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.

Because This is My First Life
(이번 생은 처음이라 / Ibeon Saeng-eun Cheo-eumira)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10

Okay so unlike what I predicted in my last review, this wasn’t 12 episodes but 16 and I don’t think I took longer to finish it than the previous two, but it felt like this took me much longer. Not in a bad way, just because I savored. every. single. episode. and I didn’t want it to end too quickly.

It’s been on my list mostly because I saw Lee Min Ki would be in it and I really like him. Also the female lead is very good and I hadn’t seen anything of them in a while.
I went into it completely unaware that it was based on the Japanese drama NigeHaji (Nigeru no ha Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu) which I saw about 2 years ago. I didn’t know this was the Korean remake. I just started watching and after a while I thought ‘hey this kinda reminds me of NigeHaji’ and then I checked on DramaWiki and it actually said ‘Related shows: NigeHaji’ so yep that’s when I found out.

I have to say that even though it’s probably based on NigeHaji, the Korean version goes way deeper into a lot of topics. NigeHaji is unique because of the way it’s filmed, sometimes it’s like a documentary following the female lead and it takes them way longer to actually get to the real falling-in-love romance part. It takes them longer to admit they’re starting to really fall for each other and the main story is just about their life together.
The Korean version not only introduces a bunch of important side characters with their own romance stories, but it also deals with a lot of critical topics. I was surprised to see how much sexual jokes and innuendos were made, since Korean dramas (as Japanese dramas) tend to hold back on such things a lot and keep it all innocent and pure most of the time. Besides the sexually-related topics, it also dealt very critically with the mistreatment and (sexual) harassment of women on the work floor and in society.
I think this was very bold and I wonder how this was received in Korea by the viewers.

So, for those of you who also haven’t seen NigeHaji, I will give a summary of the story. Of the Korean remake of course, since this review is about this one. But I won’t be able to help making some references and comparisons with the Japanese version so forgive me for that.
Because This is My First Life is about a woman named Yoon Ji Ho (played by Jung So Min), whose dream it always has been to become a writer. However, at the age of 30, she has been an assistant writer for dramas for 5 years and still hasn’t really found her place. She can’t take pride in her work that much and to make matters worse, she is kicked out of her parents’ house because her younger brother knocked up a girl and they get all the prior attention in her family as they are very patriarchal. Ji Ho needs to find her own place, as she won’t be able to live with her brother anymore now that he has to take care of his young pregnant wife.
On the other side, there is the male protagonist, Nam Se Hee (played by Lee Min Ki). He is a application designer at a company that has recently released a new dating application. He is a very stoic person, almost robotic, who handles everything through formulas and doesn’t seem to have any emotional feelings. He only cares about his house and his cat. He is looking for a housemate because his rent is getting alarmingly high for the money he’s earning, but so far he has kicked out all housemates because they couldn’t match his lifestyle.
Through a coincidental course of events, Ji Ho learns about this person looking for a housemate through one of her high school friends. Hearing the name Se Hee, she assumes it’s a woman (since it’s usually a girl’s name apparently and her female writer boss is also called Se Hee) and enthusiastically responds. Se Hee is informed of a certain Ji Ho who is interested in being his housemate and he thinks it’s a guy (since Ji Ho is usually a guy’s name apparently and he knew someone in the army who was also called Ji Ho). So first they start living in the same house without meeting each other. Because Se Hee always leaves early in the morning and returns only late in the evening and in-between Ji Ho only comes out in the hours between that and is already asleep when he comes back. And they’re so polite as not to check in on each other while they’re sleeping.
When they are coincidentally having their respective company dinner/celebration in the same restaurant, Ji Ho finds out that the director she’s been having a crush on for 3 years is seeing someone. Just before that, she has briefly met Se Hee (of course not knowing who he is). When she’s waiting for the bus home and Se Hee sits next to her and starts talking randomly about a cat’s neocortex, Ji Ho feels strangely comforted. In a moment of thinking ‘Why are people only expected to kiss when they’re dating/screw it, if I’m never going to date I might as well just kiss someone’, she kisses Se Hee, comforted by the thought that he’s a stranger and she’ll never see him again anyway.
Of course, they meet in the elevator at home the next day.
Even though it’s awkward at first, Se Hee finds that Ji Ho matches his lifestyle very well. She has the habit of cleaning the house thoroughly when she starts writing and takes out the trash and feeds the cat. Unlike his previous experiences, Se Hee is very satisfied with her. Also, because Ji Ho needs a place to stay and she’s able to contribute to the rent with her income, it’s a win-win situation for both of them.
Then a nasty situation arises at Ji Ho’s work. In a drunken state, her ex-crush director nearly sexually assaults her and refuses to take responsibility. Even her female boss at work is trying to smooth everything out with a dinner. Ji Ho, however, feels terribly wronged, her co-workers only give her the feeling that she’s overreacting and she quits her job. Now, of course, she has no more income.
But because their conditions and values matched so well, they establish a contract and decide to get married for these reasons. Se Hee needs the rent and the household help, and Ji Ho needs the house.

So this intro of how they get to live together is already very different from NigeHaji. In NigeHaji, the female lead is hired as a cleaner at the male lead’s place because he’s out so often, and he is so satisfied with her work that he doesn’t mind her staying, especially since she enjoys this job and needs a place to stay. They get married because it’s convenient for both of them and they won’t have to explain why they’re living together while they’re not actually together.
However, of course, in both cases as they continue living together they eventually do fall in love with each other. In the Korean version, they just added a lot more story lines. Besides the main leads’ friends (about which I’ll write more later), they included more family content of both Ji Ho’s and Se Hee’s families, and they added a sad background story for Se Hee to explain why he was against marriage so much initially.
In the Japanese version, I don’t remember there being so many side stories and background stories, and I thought it was legit because there’s a lot of Japanese guys these days who don’t get married because they’re either too introvert or too consumed by working. The female lead was also very easy-going, until of course she started to wish for more and couldn’t really get it.

Before I go on, I wish to introduce the important side characters in the series.
Yang Ho Rang (played by Kim Ga Eun) is one of Ji Ho’s best friends. They’ve known each other since middle school. She’s the friend with all the drama and emotional outbursts. She has been dating the same guy for seven years and they fight a lot but always end up back together. They love each other a lot, but sometimes Ho Rang’s unpredictable emotions put a strain on him too. She often gets upset about the tiniest things and he’s not very good at reading what she’s getting at most of the time. She has this idealistic idea of getting married and moving in together and tries to make this clear to her boyfriend, but when he doesn’t get it -she also has her age to worry about- she becomes anxious.
Her boyfriend Shim Won Seok (played by Kim Min Seok) loves Ho Rang very much, but he’s in a pinch at work. He’s also trying to develop an app, but he can’t seem to get investments. That’s why he doesn’t have the confidence that he’s going to be able to make Ho Rang happy even if he marries her and that’s why he keeps stalling.
Woo Soo Ji (played by Esom) is Ji Ho’s other best friend, also from middle school. Ji Ho, Ho Rang and Soo Ji are like the three musketeers. Soo Ji is very tall and skinny, and she works at an investment company. Even though she’s the only one of the three with an actual full-time job, she’s continually being sexually harassed by her co-workers at company dinners and just throughout the day. Not physically, but verbally. Little stinging remarks, she overhears people talking about her boobs, her boss keeps asking her inappropriate questions… I honestly found it quite hard to watch.
Ma Sang Goo (played by Park Byung Eun) is Se Hee’s boss, and he also has a good relation with Soo Ji’s boss. However, as he’s drawn to Soo Ji and finds out how she’s being treated, he tries to help her.
Ho Rang and Soo Ji are two completely different people. While Ho Rang’s life goal is to get married and be a housewife, Soo Ji is the kind of modern woman who doesn’t need marriage, and feels the need to be free. Her middle school dream was to become the CEO of her own company, but instead she has to keep smiling and nodding while she’s being made fun of right where she stands. She keeps her frustrations to herself because she needs the job – her mother is handicapped and she’s saving up for an apartment where she can live with her mother. The reason why she only flirts around and sleeps with guys without beginning a relationship is also because she’ll feel guilty if she goes off with someone and has to leave her mother behind with her bad legs.
I think all the different relationships in the series give a very good impression of how different the concept of marriage is for everyone. Are marriage and love necessarily connected? Why do people get married? It places a lot of question marks by these normative standards.
Marriage isn’t just a happy thing, it comes with a lot of responsibility, not only towards society but towards a lot of involved people as well. Even though you should marry only one person, you get this whole package of other people with it whether you like it or not.

Even though Ji Ho and Se Hee start off their ‘married life’ with the knowledge that this marriage is not love-based, Ji Ho quite soon finds herself getting involved in Se Hee’s personal life. She’s taken aback by his use of the word ‘us/our’ (uri 우리) and gets flustered because of that. She comes up with the idea of naming his cat ‘Woo Ri’ after this word and even visits him at work. However, Se Hee pushes her back because he says he feels uncomfortable with her doing that. For him, the contract is still what binds them together and he’s not ready to see past it yet. Slightly indignant, Ji Ho takes some distance from him too, until they both realize there really is something that’s keeping them together.

Here arises another part from the Korean remake that was not in the Japanese one, and I feel this was only used as a plot tool to make Ji Ho and Se Hee go back to each other. Ji Ho meets a guy at her part-time job, Bok Nam (played by Kim Min Gyu), who immediately shows interest in her.
Meanwhile at Se Hee’s company, a guy with the same name and his pictures is registered to their dating application and receives a lot of complaints because of reported stalking.
So, of course, Se Hee thinks that this guy is after Ji Ho now. In the end it turns out that Bok Nam was actually the victim of phishing and he didn’t really have any evil intentions. But they only find that out after Se Hee kicks his over-prized motorcycle to the ground in a fit of distress because he thought he was going to assault Ji Ho.
One thing I did feel was very weird: they made it so that Bok Nam actually overheard them talking on the bus when they were headed to their wedding ceremony and found it weird how they were only talking about distribution of rent and chores. He just so happened to be working at their wedding ceremony as well, even was in the same room as them and he even talked with them and took their picture. With a face like his, he would be near impossible to forget. So how the hell did they not recognize him from the start from their wedding?? I thought they were going to come up with a good way to explain how Bok Nam knew so much about their relationship, but this was kind of unrealistic.

Anyways, after this Se Hee and Ji Ho get back together and then the next chapter starts: their families. I think this drama made a real critical remark about what marriage is supposed to be like and what it should be about. One of the approaches they took was showing the relationship between daughter/son-in-law and parents-in-law.
I think it was interesting what was said about the ‘Good Daughter-in-law Syndrome’. Even though Ji Ho was determined not to be taken by it, she found herself unable to escape it. It reminded me of Valid Love, in which the daughter-in-law had to take care of almost her whole in-law family because it was expected of her. Several characters from this series were sceptical towards the whole ‘taking care of the in-laws’ aspect of marriage.
For example, Ji Ho was pressured by Se Hee’s parents to help with ancestral rites, and even though Se Hee forbade her from going, she went because she still partially felt she had to as a daughter-in-law even though it wasn’t part of her contract with Se Hee. Se Hee wasn’t allowed to help her, she had to do all the chores herself. As a payback, Se Hee went to help Ji Ho’s parents in the countryside with making kimchi, even though it wasn’t expected of him as the son-in-law because Ji Ho’s family was a patriarchal family.
So in their two respective families the expectations of who was supposed to help with what were already very different.
I can understand very well, usually when you marry someone it’s out of love and I mean I wouldn’t really marry someone only to basically marry his parents as well. But I notice that in a lot of Asian countries this comes with it as a matter of fact.

Going on to the next side plot in the Korean remake: Se Hee’s past. It turns out that Se Hee used to be dating a girl from his university and when he incidentally got her pregnant, they were going to get married. However, she was from a poor family and his father just couldn’t accept it. He said it was a disgrace that his son was marrying someone because he impregnated her and they didn’t know anything about being married. To make matters worse, his girlfriend miscarried the child and this only labelled her even more as damaged goods to Se Hee’s father. Unable to deal the behavior of her future in-laws, she broke up with Se Hee, leaving him heartbroken and ever since he’s been shut off and against marriage. He has also developed a very bad relationship with his father because of it.

Of course, Ji Ho meets this woman. She’s called Go Jung Min (played by Lee Chung Ah) and she’s now a CEO for a media company. She’s interested in Ji Ho’s work as a script writer, even though Ji Ho has stopped working. The two women become very close in a short period of time, but Ji Ho quickly finds out between Se Hee and Jung Min’s past and this makes her a bit anxious.
Mainly because of the following scene: they’re talking about love one day and Ji Ho is trying to make clear that she’s in love with Se Hee, so she says something like ‘I think having one love in a lifetime is enough.’ Se Hee agrees with her. However, after finding out that Se Hee has had this experience with Jung Min, Ji Ho starts doubting. She feels like for him, agreeing with her words means that he’s already had this ‘one love’ and he doesn’t need it again.
At this point, I would say that emotionally-wise, they have a lot to talk about. Because both of them just didn’t understand the other’s intentions. They both couldn’t directly speak out what they were thinking, Ji Ho was being annoyingly cumbersome and honestly sometimes I couldn’t help but agree with Se Hee because even I didn’t know what she was getting at (until I would read the episode comments of course, because a lot of people watching are very sharp and clever and they make me go like ‘Ohhhhh hadn’t thought about it like that’).
The next-to-last episode for example, when Ji Ho suggested that they end the contract and she would go away for a while. Everyone just plain assumed that they were getting divorced and she would move out and they would stop seeing each other.
However, that wasn’t Ji Ho’s intention at all. It was her intention to divorce, yes, but not to break up with him. She loved him a lot at that point and she only felt like the contract marriage was in their way. She now wanted to get married because of love. Not even married per se, she just wanted to be with him because of love, not because of marriage.
But Se Hee didn’t understand that either. He just thought she didn’t like it/him anymore and she was going to leave after divorcing. She even packed her bags saying she was going on a long trip somewhere far away.
BUT then there was this moment, right before she left. I forgot to mention this, the two of them are big Arsenal fans and they often watched matches together and sometimes used soccer formulas to compare or explain things to each other. Anyhow, right before she left Ji Ho turns around and asks him: ‘Have you never wondered what soccer players do in the intermission time?’ And Se Hee just answers plainly: ‘Evaluate the first half and making strategies for the second half, I assume.’ And Ji Ho says: ‘I see. So there’s a lot to be done in the intermission, then.’ And then she leaves.
I feel like I missed a lot of these, but this was such a big metaphor she was using and Se Hee just didn’t get it. She was of course talking about their intermission, the things he should do and think about during their intermission.
Honestly I didn’t get it either, only because of the episode comments but then it all suddenly made sense. But I still think both of them should have been more clear about their intentions. Because when Ji Ho suddenly showed up again and Se Hee was like ‘wth I thought you left?? We got a divorce??’ and Ji Ho was like ‘what are you talking about?? You thought I’d leave for good??’ So yeah, definitely some room for improvement in the communication department there.
The funny thing was that they ended up exactly how it started. Since Ho Rang and Won Seok moved out of their rooftop apartment, they individually told Ji Ho and Se Hee about it (Se Hee sold his house after Ji Ho left) and they end up living together in the same house AGAIN. Of course with better results than the first time.

I like how they titled the episodes by the way. The reason why the series is called Because It’s My First Life really made sense at the end. The episodes are all titled ‘Because It’s My First ….. (kiss/marriage/confession/in-laws/intermission etc.)’
Honestly I could relate to Ji Ho so much in the beginning, to a painfully personal level. She was 30 and never had a boyfriend and after finding out about her failed crush she just kind of gives up and accepts that she’ll never have a dating life. And that thought actually inspires her to let it out more, even to the point of kissing a total stranger at a bus stop. Now I’m not saying I relate with that part specifically, but honestly there’s more of us near-30s-single-since-birth people out there. It’s not always easy.

The division of the conservative and the not conservative people in this drama is remarkable. There’s the people who still feel like the wife should just handle the household and bear children, and there’s the people who feel like these standards aren’t important, what’s important is just loving each other without having any conditions or rules they need to abide by. I could really understand Ji Ho’s final decision, even though she should’ve made it more clear with her words to Se Hee, because now all she did was just make people confused.

I’m going to go on with my personal opinions (since I dragged the story summary on a bit too much) about the actors and the characters.
I knew a few of the actors from other series, of course I knew Jung So Min from Mischievous Kiss and Sound of My Heart, but I actually haven’t watched any more of her. I think she’s a good actress and mainly because I think she acts with her eyes very well. Not many Asian actors can pull this off because of their facial structure, but it helped that they put in a lot of close-ups of Ji Ho and Se Hee looking at each other. Their eyes were speaking for them sometimes, and I thought that was very nice.
I have only seen two things of Lee Min Ki as well since he doesn’t do much. I was kind of shocked to find out that the only drama I saw with him (Shut Up Flower Boy Band from 2012, was actually also the last drama he did before this). In SUFBB he was only in the first episode but he was this crazy wacko with untidy hair and eyeliner and I absolutely loved him. It was funny to see him in such a different role this time. It makes me want to see more of him (ahem). I saw one movie with him, Quick, but I have to watch that one again I think since I don’t remember much of it.
Not to mention the chemistry between the two main leads was AMAZING. I haven’t felt this way since Just Between Lovers, where I was just waiting for them to be in a scene together again. Even when they weren’t even in love yet, the tension was sizzling. Also, the kissing scenes were very good. I approve.
I knew Kim Ga Eun (Ho Rang) only from her role in Reunited Worlds, but she was able to display much more acting skills in this role. I’ve seen many roles of Kim Min Seok (Shut Up Flower Boy Band, Who Are You – School 2015, Descendants of the Sun, Doctors, Age of Youth 2) and I think he’s really improving as an actor every time I see him in something. I think that’s great because I wouldn’t necessarily categorize him as the standard handsome guy and he probably won’t get a main lead role (after seeing a lot of dramas and seeing the same person as a side character too many times you can kind of guess), he has been getting more prominent and certainly more challenging roles.
The Ho Rang and Won Seok couple was very lovely, they portrayed a lot of realistic issues for a couple who has been together for ages but just can’t really seem to progress beyond that. And after living together for so long and being faced with things like marriage, you start doubting if your love will be strong enough to hold on through marriage and you start getting insecure about a lot of things.
I have to say Esom might be my new Kdrama girl crush, haha. I only know her from the Drama Special White Christmas which was really special, both in terms of cinematography as acting and story. I knew her face, but I thought I’d seen more of her. I saw on DramaWiki that she mainly did a lot of movies.
I think she is so gorgeous and model-like because she has such a high fashion kind of look and face. Anyways, she was definitely my favorite character in Because This is My First Life. But there were also times when I felt she was a bit contradictory. Because on the one hand she was this badass girl who didn’t seem to care about what anyone would think or say about her, this woman who would occasionally not wear a bra to work because it made her feel uncomfortable and stuffy. But on the other hand it seemed like she really cared about how people saw her, especially at work. She was very anxious that situations would arise where her harassment would become even worse.
When rumors start about her not wearing a bra to work and when Ma Sang Goo starts making moves at her, she pushes him away saying that he will only make her situation worse. When her boss would find out about her dating one of his business associates, it would only result in him harassing her more. If anything would go wrong, all the bad stories and rumors would be about her, not about the guy. She made a point of course, and this was also one of the main critiques of the series, that as a woman you’re way less free to do as you like than as a man, because people will always judge you if you do anything bold. But the moment she told Sang Goo that I was a little bit disappointed in her because I felt that she had it in her to not care about any of those things.
But I guess society does have this kind of pressure on people, no matter how modern they might be.
I didn’t know the actor playing Ma Sang Goo, but his character was very funny. Even though he was the CEO of a big company, he had his morals and even though it might be considered normal for women to be harassed on the work floor, he still couldn’t bring himself to accept it, even though he lost his main investment because he decided to say something about it.

One other funny side character was a girl from Se Hee’s work, Bo Mi (played by Bo Mi from Apink). In the end I wasn’t really sure what exactly her role function was except from being a funny side character. Her down-to-earth-ness was very refreshing though, she may have looked like a fuzzy cute pink-loving girl, but her dry way of speaking made it very amusing. She was one of the few people who managed to have real contact with Se Hee at work and she even (for one episode maybe) became a potential love interest for Won Seok after he broke up with Ho Rang. She showed him a graph from their app to show how well compatible they were.
Maybe that’s another thing the series meant to say. Love isn’t based on conditions. It’s not based on formulas. You shouldn’t love someone just because you’re compatible or your ideals match. In the end it’s about the love itself. If you’re not actually in love with someone, nothing will come of it.

Anyways, it feels like I’ve watched a very long drama even though it’s only been 16 episodes but I liked it a lot. It really drew me in, and I enjoyed the chemistry between the two main leads. Even though it turned out to be a lot different from NigeHaji, I think this version earned some extra points because of their critique of several topics in society which a lot of Korean dramas usually treat as a taboo. I was positively surprised by the sexual references -I even had to look away sometimes because they were so explicit I felt a bit embarrassed. I don’t mean explicit as in nudity or anything like that, but just the kissing and the fantasies Ji Ho started to see as she started falling for Se Hee (zooming in on his lips and stuff like that). But it made the show very contemporary and accessible, because in truth people are like this. Both in good and bad ways.
That’s why I’m really curious as to how this series and the critiques in the series was received by the Korean viewers, especially the parts with sexual harassment on the work floor. Is it still considered a taboo or are people starting to look at it more critically?
Also about the concept of marriage – what it is and why people want to do it. I hope it lit a fire in many people’s minds to think about this more with their hearts instead of their heads. The circumstances are different for every single person, but shouldn’t the first and primary reason to get married be because of love? Should you even get married because of love, because it will mean you get a whole load of responsibilities and expectations with it?
It’s interesting to think about. We tend to assume it’s a normal thing to do when you love someone, but sometimes we fail to really understand what the consequences may be.

A very eye-opening drama indeed, I was not expecting this, but I like dramas that are open-minded and provide a new insight to social issues. A very nice watch.

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.

Go Back Couple
(고백부부 / Gobaekbubu)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

When I started on my season 2017 batch dramas I wasn’t expecting two 12-episode ones in a row. It only takes me a week to watch short dramas like that.
Anyways, this one was also on my list from the same period and it looked like a funny series and the trailer was very colorful and cute. The concept about a married couple that is fed up with each other going back to the time they first fell in love also spoke to me. When I started watching it I actually didn’t really know where it was gonna go, what the message would be. But in the end I think they did a good job.

The story of Go Back Couple is about two university sweethearts, Choi Ban Do (played by Son Ho Joon) and Ma Jin Joo (Jang Na Ra). They met at a mixer party during university and have been together ever since. After graduation they got married and in 2017 they had a sweet little baby called Seo Jin (Park Ah Rin; I have to mention his name because this child is too precious). Actually, at that point Seo Jin might be the only thing keeping them together. A lot has happened between them and all their lovey-doveyness has been drowned in the duties and expectations of married life.
Even though they used to be so in love, they started growing apart after a certain incident in which Ban Do wasn’t there for Jin Joo when her mother died. She hasn’t been able to forgive him and slowly but surely the two of them start despising each other.
After another incident in which Jin Joo gets the impression that Ban Do is cheating on her, they decide to get a divorce over the phone and they both throw out their wedding rings at the same time. And then something miraculous happens.
The next morning, the couple suddenly wakes up in 1999, in their 20-year old bodies. First they think it’s a dream, but they soon find out that this is real. Jin Joo is woken by her mother, which of course causes for a lot of emotion. Their parents and siblings are all exactly as they used to be in the 90s. When they get to school, their friends are there in 90s style fashion.
However, because they have their 38-year old consciousnesses(?), they look around more keenly than they used to. Of course, they’ve come a long way and they remember a lot about what has happened since they left university. They know about relationships between their friends that will go wrong and still have to watch them get together without any knowledge of how much they’re going to hurt each other.
In the beginning, both Ban Do and Jin Joo decided out of resentment towards one other, to each go after their other crushes, determined that ending up with someone else will provide a better future. Ban Do goes after his first love, ballerina dolly Min Seo Young (played by Go Bo Kyul) and Jin Joo approaches the popular guy of whom she heard he used to have a crush on her, Jung Nam Gil (played by Jang Ki Yong).

Up until here, of course apart from the upsetting situation in the beginning where the divorce was issued, it’s all good fun. It’s amusing to see everyone in 90s style, we laugh about the hairstyles and the fashion. And of course, the fact that the two get a chance to revise their 20-year old self’s choices is interesting. They end up changing a bunch of stuff, but not to a dangerous degree.
As a time travel theme fan, I liked what they did with the show. Because the two of them were in truth still adults in adolescent bodies, they couldn’t help but talk in a middle-aged way – Jin Joo was continually ‘Aigoo, aigoo’-ing at everything and everyone, which was funny.
However, when push comes to shove, they kept being reminded of their baby which they’d left behind. It’s all good and well to have fun and enjoy a stroll down memory lane, but you can’t just leave behind all memories of the old and more unpleasant life.
The two enjoy their first day and then automatically think they’ll be back to normal when they wake up the next one – well, no. They’re still stuck in 1999.
As viewers, we have no idea what has happened with the rings. They went up in golden ashes, there was this local earthquake only the couple felt and suddenly the next day: back to the 90s. We also don’t know what has to happen for them to go back again, although I did have the impression it had something to do with the rings, since it was suggested it happened because they threw the rings away.
So that was the information we get, and to reunite the rings, it can be predicted that somehow they have to make up again. So maybe it’s not really a good thing that they both went onto other people… But they find that out themselves as well.
Because 18 years of marriage does something to a person. No, I’m not talking from experience.

Before I go on spoiling any more I want to talk about the cast a bit. There were some familiar faces and some unfamiliar ones. First of all, Jang Na Ra. Who doesn’t know Jang Na Ra, the eternal baby-face princess. The first drama I saw with her was Baby-faced Beauty (of course) which I really liked. After that I saw School 2013 and Fated to Love You, but I didn’t really love these ones because I felt she was acting a bit of the same thing all over again and honestly I don’t really like the Korean remake of Fated to Love You (I liked the original Taiwanese version better *gasp* first time for me too).
Anyways, but she really surprised me with her acting in this drama. I read an article afterwards about how she expressed how this drama restored all her confidence in her acting again and I’m not surprised. I haven’t seen her act this well in a while. It seems like a really tough role, because she has to play a mother, a wife, a daughter and a student all at the same time. She acted really maturely, very naturally and even though she looks so freaking young I could really see her motherly/middle-aged woman side.
Very well done to her.
I didn’t know Son Ho Joon before, so I can’t really make a reference but I think he did well. I think Na Ra outshone him a tiny little bit, but I think the main leads had the most challenging roles overall. Playing an adult in a younger body seems really difficult already, but also combine the joy of experiencing youth again with the anguish of wanting to go back to their baby. And no one around them will understand what they’re worrying about.
That’s actually one reason why I felt sorry for the second leads, because we already knew from the start that it wouldn’t be meant to be. For them it was just a crush, no problems, but they had no idea what was really going on. In the end, both of them weren’t that aggressive and they backed off the moment they really saw where the others’ hearts really lie, so that saved us a lot of drama. But still. I think it was important for them to be there because Ban Do and Jin Joo had to try once if it would work with someone else.
We did get a little backstory from the second leads, but for example from Min Seo Young not nearly enough to really start rooting for her. Nam Gil’s second male lead presence was a lot stronger, but Jin Joo was clearly not into it, and at a certain time I felt a bit sorry because I was like ‘I’m sorry but it’s just not going to work bro she’s going back to her child, probably with her husband’.

Since that was what I thought, it really made sense when Ban Do said that this going back event was like a trip for them. They needed a break, they needed to go on a trip. And during that trip them found each other again. They slowly started clearing up misunderstandings, they finally got the chance to express their real feelings. Ban Do is able to tell Jin Joo why he was held up that time and disabled her to see her mother one last time and Jin Joo tells him how much she needed him during that period of grief. All of that, and they started seeing the good in each other again. They finally saw the effort and the struggles that the other went through. Going back to the past gave them the opportunity to re-establish their values.
Apart from that, they were able to change some other things as well: they brought back their friend who originally disappeared from school without a word, and they dealt with a scumbag who was using a rich girl for her father’s money while playing around with a bunch of other girls – someone who in the future became mostly responsible for Ban Do’s misfortune. They also changed the futures of Min Seo Young and Jung Nam Gil. Ban Do made sure Seo Young found the courage to start doing what she liked instead of following her mother who was drilling her into ballet, eventually causing her to have an injury. Jin Joo encouraged Nam Gil to look around more for people who cared for him and open up to people more, because he wasn’t as alone as the thought.

I knew the actress who played Min Seo Young, she was the mean stepsister in Cinderella and the Four Knights and she also played a minor role in Goblin. I’m sorry, but in this drama I had a hard time looking at her because she looked very unnatural to me. Unnaturally skinny, unnaturally dolly. I can’t really look at these kind of people and think ‘Oh, she’s so pretty~’ I think she looked kind of unhealthily skinny and her face was way too alien doll for me. Sorry if this offends anyone, but that’s just my opinion.
The actor of Nam Gil reminded me a bit of Kim Woo Bin, the same kind of face and broad shoulders. (I like Kim Woo Bin, don’t get me wrong.) I found out he was also in The Liar and His Lover, which is probably where I recognized him from. I found him a little stiff – but that was also his role of course – and I would like to see more spontaneous acting from him. It was all very safe and friendly. But I liked his character.
And then there’s the group of friends that made Ban Do and Jin Joo’s lives so enjoyable.
Jin Joo’s best friend Yoon Bo Reum (played by Han Bo Reum) and Ban Do’s friend Ahn Jae Woo (played by Heo Jung Min) got together in university as well, but in the future where our Go Back Couple comes from, they have just broken up in a real cruel way. So Ban Do tries to encourage Jae Woo not to date Bo Reum because it will only bring him pain in the future. And Jin Joo tries to tell Bo Reum that they’re going to go through a rough path as well.
It’s only until the last episode that we find out through Jin Joo why Bo Reum breaks up with Jae Woo (she finds out she’s infertile) and after this comes out, the two still make up in the future and get married.
I recently saw Heo Jung Min in Another Oh Hae Young, where he was the main lead’s delinquent younger brother. However, I think Jae Woo’s character was a bit similar. So I’d like to see a different kind of character from him. Han Bo Reum appeared in an episode of Let’s Fight Ghost, but I didn’t remember her from that.
And then there was Go Dok Jae (played by Lee Yi Kyung), Ban Do’s other friend who was kind of the clown of the bunch. In the 90s he had really long shiny hair and was always getting himself into trouble. I knew this actor from several other series but I never saw him in such a crazy role, so I liked it.
And Jin Joo’s other friend, the one they brought back from disappearance, Chun Seol (played by Jo Hye Jung). I like this actress, I’ve now seen her in three dramas in total and in all three she looked completely different. She was the best friend in Cinderella and the Four Knights, she was also one of the friends in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (for which she gained a lot of weight, because I first didn’t recognize her as the girl in Cinderella where she seemed a lot skinnier). And here she was a bit chubby as well, but again a completely different look. I love how some people can just transform completely in dramas.

What I also really liked where the many references to Goblin and Descendants of the Sun. Honestly you see references in every single drama these days, but I still like it when I can recognize it. It’s especially funny when there’s people in the series who also played in one of the two.

Okay, I will get back to the story again.
I think when it ended, the most important thing was that this ‘trip’ really symbolized a break between the two. A necessary break they had to take to get back together. For most couples, a break is just a period of time in which they think a lot and reassemble themselves and how they’re really feeling. Ban Do and Jin Joo’s break meant going back to the past for a bit. Portraying a real-life situation through fiction is always difficult, because it still has to feel like there’s a real message and it can’t be just fiction. For example, in Manhole I think they went a little too far. But in this case I think it was just right. Yes, they time-traveled, but there were no little aliens or anything that made them go back. And going back turned out to be exactly what they needed. They needed to come eye-to-eye again and they decided to return to their child as a married couple, as loving parents.
The main obstacle in the end was probably the relationship between Jin Joo and her mother. Her mother (again, the formidable Kim Mi Kyung) passed away before Seo Jin was born, so she never got to see her grandchild. Jin Joo wasn’t able to properly say farewell/see her mother one last time before she died (because Ban Do got into trouble) and this always bothered her. Going back and meeting her mother again, Jin Joo turned into a daughter who clung onto and doted on her mother. She used it as an opportunity to do all the things she still wanted to do with her and treasured every moment with her.
Of course, after Ban Do realized his mother-in-law was still alive when he arrived in the past, he had a lot of mixed feelings as well. He was fond of her, but also felt guilty for some reason. Jin Joo had always blamed him for disabling her to see her mother in her final moments. Seeing Jin Joo and her mother again, he even made a decision to stay in the past, and let Jin Joo live with her mother, even though that would mean abandoning Seo Jin.

I thought this was a very irresponsible thought. Of course Jin Joo was emotional when she saw her mother again, but she was busy processing her grief and finishing her own bucket list so that she’d be able to say goodbye to her mother properly. This was something that she had to do in order to go back. She would never have chosen remaining in the past just so she wouldn’t have to say goodbye to her mother over returning to Seo Jin. Her mother’s death would happen either way, and it was just an opportunity for Jin Joo to deal with her regrets of not appreciating her more and spending more time with her. Because, another important message of the series, you never know what’s going to happen. You have to treasure and cherish the family and friends that you have, be grateful for what they do for you, or you’ll end up regretting it later. You’ll only be able to think ‘I wish I’d spend more time with them’, ‘I wish I’d said ‘Thank you’ or ‘I love you’ more often’. This was Jin Joo’s way of dealing with that.
Ban Do selfishly almost gave up on Seo Jin, a child with a whole life and future in front of him, over a ghost of the past. And that really didn’t make any sense to me.

Luckily, they saw that in the end as well and wrapped up the past nicely in order to go back to the future. After going back some things had changed as well, but not as groundbreaking as, for example, in Back to the Future. They were reunited with their baby and I cried my eyes out because generally family reunions always hit my weak spot. It really ended with a happy ending for everyone except of course the scumbag doctor, who was faced with the ugly truth of the girl he’d used all those years hitting it off with another rich man who generally loved her.
Right, I have to say something about that girl. The rich girl whose father owned a hospital and who was dating the scumbag doctor, Kim Ye Rim (played by Lee Do Yeon). She was the crazy ghost friend in Let’s Fight Ghost who would cling to handsome guys. Overall, I guess you could say she’s not really pretty? In Go Back Couple she was also kind of portrayed as ‘the ugly girl’, which I think is always a bit harsh. In any case, I think she’s a lovely actress and I would like to see her as more than just a comic side role. It’s people like this who might look different but are really good actors that we need to see more.
I actually thought about this as well after seeing the trailer of a new drama called My ID is Gangnam Beauty, in which a girl who is really ugly gets bullied a lot and eventually gets her whole face plastic-surgerized to become ‘pretty’. I still find this a very problematic aspect of Korea, the obsession with beauty. Girls have to be beautiful and pretty and guys have to be handsome. If you don’t fit into that mold, you’re considered unnatural. Or weird, or something not good. In this trailer, I just couldn’t help but think, this young, slightly oversized girl having to play the role of an ousted ugly girl… What kind of effect will that have on her? What kind of message does this convey? That being oversized is ugly? That having large teeth is ugly?
Sorry for the sudden rant, but I probably won’t watch My ID is Gangnam Beauty since the story concept already pissed me off a bit ^^” so I wanted to mention it here as a response to this Lee Do Yeon who might be viewed as ugly but is still a talented actress. And still beautiful, without a doubt.

As a final note I would like to say, in the very last minutes of the series they went through the trouble of putting in some more fiction and show the viewers what was the deal with the magical rings. I thought it was funny, but in my opinion it didn’t have to be explained. I had already accepted that the rings were magical and brought them back together. But it gave a nice last way for a sigh of relief. They showed the main actors as divine beings quarrelling and throwing their rings down on earth in anger. And these were the rings that Ban Do and Jin Joo chose as their wedding rings. Once they took them off, they were send back on a little trip to make up, once they put them back on, they returned to their original lived. Thanks for bringing them together again, divine beings.

In the end, Go Back Couple is a very sweet story about two people who think they’ve reached the line with each other, are forced to take a break, and then realize they still have a lot to work on together. It had the right amount of humor, emotional depth, and a lot of great messages. And also the right amount of cliches, but it wasn’t to an annoying extent. I really enjoyed watching it.

Next up will be the last 2017 batch drama (I’m curious as to whether it’s an 12-episoder as well) and after that I’ll continue with more recent ones. Stay tuned!

Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

The Package
(더 패키지 / Deo Paekiji)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

This drama has been on my list for a while -well, since they started promoting it in 2017- because I generally like dramas that focus on situations where a group of different people gather and get to know each other. Also, it seemed to have the amount of romance and of course nice scenery that I tend to appreciate in a drama. So here we are.
I have to say that I haven’t seen many dramas like this one. It was easy-going in pace, easy to follow in storyline, and still it incorporated a lot of human feelings and emotions.
I think the concept for this series was very nicely established.

The Package is about a group of Korean tourists taking a 10-day package tour of France. The main characters are these 7 tourists and their tour guide. Along their trip, we get to know all the characters and their background and -most importantly- why they came on this trip. Some of them had a situation at home that they were taking a break from, others had health- or relationship-related reasons.
One of the most important lessons to take from this drama in my opinion – and I will get back to this later – not to judge anyone from the outside. Being brought together as a group on this tour, there are a lot of first impressions that turn out to be not as they seemed.

I will briefly introduce the main characters first and then go a little deeper into their respective stories.
First of all, there’s the tour guide, Yoon So So (played by Lee Yeon Hee). She has been living in Paris ever since she came there with her husband to get married. However, some things happened and her husband abandoned her. She’s not in a good place with her family at home, so she chose to stay in France and now works as a tour guide for package tours directed at Korean tourists.
Then there’s San Ma Ru (played by Jung Yong Hwa), the only passenger in the group travelling by himself. He came on this trip that he planned with his girlfriend whom he also works with, but some trouble in the office created tension between them and his girlfriend doesn’t turn up at the airport to come on the trip, so he goes by himself.
The other tourists consist of 3 pairs: an elderly couple, a young couple, and a father and his daughter.
The elderly couple, Oh Gab Soo and Han Bok Ja (played by Jung Kyu Soo and Lee Ji Hyun) seemed to have a strained relationship. The husband is a very conservative Korean man, he complains about the service and the waiting times, he compares all the places they go to to places in Korea, and he prefers Korean food over everything else. His soft-spoken wife keeps telling him to not make a fuss and keeps apologizing in his place. However, it turns out that she is much more done with her husband’s behavior than she shows.
The young couple, Kim Kyung Jae and Han So Ran (played by Choi Woo Shik and Ha Si Eun), also seem to have their relationship troubles. The boyfriend has just invested in a business and is constantly on the phone with his investor to get updates. The girlfriend expresses the emptiness she feels in her own relationship by talking about other people a lot, she likes shopping a lot, and she has an unfortunate case of indigestion which causes her to run off to the bathroom a lot.
The father-daughter duo, Jung Yun Sung and Jung Na Hyun (played by Ryu Seung Soo and Park Yoo Na) give off a mysterious vibe in the beginning because they don’t explicitly clarify that they are father and daughter. The father seems quite jovial, he gives his daughter whatever she asks for. The daughter seems caught up in her own world mostly, taking a lot of photos and videos and posting them on social media.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of this series was about first impressions. I thought it was really clever how the makers of the series used its mere 12 episodes to cover everyone’s story and point of view equally clearly. You could say that between the first and the last episode, the viewer makes a complete U-turn when it comes to knowing the characters. Almost all impressions we get from the first episode turn out to be wrong.
To start with So So – she gives off a kind of melancholic feeling from the start. A lot of the places she goes to on the tour remind her of times she visited them with her ex-husband, and it seems that since he went away she build a wall around herself and lost the self-esteem to go back home to her parents (the parents who had forbidden her to move to France for that guy in the first place). She’s scared that her family is still mad at her.
In the meantime what we also see is a guy who is released from prison and immediately goes out to find her. Our first impression therefore is: this guy in prison is So So’s ex-husband, he went to jail and that’s what went wrong with them. And now he’s back for some reason he’s really angry at her and wants to find her again.
It isn’t until he finally meets with her during the tour that we find out this guy is actually her little brother who wants to bring So So back home. Although he has a bit of a temper, he’s actually a good guy.

San Ma Ru makes a big impression on the group as soon as they arrive in France – he is held back by customs because he shares a name with a noted sex offender. It doesn’t really help that he still has female underwear belonging to his girlfriend in his suitcase. He causes more trouble during the tour, and people tend to think that he is a bit of a pervert for coming on the tour all by himself.
As it turns out, Ma Ru recently found out a big secret about his company, something to do with drug testing, and he leaked this secret, causing the company to turn on him. His girlfriend, who swore to be on his side, also took the side of the company and has been telling him to come back and settle things. As it is, Ma Ru is now on unaccepted absence of leave.

Han Bok Ja is a depressed woman. She recently found out she has cancer and she has been keeping it a secret from her husband. She has been seeing a psych and already accepted in her mind that she doesn’t have long to live. Realizing that she is envious of all the people living ‘pretty’ lives while she can’t, she wants to at least see pretty things before it’s time.
Oh Gab Soo is a very stubborn man. He has found out about his wife’s cancer and tries to make her as comfortable as possible, but because he is so bad at expressing his emotions he mostly just comes off as impatient and rude. He truly cares about his wife, he really loves her and thinks she’s pretty, but he can’t actually tell her that -I mean, of course “he wouldn’t be a real man if he did”. So the little things he does for her go pretty much unnoticed by her, creating a gap between them. He also booked this trip for the two of them because he remembered her saying she wanted to see France before she died. Still, he’s convincing himself and wants to convince his wife more than anything that she’s not going to die and in doing so, always forces her to take it easy and eat well.

Han So Ran is not happy. While she’s nearing her seven year anniversary with her boyfriend, he has been more distant with her every year. And now that he’s started his own business he’s almost constantly on the phone, even though they’re in France. They look like a typical young and superficial couple, So Ran is always gossiping about other people and acting a bit spoiled. As it turns out, her boss at work has been pursuing her and before she went to France, he told her that he will propose to her when she comes back. So this trip for her is also a kind of last chance check whether she can stay with her Kyung Jae or not.
Kyung Jae loves So Ran a lot, and he has been so busy with his new business because he wants to create a situation in which he has enough stability to propose to her. He was planning on proposing to her in Paris, but then the investment suddenly got shaky. In the meantime, a distance is created between the two because they, too, don’t communicate well enough with each other.

When they see Jung Yun Sung and Na Hyun for the first time, everyone seems to think something suspicious is going on. Because they don’t clarify their relation to each other, everyone kind of assumes that he is her sugar daddy or something – at any rate, that they’re having an affair. It’s only revealed later on in the series that they are simply father and daughter. The affair-impression is created by the fact that Yun Sung is occasionally on the phone with a woman whom he talks to very affectionately, as if she is his wife. To create an even bigger misunderstanding, we see the woman on the other side of the line with another man – as if she’s cheating on him as well.
However, it’s eventually cleared up: Yun Sung has been dating a new woman after his wife’s death and Na Hyun has trouble coming to terms with the idea of a new mother. That’s why she acts so cold towards her father when it comes to this woman he’s constantly calling.

Okay, so now I will talk a little more about the story in general.
First of all, it’s a tour of France, Paris mostly and some nearby places, which provide a lot of beautiful scenery shots. I’ve personally fallen in love with the image of Mon Saint-Michel, which I’d like to visit now as well. I think it was also a clever way for promotion – I wouldn’t be surprised if this drama increased the number of Korean tourists wanting to go to France. I also read something about the main actress Lee Yeon Hee becoming the PR Ambassador for the French Tourism Bureau in real-life. Besides the stories following every character, we learn a lot about France through So So’s guide tour. The tour also includes a lot of locations where famous movies were shot, and places with wonderful myths surrounding them.
Of course, So So’s own myth was that many fortune tellers told her that she would meet her destined love at ‘the foot of an angel’. Or that he would ‘lead her to the foot of an angel’. During the tour Ma Ru causes an accident and in exchange for his picture as a offender, the mayor of the town promised to open the passage that would lead all the way up to the statue of angel Michael on top of Mon Saint-Michel. It is at the literal feet of this angel that So So and Ma Ru come face to face. Because Ma Ru is the only passenger travelling by himself, he finds himself in So So’s company more than once and they start bonding without even noticing it.
When they get trapped on an island surrounded by water (the flood came in and they weren’t fast enough to get back in time), their feelings connect and they realize they have feelings for each other.
But because of So So’s wall, she still seems to want to keep it low-key during the tour, not wanting to let the others find out about it even though it’s so obvious everyone already knows.

I think a great aspect of the drama was that everyone’s character was clarified one-by-one, and in the end I was able to relate to pretty much everyone. Because first we see Bok Ja’s point of view we think ‘oh her husband is so unreasonable!’, but then in the end we get to see Gab Soo’s story and we’re like ‘oh but he means so well!’
This was the case with basically everyone in the story. It’s nice that, even though the drama only has 12 episodes, nothing felt rushed and everyone’s story was equally distributed and written. I feel like no one got left behind in the writing.

In the last episode we see how everyone deals with the situation back home. Although many relationships become shaky during the tour, they all work out in the end, the tour ultimately brings everyone closer to one another.
Gab Soo is finally able to open up to his wife about how he feels, how lost he would feel without her. So Ran accepts Kyung Jae even after his investment plan fails, saying they shouldn’t put locks on their relationship but just love each other freely no matter what.
Na Hyun accepts her father’s new girlfriend and even sends her a video of a bunch of edited clips she took of her dad during the tour with the message ‘thank you for accepting my dad’. She also sends everyone else who went on the tour videos of them, as she has been filming a lot during the tour -not just to put on social media but because she has an affinity for editing movies, even though one she made about her school almost got her expelled.
Ma Ru goes back to his work, but after finding out no one is on his side he quits – but only after leaving the last piece of evidence that he took with him on a USB stick to France. After that he leaves the company and goes on another vacation.
So So also decides to go on a vacation and calls her little brother to tell him she’s coming back to Korea for a bit. She also talks with her mother and all is well.
At the airport, So So and Ma Ru meet again, both being drawn to a picture of the angel Michael. Once again, they are brought together at ‘the feet of an angel’.

The funny thing is that, during flashbacks shown from before they went on the trip, a lot of the people on the tour have already met one another on the streets before. Not in a way that would remind them of each other, but just casually. Like they happened to be in the same room, or they accidentally bumped into each other.
These little things. I didn’t really see the value in adding that, because they still met as strangers on the tour, but it was fun, in a way.

I knew some of the actors beforehand, but most of them just from 1 or 2 other series I think.
I knew Lee Yeon Hee from Reunited Worlds – I have to say I have yet to see another side of her acting. I have difficulty distinguishing expressions from her face, even when she smiles it seems like there’s something behind it.
I knew Jung Yong Hwa (of course) from You’re Beautiful and from Heartstrings, but I feel like he’s always cast as the calm and kind type of guy, The Package being no exception. Even though they gave his character a bit more quirkiness, such as his urge to try out everything by himself even if that gets him into trouble (the chastity belt scene being one of the most hilariously awkward situations).
I’ve seen Choi Woo Shik before in Rooftop Prince (where he was adorable) and in Fated to Love You and Fight For My Way (in which he was a bit of a douche). It’s hard to see someone with a cute face like his to be a jerk, but I think it added a lot of character to Kyung Jae. It gaves him more depth, not just being a seemingly handsome boyfriend.
I found out Ha Si Eun was actually in Another Oh Hae Young, she played the best friend but I didn’t recognize her because in Another Oh Hae Young she was really dolled up and here she was a bit more casually-dressed and less make-up.
I remember Jung Kyu Soo’s face, but I think I’ve mostly seen him in historical dramas. I didn’t know Lee Ji Hyun, but I thought she was one of the most interesting characters in the series.
I’ve also seen Ryu Seung Soo’s face before, but I can’t remember from where. And I didn’t know Park Yoo Na, but looking at dramawiki she hasn’t done a lot yet.

Anyways, the cast wasn’t spectacularly famous or anything, but that had its own charm. Although I think that that’s one of the reasons why it hasn’t been hyped that much. When it was just out, I did see some promotional trailers and stuff but afterwards it went quiet. But maybe that’s just because I waited so long before watching it and by the time I did it was already a long time ago people talked about it.

Anyways, I really like these kind of stories with a relaxed pace, beautiful scenery shots and a thorough but not too much exploration of all the characters. The comments on the videos I watched were all very positive, as well. Stories like these don’t need more drama than just the relationships between the characters, because they already fill up the whole story. It was nice watching something short and light, yet still profound and entertaining and emotionally loaded. I think the message about the first impressions was very accurate (someone mentioned that in the comments as well), and it really makes you think about life. The characters, all the way in this foreign country with only one person they really know, are almost forced to think about their way of living and whether they have to change or not. Forced into the situation where they have to get along with each other, they have to face each other whether they like it or not.
It’s always a terrible feeling to fight while on vacation together, you just don’t want to do that, it’s supposed to be a nice time away from all the sorrows at home. So halfway through the series I was just really begging for everything to work out for everyone. Luckily, it did become a happy ending for all the characters, so that’s nice. It had enough emotional ups and downs in it already, it didn’t need a bad ending.

One thing, though, that I have to note: of all the main characters, I actually felt the least emotions coming from the main couple, So So and Ma Ru. Even though So So was occasionally crying, neither of them reached their emotional climax in the same way the other passengers did. The remaining six all went through an emotional rollercoaster and were pushed to their limits, while So So and Ma Ru overall remained very calm.
So in the beginning I found it a bit hard to acknowledge the chemistry between them, because even though the kissing scenes were really intense, the next moment they would be walking together again as if they were strangers.
Except from that I thought it was a very refreshing concept for a Korean drama series.
Especially because they went as far to show the liberty of the French in ways such as erotic shops and So So’s homosexual friends. Even Ma Ru was still too conservative to fully embrace that kind of liberty. It was clear that So So had become really used to living in France, and she was even referred to as ‘having become a French woman’.
As someone living in Europe where this kind of liberty is pretty much common sense, for me it was fun to see the Korean tourists with their Korean state of mind witness this kind of ‘liberal’ lifestyle. Even to the point of rolling my eyes when Ma Ru said ‘but… they’re both men?’ Come on man, get with the times.

I would like to stress again how much I liked seeing everyone’s point of view in the story. I was able to agree and disagree with everyone. I think it’s very important to have characters that are very relatable in both their positive and their negative behavior. One moment you think someone is overreacting, the next you get a new insight and you’re like ‘ahh so that’s why she’s behaving like that’. It just all made sense to me and in the end there really was no one that I really disliked (except of course Ma Ru’s betraying colleagues at work).

I would like to see more of these kind of dramas where the focus isn’t on the prettiness of the actress and the handsomeness of the actor. Stories about real people with their own deal or struggles and how they deal with them. That’s why I really loved Han Bok Ja in this series, I felt like they could’ve just picked her off the streets and told her: ‘just act like yourself’. Her acting was so natural and her character so relatable (even though of course I’m not age yet).

So yes, I liked this one. I’m going on to the next one quite fast, although I don’t want to rush anything. It’s just that I have a very long list and I’m very behind in my own opinion. Please keep following me!

Also, I haven’t mentioned this before but if you have anything to discuss about any of my reviews, please feel free to comment! I hope to be able to have nice talks about these series with fellow K-drama lovers 🙂

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.

She Was Pretty
(그녀는 예뻤다 / Geunyeoneun Yeppeottda)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Okay, yes, I know, it’s been less than a week since my last update… I went through this quite fast, haha.
This drama was recommended to me by my Kdrama-buddy friend, I’d seen some scenes and she told me it was really fun so I put it on my list 🙂
As with the previous one I watched, this was an older drama (from 2015) and I could really feel the old-school Kdrama style. I wouldn’t be able to really pinpoint how the modern ones are different, but it just felt like the old days when I just started watching Kdramas.

Okay, so this drama is called She Was Pretty. The story is about a woman called Kim Hye Jin (played by Hwang Jung Eum), who sticks out because she is ‘not’ pretty. She was red freckled (or pimpled?) cheeks, big bushy curls and an old-fashioned style in clothing. However, when she was younger she was really pretty and popular. She explains that when she was younger she looked like her mother, and when she hit puberty she suddenly got flushed with her father’s genes and ended up looking like she does now.
Her best friend Min Ha Ri (played by Go Joon Hee) looks like a model, she’s really tall and skinny and gorgeous. The two have been the best of friends since elementary school and friends of popular Ha Ri are often surprised to see her with such an ‘ugly’ friend.
On the other hand, there’s Ji Sung Joon (played by Park Seo Joon), who used to be really chubby when he was little. He was often bullied, but Hye Jin was always there to save him. The two were close when they were kids, but Sung Joon had to immigrate to America and they were separated for 15 years.
After these 15 years, Hye Jin suddenly gets an email from Sung Joon that he’s coming back to Korea and he would like to meet her after all this time. Excited, they arrange to meet but when they arrive at their meeting spot Hye Jin sees that Sung Joon has turned into a really handsome looking guy. He mistakes a pretty lady for Hye Jin (naturally expecting her to still be pretty) and Hye Jin gets embarrassed to be seen like this and hides. Instead, she asks Ha Ri to pretend to be her and greet him.
To make matters worse, at her new job at a famous magazine editing company, Hye Jin finds that Sung Joon is her new Chief Editor.
The only person who seems to be on her side is Kim Shin Hyuk (played by Choi Si Won), an eccentric reporter/feature editor who quickly sees the real beauty in Hye Jin.

I have a couple of things to say about this drama, some things I appreciated, but some things I couldn’t help but criticize a little. I will start with giving a bit more content to what went on the story, and then I’ll start pointing out the things that stood out to me in one way or another.

So Hye Jin starts working at this magazine called ‘The Most’, she starts out in the managing department but because of a misunderstanding where she was mistaken for an intern at the editing department, she is transferred there because the editing department was impressed with her skills during that misunderstood situation. At first she really doesn’t want to work there because she feels too uncomfortable with Sung Joon being there. Their relationship starts off really bad because Hye Jin is very clumzy and keeps making mistakes while Sung Joon is really stressed about gaining results – he is being pressured from America to make the magazine Number 1 on the rankings or else the Korea branch will have to shut down.
While constantly trying to avoid him because she is too afraid he will find out and make fun of her for how much she’s changed (in a bad way), Hye Jin finds herself immersed in work and builds up relations with her colleagues and eventually really finds her place there.

In the meantime, the story that began when Ha Ri pretended to be Hye Jin didn’t end so quickly. Sung Joon is more than delighted to see her again, basically suggesting that now they should date, but Ha Ri tries to brush him off. She tells him she’s going to study abroad the next day so he will leave her alone.
However, they bump into each other again at the hotel Ha Ri works at and she has to make up an excuse why’s already returned from her study abroad. She finds it harder this time to brush him off and this eventually leads to a complicated relationship. The main complication is that Ha Ri doesn’t tell Hye Jin that she’s still meeting Sung Joon and she even ends up really falling for him.

One of the really nice things about this drama is that Ha Ri was not the typical second female lead ‘best-friend-turns-into-frenemy’. She started out a little superficial, dating and playing around with guys and partying and living off a job her rich daddy got her. But she proves herself to be the most loyal friend to Hye Jin, and I actually think she is one of the sweetest people in the whole series. After continually meeting Sung Joon, even though she feels bad about it and wants to tell him the truth, the timing is never right and it keeps getting delayed and delayed. When she starts having feelings for Sung Joon (the first ever real romantic feelings in her life), she feels terrible and guilty towards Hye Jin. She knows what he means to Hye Jin and that she likes him. When she is about to tell him for real and even writes him a letter to convey her feelings better, Sung Joon finds out before she can tell him. Of course he’s really angry and just leaves her standing there without giving her a chance to explain. Which is not what she deserved.
When Ha Ri was still pretending they shared some really sweet moments and he seemed to really like her when he thought she was Hye Jin. Even so, when he finds out he just gets angry and leaves. I found it weird that -even though of course he was angry- he could just immediately forget about all those moments. He could’ve just asked her to explain what was going on, because she was really planning on telling him.
Of course, maybe it made it easier for him because he already had some suspicions at that point.

At work, initially he doesn’t really bother with Hye Jin (unlike in Another Oh Hae Young, he is not effected at all by the fact that one of his employees has the same name as his girlfriend, he just thinks it’s a coincidence), but she keeps reminding him of his childhood crush through little habits that she still has. Some things she does for example: 1. yelling ‘It’s a go!’ when the traffic light jumps to green, and 2. disliking rain falling on her because it makes her hair even bigger. They also show the same amount of interest in a certain painting that they liked together when they were kids. He keeps getting confronted with these little things that make him more curious about her. In the end, he claims that he fell in love with Hye Jin before he even knew she was ‘his’ Hye Jin, but I still feel that there was something weird, also comparing it to how he reacted to Ha Ri when he found out she wasn’t Hye Jin. After he left her there, he immediately went to Hye Jin, saying ‘It’s been a while’, and from one moment onto the other he started treating her well. I don’t know, it felt a little weird and it seemed to me that he was just heading towards whoever his Kim Hye Jin was, no matter who she was.
When it turned out to be the ‘ugly’ Hye Jin from work, it didn’t matter anymore because she was his Hye Jin. Although when he met her in the beginning he seemed really annoyed by her.
I couldn’t really pinpoint his sincerity and sometimes it felt a little forced, like he was determined to end up with his childhood crush, no matter what. It would have been interesting if he’d fallen for Ha Ri and even after finding out she wasn’t Hye Jin, still would’ve liked her or something. It was just a bit cliche to me.
And he also wasn’t angry at Hye Jin at all for not telling him the truth even though she knew from the beginning. It really made Ha Ri look like the bad guy, which she wasn’t.

I have to admit, although I love Park Seo Joon, I usually like him in roles in which he plays the manly but slightly dumb roles. I loved him in Fight For My Way and Midnight Runners, but as soon as they cast him as a suave gentleman or even a flower guy (Hwarang, She Was Pretty, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?) I just feel a bit uncomfortable. I just don’t see him as a flower guy, I see him as the muscular manly guy. My friend pointed out to me that his acting wasn’t very good in this drama, but it didn’t really bother me.

I was actually more bothered by Hwang Jung Eum, especially in the second half.
Whereas in the first half I sometimes got a bit annoyed with Hye Jin because sometimes she was just TOO clumsy. Like, in a ‘are-you-kidding-me-can’t-you-even-pick-something-up-in-a-normal-way’ kind of way. But it added to the character she was portraying.
About halfway through the series however, Hye Jin gets herself a makeover. I wasn’t entirely sure why that was necessary because I thought the whole point of the story was that she wasn’t ‘pretty’, but apparently she needed a new start and suddenly turns up to work with her hair straightened out, her cheeks hidden under layers of foundation and an acceptable sense of fashion. And that’s when I started disliking her. Not only because I didn’t understand the necessity of doing this to her character, but I actually didn’t think it made her look pretty at all. I liked her way better before the makeover. I almost didn’t even recognize her with all the makeup, she didn’t look like herself anymore.
Also, for some reason I felt like her acting became really off after the makeover.
Maybe her initial looks helped her when she needed to act really clumsy in the beginning because whatever she did she looked ‘lame’ because of her looks. But after the makeover it felt like she had to act extra hard to still keep behaving in a clumsy way even though now she looked like every pretty girl in every K-drama ever. When she would do something clumsy it suddenly looked super exaggerated. There were a couple of scenes where she had to cry and she just would start bawling out loud (no real tears) like a baby and I just couldn’t take it seriously.
I was just very happy when in the last episode she felt like she couldn’t keep it up anymore and let her looks be as they used to be.

I read a lot of comments about this drama from people who suffered greatly from second male lead syndrome in this drama. As K-dramas go, usually the kind guy who is genuinely interested in the female lead from the beginning is pushed aside for the cocky jerk-off guy who only starts liking the female lead halfway through the series. That was pretty much the case here as well.
The love between the childhood friends conquered all in the end -for originality reasons I would’ve liked it if they played with that a bit more but oh well- but Shin Hyuk was a very good friend to Hye Jin until the end. Even when he started acting as a rival towards Sung Joon, he wouldn’t take it as far as becoming the evil ‘I-will-do-anything-to-obtain-hold-of-this-woman’ second male lead, which made him even more lovable. He just remained his funny but mysterious self.
His role reminded me of his role on Revolutionary Love (which is from 2017 but I watched it before this one). Because of the weird faces he would pull. Despite the fact of course that here he wasn’t naive or child-like at all, he knew exactly what was going on.
I’m always pretty much down for those kind of ‘I’m-always-goofing-around-but-I’m-actually-really-alert-about-everything’ type characters.

There were some mysteries going on at The Most. There were rumors about the Editor’s nephew who was secretly working in the editing department until he would be inaugurated as the new Vice-President of the company. And there was a writer with the pseudonym Ten who became a person of interest when it came to the 20th Anniversary edition of The Most.
I have to add though, but it was obvious for miles that Shin Hyuk had a secret identity. I just wasn’t sure if he would be the Editor’s nephew or Ten. But I was convinced he was one of them, there was just too much mystery about him. He was living on his own in a hotel where everything was done for him and he kept talking on the phone with someone in English. In the end, the older slouchy looking feature director turned out to be the nephew (no one ever saw that coming) and Shin Hyuk turned out to be Ten. Also, it wasn’t until the last episode that we find out that he was adopted in America and the people he had been talking to were his adoptive American parents.

A side story that I liked was one of the girls working at the editing department who had heard about the Editor’s nephew and was determined to seduce him. But she had three guys to choose from in the editing department and since she didn’t know which one it was, she went for the most likely option, because the other 2 didn’t dress or act the part. In the end, of course, she finds out she went for the wrong guy but she still fell in love with him so they became a couple in the end. I thought this little side character romance story was really funny and sweet. I’ve seen about five dramas with Shin Hye Sun who played this girl and the only part where she played a character like this was in Legend of the Blue Sea where she was the second female lead (sort of). In the other cases she was always this really sweet, caring girl. Anyways, I liked this on its own, even though it didn’t contribute that much to the main story.

On the other hand (I keep saying this), I found the Editor-in-chief super annoying. The woman who always dressed super over-the-top and kept talking in Italian. I guess they put her in for comic relief, but I didn’t find her funny and she kept barging in when it was least needed. I don’t want to bash too many characters, but I just didn’t really see the point in her as a boss if she didn’t act like one. She’s a good actress, I’ve seen her in several roles, but this was just a bit too much in my humble opinion.

For my last critical point, I have to admit that after Sung Joon finds out Hye Jin is ‘his’ Hye Jin and they start dating (as was to be expected, I guess), for me the story was pretty much wrapped up. And then there were about 5 more episodes to fill. Again, as I have pointed out in more reviews I think, sometimes in dramas when the story is finished they don’t know how to stop so they have a few more episodes to wrap up some other things or tell a bit more about some other characters or something like that.
In the last few episodes of this drama, it was mostly about the tension in obtaining that Number 1 position to save The Most and publish the best 20th Anniversary edition they could (of course with the events of interviews being cancelled and everyone snapping at one another).
But what puzzled me the most is that I was convinced that the reveal of Hye Jin being Sung Joon’s childhood crush that he’d been missing for 15 years would be the climax of the drama. Instead, it was more like the anticlimax. It felt like the whole story was leading up to the moment he would realize it was her… and then there was no explosion, but everyone just accepted it. On the one hand it saves the viewer a lot of unnecessary drama and emotions, but on the other hand I still felt like they were rattling it off a little bit.
So in the end, to save us from too much unnecessary drama, the second leads were both really nice people who were willing to give up on their own feelings in order for their friends to be happy, and the expected climax wasn’t deemed as an emotional climax at all. It was really very different from the series I watched before this.

Also, after the whole ordeal with her and Sung Joon and the truth coming out, Ha Ri became more of a supporting side character. They only showed some scenes of her being a sweet friend and looking for a new job, but that was it.
By the way, the way they told Ha Ri’s story (about her mother who’d abandoned her as a child and her terrible new stepmother) made the impression on me that Ha Ri really missed her mother as she had only good memories of her compared to her stepmother, but then her mother appeared on the worst timing ever, in the most random casual way ever. I think it was a moment where Ha Ri was really down because she just got busted by Sung Joon (or it was another moment where she felt really bad towards Hye Jin) and she was walking down the street and suddenly -without any warning- her mother is just standing there like ‘oh my god I missed you please forgive me’ and honestly I felt even worse for Ha Ri because she wasn’t even in the right state of mind to deal with her mother at that moment and she was just looking at her like ‘are you kidding me right now, of all times to appear?’ And so her relationship with her real mother as an adult was kind of thrown out the window so that was not very ideal.

Okay, I feel like I’ve only stated my points of criticism towards this drama, but honestly in it clicheness it was an enjoyable watch. Not too emotionally exhausting, but with funny and sweet moments and even though I was critical about the second half of the series, the ending was one of the best points.
Because it seemed to end like a very -they-lived-happily-ever-after- kind of happy ending in which the two childhood friends found one another again and realized they never stopped caring for one another. But I think everyone matured in the series, even the side characters. Ha Ri made sure she started living a better life and stopped dating random people and partying all the time, she went to look for her own purpose.
Even Han Seol (the girl who was after the Editor-in-chief’s nephew) realized that she shouldn’t keep following her greed and just be happy with this guy even though he wasn’t rich.
But the most important thing was that Hye Jin, even after ending up with Sung Joon and agreeing to even go back to America with him, still found her own passion. It had been her childhood dream to write children’s stories, and she finally found a place where she would be able to fulfill that dream. And Sung Joon remained the perfect boyfriend who realized very well how much she wanted to do that, and didn’t want to stand in the way of that.

One of the stories that was mentioned casually in the series but was actually very important was the story about the God of Opportunity. It said that the God of Opportunity only had one lock of hair on the front part of his head and was bald on the back of his head. This symbolized that the only chance to grasp another opportunity was to grab the lock of hair when it is right in front of you, because if it passes you, you won’t be able to grab a hold of it anymore.
And eventually this is what Hye Jin did, with some encouragement. She saw Ha Ri brimming with excitement when she decided to work hard to pass hotel management school and that inspired her. ‘When people do something they really like, they become really pretty’. I know from experience that this is true, that’s why I always loving listening to people when they’re talking about something they’re really passionate about; they just light up.
People are the most beautiful and the most impressive when they’re doing something they love and excel at it. And then suddenly the theme of ‘pretty’ also changed a bit, there was a bit more depth in there.
So Sung Joon went back to America for a year to make sure everything in the headquarters of The Most was stable, and Hye Jin went on working with a group of writers for children’s stories.
And after that one year they got married and had a beautiful red-cheeked girl who would yell ‘It’s a go!’ whenever the traffic light turned green. So the ending was really nice and sweet.

I liked it, it was light and humorous and enjoyable and did have some good messages to convey. It wasn’t exactly as I expected it to be -I expected something standard along the lines of ‘real beauty is on the inside’- but after the point of Hye Jin’s reversal of fortune was revealed the whole theme of outward beauty didn’t even appear as much as I’d thought. And after she had a makeover no one ever said anything about it again.

And now, I’m finally getting to the list of dramas from the 2017 season and I think the next one will be a bit more intense, but I’ll take my time to enjoy it as much as possible.
Please bear with me!

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.

Another Oh Hae Young
(또 오해영 / Ddo Oh Hae Yeong)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

It’s been a while! I took my time to watch this drama as well, haha. I have to say I liked watching this as it was from a few years back and it was like a typical Kdrama-drama, like the original style Kdrama that I came to like so much. So I enjoyed it and took my time to finish it. This drama is from 2016, by the way, so not that old but still in style a bit old-school Kdrama (not in a bad way).

This drama had been on my list for a while as well, since I heard many good things about it. It was one of these classic must-watch Kdramas (in my head, at least) and I heard many good thing about the main female lead so I was curious. It was funny since the drama I watched before this had the same female lead, but her portrayal of this character was really different – it was nice see her in another good role, I think she’s a very good actress. I knew several of the actors/actresses in this drama, and almost all of them showed me a side to their acting that I hadn’t seen before, so that was a nice surprise.

Let’s get on with the summary, I will try my best to explain it in words. You know how in Kdramas there are always a lot of complications and intertwined relationships which are always very well explained in the dramas themselves but when you want to explain them in words you always get a bit tangled up? That’s what I’m going through now.
But I succeeded in Duel which was way more complicated, so I’m going to approach it in a similar way; by summing up the characters and then tying their stories together.
Another Oh Hae Young revolves about two girls with the same name: Oh Hae Young. Knowing Kdramas, you can probably predict beforehand that this will cause a lot of misunderstandings. You are not wrong.
The main female lead in the drama is ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young (played by Seo Hyun Jin).
The second female lead in the drama is ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young (played by Jeon Hye Bin).
These two girls went to high school together. Being in the same year and class, they got mixed up a lot. Because ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was very popular and ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young wasn’t, the mix-ups were always quite awkward, especially for ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young.
‘Just’ Oh Hae Young has always felt inferior to ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young. She had to get used to painful experiences such as receiving presents and love letters that weren’t meant for her. And when ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young rejected a love profession, the angry boy would come and throw stones through the windows of the wrong Oh Hae Young’s house. Stuff like that. So when she graduates ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young is quite happy that she doesn’t have to see ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young again. Years later, she is about to get married and finally feels like her life will settle down. However, on the day before her wedding she is suddenly dumped by her fiance for the mere reason (and quoting) that he ‘couldn’t stand the way she was eating anymore’.
The main male lead is Park Do Kyung (played by Eric Moon/Moon Jung Hyuk). He creates sound effects for movies and dramas, just like his father did. He lost his father at a young age and was adopted into the family his mother had with another man with two other kids. He now lives in one house with his two step-siblings (an older sister and a younger brother) and his lawyer friend who for some personal reasons can’t return to his own house. Park Do Kyung was in a relationship with ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young. They were very much in love and engaged to be married. However, for reasons he does not understand, she didn’t show up at the altar – rather, she disappeared completely without saying a word, leaving him confused and desperate. After some time, because of some misguided information from his lawyer friend and other people, he learns that Oh Hae Young has left him and is now getting married to another man. Out of spite, he ruins this man’s business, hoping to ruin Oh Hae Young’s life as well for betraying him.
As you might guess, this turns out to be the wrong Oh Hae Young.
The second male lead is Han Tae Jin (played by Lee Jae Yoon), ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young’s fiance. Without any warning, his investors suddenly take back their investments in his company, leaving him not only bankrupt but also arrested for fraud. Just about to get married, he makes up an excuse to dump Oh Hae Young before their wedding to not involve her in this mess, knowing that she might not forgive him.
So, in short: Park Do Kyung is angry because he heard that his ex-fiance called Oh Hae Young left him for another man and therefore tries to ruin their life together, accidentally ruining another Oh Hae Young’s life.
The series starts with Park Do Kyung finding out he ruined lives of a completely unrelated businessman his wife-to-be who just happens to have the same name as his own ex-fiance.

This is the main storyline of the drama. There are some other storylines, such as ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young returning and starting work at the same company as ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young, recreating their high school experiences of mix-ups and very much tension between the two.
The other one is a bit more complicated and it took me a while to fully understand it either (I still can’t really say I understand it a 100%). Park Do Kyung suffers from strange visions. First they seem to be predicting the future, but then he starts having visions about ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young before he has even met her. I will come back to this later.

First of all, I want to talk about ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young. I really liked her character, Seo Hyun Jin was really good. ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young is very honest and straightforward about her feelings. She can get very emotional, but in a pure and child-like kind of way. When she is feeling down, she has the habit of putting on dramatic music and dancing on her own in the living room (unless her mother joins her). Before her life settles, she is kind of a mess. Unfortunate things happen all the time, but instead of feeling extremely embarrassed she just accepts it and faces the stares. For example when she accidentally crashes her bike into the mud, she would just swing the bike over her shoulder and walk home in her dirty mud-stained state, not caring about all the people staring at her.
Her mother (played by the impeccable Kim Mi Kyung) is having a hard time dealing with the eccentricity of her daughter. At a certain point she is almost embarrassed with her and kicks her out of the house.
‘Just’ Oh Hae Young ends up living in a house right next to Park Do Kyung (of course, because Kdramas). Park Do Kyung, now having met the woman he keeps seeing in his visions, is kind of freaked out. By now he has already realized that she’s the one whose life he has ruined and he mostly just feels sorry for her. But continually being surprised by her actions, he also finds himself attracted to her. Of course, he doesn’t allow himself to be, but it’s getting harder to resist, even more so when she expresses her growing feelings for him in her usual direct way.
So an inevitable relationship between the two starts here as well. This relationship, however, is brought into jeopardy by 1. ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young returning who is determined to get her life with Park Do Kyung back and 2. Han Tae Jin being freed by prison and finding out what Park Do Kyung did to him and that he is now seeing his former fiance whom he still has feelings for.

One thing that I have to say that I found a shame was that they didn’t show us a lot of the relationship between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Han Tae Jin when they were together. There was one flashback scene, I believe, where you see them planning a trip I think and cuddling, but that’s it. Whereas for ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young and Park Do Kyung, we get to see a bunch of flashback scenes from their lovey-dovey relationship. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I couldn’t really fathom the relationship between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Han Tae Jin, I didn’t see any scenes that really showed what kind of couple they had been. And that must have been important, because they were getting married so they probably loved each other a lot.

And then besides all this there is an additional part of the cast that also needs to be mentioned: Park Do Kyung’s family.
His mother (played by Nam Ki Ae) is a very selfish flashy woman who has been getting married time after time to rich guys and is now the boss of the company that both her sons work for. She’s a bit of a nasty person and it also turns out that she is the reason for chasing ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young away from marrying Do Kyung.
His older sister Park Soo Kyung (played by Ye Ji Won) is ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young’s boss. While she dresses super fancy at work, she drowns herself in alcohol pretty much every single night and we find out she is a pretty crazy person, often dancing around babbling in incoherent French and having drunken frenzies. I had to get used to her character a lot. In the beginning I thought she was just some comic relief character, but I didn’t find her very funny, more like over-the-top trying to be funny. But she has actually really good character development, I will say more about that later as well.
His younger brother Park Hoon (played by Heo Jung Min) is a bit of a useless delinquent type of guy. He works with Do Kyung in the sound effects department of their mother’s company, but he has a temper. He also expresses himself very loudly and likes to make fun of people but gets sensitive when people call him a delinquent. He has a girlfriend named Anna who works at several stores throughout the series and they have their own little bubble they live in.
And then, there’s Park Do Kyung’s childhood friend, now lawyer Lee Jin Sang (played by Kim Ji Suk), a guy who is obsessed with women and partying. He starts off as a player, having pretty much a girlfriend for every day of the week, until he gets busted of course. He is the one who encourages Park Do Kyung to get revenge on Han Tae Jin when they think they find out he’s the one ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young left him for. Apart from his hormonal behavior, he is a good friend and tries to help Park Do Kyung with his situation, feeling partly responsible. His character really grows as well, funnily together with Soo Kyung’s.

Apart from the usual drama tropes, I found it an enjoyable series to watch. There were a lot of moments where I was laughing out loud – the actors sure went all the way with their craziness. There were a couple of scenes in which some people got so drunk it really escalated. And I laughed a lot about ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young’s eccentricity.
Some things were very exaggerated though. For example the scenes between the two Oh Hae Youngs at work. It was almost sickening to see how much ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was being adored by all the male employees. At a certain point I was wondering whether she herself was aware of how much she was being objectified by pretty much every male co-worker, including her boss. Especially at the company karaoke parties, there was one time when they were playing a game after they all got their physical age (?) from a medical check and they all had to act accordingly to the age they got. ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young got 40 and ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young got like 21 or something. And all these men were doting on her so much I kind of felt it was inappropriate.

As the relationship between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Park Do Kyung develops (including some very passionate REAL kisses, thank you very much), of course there is the point where she finds out what he has done. This comes in the form of Han Tae Jin, out of prison, who confronts her with the fact that he was arrested and he only dumped her to save her reputation, not because he didn’t love her anymore. He also tells her that Park Do Kyung is the one who made them break up. Conflicted as heck – because even despite this truth she finds herself drawn to Park Do Kyung – they have a temporary break.
And of course, she spirals on ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young for ruining her life once again, and big-time this time. The scene in which she stormed in and physically attacked ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was very intense and you could see how shocked ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was. Of course, it’s not until later that she hears what has happened as well. She even goes around to Do Kyung to thank him for doing that while thinking of her. After being rejected again by him, she finally backs off and leaves the two of them alone.
After their temporary break, they feel that they still can’t let go of each other and everything is forgiven and forgotten.
The only one who is still not satisfied is Han Tae Jin. I actually knew this actor from some other dramas, first of all Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo in which he was a clueless but really nice guy and then Revolutionary Love in which I think he was a bit more angsty. He became very angsty in this drama as well, getting himself drunk and getting violent a lot after getting out of prison. He beats up Park Do Kyung several times as well. I don’t know, I prefer him as a nice guy because his face becomes very scary when he’s a bad guy.

Okay, now I’m going to go into the visions part. After first having several future visions of ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young, Do Kyung has a strong vision of himself laying bleeding on the street after being hit by a car and looking up at the night sky with snow falling down on him. In this moment, his last thoughts before (presumably) dying are of ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young.
It is eventually deducted by his psychologist that when he is dying in that spot in the future, his regrets about not continuing his relationship with ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young are so deep that these visions cross time to his past self, causing him to see this visions beforehand and warning him to change the course of his failed relationship with ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young. It took me a while to figure this out, only after the last episode I kind of understood it. It’s like having a glimpse of a bad thing happening in the future and trying to change that by changing a couple of things that happened in that vision. For example, one thing he saw in his dying vision was a newsflash that a famous singer had died, so he made sure that this didn’t happen. He also sees that Han Tae Jin is the person driving the car that hits him. While aware of the fact that this will happen, he one time spots Han Tae Jin almost falling off a bridge in a drunken state and, after hesitating seconds, he saves his life. Han Tae Jin catches a glimpse of his shoes before he loses consciousness. At the moment that the vision is about to be realized, Han Tae Jin stops himself from hitting Do Kyung with his car because he recognizes his shoes and realizes Do Kyung was the one who saved his life. So like this, Do Kyung is able to avoid his vision from coming true.
All in all, I found it a little bit far-fetched to add this to the story, because there were already several very strong plots that were all completed. The fact that they had to add this to show that his feelings for her were so deep they even crossed space-time was (even for a Kdrama) a bit cheesy for me.

But here’s something else that puzzled me about the ending, even though it was a happy ending in which Do Kyung and ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young get married. But right before that we see Do Kyung getting hit by a car all the same, during daytime and white flowers falling down on him from a drama scene they’re filming somewhere on a roof. So it almost seemed like he was still destined to die like that. He is brought to the hospital for surgery and everyone is just praying he will be okay, even starting to prepare the wedding already to keep their hopes up for his recovery.
And then suddenly we switch to the wedding. Suddenly Park Do Kyung has recovered, it was all well, nothing to worry about, happy ending. At first I thought this was ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young imagining things, because in the previous scene she said something about joining the other in already picturing the wedding.
But this turned out to be real. So I couldn’t help but think ‘then why go through the whole accident thing?’ It seemed kind of useless to me, just for shock value or something. Was it that the vision of him being hit by a car had to come true one way or another to put an end to it all? I didn’t really get it.

So that was it for the main characters, but I will say a bit more about the relationship between Park Soo Kyung and Lee Jin Sang (the older sister and the lawyer friend).
Jin Sang has been Do Kyung’s friend ever since high school (or even earlier maybe), and Soo Kyung has always been the older ‘noona’ that he respected. However, as things go in their hectic lives, one time Soo Kyung and Jin Sang get so drunk they end up sleeping together. Soo Kyung wakes up sober and realizes this, but Jin Sang has no recollection of it at all.
And then, Soo Kyung hears from the doctor that she’s pregnant. Jin Sang is with her at that moment, rejoicing for her, but she knows it’s his and she can’t tell him because she’s too embarrassed. Imagine getting pregnant from a drunken one-night stand with your little brother’s best friend. I can’t say I disagree with her. And also because Jin Sang is such a dissolute person, she doesn’t want to burden him with the fact that he knocked up a 44-year old woman. However, because she has fallen in love with him she starts treating him with more kindness and respect and, funnily, because of this he figures it out on his own. Now this is the point where the two of them really grow in their characters. Jin Sang seems desperate and pitiful in the beginning but suddenly his feeling of responsibility arises and he mans up and matures in a matter of several episodes toward the end. Soo Kyung also stops acting crazy and drunk and tries to make the best of the situation as possible. In the end, even though they’re still awkward, they do decide to stay together as they both start seeing clearly their feelings for one another.
Like this, the two characters who seemed to be the most frivolous and exaggerated in the beginning end up being two of the more mature ones. That’s some good writing I think.
I knew both actors before from other dramas, and Ye Ji Won’s character reminded me a bit of her role in Producer, where she was hilarious. I have only seen Kim Ji Suk in very normal casual roles, so it was really fun to see him in such a wild role, it showed a side to his acting I hadn’t seen before. It’s always nice when actors get such chances and surprise you.

As I mentioned her before as ‘impeccable’, I want to give one more shoutout to Mrs. Kim Mi Kyung, because she is just genius. I have seen many dramas with her and she is such a great actress. Because she’s middle-aged she usually plays mothers or other kinds of ahjumma. I remember the first time I watched her was in Baby-faced Beauty in which she was a stern but good-hearted fashion designer. She was also amazing in The Heirs, where she had to talk using sign language. It’s such a joy to see her in every role she plays, she’s truly a great actress. Much praise to her!

To sum it all up, I enjoyed watching it and I’m glad I can now say I’ve seen one of the classics. As I’ve stated, there were some things that I didn’t really understand and the ‘seeing into the future’ thing seemed a bit far-fetched to me (and I watch a lot of time travel stuff, so not a lot is far-fetched to me). Also, in the last few episodes it seemed like they abandoned the  original plot of the story (the two Oh Hae Youngs) a little. All of a sudden ‘Pretty’ Oh Hae Young was not appearing anymore and it just wasn’t about that anymore. In the last few episodes it was all about the love between ‘Just’ Oh Hae Young and Park Do Kyung and while that’s okay, it felt like it dragged the end out a little bit. The real plot has finished, now we have to fill the rest of it up with some more romance, or something.
Despite that, I liked it.

The next drama on my list is (if I’m right) a golden oldie (from 2015, fair enough) as well, so please bare with me! After that I will finally start watching series belonging to last year’s batch. It’s going slowly when you’re watching one thing at a time, but otherwise I wouldn’t be able to write extensive reviews on each of them like this.

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.

Temperature of Love
(사랑의 온도 / Sarangui Ondo)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

You might have wondered what took me so long (lol), but I took my time because it was a long drama and I got more busy with work so I had less time. Since it was a 40 episode (2 episodes back-to-back) drama, I usually just watched one whole episode at a time.

Anyways, here it is! Temperature of Love. I wasn’t sure if I was going to watch it in the beginning, I was thinking of checking it out, and then a good friend of mine who also shares my passion for K-dramas told me she started watching it so I became more curious. Let me first say something about the cast and what my expectations were.

A reason which always make a drama more appealing for me to watch is if I know some actors that are in it. Of course, in some cases completely new and unfamiliar actors may surprise me, but I also like it when I see familiar faces.
In a way, seeing a certain actor or actress appear in different roles in different dramas helps me familiarize with the actor/actress and makes it more exciting for me to watch. In any case, I knew all four main leads of this drama.
It’s funny because I watched Romantic Doctor, Master Kim some time ago and the two main leads were in that drama together, although in that story they had a bit of an awkward relationship. It was fun to see them in a completely different setting, playing an adorable couple in love.
I wrote about Yang Se Jong before in my review on ‘Duel’, where he had a really intense and angsty triple-role. However, in Temperature of Love his character was quite simple compared to that, he was friendly and smiled a lot. Apart from his family issues he didn’t really have an especially remarkable character trait or anything.
I haven’t seen a lot of Seo Hyun Jin (the drama I will watch after this is also with her as the main female lead), but I feel like she is a really good actress and she always gets cast for mature female roles. One thing I also picked up on – also through Romantic Doctor, Master Kim – and this may sound strange, but I feel like she gets a lot of really mature passionate kissing scenes and excels at them, haha.
I couldn’t help but fangirl a little over Kim Jae Wook -I think everyone had a crush on him in Coffee Prince- and I’ve only seen one other drama with him, also in the second male lead role (Mary Stayed Out All Night). So it was nice seeing him again, although I couldn’t help but notice his graceful aging.
One thing that my friend already warned me about after watching this was that the second female lead would be incredibly annoying in this drama. It didn’t make it easier for me when I found out the actress was Jo Bo Ah.
I’m sorry, and this is my personal opinion, but I have a kind of allergy against her, which is solely because of the fact that all the roles I’ve seen her in up until now annoyed the heck out of me.
But I guess, because I was mentally prepared for that, it made it easier for me not to get too frustrated and I was actually able to laugh out loud at her craziness several times.

I always start a review with a summary of the story, but I actually felt a lack of storyline in this drama -which doesn’t occur very often. The main focus of the drama was the depiction of the development of the relationship between the two main leads, chef prodigy On Jung Sun (played by Yang Se Jong) and drama writer Lee Hyun Soo (played by Seo Hyun Jin). Their story has two parts. The first part is an extended flashback of when the two first meet during a city run with friends. They are introduced to each other and confronted with the fact that they know each other through a chatbox. There is an immediate spark but when Jung Sun asks Hyun Soo out she rejects him because she’s too concerned with their age gap (7 years) and she doesn’t fully realize her feelings for him yet. She only does when he suddenly leaves for Paris (after calling her one last time and she doesn’t pick up) and doesn’t see him for 5 years.
The second part is where they meet again after 5 years and they both have a career of their own. On Jung Sun is now a chef who has opened his own restaurant after studying in Paris. The restaurant is called ‘Good Soup’, and has a very good reputation. The name ‘Good Soup’ was Jung Sun’s chatbox nickname before, and Hyun Soo also used this name for her first draft drama called ‘Good Soup Won’t Pick Up His Phone’.
Hyun Soo starts out as an assistant drama writer, but she can’t get along with her fellow assistants and boss writer, so when she gets the chance to step out and go her own way, she does. She meets Park Jung Woo (played by Kim Jae Wook), the director of a big entertainment company, who shows interest in her scripts and hires her to work for his company. He is also the contractor for Jung Sun’s restaurant (everything is connected).
Ji Hong Ah (played by Jo Bo Ah) is a friend of Hyun Soo who also aspires to become a drama writer. She assists Hyun Soo for a while in her script writing but finds herself becoming jealous when Hyun Soo succeeds and she doesn’t, so she starts going her own way – this includes trying very hard to take a lot of opportunities away from Hyun Soo. Overall, the drama depicts both the sweet and awkward adorableness of two people who can’t help but be crazy about each other, and also the ups and downs of truly letting each other into their lives – ALL of their lives. The second leads try to create some tension between them as well, but end up failing. After a few bumps, Jung Sun and Hyun Soo still find their way back to each other, face their true feelings and let each other in. They even get their families to sit and eat together.

I distinguished four main themes in this drama, and in a way they all overlap with each other: ‘love and trust’ and ‘family and food’.
Let me start with ‘love and trust’. Jung Sun and Hyun Soo fall in love with each other in a very natural way. They feel a good connection to each other from the beginning, which subtly changes to wanting to call each other first when something good happens, wanting to see each other first when something bad happens, sending each other messages just to ask what the other is doing, etc. They start letting each other in on what they do in their daily lives, and they are very honest with each other -something I can always appreciate in Kdramas. When they finally reconnect after being apart for 5 years and Hyun Soo finally confesses she loves Jung Sun back, it just all makes sense and an element of passion is added to their relationship. Everything seems to be going well – but when Hyun Soo wants to take it to the next step -living together- Jung Sun suddenly wavers, and that’s where instability is created. They find something which they aren’t ready to share with each other yet. Or actually, Jung Sun isn’t ready yet and this makes Hyun Soo become more aloof, because she feels he doesn’t trust her enough after all. Conveying her insecurities to him makes Jung Sun feel like she doesn’t trust him either and they decide to take a break. I think this was an important part in their relationship because it shows that, even though a couple might seem perfect and it’s more or less taken for granted that they belong together, something like this might still happen unexpectedly and create confusion.
It showed how important trust, complete trust, is in a relationship. It’s very easy to say to someone that they can trust you, but there will always be things that they can’t convey easily and you’ll have to deal with that too. In this situation, I kind of agreed with both characters. I felt the anxiety of Jung Sun, his family issues were explained and why he couldn’t let someone into his life as permanent as that, but I also felt Hyun Soo’s frustration towards him for not being honest with her about the reason. I’m just glad that they worked it out in the end, because these kinds of misunderstandings can either break or strengthen a relationship when dealt with the wrong or the right way.

The other theme I will talk about is ‘family and food’. As mentioned, Jung Sun is a professional chef. When he and Hyun Soo officially start dating, he teaches her a lot about food and how to enjoy it the most. Almost all the lunches and dinners in the series are held in this very restaurant, and it was also the stage for many backstage scenes.
I think it was an interesting choice to show more of the restaurant’s kitchen than just the usual ‘Yes, Chef!’ and everyone cooking for their lives while it’s busy. It teaches the viewer a lot about the importance of financial stability and ratings in this kind of business, and how social media can influence customers in their choice for restaurants or how restaurants have to deal with negative reviews etc.
I will link the food theme to the family theme, so first let’s look at both main leads’ family situations.

Hyun Soo’s parents are said to have always been ‘so in love with each other that they never even paid attention to what their kids were doing’. They still plan romantic trips together and enjoy each other’s company to the fullest, but they are still concerned about Hyun Soo. They just want her to meet a nice man and get married and settled, and they worry about her working situation. Nevertheless they sometimes visit Hyun Soo and I felt like they had a really good relationship, so it didn’t really come across to me as though they ‘were so in love with each other that they never paid attention to what their kids were doing’. Maybe that was because Hyun Soo herself didn’t make a big deal of it.
Hyun Soo used to live with her younger sister, who was insufferable and made her life a living hell, treating her like garbage while feigning innocent and cute behavior outside of the house. When her sister unexpectedly gets married to a good man and moves out and has a kid, the whole thing, Hyun Soo finally finds the freedom of living on her own – though the shares her place with her assistant writer friend but she’s a 100 times better than the sister.
Jung Sun comes from a complete opposite family. His parents split early because his father was very dominating towards his mother and him, and as a child he always just watched his mother go along with it. After finally breaking away from her husband, Jung Sun’s mother has been kind eccentric: she dresses very young for her age, dates younger men and just does what she wants while being very direct with people; it’s mentioned by Jung Sun in the drama that her and Hong Ah’s personalities really resembled each other as they are both very straightforward and bold and get into rows with other people easily because of their strong personalities. His mother also tends to get manic depressive traits – when something doesn’t go her way or she feels abandoned she pulls back into the ‘the whole universe is against me’ idea. She also spends a lot of money and has a lot of debts. All in all, Jung Sun doesn’t have a good relationship with either of his parents. He never really knew warmth in his family, so that was a hurdle he had to get over when he got together with Hyun Soo. When she asks him to live together, he suddenly clams up, but he can’t seem to tell Hyun Soo honestly about what ‘living together’ entails for him and how it reminds him of his parents. He is also annoyed by the fact that Hyun Soo wants to get closer to his mother, running to her whenever she needs something and refusing to see she’s a hopeless case and she should just leave her alone (Jung Sun’s perspective).
To get to the point I want to make: I think Jung Sun’s way of upbringing has greatly influenced his love for food. Because for him, food is something that can bring people together. That’s why he enjoys making food and eating together so much. However, he finds that in some cases, food isn’t always the answer.
At a certain moment, when Hyun Soo’s mother is to be operated on an aneurism, Jung Sun naively thinks that it’s a good idea to make lunchboxes and eat together, but at that moment Park Jung Woo’s help in securing a fast surgery and a good hospital room is prioritized a bit more than happily eating together while waiting for a surgery. In moments like that Jung Sun suddenly became very insecure, because food is always the answer for him in these cases and suddenly it wasn’t. And it also wasn’t helping that he knew that Hyun Soo’s mother was less fond of him than of Park Jung Woo.

Speaking of Park Jung Woo, let’s talk about him for a bit.
Overall, I was a bit turned off by the immaturity of the second leads, but at a certain moment I was truly at a loss for what Park Jung Woo was thinking.
As mentioned before, Park Jung Woo met both Hyun Soo and Jung Sun around the same time, and they all got along separately (as in, neither Hyun Soo or Jung Sun knew that the other knew Park Jung Woo). Hyun Soo starts working for his company around the time she meets Jung Sun, and she is with him when Jung Sun calls her for the last time before leaving to Paris, which she doesn’t know, so she doesn’t pick up that one time (and regrets it for the next 5 years). However, Jung Woo also has a crush on Hyun Soo, and he begins to make advantages, but they don’t come across as more than business meetings to her. When he suggests they suit each other, Hyun Soo confesses that she’s in love with another man and that he left and she might not see him again. Jung Woo’s reaction at that was already a turn-off; instead of comforting her he literally said ‘Do you know what you’re doing to me right now?’ (crying in a public space, rejecting him in public, ‘do you even know who I am, you shouldn’t reject someone like me’, the usual ugh)
At this point, Park Jung Woo also had no idea that ‘this man’ was his good friend Jung Sun and he didn’t know that ‘that woman’ Jung Sun talked about whom he was rejected by was Hyun Soo.
When they are reunited 5 years later, Jung Woo is the first to realize that they are together. But that doesn’t stop him from trying again. While Hyun Soo had already rejected him twice, and he already knew that she and Jung Sun were dating, he came up with the brilliant idea of proposing to Hyun Soo. And not only that, he wants to do it at Jung Sun’s restaurant, while he’s serving them. He tells Jung Sun about his proposal plans (not the person of course), so Jung Sun -being the good friend that he is- gets to work excited to make this proposal dinner a success. Of course the whole story changes when he sees his own girlfriend sitting at the table. Hyun Soo also has no idea what’s going on, which I also found really disrespectful. You can’t just randomly ask someone to marry you while you know that it’s not mutual and she’s bound to reject you, but also in her boyfriend’s restaurant while he’s watching?! Just the whole point he was trying to make was beyond my understanding.
And then there was the usual childish declaration of war where Park Jung Woo started to act really immature in their ‘battle for love’. He threatened not to continue with the contract for Jung Sun’s restaurant, stuff like that. He is a grown man, yet he pulled such childish tricks like this, I was very confused and disappointed in him.

And then there was Hong Ah. I already talked about her a little bit, but here’s some more. Hong Ah seems to be the most superficial and selfish person you could imagine, who really just cares about herself and no one else. She doesn’t care how many things she takes away from other people as long as she gets what she wants.
When she likes Jung Sun in the beginning, and he doesn’t like her back and it turns out he likes Hyun Soo, she tries to come between them. When visiting Jung Sun in Paris, she tells him Hyun Soo is about to marry a hotshot director (meant to be Park Jung Woo because she ‘naturally’ thought they were together). To Hyun Soo she says she shouldn’t trust Jung Sun when he’s in Paris, because he’s bound to meet pretty French girls there and he is ‘most likely a playboy’.
When all her deeds explode in her face, like Jung Sun’s mother she retreats into the ‘the universe hates me’ state of mind and she blames Hyun Soo for everything, even though Hyun Soo isn’t to blame for anyting and isn’t even aware how her actions affect Hong Ah. Most of the things concerning her success are made possible through Park Jung Woo and she gets surprised by them just as much as Hong Ah.
Anyways, Hong Ah is the typical ‘starts out as a nice friend but suddenly becomes the ultimate frenemy’ kind of character. At a certain point she also starts to work at Park Jung Woo’s company, and becomes a direct rival in drama writing and casting to Hyun Soo.
One more thing that was crucial to Hong Ah’s character was her treating of other people. Usually, when she didn’t care or have use for people, she would just not pay attention to them or throw them away. But she always had one person on her side: Choi Won Joon, a close friend of Jung Sun, who’s also the sous-chef in his restaurant. Won Joon has always been in love with Hong Ah and has always been there for her, even though she never appreciated him. He was always the first to congratulate her when something good happened, always made and brought her food when she asked for it – and all he ever got back was complaints. But still, he he kept on doing it. At a certain point, he realizes that how Hong Ah has been treating him is not acceptable and he distances himself from her, with the help of another restaurant employee who is genuinely interested in him. At first, Hong Ah is just annoyed by this female employee and how Won Joon is now treating her and she deals with this frustration by blatantly posting about her ‘happy single life’ on social media. In these scenes it is made clear how lonely she really is, only caring about the amount of likes she gets and hashtagging everything with ‘#idon’tneedlove #i’mhappiestbymyself’ etcetera. However, she does get bothered more and more by the fact that Won Joon won’t come to her aid and won’t answer to her every call anymore. A typical ‘kid who cried wolf’ case occurs when she calls him that she got into an accident and he rushes to the hospital only to find her not hurt at all and he gets really mad at her. Seeing him like that and hearing from her that he’s not going to let her use him like her dog anymore really resonates with her. That’s when she realizes that she took him for granted and she actually really likes him.
In the end, coming to terms with her feelings about Won Joon is one of the major developments she goes through and in the end she does come out of her spiteful shell and gets him back after genuinely apologizing and confessing how she felt after losing him.

I want to give a special shout-out to some side characters who really made the show for me. First of all Hwango Kyung (played by Lee Cho Hee), the super quirky writing assistant and friend of Hyun Soo, and Kim Joon Ha (played by Ji Il Joo), the director assigned to direct Hyun Soo’s drama. The relationship between the two of them was one of the main reasons I kept watching, they were adorable. Both characters are really faithful to Hyun Soo, they stuck with her since she started on her own and especially Kyung is a real pillar of support and friendship for her, especially after Hong Ah leaves their team. Kyung started out at the same office as an assistant writer for the terrible boss and she followed Hyun Soo when she went her own way.
I loved the part where Hong Ah tried to snatch Kim Joon Ha away from Hyun Soo to direct her own drama, and he just brushed her off with no interest at all.
Furthermore, the female restaurant employee who helped Won Joon see the truth about Hong Ah, Im Soo Jung (played by Chae So Young). She was just so real and down-to-earth, and I loved how she could silence Hong Ah’s selfish tantrums. Soo Jung was in love with Won Joon and she just plain out told Hong Ah ‘If you’re going to treat him that way, give him to me because I really have feelings for him’. I wished they had ended up together, but even though they did like each other, Soo Jung realized Won Joon still couldn’t let Hong Ah go. I just really liked Soo Jung’s badassness and honesty, I think it dealt very well with everyone’s frustrations regarding Hong Ah.

One thing I’m really happy about is that the black-and-white sequences were properly explained in the end. Throughout the series, in the middle of a scene it would suddenly turn black-and-white and play in slow motion. I was wondering what that was for, if it was a metaphor for something, and why it only happened at certain moments. I thought it had something to do with the ‘temperature’ from the title, if they were moments where they felt the ‘temperature of love’ or something, but sometimes the moments were also a bit common or random.
In the last episode, when announcing their marriage, Hyun Soo says in a voice-over that she and Jung Sun had been recording their relationship in the past six years. And then all the black-and-white sequences were shown again in the right order and it all made sense. From the beginning they had been ‘recording’ their relationship in moments, from the first time they ever crossed paths without knowing each other to their first bike ride together, their first kiss together, etcetera etcetera.

I think the title of the series is a mixture of the main themes ‘love’ and ‘food’, because in both there’s difference in gradations and temperatures. I liked how they played with the simple things that make a relationship enjoyable, mostly just sitting together, eating and drinking tea together, happy smiles and cuddles, and rushing out to see each other whenever. I think it was very adorable. I’m glad I didn’t get annoyed as much as I thought I would because of my friend’s warnings, haha.
I must admit I really liked the last episode because all the indicated couples got together and it was really funny when Jung Sun and Hyun Soo were going around and everywhere they went people were kissing, lol.

It’s been a while since I took this long to finish a drama, and I’m kind of hoping the next one I’ll watch has more of an established storyline, because I miss getting sweeped away by the story haha. The next few dramas on my list are less recent, but I still hope very enjoyable.

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.

Quartet
(カルテット / Karutetto)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10

This drama has been on my list since it started airing on Japanese television begin 2017, I was in Japan at the time and I saw fragments of it but couldn’t watch it, so I decided to put it on my list for later. Now, one and a half years later, I finally watched it. And I have to say it’s one of the more interesting J-Dramas I’ve watched in quite some time.

The story is about 4 people, all musicians, who ‘coincidentally’ meet at a karaoke bar and then decide to spend their winter by rehearsing in the weekends in a villa in Karuizawa, owned by one of the members. They form a quartet called Quartet Doughnuts Hole, and start performing here and there.
The story revolves around these four people, who all seem a bit out-of-the-box, and they’re all really different, but still they turn out to be a very good team.
But as it turns out, they didn’t just end up meeting out of coincidence and they all have their own secrets and reasons for agreeing to spending the winter at the faraway villa.
At the center of the quartet is Mrs. Maki Maki (played by Matsu Takako), a veteran violist who decides to focus on the quartet after the disappearance of her husband in Tokyo. The other members knew her beforehand and somehow look up to her. I say she’s the center of the quartet because at least for two of the other members, their ulterior motive for joining the group was to get closer to this particular person.
As someone who has been admiring Maki-san since his high school period, Beppu Tsukasa (played by Matsuda Ryuhei), has been lowkey following her. After meeting her a few times by coincidence, he takes it on himself to believe it’s ‘destiny’ and even after the quartet starts living together, he feels more and more attracted to her. He plays the viola.
Sebuki Suzume (played by Mitsushima Hikari), a young and quite eccentric cello player, is approached by an old woman (later revealed to be Maki-san’s mother-in-law) to get close to and befriend Maki-san. In the past, she was used by her fraud father to act as a ‘magical wiz kid’ who could predict things (like guessing cards while blindfolded) and this put her future in jeopardy, forcing her to quit her former job and giving up on studying and working for a while.
Fourth, there’s Iemori Yutaka (played by Takahashi Issei), a kind of slouchy guy who plays the violin as well. He’s divorced with a young son he can’t care for and he feels like he can’t be a real father to him, but he hides his own sadness by putting up a nonchalant, sarcastically joking demeanor.
As these four characters start sharing a house, the four of them eat together, they go through awkward and hilarious situations together, they go through romantic and other kinds of tensions together, and all the while their main objective is to keep their quartet alive.

To elaborate a little more on Suzume-chan’s motives of joining the group: in the very first scene of the series, Maki-san’s mother-in-law (aka the mother of Maki-san’s disappeared husband) finds Suzume-chan while she’s out playing cello on the streets and tells her to get close to Maki-san. Eventually, as Suzume-chan starts cooperating, we find out that Mother-in-Law is convinced that Maki-san is responsible for her son’s disappearance and even suspects her of murdering him. In compliance, Suzume-chan records her dialogues with Maki-san in the house and meets with Mother-in-Law in secret to convey the information. However, after getting closer to Maki-san, Suzume-chan starts feeling bad about betraying her trust – she starts getting fond of Maki-san and doesn’t believe she killed her husband, so she stops cooperating. That’s about it for her initial motives. After that, she stays because she genuinely starts liking the quartet.
As it happens, it turns out that Maki-san’s husband is alive, he stumbles into Suzume-chan by chance and ends up at the villa. After talking things through with Maki-san, he insists on a divorce so that he can turn himself in to the police (he robbed a convenience store) without causing his wife any more trouble. With this, the tension between Maki-san and her mother-in-law is also straightened out.

I think one of the great things about the show lies in the dialogue. Even though some scenes seemed really trivial – e.g. whether or not to squeeze lemon over fried chicken- they all had meaning. To take this particular example: Iemori brings up the issue of squeezing lemon over fried chicken on the first night they eat together. It wasn’t necessarily about squeezing lemon over it without asking if everyone was okay with that, but about acknowledging the lemon as a possibility. Later, we find out that for Maki-san this is actually an important issue because she’s had a similar experience with her husband. She’d always squeeze lemon over the fried chicken without asking him, and she finds out via-via that he actually never liked that but never told her- one of the things that led to her realization of the end of his romantic feelings for her.
There were a lot of such seemingly trivial dialogues and references, but in the end I never found any of them truly insignificant. Because somewhere in the same episode it would be used in another context and suddenly the true meaning of it would become clear and it would all fall into place.
Another thing I really liked was the attention for detail. Little habits that the four of them had. For example, when about to perform, they were set apart by their individual ways of preparing themselves. Maki-san has the habit of moving her wedding ring from her left to her right hand, Suzume-chan takes off her socks/shoes, Iemori unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt and loosens his tie, and Beppu-san cleans his glasses. Another of Beppu-san’s habits that became more regular was that, when feeling anxious, he would start rolling up his sleeves (or trousers). This turns into kind of a running gag, mainly for comical use, for example in the case where he is accidentally locked up in the stockroom of his company and all the other members forget about him: when Maki-san finally frees him, we see that he rolled his sleeves all the way up to his shoulders, making it look like he’s wearing a tank top. When at the end of the series Maki-san has disappeared, Iemori stumbles upon Beppu-san in the sitting room with his trousers rolled up to above his knees, again making comical use of the habit.
Suzume-chan has the habit of saying ‘mizomizo shitekimashita‘, another expression I can’t fully translate into English, but in the version I watched it was translated as ‘much excite’. In the Translator’s note, it says that ‘mizo mizo’ is not an actual Japanese word, but I suppose she uses it in the way one would use ‘doki doki’ or ‘waku waku’, expressions that suggest ‘feeling excited’.

Although there are some romantic tensions within the story, the story doesn’t really focus on those. Most of all, I think, because they’re all unrequited feelings (Iemori towards Suzume-chan, Suzume-chan towards Beppu-san, Beppu-san towards Maki-san, Maki-san towards her husband), and the main point is that none of the members want these feelings to become stronger than their desire to remain this bond as a quartet.
Apart from Beppu-san, none of the other members actually really come clear about their feelings and they kind of just let it slide. Suzume-chan even starts helping out Beppu-san and Maki-san and is content with just dreaming about going on a date with Beppu-san herself. One of the most purest things she says is: ‘The person I like has someone he likes. And that person he likes is someone I like as well. So I want them to work out.’ When asked, ‘And what happens to your feelings then?’, she says ‘My feelings… are just laying around somewhere.’ Which is a reference to herself, as she is often laying around the house, sleeping.
Maki-san can’t reciprocate Beppu-san’s feelings, and says that she wants the four of them to stay together like this, because she likes it so much.
Iemori says he acts like he does because he knows that women won’t like him, and that he’s the type that ‘wants to be liked, but tries his best not to fall in love’. It’s a bit hard to read Iemori’s mind, because the way he holds himself seems like an act. You never know when he’s being serious or when he’s joking. He’s the kind of person who would have this joking smile even when he’s serious, and make a joke while he actually wants to prove a point. On the other hand, when he makes a joke or points out something trivial, he puts on his super serious, not-joking face. I also wasn’t sure of his feelings for Suzume-chan until they were clarified. But because he’s like that, it seems like he was always trying to get under everyone’s skin. He would address the most insignificant things as something serious, besides the lemon squeezing thing there was also the time when everyone used brand-names instead of the actual proper Japanese word and he lectured them on that. Things of which you’d think ‘so what?’ But that in itself made him the character.

I think the series is mainly about this weird but wonderful friendship between four weird but wonderful people, and that the friendship and trust that is established between them is stronger than any kind of tension or awkward situation.
When Maki-san finds out Suzume-chan has been recording her conversations, she isn’t even mad at her, although Suzume-chan feels terrible. When Maki-san confesses she isn’t Saotome Maki at all and that she betrayed all of them, they’re not angry at her at all.
You could say that’s soft or something, but I think it really proves how close the four of them got in the end.

I found the ending very strong. At first, Maki-san’s identity fraud is found out and she turns herself in to the police. This results in both her own and all the QDH’s members’ reputations to fall down rapidly and soon no one wants them to perform anymore. However, they find each other again and arrange to hold one more concert in a big hall in Karuizawa, which was their common dream as a quartet. They anticipated that most of the audience would turn up out of curiosity for the group of criminal misfits, and even though they got cans thrown at them while they played, even though half the audience left the hall after the first song – that wasn’t important. The most important thing was that they were there, that the four of them could play together on a big stage. And there were enough people who stayed for them.
To make a link to what I said before about their little habits: at the last concert, after they haven’t played together for a while, it seems like nothing’s changed: Suzume-chan takes her shoes off, Iemori loosens his shirt, Beppu-san cleans his glasses… and Maki-san finds herself searching for her wedding ring on her left hand when she realizes she’s not wearing it anymore. That was a nice little twist.

I think I’ve already summed up pretty much all there was to the story. It was only a 10-episode series, and there really wasn’t that much drama going on, so it’s easy to summarize. I’ll go on to my comments on the cast now.

I knew some of the actors, but they all showed me a new side of their acting, so that was a nice surprise. I only knew Matsu Takako from Frozen, since she sang the original Japanese version of ‘Let it Go’. I’d never seen her as an actress, so that was interesting.
I knew Matsuda Ryuhei from Eigyou Buchou Kira Natsuko, where he didn’t make a strong impression on me (I found the whole series kind of meh, to be honest), but I have to admit I fell in love with him a little bit in this series. He made Beppu-san such a character, a clumsy, stiff, but passionate person who couldn’t help himself and when that happened he would suddenly burst out in this adorable, awkward way. I don’t know why I’ve got a thing for this kind of awkward guy characters, lol.
I didn’t know Mitsushima Hikari, but Suzume-chan was definitely my favorite character, she was unexpected, cute, eccentric, honest and still mysterious.
I saw Takahashi Issei in multiple other series, and I feel he always kinds of gets the same kind of roles, roles that have this strangely sarcastic side. I particularly liked him in Tamiou and Boku no Yabai Tsuma. He seems to always have this dark side, even when he’s smiling. It’s kind of interesting.

Besides the main cast, there were some other interesting side characters, besides Maki-san’s husband and mother-in-law, the owners of the restaurant ‘Nocturn’ where the quartet was employed to perform during dinner hours. While the owners were a married couple, there was a young girl working there names Arisu (played by Yoshioka Riho). This girl is a bit crazy. On first glance, she seemed like this typical ‘cute’ girl, but Maki-san immediately points out the first time they meet that ‘her eyes aren’t smiling’. As it turns out, there’s definitely something wrong with Arisu, although I’m not sure what. I found her kind of creepy. She is the kind of girl that will pretend to be really friendly and then just stare at you with her fake smile and out of the blue say something really disturbing. She seems to be someone who takes life as a kind of game, she can just use people and push them however she wants. In the end, though, something bad almost happens to her and it seemed to me like that made her realize ‘uh-oh, this could’ve actually been really bad’. In the end she’s fired from the restaurant for trying to seduce the owner and at the last concert, she turns up with a foreign fiance/husband, laughing out loud that ‘life’s been a piece of cake!’ (she says choroi – damn these Japanese expressions without an adequately equivalent translation in any other language >_< but it basically means easy-peasy).

Even though the story itself is quite short and there aren’t that many characters, it’s enough to create a very simple story about real friendship. Even though it may not be uttered every single day, the bond that is established between these four people is made very clear, and in the end they just can’t feel at ease if the four of them are not together.

Also fair to comment on, I liked how all the guest appearances or characters that appeared just for one episode, were not just used as one-time guests, but were given a proper part in the development of the story. What I’m trying to say is that their appearances all had meaning and resonated through the rest of the story as well.
For example, I liked that they introduced Maki-san’s husband as more than just a weak guy and that they actually provided his whole perspective of what had happened as well, so that the audience could see for themselves what went wrong in their relationship and not just blindingly take Maki-san’s side.
I also liked that they introduced Iemori’s son and ex-wife. It didn’t only function as background for Iemori’s character, but for the first time we see his most genuine side and the whole thing makes him look more humane.
Basically, I liked how not a single side/guest character was a stereotype. Everyone had a unique trait. Iemori’s ex-wife had a peculiar name, the guy that was chasing him for information about her was always listening to the same song – all the people they encounter have something strange and interesting about them. And those little strange things make it so enjoyable and relatable to watch.
I agree most with what Beppu-san says towards the end, ‘I like the fact that none of us completely has his/her act together’ (minna no chanto shitenai tokoro ga suki desu).
It’s quite heartwarming, in the end. And it makes everything so simple. There’s no need for complicated intriges, everyone is just honest with each other. Whenever something seems off, they tackle the problem head-on. Maybe in the beginning t’s out of necessity, because they can’t rehearse when one person is troubled – but gradually they become genuinely taken with each other and sincerely care for each other’s well-being. It’s all established very naturally, but it never becomes boring.

I really enjoyed watching this, it was nice to see a J-Drama different from the usual genre, in terms of humor, character variety and development. I didn’t see many standard drama tropes, which I approve of. I hope to see more of this kind of genre.
Also, I’m definitely downloading that ending theme song.

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.

Manhole
(맨홀: 이상한 나라의 필 / Maenhol: Isanghan Naraui Pil)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

This drama was on my list after I saw a trailer in which the four main characters were doing a silly dance and I thought it looked funny and interesting. Especially since the summary said it was going to be about some people travelling back in time through a manhole, which sounded pretty original.
Just before this I watched Todome no Kiss, which also included time travel, so it was kind of fun to roll into another time travel story again, one of a completely different nature.

First of all, the story. It’s about Bong Pil (played by Kim Jae Joong), who is kind of a problem child; he is studying to be a police officer but keeps getting into trouble and is quite frankly all over the place. Especially when his neighbor/childhood friend/crush of 27 years Kang Soo Jin (played by Uee/Kim Yoo Jin) is getting married to a man she’s only known for a few months. He still isn’t over his feelings for her and he wonders where it went wrong because at a certain point in their pasts, he is sure that they liked each other. However, he was never able to confess his feelings honestly because he always freezes when that timing comes and always messes up in the end.
Soo Jin is getting married to pharmacist Park Jae Hyun (played by Jang Mi Kwan), who seems to be the very friendly and well-mannered ideal son-in-law.
Pil and Soo Jin’s other friends include: Yoon Jin Sook (played by Jung Hye Sung), Jo Seok Tae (played by B1A4’s Baro/Cha Seon Woo). Jin Sook is Soo Jin’s best friend, who’s secretly had a crush on Pil since high school but chose not to pursue it because she knew Soo Jin liked him too. Seok Tae is desperately studying for the civil servant exam, and is even a bit distant to Pil and the trouble he always brings with him, but he’s in love with Jin Sook and wants to impress her by passing his exams and becoming a civil servant with a stable job.
Then there’s their neighbors Oh Dal Soo (Lee Sang Yi), Hong Jung Ae (Seo Min Ji) and Yang Goo Gil (Kang Hong Seok). Dal Soo is a free spirit, later revealed to be a rich director’s son, but he chose not to follow into the business and start his own business with Jung Ae so they could stay together. Jung Ae has been in love with Dal Soo since high school. Goo Gil is a bit of a third wheel to the two, he is Dal Soo’s best friend but he is in love with Jung Ae and treats her really fondly, even though she always pushes him away.
Everyone treats Pil a bit indifferently since they all seem to be aware of the fact that he is a hopeless case, and that it’s his own fault for never facing his feelings for Soo Jin and they are all rooting for the newlyweds.
One night, when another conflict arises between Pil and Soo Jin in the park, Pil is sucked in by a strange manhole and is teleported back to his high school period.

That’s how it starts. First of all, I want to use this introduction to criticize the summary of this series that was written on wiki-d.addicts. The summary says, very compactly, that ‘Bong Pil and his five friends travel through time through a manhole to prevent a wedding from happening’. This, however, is not what the series is about.
For starters, Bong Pil is the only one traveling back and forth through time. His five friends never join him. Only Soo Jin joins him two times at the end of the series, but that’s it. They never travel together.
Secondly, the summary makes it sound as if Pil voluntarily and actively travels back in time to prevent the wedding from happening, or making sure Soo Jin and her husband never meet or something like that. This is also not true. I’m not even sure if you could actually say Pil ‘travels’ through time, since this suggests a voluntary action. Pil is being teleported and put back in time by this manhole against his will: he has no say in it whatsoever. That’s why, at the beginning of these teleportations, Pil has no idea what is going on or why this is happening to him. He doesn’t know if the manhole wants him to do something, and, if yes, what and how. He just slowly figures it out as he goes and then makes his own path and decides for himself what he wants to change. Actually, in the beginning he is so clueless that he changes a situation in his past and then, when he comes back to his own time, finds his own future has completely changed because he altered this certain situation. There are so many butterfly effect episodes in this series that at a certain point I found it hard to keep track of what was changed and if it was the past, present or future they were in now.
Because of all these things that happen in different timelines, a lot of it got mixed up in my head and I don’t even remember every single thing. It was quite a lot to take in and sometimes things were really confusing.

The series starts off as light comedy, where you’re just laughing at what’s happening and how bizarre it all is. Because first it seemed like every episode would just be ‘Pil goes back in time, changes something, and comes back to a present that’s different from his original one’ and it was funny to anticipate what kind of developments his past alterations would have on the future when he’d come back.
It gets more interesting when his past alterations also start changing the futures of his friends and neighbors, and starts pairing them up differently. In one changed future, Pil finds himself engaged to Jin Sook, and while Dal Soo and Jung Ae are a couple in real life, in another changed future Dal Soo chose to follow into his rich family’s heir position and Jung Ae ended up with Goo Gil. In another one, Jin Sook and Seok Tae are a lovey-dovey couple.
But then another plotline enters and creates a feeling of urgency to alter the future and, indeed, stop the wedding from happening. Now this is not because Pil is that selfish and he just wants Soo Jin to himself and doesn’t like the pharmacist so he wants to sabotage their wedding – no, he is actually, reluctantly but still, prepared to let the wedding happen if it makes Soo Jin happen. But the thing is, he finds out her husband is actual a really bad person and that’s why he wants to protect her. Jae Hyun turns out to be an ex-convict with serious anger issues, and he even starts beating people up in the streets at night randomly just because he feels agitated or angry.
Pil encounters several of these cases, each of them leading him a little closer to the truth about Jae Hyun. But how do you provide proof for things that you’ve seen in other timelines?

It takes Pil many many time leaps to get to the point where he’s able to show Soo Jin what a monster her husband actually is. And of course, Soo Jin initially never believes him, she’s disappointed in him that he’s so nasty to Jae Hyun and even breaks their friendship because of his accusations at a certain point (or should I say, in a certain timeline).
The moments that Pil manages to get emotionally close enough to Soo Jin still end up the wrong way, because there’s another malfunction in this manhole business: every night at 00:00, Pil is teleported back one way or another. So even when he’s in the past, and he’s just about to confess to Soo Jin, as the clock strikes 12 A.M., he is teleported back to the future. So there’s a lot of frustration from the viewers’ side, I believe. It takes a long time before the things are said that need to be said, before the actions are taken that need to be taken.

On the site where I was watching from, the series had a lot of bad reviews. Everyone was complaining about the series’ bad writing and their frustrations with the characters. True, there were a lot of situations that could’ve been handled more efficiently and just created frustrations about the characters’ unwise reactions. At a certain point, when Pil travels to the future for the first time where he has already become a police officer, he’s on the phone with Goo Gil, but then Goo Gil gets beaten up (by Jae Hyun). And even though Goo Gil already told him the location, instead of immediately running there or even calling for back-up, Pil just keeps screaming and asking into the phone what’s going on and if Goo Gil is okay, although he can clearly hear everything is not okay and Goo Gil is getting beaten up. On the other hand, I can fend for Pil’s character here that while he might already be a police officer, the Pil that traveled there hadn’t yet become a police officer. So he wouldn’t have known what to do in such a situation yet, while his future self would’ve. Sorry if this is confusing to read – I usually enjoy time travel stuff, but this one was really over-the-top with the butterfly effects that even as I was watching I was thinking ‘how am I ever going to write an understandable review about this’.

The thing I liked most about the whole series was the ending. As I mentioned, the last two times Soo Jin was for some reason also put through the manhole and traveled back in time as well. In the very last case, both Soo Jin and Pil (who actually died after being stabbed by Jae Hyun) are teleported back to their own original present, the one Pil originally left from in the first episode, back to the day of Soo Jin’s wedding. Soo Jin, with all her new memories intact, is now full aware of Jae Hyun’s true nature and there’s a sentimental ‘runaway bride’ moment where Pil comes dashing in and Soo Jin kicks Jae Hyun in the shins and they run away together. After that, they’re no longer summoned by the manhole and get married and they’re really cute together.
One compliment I have to give Kim Jae Joong is that he acted Pil’s feelings for Soo Jin really well. The way he looked at her, and just randomly took her face in his hands and hugged her… that was pure love acted out very well.
One thing about Pil’s character that was both interesting as bothering for me was that, in his high school period apparently he was in the track team, meaning he could run fast. But as kind of a running gag, they keep mentioning that he ‘always had a slow start’. And this keeps happening through the whole series. He doesn’t only have a slow start in running, but also in figuring out the whole manhole thing and… actually anything. It also kept occurring to me that in all the pursuing scenes, Pil was never fast enough. He always missed the culprit.
On the other hand, it was nice to see that throughout the series, Pil visibly became more mature. In the beginning he is a loose cannon, just running about, making a fuss about everything and nothing and just being dissatisfied with his situation and Soo Jin getting married. But as the time leaps keep happening, we see him gradually become calmer, more tired even, and in the end when he finally saves Soo Jin from Jae Hyun, he is actually more mature than we’ve seen him before. So the manhole also helps him become more mature I think.

The last ‘funny thing’ that happens in the series is also something I find very ambiguous. It is semi-revealed that the manhole thing is being executed by weird little firefly-like aliens. It is not revealed what they are or what their intentions are. However, in the end, they comment on Pil and Soo Jin and contemplate how interesting the love is that they feel for each other and that they want to experiment more than that. Looking for a new victim, their eyes fall on Goo Gil, who now seems to be kind of the fifth wheel, because Dal Soo and Jung Ae are also back together as if nothing changed. So then suddenly Goo Gil gets teleported and he comes running back to Pil and Soo Jin for counsel, and they just laugh at him and that’s the end. I didn’t really understand why they added that super-short new storyline, but oh well. At least everything ended well and everyone got together and Jae Hyun got psychological help and everything was well. But they sure went through a LOT to come to this final happiness.

To come back to the point of the weird aliens, there’s another thing that bothers me. Because even though the manhole seems to belong to these creatures, it seems that they have no hand whatsoever in what happens to Pil. In the end, when they see him and Soo Jin together, they just comment ‘Is he the one that’s been using our manhole?’, as if they hadn’t even noticed before.
So really, the intentions of the manhole aren’t clarified at all. It doesn’t seem to have had a logical reason for putting Pil back in time. Even if it wanted Pil to fix past mistakes and make sure he and Soo Jin end up together, take some responsibility! Because now it just seems as if the manhole acted by itself, and the alien thingies that supposedly controlled the damn thing weren’t even paying attention to what was happening or they didn’t care. They keep taking Pil, dragging him back and forth and then in the end it’s like they didn’t even have a reason, or they didn’t even do anything on purpose to let this happen. So the whole argumentation of what happened and why was kept really vague. Also what the heck was actually up with the manhole? It’s never clarified.

Now I would like to make some remarks on the actors. I actually knew Kim Jae Joong from a Japanese drama called Sunao ni Narenakute, in which he spoke Japanese. So this was the first time I actually heard him spoke Korean.
I didn’t know Uee, I’ve seen her name before, but I didn’t know her. I thought she looks a lot like Han Seung Yeon, or maybe the other way around. Han Seung Yeon could play Uee younger version, they have very similar face types.
For the rest I only knew Baro from God’s Gift 14 Days and I knew Jung Hye Sung from several dramas in which she portrayed her versatility and playing very cheeky and funny characters (Blood, Moonlight Drawn By Clouds, Oh My Venus). I’ve seen Kang Hong Seok once before in Chicago Typewriter. So a few familiar faces in the cast.
Also Jang Mi Kwan has played in one other drama, Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, in which he also played a psychopath/serial kidnapper. I hope they give him other roles as well so he doesn’t become a typecast actor.

Apart from the main cast, I want to give one minor character a shoutout for her acting. I’m talking about Jae Hyun’s ex-girlfriend, Park Young Joo, who keeps following him after he’s already married Soo Jin. She claims that she’s the only one who truly understands him, even though she becomes a victim of his anger issues as well. The actress who played this role, Park Ah In, was really good in my opinion. Because she had to play a mentally unstable role but still maintain a normal posture. The best acting was when Jae Hyun almost strangles her and lets go at the last minute: the way she acted out the after-reaction of being almost choked to death was really realistic, including all the weird and ugly gasping sounds. As I probably mention a lot, I respect Asian actors who really go all the way in their acting and throw away their shame, because I criticize the tendency of women in dramas to always appear ‘pretty’. It’s unrealistic. You can’t be pretty all the time. Not when you’re crying/gross sobbing, and certainly not when you’re almost strangled. So well done to this lady.

To sum it up, I had a lot of confused thoughts about this drama. I didn’t find it as good quality-wise, but it was definitely entertaining. It was a nice break from all the emotional stuff I’ve been watching lately.
I might even change the summary on wiki.d-addicts myself, because it’s really not a good synopsis of the series. In the end, Pil goes as far for Soo Jin as he can, and it takes seeing him die for Soo Jin to truly see that she’s loved him all this time, no matter how she covered it up. It’s nice that it had such a sweet ending, because at a certain point, after Pil messes up time(line) and time(line) again, as a viewer you start thinking ‘maybe they’re not meant to be after all’. And then they still prove us wrong.
The friends in the end didn’t really have that much to do with the time travelling, Pil never tells anyone (or he does and they don’t believe him). But it was important to see how the alterations affected them as well, because that’s what gave true insight in their personalities. Without the alterations, we would’ve never known how much Jin Sook has been suppressing her feelings for Pil. There were times she couldn’t suppress them and in such an occasion she even sabotaged Pil and Soo Jin’s relationship when he was in the army (by hiding Pil’s letters to Soo Jin and making Soo Jin think he never wrote her back). Without the alterations we would’ve never known what would’ve happened if Dal Soo took another path, what would’ve become of Jung Ae and Goo Gil and to their triangle-relationship. So I believe the happenings mostly helped create character development for the side characters and of course the main storyline of trying to unmask Jae Hyun was what was needed to re-light the love and trust between Pil and Soo Jin.
But I still believe there were a lot of small, unnecessary elements in there, ones I can’t even remember now. But I feel like I’ve seen so many things happen, and in the end it was really just about one thing: getting Pil and Soo Jin to finally confess their true feelings to each other and getting together. Even though the alien thingies that started everything didn’t even want to take responsibility for letting all of this happen.
It took Pil and Soo Jin a long, long, way. This time it was a bitchy manhole that brought them together, but maybe it can be seen as a kind of metaphor. And it’s a good way to look at relationships: to really make sure you have no regrets. Pil was vexed that he never got to say how he felt to Soo Jin and had to watch her get snatched away by someone else, a stranger, and the manhole started helping him get back at that. Starting sending him back to situations in which he could’ve confessed but he kept failing until he got the gist of what was happening.
Even though none of the characters seemed to be witty enough to get it fully, in the end it all came together and that’s what matters.
Sometimes things take a long way. The important thing is that it’s worked out, and then the long way just becomes the effort we put into it.