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.

Summer Strike
(아무것도 하고 싶지 않아 / Amugotdo Hago Sipji Anha / I Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hello hello everyone! I hope everyone is managing to stay hydrated this summer, as these days it’s nauseatingly hot even on my usually cold end of the globe. After passing my test (yay!) and finally getting the chance to enjoy a proper ‘summer holiday’, I went right back into my drama list and as I teased in my previous review, I have some summer watches in store! The first one on my list was this one, as I saw glimpses of it and also talked with my friend about how the ‘introverted couple’ vibes it gave off seemed very endearing. It turned out to be very different from what I expected and I have multiple things to say about it, both positive and more critical. I have to say it gave me Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha vibes from the start and I definitely think there are some similarities, but it’s not my intention to make this a comparative analysis review. I want to state my thoughts and opinions while treating it as an individual series, because despite sometimes being a little more negative in my reviews, I still believe every series deserves an honest analysis.

Summer Strike is a 12-episode K-Drama with episodes lasting about 45~50 minutes. The story is about Lee Yeo Reum (played by Kim Seol Hyun), a twentysomething who works at a publishing company in Seoul. Despite seemingly living a busy and fruitful life with work and her boyfriend, she’s actually in a rut. She’s treated like a doormat at work and her boyfriend keeps reprimanding her for not standing up for herself more. After her mother unexpectedly passes away in a tragic accident that’s never specified, Yeo Reum one day instinctively decides not to go to work and just take a trip to the sea, and this makes her feel so good that she then decides to quit her job completely and move from Seoul to Angok Village, to literally go on ‘strike’ from her city life for an undetermined period of time. In her search to find a place to stay, she ultimately ends up living at a shabby place that was once a billiard hall. There’s no good electricity or security and she doesn’t initially get as much of a warm welcome or support from the neighbors as she would’ve liked, but she still manages to get around and befriend some people, among whom Ahn Dae Beom (played by Im Si Wan), who works at the local library. While initially unable to strike up a proper conversation with her, Dae Beom keeps showing her hospitality and kindness until their bond develops into something more than just neighborhood friends.
As her stay gets extended longer and longer, Yeo Reum ends up befriending a high school girl named Kim Bom (played by Shin Eun Soo) and her family, and several locals warm up to her more as well.
In the meantime, it’s revealed that Dae Beom is somehow related to the billiard hall where Yeo Reum is now staying and that something terrible has happened there in the past: when Dae Beom lived there as a kid, his older sister was killed there, and as he was the one to find her body he has a trauma about the place. When someone suddenly starts vandalizing Yeo Reum’s new home by spray-painting threats that refer to the murder of Dae Beom’s sister, we are introduced to a side plot of who is responsible for that.
Overall, it’s a story about a young woman taking a well-earned break in a seaside town and after initially encountering some hardships in trying to get along with the locals and getting confronted with the fact that people see her as an outsider, she makes some meaningful bonds and ultimately decides to stay and live there for good.

I have to say, I found the first episode very empowering. Looking at the life Yeo Reum was living, how she was treated at work and how even after her mother passed away her brother kept bothering her for money while Yeo Reum literally let go of everything she had, I was basically yelling at her to get out of there. When she decided not to get on that train that day and then just went ‘you know what, I’m outta here’, I was like YES GIRL DO IT. So that was pretty nice and immediately made me root for Yeo Reum. Despite the fact that she seemed really timid and hesitant to stand up for herself, she had some really powerful moments when she realized that she was, in fact, being treated unfairly and didn’t stand for it. There could’ve definitely been more consistency in that, but in any case it was really satisfying whenever she chose to stand up for herself. Because, to be fair, she had to stand up for herself A LOT. More than often for no reason at all.

Before I go on to elaborate on my criticisms, I would like to go over the main characters and their circumstances. The show principally follows Yeo Reum’s point of view. We meet her when she’s still in Seoul and, as she narrates herself, she gets stuck in a pattern where ‘she’s living but doesn’t feel alive’. It’s like she literally can’t catch a break. Her mother suddenly dies right after her boyfriend breaks up with her, and when her situation at work only gets worse after that (seriously, those managers were unbelievable) she suddenly feels the urge to get away from it all. It’s not easy to just drop your life and go away to clear your head, and the way she just flips that switch and opens herself up to the beauties of her new free life in an unfamiliar environment is a really empowering and admirable thing. You could also say that the fact that she chooses to stay even after people initially try to shoo her away confirms that she feels that she is in her right to be there and enjoy her break, despite what anyone else might think about her. I found that there were both strong and weaker characteristics to her character. As I mentioned already, the moments that she chooses to stand up for herself are the most satisfying because she WAS in her own right, she had all the right in the world to do nothing for a while and take a break and clear her head by the seaside. She didn’t do anything to disrupt the community life at Angok, she was just exploring the place, trying to settle down for however long she needed. And still, for some unclear reason, no one wanted her there. No one initially showed her any hospitality or kindness, no one even cared to learn about her circumstances, people just tried to kick her out as soon as she arrived and that was awful.
When she goes to the realtor and he starts showing her places, the only slightly liveable place turns out to be the former billiard hall, and she starts out with literally nothing. Even in the process of getting the hall, she faces issues when it turns out the son of the building’s owner has been showing it to other people in the meantime as well, and her getting the hall from the realtor goes against that plan. While the other people bidding on the hall already have a house and Yeo Reum is definitely in more dire need of a place to stay, they still start treating her so pettily and meanly after they lose the hall to her, it is so childish and frustrating. I just couldn’t understand how they didn’t even try to understand where Yeo Reum was coming from and what her situation was, they just immediately judged her for being a city outsider who was just trying to laze around doing nothing for a bit before she’d leave again anyway. Things even escalate to the point that, when more dramatic things start happening in town, people automatically point fingers at Yeo Reum for being the ‘disruptor of the peace’ while she has done nothing to deserve this treatment. The way she got treated throughout the story by the Angok Village locals was a major point of frustration to me. I will go into more detail later on.
On the other hand, while she occasionally manages to stand up for her own right, Yeo Reum also has the tendency to take things unnecessarily personal. It’s probably a force of habit from how she’s been treated at work, maybe she’s used to taking that humble position even when she’s being unfairly accused of things, but there are several occasions where she does take the locals’ words to heart, and she even debates leaving Angok a couple of times. Mostly in terms of Dae Beom’s connection to the billiard hall – I will get back to this later as well – she has a habit of blaming herself for things that she doesn’t have to apologize for in the least. In these cases, her behavior could also be quite frustrating, because I just kept yelling ‘GIRL COME ON YOU KNOW THAT’S NOT YOUR FAULT?!’ at her throughout the show. I would’ve liked her to be a bit more consistent in her confidence and self-righteousness, but I couldn’t help rooting for her nonetheless. Maybe it was all the more because of the way she was treated, but I really just wanted her to finally catch a break.

We meet Dae Beom for the first time in the first episode, when his daily routine is kind of put in parallel to that of Yeo Reum. He works part-time in the Angok Public Library, enjoys getting up at dawn and going for morning runs. He is a very calm and introverted person, and we see in his case that actions really do speak louder than words. He has difficulty initiating a conversation with people he’s not familiar/comfortable yet, and that’s why it’s a strong sign when he does talk a lot. From the moment he encounters Yeo Reum in the library, he shows her kindness – even when she runs away embarrassed for addressing him as a woman because of how his hair looks from the back, he still comes after her to give her the directions she asked for drawn out on a piece of paper. He keeps taking care of her when she gets drunk in broad daylight a couple of times in the beginning, and he’s consistently the only person who treats her in a welcome way from beginning to end. He’s also the only person in the entire series to tell Yeo Reum that he’s glad that she came to Angok and that he’s thankful for every single moment they got to spend together. Despite being such a seemingly calm and kind person who’s loved by the entire community, Dae Beom turns out to have quite a dark past. He used to live with his parents and older sister in Yeo Reum’s ‘apartment’ when it was still a billiard hall. His sister, Seon Ah, after which the billiard hall is also named, was a math prodigy who (I believe) won a math quiz on TV and got some fame for that. One evening, when Dae Beom came home, he saw his father run from the entrance of the hall and when he went in himself, he found his sister lying on the floor in a puddle of blood. As circumstances were a bit weird – Dae Beom was definitely treated by his parents as the ‘lesser’ child, his genius sister got all the attention – and the fact that he saw his father run away like that, when he’s being pressured into talking by the police, Dae Beom ends up voicing his suspicions towards his father, ultimately resulting in his father getting convicted for the murder of this own daughter and he’s sent to jail. Not long after, Dae Beom’s mother also commits suicide, leaving her remaining child all on his own. I don’t exactly know the timeline from that point onwards, but he ultimately ended up becoming a math prodigy himself. He even went to the Korea National University to study under a certain professor, but he ended up getting so absorbed in his studies that it actually scarred his health. He decided to step away from the university life and returned to his hometown Angok to live a simple and happy life.
The person who’s stood by him through everything and knows about all that’s happened to him is his long-time friend Jo Ji Young (played by Park Ye Young), who also works with him at the library. Ji Young used to be friends with Dae Beom’s sister, and she’s seen how he got through it by honing his skills in math. She strongly believes that he belongs in the math genius world, and that’s why it is her plan to take him with her to Seoul after she finally passes her civil servant exam. Another reason she wants to take him with her is because she’s actually in love with him and doesn’t want him to drift away. Her unrequited feelings are challenged when Dae Beom starts showing more and more interest in Yeo Reum, all the more when the latter becomes a factor that makes him want to stay in Angok. In the end, Dae Beom goes with her to Seoul, but when Ji Young realizes that she’s enabled Dae Beom to get stuck in the same ‘black hole’ of studying as before in which he starts neglecting his health and sleep, and the professor’s intentions are also kind of toxic, she finally acknowledges that it’s better for Dae Beom to be in Angok and goes back with him to keep working at the library.

I just want to insert my first piece of criticism here, because Ji Young was a big contributing factor in my frustrations. I was just very disappointed with her character. Even though I understand that it must have hurt seeing the person you’ve loved for so long suddenly fall for the new girl in town, and that you’d get frustrated because you feel like you’ve known him for so long and he can’t just drift away from you like that, her actions were all extremely selfish. She didn’t even consider Dae Beom’s happiness, or what he would think of her treating Yeo Reum like ‘the other girl’. The fact that she went to talk to Yeo Reum about Dae Beom’s interests behind Dae Beom’s back was kind of wild to me. Like, he wouldn’t even be happy with her if he knew she’d been doing that. The audacity of Ji Young to visit Yeo Reum and straight-up go, ‘girl, it might be just a summer fling for you but you’re distracting him from his true potential, you don’t even know him, you’re making him relive his trauma, you’re bad for him, stay away’ made me go 😠😠 because what right did she have to talk for Dae Beom like that? The worse thing was that Yeo Reum actually went along with it and started feeling guilty about reconnecting Dae Beom with his past while she didn’t even do that! It was his own decision to walk her home, and it’s not like she knew about his past with the billiard hall, it’s not like she knew that there would be graffiti on her door mentioning his dead sister’s name, it’s not like she took him there on purpose? That was all his own decision. It was so unnecessary to guilt-trip her for that, but Ji Young really went there. She literally pulled the ‘do you even know about his trauma’ card when they’d JUST started getting to know each other, like of course she didn’t know about that! It’s not like anyone was so helpful to tell her either, they just told her off for being inconsiderate of something she wasn’t even aware of. Ji Young’s selfishness and pettiness in trying to guilt-trip Yeo Reum into taking a distance from Dae Beom was very frustrating. She even turned it onto Yeo Reum when she was officially rejected by Dae Beom herself. Like, why make two people that like each other feel bad about doing so, only because it means you can’t be in the picture?
I also really hated the way she treated Sung Min in it all. I’ll get to his character later, but the fact that she chose the moment she knew he was going to confess to her to just go ‘I must really like Dae Beom’ and then just took it for granted that he’d be there to pick her up… Wow. Just wow. I just hope she started treating him better after they ultimately got together.
It was a shame because I thought she’d be a really cool character at first, even to Yeo Reum it seemed like she wasn’t bent on hating her from the start. She just gradually started scolding her for disrupting the library (which again, was unfair except maybe the times Yeo Reum ended up there drunk) and then just started treating her like a nuisance and I was like, ‘really Ji Young😑?’ I’d hoped she’d be more mature than that.

Let me talk about Kim Bom. Bom is a teenager who goes to the local high school in Angok and she’s kind of a brat, initially. She has a history of getting into fights and gets into trouble at school a lot for lashing out at her bullies. After her mother passed away, her father started drinking more and more and occasionally became violent to her, her brother Kim Ha Neul (played by Shin Ki Joon) and even her grandmother Jung Young Sook (played by Kim Hye Jung). Bom has only received warmth and love from her grandmother since her father became like that. Initially a bit of a troublemaker, Bom is also not very amiable towards Yeo Reum at first. While she’s the first person to voluntarily refuse Sung Min’s bribe to scare Yeo Reum away when she acknowledges that she’s just there to get some rest, before that she also does some things that really made me go, ‘wow, this girl’s a brat’. She pins it on Yeo Reum when she steals something from the discount store, she literally THROWS Yeo Reum’s bag onto another table in the library without asking if she can just move to another seat, and she spills water over some books aka library property that Yeo Reum is working on. By the way, this was such an idiotic situation, because Yeo Reum just came back from the toilet and then suddenly there was a drink spilling over the books. She knew better than anyone that she didn’t do that – hello, it happened while she was on the toilet?? – and STILL she went ‘oh dear, I must have done that’ and just went along with Ji Young’s scoldings. This again, was when the palm of my hand went to my face because Yeo Reum could be such a pushover sometimes. Anyways, while Bom makes a very bad first impression, I do think that her character develops a lot throughout the show without her ever losing that bratty teenager personality. It doesn’t take too long for her to warm up to Yeo Reum, she starts standing up for her more often and helps her out when other locals are treating her badly. The two end up becoming close friends, even with an age gap of 10 years between them. I have to admit that I found the friendship between Bom and Yeo Reum very endearing, the way that Yeo Reum became like a loving older sister to her. It was also cute that their names matched so well (yeoreum means ‘summer’ while bom means ‘spring’), it really felt like they developed a special bond. The scenes where they were giggling together at sleepovers were really fun, the chemistry between them was very nice to see. Bom was kind of a tricky character, she’s a good girl but she definitely has it rough growing up with her alcoholic dad and she’s become very guarded because of that.
Honestly, and I’ve seen more people comment on this on MDL, but what the heck was up with everyone defending her father and telling Bom to be considerate of him? She literally ends up in the hospital with a punctured liver because he STABS her with a KNIFE. Only days after he BEATS her face BLACK and BLUE. And still everyone, including her grandmother AND Yeo Reum, tell her not to be selfish when she refuses to defend him in court. Like, what the heck was up with that? Everyone was treating her father like the victim, while Bom had to undergo a freaking surgery. I could not believe what was happening here. Stuff like this had happened many times before, Bom was constantly beaten and bullied at school for having an alcoholic father and no one ever stopped to think that it might be a good idea to maybe send him to rehab. Even her grandmother, and this was the only main criticism I had against her because she was a gem, but while I understood that she wanted to protect her child, it was not okay to consistently tolerate his drunkenness without doing something about it. It was like she just accepted that this happened sometimes, he just beats up his kids and it’s awful but we have to deal with it and I was like ‘???’ Seriously, when they were all standing around Bom’s hospital bed and asked her to confess that she’d done it to herself?! The fact they even dared asking her that was unbelievable. Also, her dad didn’t change. Yes, he went to rehab and he seemed better for a while and his kids were just about to let him into their lives again… and then during a gathering after work he just accepts the soju again. Admittedly, he was pressured into it and those shady people should’ve known better than to indulge a former alcoholic, because this wasn’t just about being respectful to his work seniors, the guy had a serious problem. He was kind of peer-pressured into drinking, but on the other hand he also didn’t have the discipline to refuse it for the valid reason that he wasn’t allowed to drink anymore. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be an ex-addict being introduced to your kryptonite again after you thought you recovered, but in my opinion he should’ve just flat-out rejected it and avoided the situation altogether, all the more because he knew what alcohol would do to him and yep – next thing we know he runs away from his kids again with ALL the money in the house. And still no one said anything about it. The way the whole town just overlooked issues like this, the way they just dismissed him as a drunk but never actually did anything to help him or stop him from becoming violent to his own children and mother, was really not okay.
Going back to Bom for a bit, I have some frustrations with her as well. Despite the fact that she undeniably has a warm side that only comes out when she’s happy and surrounded by her favorite people, Bom also has some very selfish tendencies. This mostly comes out in her treatment of Jae Hoon. Heo Jae Hoon (played by Bang Jae Min) is Bom’s classmate and closest school friend. He’s head over heels for her and she knows it, and although she remains kind of vague in reciprocating his feelings it is suggested that she doesn’t mind his affection – she’s just kind of tsundere by nature. At some point, Bom, Yeo Reum, Dae Beom and Jae Hoon go on a little trip together and there Jae Hoon and Bom even kiss (which was very cute) and from there on I, as well as Jae Hoon, kind of assumed that they’d basically confirmed their feelings for each other. I mean, Bom definitely didn’t push him away and she started acting shy when he brought it up afterwards. Still, I have to agree with Jae Hoon that she never shows him as much confirmation as he shows her. Especially when her best friend Im Dae Ho (Im Jae Hyuk) returns from juvenile prison and gives Jae Hoon enough reason to be suspicious of his bond with Bom. Like, Jae Hoon makes it clear from the start that he isn’t keen on Dae Ho, Bom knows that, and still she never considers Jae Hoon’s feelings in that she chooses him over Dae Ho even once. That time when they’d planned a date and she just let herself get swept away by Dae Ho on his motorcycle and Jae Hoon saw them leaving together while he was waiting for her and she couldn’t even spare him more than a ‘sorry, something came up’ text… Seriously, Bom. You made an appointment with Jae Hoon first, heck, you even got all dolled up for your date and still you just let yourself be dragged away so easily? Also, the time when she was with Jae Hoon and she heard about Dae Ho being beaten up, the way she just left like that was basically the same as that text message, ‘sorry, gotta go, something (more important) came up’. To be fair, Jae Hoon was kind of pushing her to treat him better and this situation was really awkward, but I just didn’t like how Bom dealt with it and how she literally threw a ‘I didn’t even ask for your affection’ bomb at Jae Hoon. I was just so confused about how she felt about Jae Hoon, because I thought she would’ve been more considerate about his feelings if she liked him as much as he liked her. Now she just kept acting hard to get and it just felt like she was taking advantage of his feelings, giving him hope one day and then just throwing him to the side the next. My boy really had it bad for her, he even decided to come back from the US because he realized he couldn’t live without her and she legit went, ‘lol, why’d you come back?’.
Not to mention anything negative about her friendship with Dae Ho, I really liked Dae Ho and I didn’t actually think he was planning on stealing Bom away from Jae Hoon per se. The revelation that Dae Ho actually went to juvie to cover for Bom’s involvement in a street fight definitely gave a deeper layer to their friendship. Their friendship is really sweet, but I still think Bom should’ve established her own feelings and intentions more clearly with both guys. To Jae Hoon, she should’ve explained why her friendship with Dae Ho was so important to her, and to Dae Ho she should’ve been more clear about how meeting up with him could hurt Jae Hoon’s feelings. She didn’t even seem to care about ditching Jae Hoon that one time, even though she got all dressed up excitedly for their date, and when he went to the US she didn’t even seem to think about him that much until he suddenly appeared in front of her again. I found her feelings toward him really difficult to gauge and I found myself feeling bad for Jae Hoon on many occasions. I couldn’t even blame him for getting selfish because of his jealousy towards Dae Ho, because it could’ve been so easily cleared up by Bom, but she never even bothered.
I was also very disappointed with Bom when she, of all people, turned her back on Yeo Reum after what happened to her grandmother. She knew Yeo Reum wasn’t to blame and she still told her, ‘I can’t help resenting you’. Like, even to me, that felt like a stab to the heart. I get that in grief, you need someone to be mad at, but there were enough people to be mad at, most of all the people who actually did it. I’d hoped so badly that at least Bom wouldn’t hold a grudge against Yeo Reum, but in her own misplaced resentment she also left Yeo Reum’s side at the worst moment. Everyone knew that Yeo Reum wasn’t even there when it happened and still, just because it happened at the billiard hall, not only does she get slapped in the face by Bom’s father (which made me wanna throw hands myself) but also does her dearest friend push her away. As if it wasn’t enough that Yeo Reum already blamed herself for what happened, because again, it wasn’t her fault whatsoever, still people just accused her of calling Mrs. Jung to the hall.

I’m going to discuss the whole thing that happened to the grandmother in more detail in a moment, let me just go through my final character analyses first.
Bae Sung Min (played by Kwak Min Gyu) starts out as one of the most persistent people who try to get Yeo Reum out of the billiard hall and out of Angok, but he has some solid character development and becomes an ally to her in the end, not to mention he’s actually a pretty good guy altogether. He runs the discount store in town and his father is the landlord of the billiard hall when Yeo Reum moves in. I initially had a bit of trouble determining who was related to whom, but I think it was just him, his father and little Joon. He was divorced, I believe, and his ex-wife was now out of the picture. I don’t remember anything being explained about it specifically, but in any case he’s raising his little boy Joon by himself. When Yeo Reum moves into the billiard hall, Sung Min is just trying to sell the hall to his neighbors, Chang Soo and his wife Ok Soon, and gets bitter at Yeo Reum for ‘taking it away from him/them’. Again, not Yeo Reum’s fault in the least, because he should not have been showing the house to other people behind the realtor’s back. Anyways, after Yeo Reum moves in he plain-out refuses to help her out with anything, he even tells her specifically not to come to him whenever something’s broken or needs repairing, even when Yeo Reum expresses that she’s sorry for getting in the way of his plan to rent out the hall. Not only that, but he starts resorting to very petty and childish ways to drive Yeo Reum out of Angok. He just starts offering money to people around town, asking them to do something to Yeo Reum that’ll make her want to leave. Heck, he even gives his own kid and his friends some cash to trash her place and scare her away.
On the other hand, we kind of get to know him as a friendly neighbor and friend as well, mostly in regards to Ji Young. Sung Min is clearly drawn to Ji Young, and he keeps trying to comfort her when she’s sad about Dae Beom. Every time she gives him an inkling of a signal that she might accept him as more than a friend, Sung Min immediately lights up and it’s clear that he really cares about her a lot. Which makes it even harder to watch as Ji Young keeps treating him like the person in charge of cheering her up whenever she’s feeling down. Seriously, that scene when he got all dressed up and picked her up on his motorcyle and treated her to a fancy dinner and was just about to confess to her and she just cut him off and started talking about her feelings for Dae Beom. Like, she didn’t even reject him directly by saying ‘Sorry, Sung Min, I kind of sense what’s coming and I just want to stop you right there’, she just changes the topic in such an abrupt and painful way that he doesn’t even get the chance to confess anymore and it was just sad. She must have known exactly what he was trying to tell her and instead of being honest and considerate of his feelings she just broke the news to him like that. After coming back from Seoul and officially giving up on Dae Beom after seeing him run to Yeo Reum immediately when he heard what had been happening to her while he was away, she suddenly starts coming to Sung Min. Like, if she really decided to finally give him an honest chance, great, but it was still very much on her own terms and it still didn’t feel completely fair to me.
I loved little Joon, by the way. Bae Joon (played by Kim Joon) is kind of a troublemaker at first, as he and his two friends are always shown making mischief around town. After the thing happens where he finds Yeo Reum’s cash money and it takes him some time to return it to Dae Beom, he seems to have learned a lesson and he even starts telling his friends not to make a mess in the library. After that, he is shown more as he’s hanging out with his dad at the discount store and he also gets some nice interaction scenes with the grown-ups. I just really loved what a straightforward little fellow he was.

I’m going to talk a bit about Geun Ho before moving on to my main criticisms of the show, also with regards to the ending. So, I’ve mentioned that there were people who wanted to rent the billiard hall before Yeo Reum moved in, namely a guy named Chang Soo and his wife Ok Soon, who ran a restaurant in town. You’d think they must have had a really strong desire to rent that building, seeing as how they started treating Yeo Reum after she beat them to it. (By the way, why did it take them so long to rent it? Are you telling they just randomly decided to suddenly go after the billiard hall right when Yeo Reum turned up, not in the 10+ years time that it was empty before that? Possible plot hole?)
Turns out, they actually live next door to the building, together with their son Hwang Geun Ho (played by Kim Yo Han). Geun Ho is mentally handicapped, and for some reason he keeps trying to go into the billiard hall. Not long after Yeo Reum moves in, someone starts spray-painting all sorts of threatening slurs over the front door, and one time Yeo Reum busts Geun Ho on her roof terrace, completely panicked. At some point people start to speculate that Geun Ho used to have a crush on Seon Ah as a child, that he saw her body the night of her murder, and that he now keeps trying to warn Yeo Reum because he’s mistaking her for Seon Ah. When the terrible accident happens to Bom’s grandmother, Yeo Reum sees him run from the billiard hall again, completely frantic, and as there’s no one else there, she assumes that he must have done something. His parents keep defending him to an incredible extent.
Even though they end up being right about their son’s innocence, looking at how especially Ok Soon has been treating Yeo Reum throughout the series, I still think they were very inconsiderate to her until the end. Ok Soon kept giving her the stinky eye, even when she came to eat at their restaurant, and I still can’t forgive her for scamming Yeo Reum out of all that money in return for her dog. And then when her son keeps creating trouble, she still has the nerve to keep asking Yeo Reum to forgive him. Like, it was literally because everyone kept asking her to be considerate of Geun Ho that Yeo Reum chose not to report him the first time, and then when it went really wrong, they started pointing fingers at her for not reporting it earlier😑 Fact remains that Yeo Reum is constantly put in an awkward spot because of Geun Ho’s actions, whether he actually committed this crime or not, so I was BAFFLED when Ok Soon just came to her with that petition. Even after all this time, NO ONE was thinking about Yeo Reum, about how SHE was being unfairly blamed for the murder on one of her favorite people in town. I found it absolutely shameless of Ok Soon to go to Yeo Reum of all people to ask for considerateness towards her son at that specific moment, and I agreed completely with Yeo Reum when she was like, ‘uhm, excuse me but what the actual fuck are you asking me right now?’ It was just unbelievable. Again, yes, in the end they were right to defend their son, but they also continuously put Yeo Reum in dire positions, they even LIED to the police during Yeo Reum’s interrogation saying that Geun Ho had never set foot inside that hall. This is when I truly became one with Yeo Reum because she really saw everything for what it was and the look of complete disbelief on her face when they said that was just so painful. I keep repeating this, but the way some people treated her from beginning to end, even if their intentions towards her changed, was just unbelievable to me. And then in the end it was like ‘oh please Yeo Reum I want to thank you, please come have dinner at our restaurant and all is well’. Yeah, right.
What it ultimately comes down to is that Geun Ho was lured into the billiard hall that night by the real culprits because they were trying to frame him for Seon Ah’s murder from 10+ years ago, plus for what they were planning to do to Yeo Reum. Except it wasn’t Yeo Reum coming through the door when they were waiting for her, but Bom’s grandmother.

We’ve now arrived at the point where I’ll share my main criticism of this show and I saved it until the end because in the show it also happens at the end, in the very final episode. I don’t know what happened with the ending, but it just seemed so out of place and badly written compared to the rest of the series.
First of all, the revelation of the true culprits in both Seon Ah’s and Grandma’s case. Seon Ah’s case happened more than ten years earlier, when Dae Beom was still a kid. After his father was locked up, the case was considered closed and solved, and no one ever spared another thought on that someone else might’ve actually been responsible. In the final episode, in the flashback of what actually happened to Seon Ah, we see that Geun Ho witnessed the whole thing. He saw a middle school student do that to Seon Ah before running away. He didn’t know who it was, and he only caught a glimpse of the bottom half of the student’s name tag, so he only remembered the middle school logo and the bottom part characters of the student’s name and starts scribbling and spray-painting that around the billiard hall. The middle schooler turns out to be Kwak Moo Chul (played by Park Ji Hoon), a local police officer who’s also the son of the realtor who sold Yeo Reum the billiard hall in the first place. Both the realtor and his police officer son appear only sporadically throughout the series, and only in the final episode are they suddenly revealed to be the culprits in both cases.
My question is: WHY? Why, after living their lives comfortably and unsuspected by anyone for more than ten years, WHY suddenly the urge to frame Geun Ho for Seon Ah’s murder? Why did they suddenly start bringing everything back as soon as Yeo Reum moved into the billiard hall? It’s not like she was investigating the case or doing anything that would trigger a response to threaten her. It’s more like the culprits reopened their own case and just ended up exposing themselves, which was really weird and lame. It just didn’t make any sense to me.
Also, the fact that they went ahead with more spray-painting after Geun Ho was already locked up, while they knew there was CCTV camera at the entrance of the billiard hall? The police officer even helped install that thing himself, so how could he be so stupid to just give himself away like that? The same went for writing all those nasty words (seriously though, where did the ‘whore’ and ‘prostitute’ stuff come from🙄) inside the billiard hall, something Geun Ho would never do. The only things Geun Ho ever spray-painted were warnings to Seon Ah and the logo and lower half of the characters that he memorized from the culprit’s name tag, aka symbols that didn’t make sense to anyone else.
And then, when Yeo Reum and Dae Beom come up with that plan to divide father and son and have them each confess the truth separately, the conversation between Yeo Reum and Mr. Realtor is also really weird. I don’t know if it was just me, but didn’t they make kind of an error in the dialogue? Yeo Reum literally says, ‘You killed Mrs. Jung to frame Geun Ho for Seon Ah’s murder!’ and then Mr. Realtor says, ‘No, I was the one who killed Mrs. Jung!’ and I was like…. isn’t that what she just said🤨? It may have been an error in the subtitles but it sounded like an error in the dialogue. Also, the fact that Moo Chul just started punching Dae Beom while screaming that he was innocent… that was like shaking your head and saying yes at the same time. Like, they weren’t even trying.
All in all, the fact that the culprits themselves suddenly reopened the whole Seon Ah thing by killing Bom’s grandmother for literally no reason and then kind of walked into their own trap there, was not only really lame and badly written, but it just didn’t make any sense. Until the end, there’s not a single reason given why they had it out for Yeo Reum. I still have no idea why they were planning on killing her, as I said it’s not like she was investigating the case or anything. So, WHY? The whole murder side plot just became a major plot hole and I still don’t see how the murder on Grandma was relevant. The culprits could’ve just waited for her to drop off the food and leave while keeping Geun Ho under control and then wait for Yeo Reum to come back, why was it necessary to kill Grandma so cruelly like that, like nothing more than a piece of collateral damage? It just made her death such an unnecessary shock-value event, especially when they couldn’t even give a single argument as to why they were targeting Yeo Reum in the first place.
I was glad to read I wasn’t the only one who thought this, I actually took some inspiration from a comment on MDL saying exactly this: ‘I’m a bit confused about the motive for Mrs. Jung’s murder. Seon-A’s murder was already considered solved and the real murderers weren’t suspected, so why would they even go about trying to murder Yeoreum? They said it was to cover up Seon-A’s murder but I don’t understand how that’s the case. Seemed like unnecessary drama and heartbreak that put a big dark cloud over a show that’s otherwise really light and healing.’
What only added to this was when the flashback of Seon Ah’s murder was revealed and it turned out her murder was also an accident. Moo Chul was being a prick and bullying Seon Ah and she just brushed him off and that hurt his pride. He gave her a shove that was a bit too hard and she hit her head and fell on the floor. And then he ran away. So brave. But yeah, then still, even after getting away with it, if it was an accident, why go through all that trouble and even kill another innocent person just to cover that up? I just don’t understand what the writers meant to convey with this final revelation, because rather than closure it just gave me more unanswered questions. Honestly in my opinion it even distracted from the happy, healing message that this series should’ve conveyed. It would’ve been better without it, and there was no reason whatsoever to kill off Grandma, or to bring back the painful memories of Seon Ah’s death, as it was already something from the past. It just didn’t make any sense to me.

To end my main analysis on a positive note, I just want to say something about the one thing that kept me going throughout the show, the main reason I wanted to keep watching it: Yeo Reum and Dae Beom. If I haven’t mentioned it clearly enough before, I really loved their relationship. The build-up in their interactions and how they both gradually and naturally started opening up to one another was one of the best aspects of this series for me. Dae Beom was such an incredible sweetheart, he literally just went back from Seoul to Angok for a couple of hours just so he could watch a movie with Yeo Reum and he was so meticulous and considerate in figuring stuff out before their meetings. I loved how he would research a bunch of restaurants so they’d immediately have some options when the question ‘should we go eat something?’ would arise. I loved how, when Yeo Reum mentioned that she couldn’t go running one time because her running shoes got damaged (which was a lie), he literally went as far as to measure her shoe print on the floor of the library to figure out her shoe size to get her new ones. Like, seriously, get yourself someone who goes through such lengths. He was the sweetest, and I also loved how Yeo Reum just couldn’t stop herself from smiling whenever he’d turn up at the final moment when she wasn’t expecting him. Even after being told all those things by Ji Young, and she tried to take a distance from him because she felt sorry about ‘re-introducing him to his trauma’, she still couldn’t help but smile when he turned up for their trip the next day. He kept showing up, he kept surprising her, he kept taking care of her. I really loved their scenes together. I’m not even mad that there wasn’t a kissing scene in the end – of course I would’ve liked it, but the way they were slowly growing to becoming more intimate, and the series ending with them finally walking hand-in-hand along the beach, was very endearing in itself.
I also loved how Dae Beom represented introversion so originally, not as an exaggerated awkward personality but more in a ‘it takes some time for me to feel comfortable around people’ kind of way that was really relatable. There are so many types of introverts, and I really loved how despite being a little slow-paced, Dae Beom was still able to show such a serious and caring side. It just happened so naturally between them and throughout the show I kept feeling that they were the most themselves when it was just the two of them.

I said that I wouldn’t make this review into a comparison with Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and I won’t, but there are some things that I do want to mention in terms of comparison. As I said, in the beginning I really felt the same kind of vibe as with Hometown, in terms of the FL moving from the big city to a smaller town, struggling to fit in but still determined to settle down there and gradually becoming part of the community. It even went as far as to introduce themes of guilt and trauma, which also happened in Hometown. Still, I think that Hometown managed to keep the healing theme in way better and more clearly than Summer Strike. In Summer Strike, at some point the dramatic events take over from the soothing pace of events and especially with the rushed ending that didn’t make any sense, it kind of lost the feeling that the first couple of episodes gave me, so that was a pity. In Hometown, they chose to only introduce the more darker theme at the end of the show, so it didn’t quite take away from all the other events that had happened, which were all really meaningful and comforting. It’s a bit of a waste that Summer Strike didn’t manage to stick to that ‘healing’ theme as much, because it definitely had the potential to be a proper healing drama as well.

Just to make a final comment on the title of the series, I saw that this show is based on a webtoon with the Korean title ‘I Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything’. I think ‘Summer Strike’ is a really nice choice for a title because it’s already mentioned in the first episode by Yeo Reum herself that she’s decided to go on ‘strike’ from her draining city life, at least for the summer. While it starts out as a summer trip, but in the end she decides to keep living there for good. In the final episode, there’s also a reference to the webtoon, or at least to webtoons in general, when Bom suddenly comes up with the idea of creating a webtoon as she’s good at drawing and Yeo Reum is good at writing.
I realize I haven’t really mentioned this before, but Yeo Reum used to work at a publishing company and the fact that she’s at Angok Public Library basically every day isn’t just because of Dae Beom: she really likes to read. She keeps saying that she’s bad at writing, but at some point Dae Beom asks her to come with him to cover an interview with an elderly lady and this works out fine. Bom, on the other hand, has a knack for drawing, she’s seen drawing and doodling in her notebooks throughout the series and this is also where the idea for the webtoon comes from. So Bom even ends up cheering Yeo Reum on to try to write more. We don’t get to see what becomes of the webtoon, but it’s suggested that Yeo Reum might take up some writing work again as well.

By the way, I was looking at the opening animation sequence, but in the final scene when there’s four people standing on the beach looking out onto the sea, I can’t figure out who the fourth person is supposed to be. There’s Yeo Reum with the long hair, Bom with the short hair, Dae Beom is also quite characteristic because of his hair, but then there’s another lady with short hair wearing a cap and I’m like, WHO ARE YOU?? xD Did anyone catch who this was supposed to be? Or am I mistaking one of the other depicted webtoon characters?

Before I go on to the cast comments, I have to make two final special shoutouts, first of all to Gyeoul the dog. Man oh man, did this doggy steal my heart. From the moment he appeared to the final episode when he stood up and rested his little white paws on the veranda. My heart became one big fluff. I really wanted to slap Ok Soon when she tried to grab it so violently by its ears, like how in the world could you dare lay your hands on such a cute doggy like that? I also loved that they decided to call it Gyeoul, aka ‘winter’, and how in the final episode, which took place in autumn, Dae Beom was like, ‘hey, Bom, Yeo Reum, autumn and Gyeoul, all four seasons are gathered here tonight’. The doggy was the cutest thing.
And then, finally, a special shoutout to the taxi driver from the very last episode. He only appeared once, and he was helping Yeo Reum get to the police station but then Moo Chul came after them and he was debating whether he should stop or not as he was being ordered to stop by a police officer while his passenger was urging him to go on. Can I just say how much I loved it when he was like, ‘nahh, I pay my taxes, I’m not letting a police officer yell at me like this’ and just DROVE AWAY when Moo Chul was banging on his car windows? 😂😂That part really made the episode for me, lol. Thank you for that, Mr. Taxi Driver (Ji Sung Geun)!

Time for the cast comments! I’m only going to pick out a few people this time as I’m in a bit of lazy mood, lol. I just discovered that Kim Seol Hyun is a former member of AOA, and that she was also the lead in Orange Marmalade. I’ve only read the webtoon and I remember cringing too much at the first episode of the drama to give it a fair chance, but at least now I know that was her, lol. I haven’t seen anything else with her before, so this’ll be a very ‘clean’ commentary, free of references to other shows. As I mentioned before, I found myself rooting for Yeo Reum from the first episode on. I related to her feeling so drained and being so fed up with work, man, how many times have I not been sitting in the office staring outside, longing to be anywhere else. I found it really empowering of her to just decide on the spot that she had to leave for her own sanity. It was just too bad she received such a cold welcome. My only issues with Yeo Reum were the fact that, despite her occasional self-righteousness, she still went along with what other people were pushing onto her too often. She still kept apologizing and feeling bad for things that weren’t her fault too often. I was she could’ve been a bit more consistent in her right to be in Angok for a break rather than falling back into that pushover role on several occasions. I didn’t have any main issues with Kim Seol Hyun’s acting, as far as I can remember. I did find Yeo Reum’s personality a bit tricky to gauge sometimes, because she had an introverted side and a self-righteous, but then she would also suddenly decide to get drunk in the middle of the day and walk around like a lunatic, and that kind of felt inconsistent with how she behaved normally. Maybe she just wanted to try out a new wilder side of her or something, lol. Anyways, I liked her portrayal of Yeo Reum in this show.

Im Si Wan was probably my main reason to watch this show, besides the little teasers I saw of it. Dae Beom was definitely my favorite character. He was just so good. He was such a good person. All the more in comparison to how the other locals were treating Yeo Reum, I loved that he was always the light at the end of her tunnel, the one person she could always rely on to make her feel better. The only time that I didn’t agree with something he did was when he lied that he’d had her money after she (and him both) spent an entire day going through the trash to find it. In the end it turns out he was covering up for Joon, but still the way he delivered it while he could see she was covered in dirt, that could’ve been done a bit more considerately. Other than that, I thought it was very powerful to show that, even though he knew going back to math research would take a toll on him, he still found himself absorbed in it, but Yeo Reum was the only thing that could snap him out of it. It was kind of similar to Bom’s father’s addiction to alcohol, he walked away from it because he saw what it was doing to him, but then he still somehow ended up going back and then it all just repeated itself. I really loved the small and thoughtful gestures he made to Yeo Reum, figuring out running routes for the both of them, sticking to promises and appointments. Even if he turned up late, he still always showed up. I thought he was really well cast for this role, I liked his performance a lot. My only reference for Si Wan is Run On, where he also played a mild-mannered and slightly socially awkward character, so I guess this type is right up his alley.

I’ve only seen Shin Eun Soo before as the young version of Shim Cheong in Legend of the Blue Sea, but as I don’t really remember her from that as much, I’ll give an official first impression here. I thought she portrayed Bom in a very realistic way, even including the aspects that kind of frustrated me. She was just such a typical teenager, and with her problematic family situation I didn’t find it strange that she sometimes lashed out, but I would’ve liked to see her character development become a bit more consistent. I already mentioned my opinions on her treatment of Jae Hoon, I had hoped she would’ve at least let him in more easily after they kissed, but it just seemed like she started taking more distance and I didn’t really understand why she kept him, of all people, out. Like, he was also the only person she never invited to her house and that was kind of odd to me, too. Anyways, I don’t have any major criticisms on the acting, I thought she did well, it must have been a challenge to try and capture such a whimsical character as Bom.

I’ve seen Park Ye Young before in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, and I remember really liking her character there. While I initially liked Ji Young and the energy she brought, especially in her dynamic with Dae Beom, I was a bit disappoined by how she decided to treat Yeo Reum and deal with her feelings, also in regard to Sung Min. It was a nice development of her to realize the professor’s plan to keep Dae Beom inside that ‘black hole’ of maths, and that her concern for him there went beyond her jealousy of Yeo Reum. I think the moment she went to tell him about what had been happening to her while he’d been absorbed in his studies was the moment she decided to let him go to her for good, and that was big step for her, certainly if you see how far she was willing to go to break him and Yeo Reum apart in the beginning. I thought it was cute that she warmed up to Sung Min in the end, but I also felt that she was taking his affection for her a bit for granted at some point. Again, I have no real criticisms regarding the acting, I just had some issues with Ji Young’s character. I think Park Ye Young did a good job.

I didn’t know Kwak Min Gyu, so that was a nice first encounter. Despite his initial bad impression of trying to shoo Yeo Reum away, I possibly liked his character development the most. There was a moment where I became aware that I genuinely liked him as a person and didn’t even blame him for his behavior in the beginning anymore. He just showed that he learned from his initial judgements towards Yeo Reum and decided to right his wrongs, and I appreciated that of him. I felt kind of bad for him when he just couldn’t get Ji Young to look his way, but then it felt extra good when she finally started paying more attention and coming over more often, it really felt as if his hard work of wooing her had paid off, so good for him. I also liked Kwak Min Gyu’s acting, I thought he was a good fit for the role.
Kim Joon is getting a special mention because Joon was such a wonderful little fellow and I loved how he would sometimes just look from his dad to Ji Young and back and go😤, haha. I think he really liked it that his dad and Ji Young got together in the end, his little face beaming from the back when they were goofing around in the car was really precious. I wanted to give him and doggie Gyeoul a big hug.

I should definitely mention Grandma here as I haven’t talked that much about her in my review itself, besides the topic of her accident. Kim Hye Jung made for such a lovely little grandmother. There was nothing but pure kindness inside her, and that was proved even to the extreme that she kept standing up for her son when he’d struck his kids in a drunken frenzy. She could’ve been a bit more sober in seeing things for what they were sometimes, rather than always just seeing the good in everything and everyone. I still disagree 100% with her character’s death, I think it didn’t contribute anything but shock-value and it only took away the more soothing and healing aspects of the story by focussing on such a dark and meaningless dramatic event. I really liked Kim Hye Jung’s performance, she was a really sweet old lady and also one of the few who just accepted Yeo Reum into the community. Yeo Reum helped her carry her drunk son home one time and that was already enough for Grandma to feel amiably towards her.

Apparently Bang Jae Min is a rapper stagenamed “a.mond”? I wouldn’t have guessed that from his portrayal of Jae Hoon, haha. He looks way too fluffy to be a rapper, but myabe that’s just the image that I have in my mind. I really liked the friendshipe dynamic between Jae Hoon and Bom, how he was always the puppy looking for attention and she always played coy while actually liking it. I wish he could’ve gotten more confirmation from Bom in terms of her feelings towards him, because I couldn’t help take his side in thinking that she was being very ambiguous about the nature of their relationship. Jae Hoon was consistently clear and adamant about his feelings for her, so I understood why he got a bit impatient at some point. He was just a lovestruck boy and I think it was a big step for him to decide he was going to keep wooing Bom until she officially agreed to go out with him. My boy really went for it and I have to respect him for that.

I want to mention Im Jae Hyuk because even though he wasn’t a regular character, I actually quite liked Dae Ho. It was clear from the moment he was introduced that he was a very dear friend to Bom, and he cared for her a lot. The fact that he was willing to go to prison for a second time to stand up for her definitely proved that. I didn’t even blame him for making Jae Hoon feel anxious because admittedly, that was all for Bom to clarify. In the meantime, he just treated her like he’d always done and didn’t really pay much attention to what Jae Hoon thought of him. I haven’t seen this actor in anything before, but he looks familiar for some reason. Anyways, I liked his character and his performance.

I thought Kim Yo Han’s performance as Geun Ho was really good as well. Also, they did a really good job casting his younger version, because he was the spitting image of him. Characters with a mental disability are always a big challenge, I think, and like Yeo Reum we are so quick to suspect that he might have vioelent tendencies or outbursts, but in the end it’s really just a sweet guy who’s seen something that triggered him more than it would trigger a more ‘normally’ functioning person. I was kind of surprised when he was introcued because it almost seemed as if his parents were hiding him or something? But then that wasn’t the case and everyone knew who he was and I was like… then why are his parents so hush-hush about it, would do they try to cover up everything he does? If the local people are all aware of him and what he might do, Chang Soo and Ok Soon shouldn’t have had to cover so much stuff up for him, right? Anyways, it was nice to see him get cleared of all charges and it was nice that he was finally able to go to school and I loved how he joined in with the dancing on that rooftop party they held in the final episode.

I think that’s about all that I wanted to say about this series. All in all, I thought it had the potential to be a very soothing, healing, sweet love story between two introverts and I found it kind of a pity that they chose to put such a dark dramatic cloud over it without actually coming up with a satisfactory concluding explanation. They let a much-loved character die in a cruel way and didn’t even give a proper WHY to it. I still gave it a slightly positive rating solely because of the relationship between the main leads, they really made the show for me. I was constantly looking forward to their scenes together because those were the only moments were I myself felt the most at ease. When the two of them were together, things were always good and safe, and I would’ve liked the whole series to give off that feeling in a more consistent way. The added drama took that feeling away for a big part, so that was a pity. On the other hand, the acting was good, there were many touching scenes and I definitely rooted for the female lead, so those were kind of my beacons while watching it. I’m glad I watched it, the fact that it was unpredictable definitely added to its charm, but I just didn’t like how they decided to wrap up the ending by suddenly making two completely random character the culrpits without any solid arguments to explain why things happened the way they did.

I’m moving on to another quite recent summer-themed K-Drama, so please bear with me until my next review. Luckily this time I can watch it on Netflix again, which means that I’ll at least have some more high-quality subtitles. Until then!

Bye-bee~! x