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.
My Liberation Notes
( 나의 해방일지 / Naeui Haebangilji / My Liberation Journal)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10
Hi everyone! I’m bringing you another review right before the end of April. I hope everyone is feeling the start of spring wherever they are. I certainly am, although it’s really just the start of it. As I mentioned in my previous review, I decided to catch up on some more recent hyped Netflix K-Dramas before I go back to my golden oldies watchlist, and I finally got to watch this one. I’m really glad I did, because it’s definitely my kind of genre in K-Drama. It distinguishes itself from ‘regular’ dramas in more than one way, and I’ll try to phrase my opinions and thoughts on it as well as I can. I had no idea what the story was about, as I always kept my distance from spoilers, which I’m glad I did, because it enabled me to completely immerse myself in the unpredictability of this show. There were also several of my favorite actors in it, which I didn’t know beforehand, so that added to the surprise.
My Liberation Notes is a 16-episode Netflix K-Drama with episodes lasting about 1 hour and 7 minutes each. It follows the lives of three siblings, whose daily life consists of commuting from their family house in the countryside to their jobs in Seoul and back. Yeom Gi Jeong (played by Lee El), Yeom Chang Hee (played my Lee Min Gi) and Yeom Mi Jeong (played by Kim Ji Won) are all in their thirties but still live with their parents in a village called Sampo, in the Gyeonggi-do Province which surrounds Seoul. Their parents, father Yeom Je Ho (played by Cheon Ho Jin) and mother Kwak Hye Sook (played by Lee Kyung Sung), are quite the conservative couple. Father barely speaks and is just out and about working all day. Besides harvesting crops, he has a small factory called Sampo Sinks, where he manufactures sink cabinets. He runs a small business making and delivering these to customers in the city. Mother is the ultimate housewife who’s constantly cooking and cleaning and worrying whether her children will ever get married and leave the house. There is not a lot of emotional bonding within the family, or should I say, there’s a serious lack of it. The children don’t talk with their parents about their struggles, and amongst each other they’re usually bickering. They don’t get involved with each other’s lives that much. They’re a family of individuals.
And then there’s the mysterious Mr. Goo (played by Son Seok Goo), a strong young man who one day appeared in Sampo and started living near the Yeom family house while helping Father Yeom out with his daily work. Mr. Goo doesn’t talk much either, which is probably why Father Yeom likes to have him around so much. No one knows his full name or where he came from, all they know is that he drinks every single day and he never engages in conversation.
You could say the series lacks a singular evident storyline, it’s more like a slice-of-life depiction of the three siblings – followed later by Mr. Goo – while they navigate through their adult lives in the pressuring society of South Korea. While the ‘liberation’ theme comes mostly from Mi Jeong’s storyline, in the end all of them find their own kind of liberation.
I have to say right off the bat that watching this series gave me a feeling similar to when I was watching Something in the Rain. It started out really good and became increasingly interesting to me in the first half. In the second half, there was a moment where I started wondering where it would go, and just when I felt like that part was dragging on a bit, the ending felt completely wholesome again. It’s nice that they all managed to find their own kind of liberation in the end, like all these things that had a hold on them for the entirety of the show suddenly started falling away one by one. When I finished the final episode, I also felt like I had been liberated from something, so I liked how it had that effect.
This is without a doubt one of the more unique shows I’ve seen in a long time. I love how unpretentious it was, I love how brave the main characters were for finding a way to speak their minds even though the majority of the people around them would look at them weirdly. I think it brings a very important message with regards to South Korean society, about how succumbing to the mainstream way of life can be both mind-numbing and maddening at the same time. The siblings definitely belonged to the group of people that were meant to search for their own path, even if that meant going against the one-direction traffic of their surroundings.
Since this series is more character-driven than story-driven, and its characters are all interesting in their own way, I will go through this review by means of character analysis. I feel like going character-by-character will prove to be the most effective way to go.
I’d like to start with Yeom Mi Jeong, the youngest sibling, as her storyline will enable me to get directly to the series’ title and main theme. Mi Jeong is without a doubt the most timid of the siblings. She’s an introvert, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have an edge. You could say that behind her quiet demeanor there’s a silent rage that she only rarely expresses. Mi Jeong has always been the most helpful child to her parents’ work in the countryside, and she’s the only one who never complains when they’re asking for help. Unlike her older brother and sister, who fight a lot, she keeps to minding her own business most of the time, until other people involve her. She works at a sort of designing company (if I’m correct), where she gets the chance to design layouts for pamphlets and business cards etcetera. While she’s quite good at it, her manager always finds ways to reject everything she comes up with. As she sits quite close to his desk, her working hours include long periods of hearing him curse under his breath while he’s striking through all her proposals. At least she has some female colleagues who (seem to) have her back, but Mi Jeong usually smiles rather than engage in vindictive gossiping with them. These female colleagues are always trying to get Mi Jeong out of her shell, they try to convince her to stay and go clubbing or drinking with them, they try to get stories about her private life out of her, but Mi Jeong doesn’t usually talk about herself. She seems to be the introvert friend in a group of extraverts. Except she’s not a friend. She doesn’t even feel a connection with her female peers, except for maybe one of them. Mi Jeong actually doesn’t like any of the people she meets in her daily life, and this only feeds her growing inner rage.
As if her daily life isn’t already tedious enough dealing with people she doesn’t like and commuting to places she doesn’t want to go, her company starts making her life even harder by forcing her to join a social activity club. The company has a system of extracurricular activity clubs, to make working life more fun and bring colleagues from different departments together. It seems like a fun initiative… until you’re being forced to participate. Mi Jeong is one of the few people who hasn’t joined a club yet. More importantly, she has no interest in joining one at all. She’s called in several times by the club consultant (played by Lee Ji Hye), who just can’t seem to understand why she doesn’t want to join one, and who keeps urging her to make more social contacts within the company. Eventually, just to get out of these consultations, Mi Jeong and two other people who refuse to join a club decide to start their own, The Liberation Club. These two others are Park Sang Min (played by Park Soo Young) and Jo Tae Hoon (played by Lee Ki Woo). They’re all from different departments and basically just know each other’s faces from crossing paths in the hallway, but they all have their own reason for not wanting to join a club. Since simply creating a club to get it over with doesn’t cut it, the consultant keeps asking them to come up with visual proof of the kind of activities they do at The Liberation Club. What it comes down to is that they meet up once in a while and talk about the things they want to be liberated from. It’s not a pity club, they’re not looking for comfort or advice, it’s really just each member taking time to talk about things that they feel bothered by. It may not come close to the social gatherings of the other clubs, but to the three of them, it definitely causes some kind of relief and they’re not the only ones. After the consultant sits in on one of their meetings, she’s so impressed by it that she decides to join herself, becoming the fourth member. They decide to start writing down their thoughts in-between gatherings in notebooks, and then present what they’ve written when they get together. That’s how the liberation notes come into the picture.
In the meantime, Mi Jeong has other things to worry about. Her ex-boyfriend cheated her out of six million won for an ‘investment’ and then left her to live abroad with another woman. He keeps refusing to pay her back, saying he doesn’t have any money himself at the moment, causing Mi Jeong to receive notices of delinquency from her bank. Because she doesn’t want her family to find out, she changes her address briefly to that of Mr. Goo’s, so the bank’s letters won’t be delivered to her family house. From this point on, Mi Jeong starts approaching Mr. Goo more often. It seems like she was already a bit interested in him from the start but never bothered to talk to him as he never answered, but at some point her inner rage starts boiling and she boldly goes up to him one night, surprising him with words that will change his view of her forever: ‘Worship me.’
It was so interesting to see Mi Jeong transforming throughout the series. I related to her in a lot of aspects. The whole thing about her being forced to join a club reminded me of something a friend of mine recently went through. Her company was doing this team dinner and everyone was supposed to participate in this kind of talent show. Despite repeatedly telling the organisors how uncomfortable she was with performing in front of people, everyone around her was like ‘well, we’re all doing it too, so you should just get over it’. It made us both aware of the fact that introverted people are overlooked on so many occasions.
In any case, it didn’t come as a surprise to me that Mi Jeong’s rage kept piling up, and I’m impressed that she kept it together until the very end. Once she got to talking and started opening up to Mr. Goo, we get to see this whole different side of her. She’s not insecure, she’s not timid or shy. I felt like she was overlooked, and that made it hard for her to see her own worth, but it didn’t make her lose confidence, per se. She just gained a whole bunch of people to curse out inside her head. In the beginning, she would just let everything wash over her and not talk back even when she was being treated unfairly, but I think it was a big step for her to actually step up when she found out her manager and one of her female colleague ‘friends’ were having an affair and he saved his mistress under Mi Jeong’s name on his phone. I honestly didn’t understand how that woman had the nerve to slap Mi Jeong in the face while she had been the one dragging Mi Jeong into this mess. Anyways, it definitely felt like Mi Jeong was maturing in her own way and decided there was room for her to live her life the way she wanted to.
Her relationship with Mr. Goo, one of the more apparent storylines, was also very interesting. In the beginning I was really excited for their growing tension to explode at some point, but they kept it pretty conservative! I didn’t expect that. He kisses her one time, but it’s not even captured in detail, as soon as he leans in the shot is zoomed out and we can’t even see it clearly from that distance. Even when they meet up again later and nothing was holding them back anymore, I was just waiting for them to show some sort of physical affection, but in hindsight I also think it’s quite refreshing that they didn’t make it about that. Their chemistry was clear enough through their gazes and conversations, so a part of me was also glad to see a relationship work out like this, without the physical intimacy that people are always asking for. Of course, I wouldn’t have minded it, but I also respect that they chose not to put too much focus on that. The most important thing was that Mi Jeong and Mr. Goo understood each other, despite coming from completely different worlds.
Let me move on to Yeom Gi Jeong, the oldest sibling. Gi Jeong is nearing forty, she works at a statistics company and she has yet to find the love of her life. She’s more outspoken about her frustrations than Mi Jeong, and she tends to get home late because she can’t stop herself from going for a drink (or more) after work. At one point, she decides to set herself an ultimatum: if she hasn’t found someone to love by the time it’s winter, she’ll shave all her hair off. However, it turns out to be a bit of a challenge to find a guy who’s up for sweeping her off her feet. Once Gi Jeong starts talking, her quirks inevitably come out and this has rarely worked in her favor. I really loved the scene where she had that blind date and started talking about how she would prove her devotion by picking up her husband’s severed head, and how she admired Maria for staying with Jesus while he was being crucified. To her, those extreme cases may have illustrated some sincerely noble acts of love, but to other people they were a reason to run away as fast as they could.
Gi Jeong eventually falls in love with Mi Jeong’s Liberation Club member Jo Tae Hoon, who also happens to be the younger brother of one of her old school friends. I will go into more detail about Tae Hoon and his circumstances later, but let’s just say that they make an interesting pair. He’s the first man who seems to be genuinely charmed by Gi Jeong’s quirks, they’re always smiling a lot when they’re together, and Gi Jeong becomes quite passionate about him. Initially, Gi Jeong is in it by herself, which she realizes after confessing to Tae Hoon for the first time. Even though he initially doesn’t give her a straight answer, her bold confession is the trigger for his feelings towards her to unfold, and they still end up together. Although they face struggles, mostly caused by Tae Hoon’s family, they are determined to stick together, and eventually they even agree to get married, even though the series ends before this happens.
I think that finding love was one of the main driving forces for Gi Jeong’s character. I thought it was kind of funny that this came out when she was complaining about how her manager at work allegedly dated almost all of the female employees, and had given lottery tickets to every single employee in the company, except for her. Instead of seeing it as a good thing that she at least wouldn’t be treated like that, it made her doubt herself all the more because she was the only woman who he hadn’t gotten involved with. As in, she was prepared to be one of those women rather than being ostracized by herself, because that made her feel like she wasn’t attractive enough. I liked how she just went to confront her manager and they ended up becoming friends who exchanged dating advice. I kind of expected him to still fall for her at some point, because I thought he started looking at her differently when she started glowing after falling for Tae Hoon, but he kind of disappeared towards the end of the show, which was a pity. On the other hand, I liked that they didn’t make him into this typical male character, the rumors weren’t all true about him being a player and whatnot, and it also seemed like he learned from Gi Jeong, in a way. Anyways, finding love was always a driving factor for Gi Jeong, that’s for sure. I think she struggled more with things in terms of beauty and feminity, in hindsight. It never became a true obsession, but I believe that she was dealing with a lot of pressure from being the oldest daughter, nearing forty and not having found anyone to marry yet. Even when Tae Hoon agrees to marry her, the plan is to wait until his daughter is twenty years old, and Gi Jeong then struggles again with the thought that she’ll be fifty when that time comes. So I guess Gi Jeong’s sorrows mostly come from the conformity that women are supposed to find love and get married within a certain time span.
I started liking Gi Jeong the most when she started falling for Tae Hoon. In the beginning I wasn’t completely sure what her deal was, and I thought she was a bit unhinged, to be honest. I also thought it was quite childish of her to get all bitter after seeing Mi Jeong and Mr. Goo getting closer. It just really showed how uninvolved they were in each other’s lives, she wouldn’t even support her younger sister for finding love before she could. But from the moment she became a lovestruck schoolgirl over Tae Hoon, I started finding her so incredibly endearing. The urges to show her affection were so relatable. I loved the part where she was like, ‘I never understood why people took pictures of their food before eating, but now I also want to take pictures so I can show Tae Hoon what I’m eating’. I really liked how this habit jumped over to Tae Hoon as well after Gi Jeong confessed to him. One of my favorite parts was when Gi Jeong was all 😭 after her disastrous confession, and a rainbow came out and she was like ‘why do I still want to send him a picture of that rainbow??’ and in the meantime, somewhere else, Tae Hoon chose to take a picture of it, almost subconsciously.
I find Chang Hee one of the more complicated characters to analyze, because his storyline jumped from one event to another and I feel like I missed a couple of transitions. In contrast to his two siblings, his storyline wasn’t focussed on romance at all, more on money and proving himself to his father. Towards the end, I felt like there were more things happening off-screen than on-screen, which we only learned about when the focus went back to him. Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention, but for me it kind of jumped from him suddenly quitting his job to suddenly having to pay off debts to suddenly having some sort of relationship with his childhood friend Hyeon Ah (more about her later as well). I watched the last couple of episodes with some time in-between, so it could be that it just didn’t linger in my memory, but I got a bit confused about his storyline towards the end.
In my opinion, Chang Hee starts out as the most obnoxious of the three siblings, and ends up with maybe the most character development out of everyone. In the beginning, he’s just a selfish guy with won signs in his eyes. He thinks he can take on the world if he just has a mountain of money and a nice car. Despite his ambitions, Chang Hee usually lazies around the house on his free days and only reluctantly comes to help out with the farming after he’s been repeatedly asked to. To me, he felt like a little kid in a grown man’s body, also in his behavior towards Mr. Goo. After seeing Mr. Goo perform that crazy high jump, Chang Hee starts idolizing him, and he reaches a new level of respect when Mr. Goo lends him a Rolls-Royce that he had standing around somewhere. Mr. Goo becomes the older respectable brother that he never had. I laughed so hard when he ended up showing Mr. Goo the damage he’d accidentally gotten on the car and he had to run a marathon to escape him, lol.
While Chang Hee doesn’t seem to suffer much under society’s pressure, he is always complaining about something. He works at a company that manages convenience stores and he is also personally responsible for some of these stores. He seems to be liked well enough by the people he works with, a bit too much in some cases. I found it so strange that he would just allow that woman to keep calling him for hours to rant about her deceased husband. With his personality, I didn’t really understand why he put up with that and why he ended up getting Hyeon Ah to solve the problem for him. I guess he was the kind of person who would complain about people behind their backs but tried to keep himself composed when they were in front of him. The same went for that woman he worked with, who was sitting next to him and couldn’t shut up. The funny thing is that one of the first things I thought was that Chang Hee also couldn’t stop talking whenever something was bothering him, and it surprised me that he was also able to reflect on himself. Despite the fact that I apparently completed missed or forgot about when or how he quit his job, it was nice to see that helping out his parents on the farm started coming more naturally to him. Honestly, I related to him at this point because I also became unemployed recently and I was exactly the same in that all I wanted for the next few months was just to relax and enjoy my free time, without immediately being nagged by my parents about my next steps. I feel like from this point on, and then strengthened by the passing of his mother, Chang Hee finally made the final steps to maturity. He was finally able to reflect on himself and this also enabled him to suddenly realize that he had always been present when someone close to him passed away. From that moment on, it was like he became The Man Moved By The Universe. In the final episode, he goes into a building to visit an exposition, but he ends up in ‘the wrong room’ where people are being prepared for becoming funeral planners. In an unexpected way, he ended up exactly where he was supposed to be.
The only thing I didn’t completely follow, as I said, was his relationship with Hyeon Ah. I got that they were childhood friends and they were close enough that he would always ask her to pretend to be his girlfriend and get him out of certain situations. After his mother passed, he asks Hyeon Ah to marry him after she says that at his cremation, she’ll probably be the one watching behind the window. However, I never really felt a romantic connection between them and we also see their relationship fall apart pretty fast. Also, Hyeon Ah already had a partner, who was dying of cancer. So that part wasn’t completely clear to me.
To me, Chang Hee was all the more interesting because he wasn’t completely likable. He wasn’t a nice, friendly gentleman, he was selfish and self-absorbed and greedy, but he still managed to find his way out of his own darkness. Even though there were some potential love interests throughout the story, he always ended up the most happy when he was alone. Unlike Gi Jeong for example, he took solace in the fact that he didn’t need anyone else to rely on but himself. I started feeling for him more after the story explored his relationship with his father more. I will talk about the parents separately later, but I just thought how interesting it was that Chang Hee and his father had gotten so estranged while they were actually so much alike.
Once he started maturing, I started feeling more sympathetic towards him. In the final episode, there’s this part where he’s sitting at this fire with his two Sampo neighborhood friends and he’s talking about why he decided to give up a business that could’ve earned him tons of money. It was so good when he talked about how proud he was of himself, how much he could love himself now for being mature enough to not linger on those petty thoughts he used to have, to swallow them and not speak them out loud.
Finally, let me go over Mr. Goo before I turn to some of the important side characters. When we meet him, he’s as much a mystery to us as he is to the Yeom family. I kind of liked his vibe from the start, this charming mystery man of few words. I was also really interested in how his relationship with Mi Jeong would develop. It was nice to see him actually get caught off guard by her, how she actually managed to scare him at times with the things she said. I was ready for him to slowly start letting his walls down for her, especially when it became more serious.
As it turns out, Mr. Goo, or Goo Ja Gyeong, is definitely a bit of a shady guy. I kind of expected him to be part of a maffia organization or something, and I wasn’t completely wrong. Mr. Goo was working under a dangerous and influential guy who managed a bunch of host clubs. Apparently he’d been a host himself before he climbed his way up, and now he’s mostly in charge of making sure all the clubs and the managers pay their bills on time. When a manager fails to get money from a customer, he’s sent after them to make sure they pay, and not in the most friendly way. It can get quite violent. At some point, Mr. Goo was apparently in a relationship with the sister of one of his work acquaintances, but this sister was severely depressed and ended up unaliving herself. Around this time, this work acquaintance decided to betray Mr. Goo and take him out. Mr. Goo incidentally found out about this and decided to disappear into the countryside – that’s how he ended up at Sampo. About halfway through the story, he is discovered by his former work acquaintances, and one of them even visits the Yeom family house to convince him to come back. Mr. Goo eventually decides to return after the brother of his ex meets an unfortunate end during a pursuit when he’s found out for dealing drugs. However, this only worsens his alcoholism. As I mentioned before, one of Mr. Goo’s characteristics is that he drinks a lot, every day. He has an entire collection of empty soju bottles in his house. After Mi Jeong gets him to talk, and she’s really the only one who gets him to open up like that, he keeps saying that drinking makes him feel comfortable, that whenever he’s sober, he can only think about all the people who have wronged him and feel angry towards them.
I found it very interesting to see how much Mr. Goo changed throughout the show. In the final episode, he was nothing like the person he was in the first episode. He had no problem talking to Mi Jeong, he was smiling at her and looking at her with those shiny eyes (seriously, the way he looked at her). I was kind of worried that he would be the only person who wouldn’t find his liberation, because his drinking became worse and worse and then he even started slipping up during work and stuff. But the relief that final scene brought me, the one where he chose to pick up that coin and leave the whiskey bottle behind, was immense. Even though he may not completely leave it behind, it was a first step, and the fact that he was finally strong enough to start ‘trudging step by step’ together with Mi Jeong was really nice.
Overall, I really loved how they managed to portray everything in an ultimately uplifting way without turning corny. There was something real and powerful in the way everyone reached their own kind of liberation, and how they went about it. It was so realistic, also in how the series left a couple of things open. We never see how the relationship between Mi Jeong and Mr. Goo works out, we don’t see Gi Jeong and Tae Hoon get married, we don’t see Chang Hee become a funeral planner. The story ends at a point where they have all found something that might lead to their liberation, and that in itself is already uplifting. The most defining point of that for me was when they decided to restart The Liberation Club and, according to Park Sang Min’s words, ‘keep going until it works’. Mi Jeong previously said that while she didn’t feel completely liberated yet, the meetings had at least helped her figure out the cause of her frustrations, and that was already a big step. I think this was a very defining moment, and a very good way to end the series. Life doesn’t have a defined ‘ending point’, like some point that you have to get to in order to reach liberation or something like that. Getting to the point where you become aware of the source of your problems and taking steps to go in the direction of fixing them and improving your own life is already such an important step in itself.
I want to talk a bit about the siblings’ parents, as they also played an immensely important part in the story. You might wonder how the children got to grow up so differently from their parents, but I read a book last year which kind of reminded me of this, in which the children became estranged from their parents exactly because their parents never talked about things. Because they could never confide in their parents, the children were forced to figure their own stuff out and this can go either way. All I’m saying is that I wasn’t surprised how everyone was so ‘on their own’ despite being a family of five.
It’s mentioned somewhere that Father Yeom is a very shy man, and that’s why he doesn’t talk much. He seems to be the conservative kind of father who never shows his emotional side to his wife and children, even though he actually cares and worries about them a lot. In the beginning he seems quite indifferent towards Chang Hee, but I was so happy with that flashback of him being surprised seeing his son win that tracking competition. And how he suddenly became a child in racing that other family’s car after they’d looked down on them for having a less successful harvest, that really cracked me up. I love how in that moment, Chang Hee and his father were one, the son cheering on his father. Father suddenly got that mischievous gleam in his eye, and that was the only time in the entire series that he behaved like that, but I loved it. We don’t get much insight in Father’s frame of mind, as he doesn’t disclose much about himself, but it’s undeniable that part of it is due to awkwardness in showing affection. After his wife suddenly passes away, the bond between him and Chang Hee becomes much better as his son starts helping him out around the house more, and he’s even able to remarry at some point. When Mr. Goo comes to visit him, he gives him Mi Jeong’s phone number and the most beautiful example of liberation takes place in the final episode, when he tells his kids that he doesn’t mind if they all choose to live their lives without getting married. He was finally able to talk to his children, and this was beautiful. I really feel like, specifically for Gi Jeong but also for Mi Jeong, this was one of their major liberations. The way they both teared up after hearing their conservative father tell them they were free to live however they wanted was really touching.
While Mother was also a very typical conservative housewife, I did feel like she was more concerned about the struggles that her children, mostly her daughters, went through. She was never the hug-it-out kind of mom, but there were moments where it became abundantly clear how much happiness she wished for her children. She always had a gentle expression when looking at their childhood photos, and I felt like she was the kind of wife who’d scoff about her husband’s inability to communicate but didn’t actually take it to heart. It was quite cosy how she’d just complain about him while he was sitting right next to her, as if that was their love language, in a way. We only get to see her emotional side right before she passes away. Despite never really smiling widely, she was so excited to see Tae Hoon after learning about Gi Jeong’s relationship, and she also seemed to be really hurt by hearing about Mi Jeong’s sadness after Mr. Goo left. In those two final scenes, that took place on the afternoon before she died in the evening, showed just how much she cared for her children and how much happiness she wanted for them.
Needless to say I was really surprised when she suddenly passed away, I don’t even know the reason for sure. Did she hit her head during that racing incident? Did she suddenly have a heart attack while resting? She seemed to be completely healthy so it came as a shock for me, too. Her passing had a different effect on each relative. I believe it hit Mi Jeong more directly, especially because it had just been a short time since Mr. Goo had left, and it felt like being left by several people in a row, including her ‘friend’ at work. On the other hand, it also caused all three siblings to finally leave the house and move to Seoul. It made Chang Hee decide to be more dependable and it made Gi Jeong go through some important experiences as well. Maybe it’s a bit cruel to say, but it felt like her passing did allow a certain liberation to happen within the family.
Speaking about families, I’d like to talk a bit about Tae Hoon. He is introduced in the first episode, in a quite embarrassing situation. In short, Tae Hoon and his daughter happen to sit right next to the Yeom sisters in a café when Gi Jeong is ranting about some guy she was seeing who turned out to be a single father. I mean, of course she couldn’t possibly know that the person sitting right next to her was going through a similar situation, and I thought it was weird they made such a big deal out of feeling called out by someone that wasn’t even talking about them, but it was a bit embarrassing either way.
As I mentioned before, Jo Tae Hoon works at the same company as Mi Jeong, only in a different department. They have seen each other’s face before, but they initially don’t really know each other. Despite joining The Liberation Club together, Mi Jeong never becomes very close with him, but they are on friendly terms with each other and this remains after he and Gi Jeong start dating. Tae Hoon is a single father with a teenage daughter called Jo Yoo Rim (played by Kang Joo Ha). His wife left him for another family, and he has trouble bonding with his pubescent daughter. Besides that, he has two sisters, Jo Hee Seon (Kim Ro Sa) and Jo Gyeong Seon (Jung Soo Young) who help him take care of Yoo Rim. Gyeong Seon is Gi Jeong’s old school friend and they reconnect after Gi Jeong gets an eye treatment at Gyeong Seon’s clinic. However, as soon as the real nature of Gi Jeong and Tae Hoon’s relationship becomes clear, Gyeong Seon actively protests against it, mostly because of what Gi Jeong said during the beforementioned incident, which Yoo Rim told her about. Gyeong Seon keeps looking for reasons to cancel Gi Jeong, so to say. Despite Tae Hoon’s less than welcoming family (apart from Hee Seon), the couple becomes determined to stay together.
Going back a bit to where they first start hanging out, I just want to comment that I found them a really endearing couple. Tae Hoon is quite sullen, but he really lights up when he’s with Gi Jeong, they have interesting conversations and get along really well. It was kind of cute how he only became aware of the implications after Gi Jeong gathered the courage to speak her feelings, like he had this denseness about him, but he never became a wimp. He may have lacked a little spine in standing up for Gi Jeong against his family, but he remained very adamant in his feelings for her and that in itself was a strong characteristic of him. I can’t deny that I found him a little pessimistic, also in how his own experiences had caused him to feel sorry for every small child he saw because he was worried about the painful experiences they would have to endure in the future, but I guess that’s just the blow that life dealt him. It reflected his feelings towards a hopeful future, seeing what his ex-wife leaving them had done to Yoo Rim, and how he was now depending on his sisters’ help so much. I was just happy for him that he got to meet someone new in Gi Jeong who could make him smile. Honestly, that final scene where he came to her house drunk to give her a rose, that was so cute. I wish there would’ve been more scenes that showed his more affectionate side. I was also kind of sad they didn’t have a kissing scene, but oh well. I definitely cracked up that one time when Gi Jeong blurted out ‘next time we can sleep together!’ leaving him all speechless.
As much as I thought I had Ji Hyeon Ah (played by Jeon Hye Jin) figured out, she became kind of a vague character to me in the end. She was just so different at the start of the show. She only appeared as a side character in the siblings’ storylines, so there wasn’t much linearity in her own story. The image that I got was that she grew up with the siblings in Sampo, but moved to Seoul after graduation and they’d always kept in touch. The siblings are sometimes able to meet up with her in Seoul after work, and she also comes to visit them in Sampo on occasion. She appears to be a fun-loving older sister figure, who occasionally gets involved with bad boyfriends. Mi Jeong comes to visit her at her house one time, and then she hears how Hyeon Ah’s then-boyfriend is intimidating her and breaking stuff in her apartment. Despite her own less-than-ideal situation, Hyeon Ah is always there when one of the siblings needs an issue worked out. She often helps Chang Hee out in situations where she needs to pretend to be his girlfriend, and she never complains about it. She’s a very loyal friend who cares about everyone’s wellbeing more than her own, it seems. At some point we find out that she is being terrorized by another boyfriend’s mother and we find out that this guy is in the hospital succumbing to cancer. I wasn’t sure who this guy was, if he was an ex-boyfriend or if she was seeing other people while he was in the hospital. In any case, suddenly there was this guy in the hospital who couldn’t let her go and she kept visiting him. I didn’t really understand what was going on there. Chang Hee also seemed to know the guy and was friendly with him, so he can’t have been a bad person. Chang Hee ends up visiting him several times when Hyeon Ah can’t make it, and the boyfriend even asks Chang Hee to take care of Hyeon Ah after he’s gone. Shortly before he passes, Chang Hee proposes to Hyeon Ah and they start dating…? I questionmark this because again, I didn’t fully understand the situation. I didn’t think it made much sense for them to get together. The boyfriend passes away when Chang Hee is the only one present, as he can’t get hold of Hyeon Ah. So yeah, that’s what I got from it, but throughout it all Hyeon Ah also suddenly became this really docile, vulnerable person and I just felt like I missed a few crucial steps in her life story. That was something I would’ve liked to get more clarity about. Other than that I liked her character, and I was fine with her remaining a kind of whimsical supporting figure in the siblings’ lives. I just didn’t really understand how she somehow ended up with Chang Hee, as I didn’t feel any chemistry between them besides close childhood friends.
Speaking of childhood friends, I thought it was an interesting choice in itself to create the community of Sampo. The way it’s explained is that normally, no one stays there. It’s a village that has more people leaving than staying, and that’s why it’s a surprise to everyone that Mr. Goo suddenly decided to start living there. Chang Hee has two friends from Sampo, even though they’re all really different. As a child growing up in a village like that, you don’t really have another choice but to play with the other children there, because they’re the only peers you have to grow up with. As Chang Hee also mentions at some point in the beginning, he wouldn’t even call Oh Doo Hwan (Han Sang Jo) and Seok Jung Hoon (Jo Min Gook) his friends if it weren’t for that reason. They’re his friends by default because they all grew up together in Sampo, something like that. It felt like the siblings’ relationship with Sampo itself was already complicated enough. It took them so long to actually move away, their mother was already worried that they would never leave, but I could never tell whether they preferred to keep living there over living in Seoul. I think it was just that they were used to living there, they were used to their way of living while helping their parents out (especially Mi Jeong). It had a lot of inconveniences, like the tediously long commute, but still none of them took action to move to Seoul before. I thought that was quite interesting.
I just want to briefly mention a couple of supporting characters that deserve a shoutout.
First of all, Oh Doo Hwan, Chang Hee’s closest childhood friend in Sampo. Depicted as a bit of a comic relief character, only strengthened by his goofy appearance, Doo Hwan remained to be a very close and true friend to the siblings. I believe he was a gym teacher or soccer coach at the local school. Despite him often being used as a target of ridicule by Chang Hee, he did prove to be someone who stayed in Sampo and got his life together. I thought he was a nice presence in the Sampo scenes, and I thought that he might have been a bit underestimated by the majority. In any case, he was always really happy to see his friends come back home to Sampo and he really cared about everyone’s wellbeing, just like Hyeon Ah. He also helped out with Gi Jeong’s confession plan without a second of hesitation, I thought that also proved something.
I wanted to mention Gi Jeong’s manager Park Ji Woo (played by Kim Woo Hyung), who I’ve briefly talked about before. I just really liked how being confronted by Gi Jeong for not giving her any lottery tickets eventually made him aide her in her mission to find love before winter came. I know I said I kind of expected him to still fall for Gi Jeong, but on the other hand it really wasn’t the kind of show that dealt with typical love triangles. I just found it a waste that he basically disappeared after his relationship with that one female employee ended. She was weird, by the way, she was going all ‘don’t spend so much time with my boyfriend’ to Gi Jeong, and to her boyfriend himself she was acting all distanced. I didn’t get what her deal was, so I didn’t feel sorry for her when he ended it. In a way, he kind of liberated himself, too!
I cannot forget Sam Shik (played by Kim Min Song), Mr. Goo’s faithful assistant in the host club business. It was funny how Mr. Goo always kept calling him by different names, from Yeom Mi Jeong to Kim Woo Bin, lol. I don’t know if he really just couldn’t be bothered or what, haha. Anyways, he was saved on his phone as Sam Shik so I’ll keep referring to him as that. This guy has such a bad-guy face, he was perfectly cast for someone in that business. All the while being a really nice person, he really tried to take care of Mr. Goo, he always followed him. I just wanted to mention him because I liked his character and he was a prime example of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’.
Finally, the only nice female colleague of Mi Jeong who’d always chat with her in the coffee corner and always felt sorry for what was happening to her, Bo Ram (played by Seo Ji An). I don’t know, I just liked her vibe and she was one of the girls who seemed to see things for what they were, including those other gossiping female colleagues. She remained on Mi Jeong’s side until the end and was always trying to relate to her. I just liked her character and it was nice to see them meeting up again in the final episode.
The opening animation was really soothing, in a way. I liked how it combined the endless commutes of the three siblings with the small in-between moments of peace. I also noticed that, while it was originally an instrumental soundtrack, around episode 13 maybe, vocals were added. I wonder what the reason for that was. I liked it well enough as an instrumental, but it was interesting that at some point they decided to add the vocals in. I like how the opening and the soundtrack had this soothing, comforting feeling, how it was filled with bright colors in contrast to how the world must have looked to the main characters. It was an interesting contrast, I think. Animated opening sequences are always nice because the essence of the series has to be depicted within a limited amount of animated frames. I think they succeeded well in doing that.
Alright, so before I move on to my cast comments I just want to make some final comments about the series itself, the structure and things that jumped out to me. Overall, as I said in my introduction, I really enjoy this genre of K-Drama, the slightly slow-paced type that goes deeper than just funny dialogues and comic relief. I thought it was very well written and I enjoyed watching it, I found it very engaging to get to know these intriguing characters. I think the phrase ‘less is more’ goes very well for this show. There would occasionally be scenes that played out in complete silence, apart from maybe a voice-over. I loved how they kept so much open for interpretation, or how they didn’t point out every single thing that happened in a Captain Obvious-kind of way. Its strength lay in its images, and sometimes emphasizing a gesture or a gaze said more than words. However, I can’t deny that in some cases, I need to have things spelled out to me. I like the silent understanding theme, but only if I understand it, lol. There were a couple of things that remained a bit unclear to me, and while I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing – the unspoken aspect is also one of this show’s charms – I still would’ve liked to get some more clarification on a few things, like for example Hyeon Ah’s situation. By showing only fragments of some storylines, I feel like I missed some things, and I wish I hadn’t. On the other hand, the choice to leave room for interpretation and the fact that they chose for an open ending really fit the series’ style. In hindsight, I think it would’ve been weird to show a ‘happy ending’ for everyone, because the whole point of the story was for everyone to keep navigating through their lives. It’s nice that they chose to end the show at the moment they finally go in search of their true liberation. After finally being liberated from the things that bound them to the previous chapter of their lives (their mother passing, Mi Jeong’s ex paying back the money he owed her, their father taking away the pressure of getting married), they are now at the start of a new chapter in which they can start to discover a whole new life for themselves, on their own terms, without being bound to their parents/family house/Sampo anymore. And that’s a pretty good way to end it, with the promise of a new hopeful beginning. It really felt like I was following these people as they closed one chapter and started on a new one.
In terms of structure, I thought it was very well written. The dialogues weren’t only meaningful and engaging, but they always had a way of being repeated, like they were reverberating throughout the story. I really loved that Gi Jeong made a final reference to her ‘severed head’ story in the final episode, when Tae Hoon came to bring her a rose, but the head had fallen off. When Gi Jeong was talking about her worries to wait until she turned fifty to get married, there was a repetition in being overheard by a group of people at another table, just like in the situation with Tae Hoon and his daughter in the first episode. I really loved that guest appearance of Jung Young Joo as a fifty-year old lady who told Gi Jeong that turning fifty wouldn’t make her feel any different than turning thirty of eighty, because you always kept having regrets in one way or another. That was really powerful.
Also, there was one episode that just really made me go🤯. It ends with Mi Jeong walking home, a bit disappointed that Mr. Goo was not waiting for her at the station, and she is suddenly passed by an ambulance heading towards her house. The next episode very skillfully mixed Mi Jeong’s life just after Mr. Goo left with flashforwards to Mr. Goo’s new life after returning to his business, and this was done really well. But it’s only until the end of that episode that we, through Mr. Goo, find out that Mother has passed away, and then we’re suddenly taken back to that scene with the ambulance and it just all falls into place so well! That was the moment the ambulance came to pick up her mother. The way this whole episode was structured to finally get back to the end of the previous episode was really well done.
Okay then, to the cast comments! As I said there were some of my favorite actors in this one, and a lot that surprised me in a good way, so I’m exciting to go over them.
I think this is the most timid role I’ve ever seen Kim Ji Won play. So timid yet so unpredictable and even dangerous, in a way. She really keeps surprising me with every new thing I see of her. I am so happy she’s broken free of her typecasting for the typical bitchy character, because she has so many different qualities. I mean, she undeniably has an RBF, but she has so many different expressions, and she can use her cold expressions in many more ways than just ‘bitchy’. I loved how multilayered she made Mi Jeong. I think there’s only so many ways a younger person weighed down by her family’s and society’s expectations can deal with loneliness, with the feeling she has no one around her who truly cares about who she is and what she thinks. It’s the easiest to just go along with the mainstream, but when that keeps making you unhappy, what do you do? I was glad that she was able to find The Liberation Club and at least find some like-minded people. Her chemistry with Mr. Goo was incredibly strong, I was surprised they were able to hold it in, lol. So far I’ve seen Kim Ji Won in a lot of things, To The Beautiful You, The Heirs, Descendants of the Sun, Fight For My Way, Lovestruck in the City and Arthdal Chronicles (still said she’s not going to be in Season 2😭). With every new drama she does, she shows me a new side to her and she’s gradually rising on my list of favorite actresses. I was really impressed with her acting. I’m keeping an eye on any new project she’s going to be in!
If Lee Min Gi wasn’t already one of my favorite actors, he certainly proved himself all over again through this show. My god, this guy is good. No matter how obnoxious Chang Hee was, it was because of my love for the actor that I just enjoyed every single second of his performance. I loved how I finally got to see him as a completely different type of character, and he acted it out so well. I loved how he just didn’t hold back, like there was so much gleefulness in his portrayal of Chang Hee. The thing is, Chang Hee never thought of himself as a bad person, and he really made me believe that through his performance. I really loved his antics, his silliness, his little-boy-in-grown-man’s-body-ness. He was a perfect cast, I’m really happy to have seen him in this. I was kind of disappointed about the last thing I watched of him, so it meant all the more to me to be completely blown away by his acting again. This guy is amazing, and he’s definitely gone up a few more ranks in my favorites list. I’ve seen him before in Shut Up Flower Boy Band, Because This is My First Life, and most recently The Beauty Inside. I am really excited about his next projects!
Honestly I only remember Lee El from her role in Goblin where she was this mystery deity lady, so it was a real pleasant surprise for me to see her as such a real, messy human being, haha. As I mentioned before, it took me some episodes to warm up to her, but after that she became one of my favorite characters. I was just so genuinely happy for her when she finally found someone who liked her to, and despite her lovestruckness she still managed not to make it too cringy. And if she did, she owned it like a real woman would. I loved how she portrayed Gi Jeong’s vulnerability through a tough exterior, how she would just say what she felt even if it was embarrassing. I remember this one scene where Tae Hoon’s older sister hugged her tightly and her face just when from a smile to an I-want-to-cry face over her shoulder, before changing back to a smile. The subtlety of that, where she was just pretending to be fine until someone actually showed her a gesture of affection, it stuck with me because it was so realistic and relatable. It was also powerful how even cutting her hair became a way to liberate herself. Her quirks were really interesting, I really liked how she portrayed Gi Jeong, she was amazing.
Son Seok Goo looks so familiar to me, and now I see that he was in Sense8?? Like, I don’t even know him from a K-Drama, but from an international series? Anyways, I thought he was a really nice casting choice for Mr. Goo. He made for a really intriguing mystery man in the beginning, all stoic and intimidating, but then when his story was revealed and he opened up to Mi Jeong, it was like that all melted away and he becomes such a different person when he smiles! I really loved the chemistry between him and Kim Ji Won, even without physical intimacy there was so much going on between them. The way he looked at her after meeting her again was really sweet, he just couldn’t stop himself from smiling, lol. This is the first main role I’ve seen of him, even though he looks so familiar I feel like I know him from more than just one thing. In all truth, I liked him so much as the mysterious man that he was that I would’ve been okay if they hadn’t even revealed the entire truth about who he was. It was kind of his charm that he was such an enigma, and to be honest the fact that he was involved in shady business was a bit predictable. But anyways, he did a very good job and I’m curious to what he will do in the future!
I had no idea Lee Ki Woo was in this show! Somehow that keeps happening, lol. I was so happy to see him, even though he was again casted as a kind of sullen, melancholic character. The final scene when he came to visit Gi Jeong when he was drunk and acted all goofy was the Lee Ki Woo that I love to see the most, so I hope he can soon get another chance to act like that again! But yeah, at least he wasn’t a bad guy here, I really thought he and Gi Jeong made a cute couple together. He may have been a little hesitant at first, but when he kept smiling in his scenes with her, it warmed my heart. A smile suits him best😌So far, I’ve seen him in Flower Boy Ramyeon Shop (where I developed my first crush on him), Just Between Lovers and Fates and Furies. I’m glad that he’s still active and he’s already doing new projects, I can’t wait to see more stuff from him.
I have seen Cheon Ho Jin before in Doctor Stranger, Moonlight Drawn by Clouds and Chicago Typewriter. I don’t actually remember what characters he played, but at least I’ve seen him before, he looked really familiar. I’m positive that I have never seen him in a role like this before, though. I think he was one of the actors who proved his skills mostly through silent acting, and he did really well. Even without speaking, he was such a distinctive character as the siblings’ father. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him too, because he definitely meant well, but he just lacked the skills to interact properly with his family, and this was undoubtedly due to how he himself was raised. I think it’s just a generation-gap thing. Also the way he kept asking Chang Hee what his plan was and didn’t settle for just ‘living well’, because what did that mean? I think he just wanted to be sure his kids would end up alright and I’m glad he was able give his children his blessing to live the way they wanted.
I’m shocked that Lee Kyung Sung doesn’t have more than three projects to her name! I was convinced I knew her from something, but this is only her first drama acting job? I can’t believe it. As I said, I was really surprised when the mother suddenly died, I definitely didn’t see that coming. In hindsight I feel like it was used as a plot tool to set the final part of the siblings’ liberation process in motion, but then again I found it a very surprising choice. At least we got to see a fragment of the worries she was carrying before she passed, and I thought she portrayed the hidden affection she had for her children very well. She definitely wasn’t a soft and weak lady either, I thought she had some real fire in her. I lowkey wondered how she and the father ended up together as such polar opposites, haha. Anyways, I liked her performance and I hope she gets more projects!
Jeon Hye Jin looks so familiar to me but I haven’t seen her in anything before (except Oh! My Lady, but that was ages ago). How can this be? As I said, I really wanted to get some more information on Hyeon Ah and what exactly was going on with her. I think she pretended like she was doing better than she actually was, just not to worry her friends, but I kind of missed what exactly the deal was that she had to keep taking care of her sick boyfriend while repeatedly getting involved with other guys in the meantime. I’m guessing the guy she was mentioning in the beginning that she meant to break up with soon, was the guy who trashed her apartment, not the one in the hospital bed. Anyways, I liked how despite her edgy lifestyle she kept showing up for her childhood friends from Sampo, she made for a really interesting supporting character. I was interested to get some more insight in her, and also in the true nature of her relationship with Chang Hee, because I just don’t believe they had romantic feelings for each other.
Apparently, Han Sang Jo also played the physical education teacher in True Beauty, which I don’t even remember🙉. This is the first I saw of him, and I really liked Doo Hwan. I felt a bit bad that he was being teased so much because of his appearance, since I’m sure he had a lot of redeeming qualities! He was a very loyal friend, for one! I liked how he was always kind of dragged into things, usually by Chang Hee but sometimes also by Gi Jeong, but he always saw them through. He was all the more interesting because he took himself very seriously, and that always makes characters more effortlessly funny.
This is Jo Min Gook’s first drama project, and it was nice to have him, Han Sang Jo and Lee Min Gi together as this little group of friends. I could totally envision them as little boys hiding in self-discovered places, pulling mischief. It was nice to see some new faces in this show.
I am so grateful to Jung Soo Young in this drama for proving something eg. Hwang Bo Ra keeps failing to prove. I’ve seen Jung Soo Young in a couple of series before, like Who Are You: School 2015, Jugglers and most recently in Fates and Furies. Apart from that she’s appeared in many a comical guest role, for example in Me Too, Flower!, Fight For My Way and Go Go Waikiki. I know I keep repeating myself but I find this a very important point: a character is most funny if they’re not acting to be funny. They’re most funny if they take each other completely seriously. I wouldn’t say Gyeong Seon was meant to be a funny character, but Jung Soo Young always brings something funny to her characters, even if it’s just in the expressions. And I thought that in this series, she did a really good job to be funny without meaning to be. She took herself extremely seriously and she didn’t do more than necessary with her expressions to make it over the top. I really liked that about her, because it still made her serious enough to see her as more than just an annoying sister trying to protest against her brother’s new girlfriend. Despite her rivalry against Gi Jeong, I did like her character because she still wasn’t a bad person and she cared very much about her family. I always like it when actors can bring this kind of duality to their performances. Thank you, Jung Soo Young!
I hadn’t seen Kim Ro Sa in anything before either, even though she too looks familiar to me. She was the friendlier older sister who probably had already seen enough drama in her life to make a big deal about her younger brother finding new love after already raising a teenage daughter. It was nice that she didn’t make it into something bigger like Gyeong Seon, and she was consistently nice to Gi Jeong. She also had a nice vibe around her and she cared a lot about Yoo Rim, she was perfect fun auntie material. I liked her character. Also, I see she’s in some of my watchlist shows, so I’m definitely going to see more from her!
I think I must be recognizing Kang Joo Ha from stuff she did as a child, like Legend of the Blue Sea, Hwarang and Individualist Ms. Ji Young. Now she’s a teenager and I hope she gets a lot more opportunities in the future. I found the dynamic between Tae Hoon and Yoo Rim really interesting, you never really saw them interact much together and I had the feeling that Yoo Rim may have completely shut herself off from him after her mother abandoned them. But when Gi Jeong started talking about what it was like losing her mother and Yoo Rim started crying… I don’t know, there was definitely some depth in her character. I wish we could’ve gotten to know Yoo Rim a bit better, not just as the scary teenager who barely said a word. She did well, no doubt about that, her acting was really good, but I would’ve just liked to get some more insight in what was going on inside her head.
It’s been a very long time since I saw Park Soo Young in something! I know him from King of High School, Pinocchio, Uncontrollably Fond, Individualist Ms. Ji Young, My Mister, Come and Hug Me and My First First Love. It was nice to see him portray such a profound character as Park Sang Min. He may not seem like much, but going by the things he said I just felt like he had a bigger presence than you might think. He was basically the person who kept The Liberation Club going, and who even came up with the idea to hand in their notes to have them made into a book. He was a nice addition to the cast, and always a familiar face in a drama series. It was nice to see an old familiar face like this again.
I recognized Lee Ji Hye immediately from a small role she had in Crash Course in Romance, which I just finished, but I see she was also in The Light in Your Eyes. I liked the transformation from the club consultant. She was initially one of the people who just wouldn’t understand people’s reasons for not wanting to join a club, but she kept an open mind and was drawn into the concept of The Liberation Club. I liked how she immediately related to it, and immediately reflected on herself, in how she wanted to stop her face from immediately turning into a smile at any given occasion. It was a really nice twist they gave to her, and she was a nice and original addition to the club. I liked her, she was a very typical lady, lol.
I’m not even surprised that Kim Min Song was part of the bad guys’ crew in The King: Eternal Monarch and Midnight Runners, if you see his picture he would fit right in, haha. That’s why I liked that they gave him a more friendly twist in this show. He’s also in a couple of more series on my watchlist, so I’m curious what else he can bring to the table! Although I didn’t really care for anyone within Mr. Goo’s shady business circle, I did like Sam Shik, he had his heart in the right place.
Seo Ji An somehow reminded me of Seung Hee from the girl group Oh My Girl, I don’t know why, maybe something in her face? Anyways, I wanted to mention her because she’s an upcoming actress (this was the first drama project out of her current three) and I liked her character a lot in this show. Despite the fact that Mi Jeong liked almost no one around her, it was clear that Bo Ram proved her loyalty to her as they kept in touch even after they’d separated ways. I just found it so great that there was at least one person fully on Mi Jeong’s side in that toxic company, so shoutout to Bo Ram!
I’ve reached the end of my cast comments, which only leaves me to say some concluding words before I close off this review. It wasn’t a very big review to write since the story doesn’t take long to explain, it was mostly the psyche of the characters that intrigued me to go into some more detail. I really liked how all the characters were written, so humane and layered. There wasn’t a single one-dimensional character and I really appreciated that. The dynamics between the characters were also really interesting and original, the fact that being a family doesn’t actually mean anything if you’re all just minding your own business. It wouldn’t have made a big difference if they had been complete strangers to each other, so that was very interesting.
I also thought they did a great job steering away from standard tropes and cringeworthy situations. Everything was really real, there was no sugarcoating, it just painted a very real picture of people feeling lost in a society that pushes them to live ‘The Korean Dream’, whatever that may be. I think this show can definitely be seen as an anthem for the lonely and the introverted. As a major introvert myself, I found it really nice and inspiring to see representation of this in several of the main characters.
The relationship between Mi Jeong and Mr. Goo was unique in its kind, and it definitely wasn’t perfect but what I liked about it the most was that they weren’t trying to change each other. Mi Jeong never once told Mr. Goo to stop drinking, for example, she just smiled when he bought another bottle. The important thing is that he decided to change for her, without her even asking it. There was something really vulnerable about them when they were together, and they were constantly trying to scare each other away, testing each other’s limits to see how long they would stick around. It made their chemistry kind of exciting and I liked it.
Apart from that of course it also deals with heavier themes such as loneliness, pressure and loss. I kind of expected it to fall into a similar category as Our Blues before I started watching it, but it gave a completely different vibe despite being just as good a drama. I think the tone of My Liberation Notes may be a little bit somber, but it definitely becomes lighter in the end and I thought the ending was really meaningful and wholesome. I’m glad I watched it.
Next up is another recent hyped Netflix K-Drama that I’ve been looking forward to and I’ve seen a lot of emotional reviews about it so I’m very curious! I hope I’ll be back soon with a review, but I’m not in a hurry. Until next time!
Bye-bee! ^^
