About Yoon Jin Ah (Son Ye Jin) who starts a relationship with her best friend's younger brother, Seo Joon Hee (Jung Hae In) and how they work out the conflicts that arise between their families and between themselves. Also started my mini SYJ obsession where I marathoned all her movies haha.
This show...I started it around April when it was airing, then school started so I put it off till July, then took forever to finish it. It started off so well and I was hopeful it was gonna be as thoughtful and introspective and affecting as Secret Love Affair (one of the best kdramas ever made imo). The first 4 episodes when they were still dancing around the situation was exciting and heart fluttering and was setting up such a good base for the rest of the story. Ultimately, unfortunately, the writer failed to carry through with all the threads she started. The love story between Jin Ah and Joon Hee felt superficial, if the only thing Joon Hee can say about her is that she's pretty. And what happens when her exterior beauty fades? After they got together, their relationship just meandered around - JinAh does something stupid, JoonHee gets angry then melts when she apologises or whines, they make up and be cute until the next JinAh mistake comes along. Admittedly there are couples like that in real life, who don't fit well but love each other alot. But this is a drama and viewers want character growth, which unfortunately JinAh showed little of, even though she claimed to have changed so much due to JoonHee. Not that JoonHee grew up very much either considering his solution was to just run away. Don't even get me started on her mother lol. I feel like Kyungseon's reaction was a lot more normal, where she was initially understably betrayed and upset, but grew to come around after witnessing them. I just felt like the stakes were so low, and there was no compelling reason to oppose their relationship, unlike in SLA where the female lead was literally twice his age AND his teacher.
And then there was that whole sexual harrassment in JinAh's office thing that was so poorly handled. For like 10 episodes, things just went round and round. And then the boss got fed up and I got fed up too. I do like that they showed the males were only sorry they got caught, because that is so true in real life. But did we really have to spend all that time on it if it was just gonna be the same thing over and over again, when the time could have been used to either shorten the episodes (1h20min is too long!) or develop other characters, like JinAh's junior in the office, or Bora.
Ahn Pan Seok PD let me down this time. I have watched A Wife's Credentials and SLA and love love loved both of them because they were so quietly affecting with amazing choice of music. But man this time, the music was so overplayed. Maybe more than 2 songs in the OST would have helped.
Overall, only worth watching for the few scenes of Son Ye Jin flexing her acting muscles (ie whenever she fights with her mum). To fully appreciate Ahn PD's genius, go watch SLA or A Wife's Credentials instead. I'm going to rewatch SLA right now because that's one masterpiece haha.