they’re definitely already ‘minding’ each other’s business. And then, when Jin Ah finally (literally) grabs Joon Hee’s hand, he’s ready to just dive right in. What starts as a series of dinners and aiaigasa walks in the rain, evolves into a series of late night phone calls, late night drives and visits to Joon Hee’s house, any opportunity they can get to meet up and talk and share the small details of their daily lives with one another. It’s a truly heartwarming relationship, and I loved each of these scenes. It’s just so fluffy and soft and sweet, and they just click so well together. You can really see all Jin Ah’s worries fall off her when she’s with Joon Hee, she enjoys his company so much. From their hugs and kisses to their walks and other interactions, it just made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Looking at them, you’d wonder how anyone could be against this.

Seung Ho is the first to find out about it, although I don’t completely remember how it happens. He has a conversation with Joon Hee earlier in the series, when the two aren’t together yet, in which Joon Hee tells him that he has a crush on a 35-year old woman and Seung Ho is like ‘Ewww, that’s like, my sister’s age!’ Little does he know, of course. He seems to be kind of disgusted by it at first, but it doesn’t take long before he (reluctantly) accepts it.
Jin Ah’s dad is the second one to find out, and he is actually told about it by Jin Ah’s ex-boyfriend, who means to use it as a way to sneak his way back into her family’s favor after they separated. This guy is going to get his own paragraph later on, but for now let’s just say that his plan doesn’t work, as Jin Ah’s dad actually seems pretty cool with the idea of his daughter dating a good guy who he’s known since childhood. I think his initial reaction was just to throw off the ex, but he did seem relatively cool with it, overall. I feel like people want to make him look like another toxic parent, but he was nothing like the mom.
When Kyung Seon finds out, they have a whole other issue on their hands. Because this isn’t the same as a random person discovering their secret, this is the person closest to the both of them. For Kyung Seon, there is definitely a factor of betrayal in this relationship. I don’t know how it would’ve been if they had been honest with her about it as soon as their relationship started going that way, so that she would’ve been aware of it from the start, but she actually finds out about it when she discovers Joon Hee’s sketchbook full of drawings of Jin Ah (one with a lipstick kiss on it), and starts connecting the dots all by herself. She’s pissed about it for a while, and even after she and Jin Ah make up and seem to move past it, something definitely breaks in their friendship. I don’t quite understand why Kyung Seon chose this kind of behavior toward Jin Ah, because she must’ve known she never had any malicious intentions towards Joon Hee, but she becomes pretty quick to judge her best friend whenever there is even the slightest suggestion that what is going on between the two of them isn’t serious. For example, the way she reacts when she busts Jin Ah at that blind date and doesn’t even give her a chance to explain what she’s doing there. She just immediately accuses her of toying with Joon Hee’s feelings and looking down on him, while she should’ve known there had to be a reason. She knew how much Jin Ah loved Joon Hee and that she wouldn’t just throw him aside for a blind date after they’d just gotten Kyung Seon’s approval. It just didn’t make any sense to me, the only thing I can think of is that she was already on edge because she was meeting her father at that moment, and she just snapped or something. But even after that, she continues to be angry with her, all the more after facing the consequences with Jin Ah’s mom, although she also knows that that doesn’t come from Jin Ah. She just puts the whole Yoon family in one box and that isn’t fair. All in all, their friendship never becomes completely the same again.
And then there is Jin Ah’s mom, the biggest obstacle of them all. She just doesn’t want to accept it. The only thing she cares about is for Jin Ah to marry a guy who is from a good (wealthy) background and who has a good (stable) financial status. Those are her criteria, feelings aren’t as important as status. That’s probably also why she keeps nagging Jin Ah to make up with her ex-boyfriend, even after he cheated on her, sexually harrassed, stalked and threatened to kill her. I mean, there’s a limit to being conservative and wanting a good and stable marriage for your child. Treating your adult child like they can’t make their own decisions… the gaslighting was NEXT LEVEL. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen such a gaslighting character in a K-Drama before. Everyone else was being crazy and unreasonable, and she was the victim because no one could see her point of view. It didn’t occur to her that maybe that was because her point of view was just ridiculous. Seriously, at some point the entire family was so done with her behavior, it was almost amusing. They’d go through this whole drama, explosive fight and all, then she would crawl into bed wallowing in self-pity for a while and you’d just hope she would come to her senses, and then she’d just come back to Jin Ah and tell her she set her up on another blind date. Like, just refusing to accept the situation as it was. It was crazy. She was crazy.
And the worst part was that she was HORRIBLE to Kyung Seon and Joon Hee after finding out. Even though she used to act like a second mother to them, as soon as she found out about her daughter’s involvement with Joon Hee, she couldn’t just calmly tell them that she wasn’t at peace with their relationship. Nah, she had to drag the Seo siblings through the mud, disrespect and look down on them where they stood, telling them they didn’t deserve to become a part of their family. They could never be on the same level as them, with their poor background and lack of stable foundation. Just because their mother died and jerk father abandoned them, as if that was any of their fault. It was disgusting. I really couldn’t believe this woman. She literally caused Jin Ah to break up with Joon Hee right in front of her, just to shut her up. Jin Ah even agreed to go on a blind date just so her mom would stop bringing it up. Of course it didn’t mean anything, it was just a way to keep her mom off her case for another while.
Seriously, her mom ruined everything. And she just wouldn’t admit it! She’d keep saying that Jin Ah was the one who created ‘this mess’, and everyone else was treating her like the bad guy while she just ‘wanted the best for her children’. She was the kind of person that, whenever someone corrected or tried to educate her on something, she would just scoff. The scoffing was excruciatingly annoying, because it just proved that she would never change her mindset. Even when she suddenly ‘apologized’ to Jin Ah in the final episode, I didn’t buy it. I put apology in brackets because it was pure BS to me. ‘I’m sorry, there are just things I need to do as a mom, I couldn’t bear you suffering the consequences of your own decisions.’ Seriously?! Fuck off. And I couldn’t believe Jin Ah actually HUGGED IT OUT with her. Like… what the heck was that?!

After going through a lot of shit regarding Jin Ah’s mom, Joon Hee suddenly decides to move back to the US and work at his company’s branch there again, intending to take Jin Ah with him. This, however, comes at the worst possible time for Jin Ah, since she’s just trying to become independent. She moves out of her parents’ house, finds her own place, and also at work the sexual harrassment case she’s fighting is at its peak. She can’t just abandon everything now and flee to the US. So the two break up.
Some time later, probably a few years (there wasn’t any “….years later” mention as far as I know), they meet again at Seung Ho’s wedding. Joon Hee is just temporarily back in South-Korea for a holiday, and Jin Ah is dating another good-for-nothing guy who’s constantly on the phone for work and doesn’t care to make any time for her. He is, of course, exactly the kind of guy her mom approves of. Anyways, as soon as Jin Ah and Joon Hee see each other again, they both know it was never over between them. Jin Ah wants to try going back to how they were before they even started dating, but they both know that’s not possible. She only suggests it because she doesn’t want it to be awkward when they’ll run into each other. In any case, Jin Ah decides to take up an offer from a friend to live with her on Jeju Island and help her out with her coffee business there.
Just to give another example of Gaslighting Mom: she actually calls Jin Ah “childish” for moving to Jeju Island all of a sudden. Like, seriously? Your nearly 40-year old daughter finally moves out of her parents’ house to start her independent life as an adult away from all the toxicness of her home environment. Sounds like the most mature decision ever to me. Her mom just had a really backwards way of thinking, I guess. After Jin Ah moves to Jeju, Joon Hee comes across the ‘I love you’ voice recording she once left him, officially decides he can’t live without her, goes after her and they make up and stay at Jeju together. Happy ending.

Let’s address some stuff that has already been mentioned before but that I will now talk about more elaborately.
First of all, Lee Gyu Min. Lee Gyu Min (played by Oh Ryoong) is Jin Ah’s boyfriend in episode 1, the one who breaks up with her. Jin Ah is very hurt, since they were together for a pretty long time (a couple of years, at least) and her family loved him. But then she finds out that he’d actually been cheating on her with a younger woman, someone who probably ‘excited’ him more (nice cameo of Z.Hera, by the way). She pulls a revenge plan and causes a situation that makes Younger Woman break up with Gyu Min. Honestly, she could’ve let it slide, but I definitely don’t blame her for wanting to expose him for the cheating bastard that he was. The Younger Woman was better off without him, too, Jin Ah was just helping her out! Anways, for some inexplicable reason, Gyu Min then comes crawling back to Jin Ah, twisting the situation so that it almost looks as if SHE was the one that dumped HIM and he needed to persuade her to get back together. Like, he literally pulls the desperate ‘I will win you back!’ on her. He freaking cheated on her and dumped her himself! Jin Ah isn’t having any of it, and she tells him very clearly, multiple times, that it is over between them. Even Kyung Seon, who also knows him (I believe they all went to college together or something), gets involved and tells him to back off, but he just won’t take the message. He even goes straight to her parents behind her back trying to get back their approval. Her parents don’t even know about the cheating at this point, and he just uses their existing affection for him to his advantage. A tricky situation occurs when Jin Ah tells him and her parents she likes someone else and just then Joon Hee enters with Seung Ho. Gyu Min sees this as his way out. Jin Ah was ALSO cheating on HIM, so she didn’t have any right to accuse him of cheating! This guy, seriously. If that wasn’t enough, he turns up at the coffee store Jin Ah temporarily works at (she gets demoted at work to personally help out at one of the stores she manages) and forces himself on her. Even after already losing all of his dignity, even in front of her parents, he keeps coming back to her. He sends her a flower bouquet with a picture of them in bed together. When Joon Hee finds out and visits him at his house, he finds all these pictures of Jin Ah half-naked from when they were still together. He loses it and beats Gyu Min up. This just strengthens Gyu Min in his mindset of ‘being wronged just the same’. Every single time he bothers Jin Ah and she tries to talk to him again to convince him again that it’s over between them, it’s just another opening to him. In the end, he uses a situation in which Jin Ah actually needs his help (she can’t cut the contract of her old phone without his agreement because it’s under his name) to kidnap her in his car. Instead of driving her to the phone store, he starts speeding on the highway and tells her ‘we’re going to die together’. Jin Ah even gets injured as a result, and STILL he’s not locked up. Until the very end, he keeps treating Jin Ah like SHE’S the person being unreasonable. When they finally part ways after he signs the agreement to cut her old phone contract, and Jin Ah actually EXTENDS HER HAND TO HIM to part ways as adults, he just scoffs and walks away like SHE’S the crazy person. He was a delusional piece of shit. I was more than happy when he finally disappeared off screen.

The level of gaslighting that Jin Ah was facing didn’t just stop at Gyu Min and her mother. It’s time to now address her work situation.
So as I explained before, Jin Ah works at Coffee Bay, a coffee trade company that manages a chain of Coffee Bay stores throughout the city. (I would definitely think twice about joining a company that has as its slogan ‘Roasting One Dream At A Time’, but hey, that’s just me.) When she’s not out to check in on the store managers she works with, she’s in the office. There are a few colleagues to introduce here, starting with the Two Scumbags.
Scumbag No. 1: Mr. Nam (Park Hyuk Kwon). I believe he was a director or something. Anyways, he’s the person responsible for a mistake that Jin Ah has to pay for during the promotional event of a new coffee product at one of her stores in the first episode. He forgot to approve the document for it while she’d handed it in perfectly in time, and then just pretended he never got it. Heck, he SHREDDED the thing so they wouldn’t be able to accuse him. And then just went on in her face like ‘hey what happened, you’re usually so good at your job’. Seriously, the audacity of men in this series still baffles me. Anyways, he’s a typical coward guy who just wants to exert the power that he has in the company without ever getting criticized for it. The thing he has going for him is his rank, because it assures that no one of lower rank can go against him. Everyone knows that he’s responsible, without a doubt, but no one says anything and that’s how he thrives. The only person capable of reprimanding him is Mr. Jo (Kim Jong Tae), the CEO (I guess?). I just felt like he knew he was responsible too, but he just wasn’t able to do anything without evidence, either way it was frustrating. Anyways, Mr. Nam is the coward scumbag who shows his true colors once Jin Ah starts her case against the sexual harrassment: he literally has someone create fake screenshots of fake Line conversations in which Jin Ah sends him messages. This way he is able to show that she went along with everything he ever said to her, it was disgusting how he abused his position.
Scumbag No. 2: Mr. Gong (Lee Hwa Ryong), Jin Ah’s team leader who always enjoyed reprimanding his female employees on how incompetent they were at the office (still can’t get over the fact that they’d just put earplugs in whenever he summoned them to his office, as a standard precaution), only to get really drunk and touchy towards those same employees during work dinners. And there were a LOT of work dinners. Jin Ah would be their usual victim, as she would initially just smile, come over from three tables away just to pour their drinks and cut their barbecue meat for them, and laugh it off as they ‘accidentally’ pulled down her bra straps while she was dancing along to the karaoke sessions. It makes all the other female employees very uncomfortable as well, but we see that Jin Ah is not the only one ‘playing the game’. The nasty thing is that for the majority of them, it’s just something annoying that they feel like they have to deal with as it is ‘part of the job’. It’s nauseating.
At some point, Ms. Jung Young In (played by Seo Jung Yeon) – I don’t exactly know what her position in the company is, but she is close to Mr. Jo and higher than Mr. Nam – issues an initiative through which all female employees can write down their experience with sexual harrassment on the work floor. As a result, all male employees become very anxious to find out more about what they will write down – I guess they are partially aware of their own actions after all.
Let me just go over Jin Ah’s fellow female colleagues. First of all, there’s Kang Se Young (played by Jung Yoo Jin). She’s Jin Ah’s top competitor and very eager to get a promotion. She’s also very proactive when it comes to pursuing what she wants, especially when it comes to guys. She develops an interest in Joon Hee, and even goes so far as to take over Kyung Seon’s store from Jin Ah after she gets demoted, partially to get to know Joon Hee’s sister and suck up to her a bit. After she finds out Joon Hee and Jin Ah are together, she definitely harbors some grudgy feelings towards Jin Ah. I’m not sure if it’s because of these grudgy feelings, but she even accepts a deal with Mr. Nam to keep him informed on the female employees’ actions regarding the sexual harrassment case, just because he promises to get her a promotion. She seems to be someone who, like Jin Ah, also just grins and bears it, but doesn’t find it worth the aggravation to try to fight it. Because of her deal with Mr. Nam, she even starts demotivating a couple of female employees to share their experiences because it will just backlash and they’d risk losing their jobs. Also, because Jin Ah is first in line at the firing zone, they risk getting associated with her and how she always just went along with it. All in all, even though I didn’t think Se Young was a bad person per se, she wasn’t too sympathetic either. In the end, she didn’t even get the promotion even though she snitched on her own team, which was a bit sad for her. But she and Jin Ah end things on a fairly positive note when Jin Ah resigns.
Then there’s Geum Bo Ra (played by Joo Min Kyung). She’s the snarkiest of the colleagues, but mostly because she’s the most aware of the male employees’ behavior, recognizes it exactly for what it is, and doesn’t bother to even try as if she’s okay with it. She actively tries to get out of work dinners or any kind of situation in which she’ll have to spend time with these men, and for good reason. She’s one of the most active participants in trying to get all female employees to share their experiences in the case, even though she also doesn’t know if it’ll make any difference. She clashes with Se Young the most, and is actually the first colleague to find out about Joon Hee and Jin Ah’s relationship as she accidentally walks in on them during a restaurant date. Instead of judging them, she relishes in the fact that she now has a way to tease Se Young, because she knows she has a crush on Joon Hee. Bo Ra becomes a good friend to Jin Ah, and she’s also the person who invites her to come live with her in Jeju, where she starts her own café.
Then there’s Lee Ye Eun (played by Lee Joo Young), the ‘maknae’ of the team. She looks up to Jin Ah a lot and always comes to her after work dinners to complain about the male seniors being all touchy again. Especially in her case, as the youngest of the team, this was hard. She was in the least ideal position to speak up, and even though she wanted to back Jin Ah up in her case, she did get affected by Se Young’s words as well and still tried to not get associated with Jin Ah for a while. She does remain close to Jin Ah’s family, as she’s also invited to Seung Ho’s wedding and by that time she even has a baby already.
There was this one guy, Mr. Choi (Lee Chang Hoon) who seemed to be acting as a kind of spy as well. I think he wasn’t particularly as guilty as Mr. Nam and Mr. Gong were in the case, but he saw the situation as a way to redeem himself and get a promotion as well. He agreed to help Ms. Jung to get evidence of the sexual harrassment from the male seniors. He literally went to have dinner with them and try to get them to talk while wearing a recording pen in his breast pocket, lol. He gathered a bunch of video evidence as well, of the male seniors ‘accidentally’ falling on top of Jin Ah and grabbing her arms and legs under the table etc. As viewers, this is also the first time we see how much Jin Ah has had to deal with, and I could just feel to the core how Ms. Jung reacted to it, with a sigh and a heartfelt ‘…oh, Jin Ah…’ It was really bad. And at to the moment Jin Ah was in the middle of it, when Joon Hee proposed going to the US together, it really did seem like she wouldn’t win the case.
I thought it was nice how they revealed she did, though. When she came to the office that last time to hand in her resignation, the way Ms. Jung reacted almost felt like she’d build up a bad reputation and Ms. Jung just wanted to keep her on because she’d always liked her so much. But then when she went down the elevator with Mr. Jo and he just casually mentioned that ‘Mr. Nam still claims to be innocent even after the verdict’!! I was like, ‘wait, does that mean she DID win?!’ So that’s good, at least. It really can’t have been easy for her, especially after Joon Hee left and she had to deal with it all by herself.
The only thing that was amusing to me about this whole thing was how antsy all the male seniors became when the whole case started and how Mr. Nam and Mr. Gong kept trying to throw each other under the bus. Mr. Gong kept claiming that he did everything just because Mr. Nam had ordered him to, it was so lame it was almost entertaining. I LOVED the part where Jin Ah asked them each separately to join her at the movie theatre but then just made them go there together and they couldn’t face each other at work the next day. It was very satisfying.

The last story arc I wish to talk about before concluding is the one about Kyung Seon and Joon Hee’s father (played by Kim Chang Wan). From what we learn, he abandoned his family and is already onto his third wife after the Seo siblings’ mom. What exactly happened, I don’t know, but Kyung Seon and Joon Hee resent him. When he suddenly turns up back in South Korea (he resides in Canada), Kyung Seon only agrees to meet up with him once, as a kind of obligation she has to her father, but Joon Hee refuses to even take a look at his face. As he is an old friend/acquaintance of Jin Ah’s parents, he contacts her father as well and this unfolds into a very dramatic outburst of emotions at Jin Ah’s parents’ place (also the scene where her mother does her whole disrespectful rant towards Kyung Seon and Joon Hee). Jin Ah meets their dad a couple of times without Joon Hee knowing, and he’s pretty pissed when he finds out because she shouldn’t get involved in it. However, she manages to persuade him to have one final talk with his dad before he leaves for Canada again.
I can’t really figure out what the dad’s deal was, honestly. He never contacted his kids, but then when he suddenly came to South Korea he just expected them to greet him normally. He also doesn’t oppose Joon Hee and Jin Ah’s relationship for a second, on the contrary, he reprimands Jin Ah’s parents for being so against it, only making things worse in the process. There was the one scene in which he suddenly burst out crying in his hotel room and I was like ‘???’ I guess it was just about seeing the kind of situation his kids were in with the whole love affair? But I didn’t quite get it. I guess the most important thing was that he eventually was able to make amends with Joon Hee, and that it became clear that he didn’t stop caring about his children completely.

Can I just remark on the VERY satisfying soundtrack of this series? It was an all-English soundtrack with very jazzy, bluesy tracks and I thought that was a very original choice. I kept singing along to the opening sequence track ‘Stand By Your Man’ by Tammy Wynette, and I also loved the tracks by Rachael Yamagata, ‘Something in the Rain’, ‘La La La’, and ‘Be Somebody’s Love’. The soundtrack really did the show justice. Heck, they even chose ‘Something in the Rain’ as the show’s English title! Speaking of which, I want to comment on the show’s title, both the English one and the Korean one (‘Pretty Noona/Lady/Sister Who Buys Me Food’). I get where they come from. For the Korean title, this is where the relationship between Jin Ah and Joon Hee starts. At the beginning, instead of asking her out, Joon Hee blurts out if she’ll buy him dinner more often. When they have a fight at the end, he literally uses the phrase ‘do you really want to go back to the time where I was just your younger brother’s friend who’d ask you to buy him dinner?’. The Korean title is clearly written from Joon Hee’s perspective, even though Jin Ah seems to be the main protagonist as we see most events through her eyes. It’s interesting how they used the starting point of their relationship as the title, while the story goes much further than that.
For the English title, if you look at the lyrics of ‘Something in the Rain’, it really fits their relationship when they’re together, and they also take quite a few walks in the rain.
Now that I’ve considered both titles more, I can better understand the choices for both of them, but in the beginning I honestly didn’t feel like either embodied the full essence of the story. Yet, as I say, I can see where they might’ve come from and there’s probably a logical explanation for why they chose these titles in the end.

On to the cast comments!

I was excited to see something with Son Ye Jin after Crash Landing on You, even though of course Something in the Rain is from a few years earlier. I just don’t think I’ve seen her in a lot of things, so I always like to see different performances from actors in different shows. I think she made Jin Ah an incredibly beautiful, vulnerable woman. Even though she starts out as kind of a pushover, and I might’ve gotten a little frustrated by her passiveness when it came to talking things through with some people, I couldn’t stop rooting for her. Especially after seeing how much gaslighting she had to deal with, everyone from her mother to her colleagues making her feel like she was the one being unreasonable and crazy, I just really hoped she would manage to break free from them all. I definitely loved her the most in her scenes with Kyung Seon and Joon Hee, because that’s when she came apart and showed herself without restraint, that’s where she felt safest and most comfortable. The fact that I didn’t understand where she came from all of the time – like there were moments when I was like ‘Jin Ah, WHY?!’ – just made her all the more human to me. Our emotions don’t always make sense. There are always bits of immaturity and selfishness that may come out at the wrong moment. But I really felt like she was trapped in every single situation in her life, at home, in her relationship with Gyu Min (even after it ended), at work, and Joon Hee helped her fully come to herself and embrace the power she had within to fight her way out of those prisons. Her acting was very natural and I liked it.

So this is the drama that made everyone fall in love with Jung Hae In! I honestly hadn’t seen him in a main role before, only in some side character roles, like in Blood (he was the ML’s best friend who got killed by the bad vampire man T^T), While You Were Sleeping, and of course his guest appearance in Goblin. It was nice seeing this new side of him. His smile is so endearing, and I loved how he just couldn’t stop himself from smiling whenever he saw Jin Ah, like it was just a cause-and-effect thing. I think Joon Hee was a pretty uncomplicated character, even with his family background, it didn’t really seem to leave a very dark side in him. He was easygoing and hist loyalties lay in the right places. He really went for what he wanted, both in his relationships and in his career. There’s a few more of his dramas on my list, so I’m curious to see more sides of him now! I really loved his chemistry with Son Ye Jin, it didn’t look unnatural at all and I also wasn’t bothered in the slightest by their (minor) age difference.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen Jang So Yeon before in Touch Your Heart and Crash Landing on You, but I remember her as a middle-aged lady? And here she seemed so much younger? Like, I suppose Kyung Seon and Jin Ah were around the same age, but she definitely didn’t feel like 40 to me! It was some years before the series I just mentioned, so maybe it really is just a matter of her getting older, lol. Anyways, Kyung Seon was a really chipper and energetic lady. I liked her character, and also her friendship dynamic with Jin Ah. She really was like an older sister to her, also in how she felt like she needed to protect her from Gyu Min and everything, because Jin Ah just didn’t seem to be able to stand up for himself against his antics. I also get how she’d feel like Jin Ah and Joon Hee betrayed her trust by going behind her back like that, but I did find it disappointing how she was determined to stay mad at Jin Ah, even though she ought to know her best friend would never be so heartless as to treat them the way her mother did. I found it a pity that she put Jin Ah in the same box as their parents, as in that their whole family was like that. I just wanted the two women to be like they used to be, the bestest of friends, and even in the end it felt like there was still a lot to fix, even though Kyung Seon seemed more forgiving already. It was nice to see a completely different side from her than I’d seen so far, to see her be more goofy and energetic and youthful.

I had no idea Wi Ha Joon was in this!! The first episode gave me so many nice surprises, there were all these actors in it that I knew and loved. He was the typical younger brother to Jin Ah, the one that was coddled by his mother the most even though he was spending his time on gaming more than he did on his studies. Despite his attitude, he did care for his sister, as became clear how he started acting towards Gyu Min when he found out what he’d done to her. His friendship with Joon Hee was a bit more casual than the one between the two women, which was probably for the best in the whole love affair thing because Seung Ho came around much easier than Kyung Seon. I mean, finding out your friend is dating your older sister would probably throw everyone off in some way, and for him it was just at the level of ‘do your thing, just don’t make out in front of me’. I’ve only seen him before in Romance is a Bonus Book, but I liked him so much there that I cheered when I saw him appear here, haha. I feel like he has so many sides to his acting as well, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of him.

Jung Yoo Jin has this strong vibe around her, I feel like she always gets clever and confident roles. She’s still stuck in side characters that never get the guy, though. I’ve seen her in W – Two Worlds, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (although I don’t remember her from there), Thirty But Seventeen and Romance is a Bonus Book. Anyways, I thought her performance as Kang Se Young was good because for the first time I didn’t find her to be very sympathetic, but that also made the character interesting to me. You always have different types of people who react in their own way to situations, and I guess she was more interested in securing success in her career no matter the means, than she was in standing up for women’s equality on the workfloor. To each her own, I suppose. I’m still waiting for the day that she gets her big break and maybe even a main role!

I really liked Joo Min Kyung as Geum Bo Ra. I hadn’t seen her in any drama before yet, but her character probably went through the biggest change of all, simply because she really became Jin Ah’s person. At the beginning, it didn’t seem like she was particularly interested in becoming friends with anyone in the office, but the events just brought them together and I love how they became so close that they’d even start living together in Jeju. I thought she brought a really good and important energy to the show, because she was the only female employee who from the start spoke up about what was really happening while the rest was still trying to swallow their pride. I’m really curious to see her in more shows!

This is probably the most feminine role I’ve ever seen Lee Joo Young play in a show. After Weightlifting Fairy and Itaewon Class I wondered if she’d ever get a role in which she wouldn’t be cast as a short-haired tomboy, but here we are! I thought she was very cute in the beginning, as she kind of attached herself to Jin Ah but also really looked up to her and respected her. It must have been hard for her to continuously back Jin Ah up, especially when being driven by the fear of losing your job and getting a reputation when you’ve just started out. I felt really bad for her whenever she was left unable to escape from the male seniors forcing her to stay and have dinner with them, but it was purely because she didn’t have the courage to stand up for herself yet. She was always just tagging along with the bigger group. It was much easier to leave together with the other women as a collective than when she was by herself. I didn’t know she was in this drama, and she had a completely different presence from what I’d seen from her so far, so I hope she can keep surprising me!

I was BEYOND happy to see Seo Jung Yeon again and I LOVED her the instant her character appeared. She’s such a queen. Again, I don’t even remember exactly what her position in the company was, but she definitely saw all the male seniors for what they were, even though she didn’t speak a word out loud – she would just give them this resigned but disappointed and judging look, lol. And I loved how, even though what she could do was limited, she always had Jin Ah’s back and she really wanted to bring those scumbags to justice for her. I really, really love this actress, and I have already written many cast comments about her but I will always mention her because she deserves to be acknowledged for the amazing actress that she is.

I didn’t know Oh Man Seok from anything else, but from all the male characters in the show, he was someone I didn’t despise as much. I feel like everyone was always talking about Jin Ah’s parents as one, that they were on the same page about Jin Ah and Joon Hee’s relationship etcetera, but I kept correcting them in my head, that it was just the mom. I think the dad did a good job of trying to go against her, but there was just no correcting her mindset. I liked the dad! I think he was really easygoing and he really didn’t seem to see it as such a big deal when he found out about the love affair. I like how he held the biggest grudge against Gyu Min, and when the latter came to him to ‘reveal’ Jin Ah and Joon Hee’s involvement as a way to regain his trust, the dad was just like, ‘Actually, I’m glad that it’s Joon Hee, I’ve known him forever, and now at least I know that my daughter is with a good and trustworthy man’. BURN!! I thought it was pretty funny how different he was from his wife, it kept me wondering how the heck they ended up in a marriage like this together. At least he was trying to make the most of his retirement, haha. Anyways, despite what other people might think, I thought he was the least bad of Jin Ah’s family.

After seeing her as the FL’s mother in Melting Me Softly, I wrote the following about Gil Hae Yeon:

“I want to give a final shoutout to Gil Hae Yeon (…) I thought this actress was really good. She wasn’t overdramatic, I think she portrayed her emotions very realistically and it really touched me. (…) the duality of her thoughts and feelings was just very human in my opinion. I was impressed by her acting, even as a relatively minor character. So well done, madam!!”
– Melting Me Softly review, January 20, 2022

After seeing her as the FL’s mother in Something in the Rain, I will write about how much I hated her character, haha. No, but seriously, I guess it just means that she performed very well! I will never talk bad about actors, let that be clear. Her character was just unbearable to me, like if she were my mom I wouldn’t even be able to live in the same house as her for as long as Jin Ah did. I can’t remember I’ve been this baffled by someone’s disrespect and inability to self-reflect before. I still can’t understand where she’s coming from, even after pondering the story again. When I told my friend about her, she said, ‘Oh, like the mother in Boys Over Flowers’, and I actually replied with, ‘I dare say she’s worse’ and I stand by it. It wasn’t just about not accepting someone because of their poor background, it went so much deeper than that.
On the other hand, it was really interesting to see this actress portray this kind of character, as I’ve only ever seen her as a ‘normal’, sweet and caring mother before. It definitely must have given the actress a challenge, and that I can respect.

Same went for Kim Chang Wan, to be honest. My first association of him is from You Who Came From The Stars, where he stole everyone’s heart. After that, I’ve seen him in several things, like 1st Shop of Coffee Prince, Hwarang, 20th Century Boy and Girl, Jugglers and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay. I can never get used to seeing him as an unsympathetic character, he just looks so kind! I’m glad that in the end he didn’t seem to be such a bad dad after all, like I actually am still wondering what he did to make his kids resent him so much. It might’ve been solely the fact that he left them after their mom died, but I almost got the impression that he did something else that was unforgiveable. Anyways, it was nice seeing him as another familiar face in this show.

To make a last mention of the great actors who portrayed the worst characters! I’m not even gonna lie, whenever either of these men came on screen, I legit pulled my sock off just so I could throw it at their faces! I’ll repeat, if you hate a character, that just means the actor did a great job! I know Park Hyuk Kwon from Dream High and Producer, apparently, and I see he’s also going to be in some dramas that are still on my list, so I hope he won’t be such a bad character in those. Same goes for Lee Hwa Ryong, who I’ve just found out is in Arthdal Chronicles! I’ll have to pay better attention next time, although at least there he’s a sympathetic character, haha. I can’t say much about Oh Ryoong since I haven’t seen anything else of him, but he definitely set my teeth on edge as Gyu Min!

And with that I’ll end my cast comments!

For my conclusion, I just want to say that this was a commitment of a series. The episodes are pretty lengthy, and you really have to love a slow-paced series without too much action that is mostly focussed on emotion and character development. It really is, first and foremost, about Jin Ah and Joon Hee’s relationship and how their love fights to thrive in a world full of prejudice. It’s about going against social standards and conservative mindsets, including ones that lead to people being treated inequally in any kind of situation, be it in terms of gender or background. Every person needs to make a way for themselves in this world, no matter where you come from is. But love, that just bloody does whatever the heck it wants. It might be inconvenient, it might be messy, and people might think of it what they want, in the end it still always comes down to the two people involved in the love, not the people watching in from the outside.
I really loved Jin Ah and Joon Hee together, it was like two pieces of a puzzle, they just fit and clicked perfectly. I loved how natural and playful their acting was from the start, and the scenes in which they took walks together, had late night phone calls together, and especially when they just went out to see each other in the middle of the night, those scenes brought me so much comfort. To have a person like that. Someone that you can literally just run to whenever, not caring what anyone else might think. Isn’t that the dream? I’m not even talking just in a romantic way, I think it’s even a dream to have a friend or other kind of soulmate like that, who is just always there for you with open arms, whenever, wherever. So that’s what I really liked about it. The whole drama that was created and dragged out became a bit ridiculous to me, especially since there literally was no reason whatsoever why they shouldn’t be together. The people who needed to ‘get used to it’ (or rather, ‘get over it’) weren’t even directly involved in the relationship. It just didn’t make any sense to me how a bunch of outsiders seemed to claim so much ownership over their love.
As I mentioned before, even though my ranking of this show dropped a little towards the end, I still thought it was a good series, especially the beginning had me completely hooked. I also really appreciate how it dived so deeply into the sexual harrassment issue, since I feel like this is still very much a taboo thing. I feel like this really exposed something that happens a lot in real life, and I hope it also educated a lot of people that need to be educated in that aspect. I will always appreciate themes like this to be addressed, all the more in K-Drama since they still seem to hold back a lot when it comes to calling stuff out.

I saw that this year, a Chinese remake of this series came out called Love The Way You Are. I’m not sure if I’ll watch a remake of this one. I think the original one was unique in its own kind.

Before finally starting on my long-awaited, finally complete, hyped new release Netflix K-Drama (huh, which one could it be?), I will watch a short drama in-between that will serve as my palette cleanser. Then we’re off to a couple of more watchlist items and then I’m probably going to catch up on some more Netflix releases because they just keep piling up and I can barely keep up with them!
Anyways, I hope this was a worthwhile review to read and I promise I will be back soon.
Bye-bee!