Sigh I Love Kdramas June 21, 2022

April May and June 2022 Korean Drama Reviews

The first drama that I finished was My Liberation Diary/ My Liberation Notes. This is a very interesting and unusual drama. It is about one family with adult siblings who live far from where they work in Seoul and have to spend a lot of time commuting. Gi Jeong (Lee El) is the oldest daughter and she is exhausted with her life and wants some romance. Chang-Hee (Lee Min-Ki) is the middle child and wants to live a better life and has dreams but feels crushed by the people around him. The youngest is Mi-Jeong who is introverted and doesn’t really like dealing with people but has a rich inner world that she doesn’t share with anyone. At work she is forced to join a club but instead with a couple of other people she makes her own club Liberation Club to help liberate each other from the things they want liberation from. It also stars Mr. Gu (Son Suk-Ku) who appears one day in Sanpo Village and starts to work for their dad. He never talks and is a known alcoholic that drinks everyday. Mi-Jeong decides to include him in her life and they find relief from life with each other.

This is a hard drama to explain because a lot of times it gives you a lot of feelings without even using a lot of words. This drama can feel monotonous because that is what is trying to be portrayed. It feels so relatable that it hurts at times and sometimes feels like it punches you in the gut with the truths that are revealed in the story. You feel the frustration, anger and sadness with the characters. At times there are silences when the family eats together and it actually would drive me bonkers, you just want them to communicate better with each other. When it focuses on the character of Mi-Jeong because she doesn’t talk much it would actually get frustrating because you just wanted her to speak her truth and what was on her mind. I just felt it was such a compelling drama even though it wasn’t action-packed or had a huge plot line. I like that it wasn’t a typical drama that was so predictable and always the same tropes. The acting is very good as well, they were able to convey deep emotions without even much dialogue at times.

What I didn’t like was the romance story line, I honestly feel that Mi-Jeong deserved someone better to love than someone that was an alcoholic. I would never encourage a friend or loved one to enter into a relationship with someone that had an addiction. I just can’t imagine it being healthy no matter and also being in love or having a loved one cannot be your savior, even though that was what the drama was hinting at. The drama didn’t really take it that far but the ending gave me hope for their relationship to be better. I also didn’t really love the love relationship for Gi-Jeong I thought she had better chemistry with another person in the drama then the one that she ended up with but it is fine. Chang-Hee’s ending is different but I mostly feel bad for him.

This is a great and well made drama! I would highly recommend if you like dramas that are more thought-provoking on the human condition.

The second drama that I finished was Our Blues. It is about a group of people living in a small village on Jeju Island. It focuses on one character for a couple of episodes and then moves onto another character. It had a large cast and no one was completely the main character as they would move on from a newcomer Lee Yeong-Ok (Han Ji-Min) who starts working as a haenyeo (female diver) and has a lot of secrets and is frustrating to the other people she works with. To Jung Eun-Hui who runs a fishing store and other businesses and focuses on the relationships that she has from the past and trying to figure out how to keep her friendship. To a teenage couple that gets themselves in trouble and their Dad’s have a grudge which makes it hard for them to solve their problem. This drama focuses on the hardest and best times of our lives and shows that they are often intermingled. Sadness and happiness are not really something you feel separately it is intermingled and can change quickly and suddenly but you can’t deny either of them. It is about family, friends and relationships and the struggle to keep them and understand the feelings of other people in your life. It is really a heart breaking and heart warming drama all at the same time.

I really was sucked into this drama and wanted to know what was the story between the different feuds and friendships and all the secrets between them. I also liked that there was a large cast so there was variety in the story telling. I think some of the best acting came from the oldest and youngest actors. The little girl Eun-Gi was so good at acting it was shocking. I thought it was really interesting that they were addressing Depression and how it can affect someone’s life. It was good they were talking about it but I’m not sure that they really gave good examples to deal with this disease. She didn’t really go and get help and was almost just supposed to overcome it with her own strength and friendship. I don’t know but that won’t work well for just anyone. I also thought it was good that they highlighted different disabilities in this drama as I think it is good to bring awareness to different issues that lots of people don’t have experience with and this drama seems to help bring understanding and showing how people are different.

What I didn’t like was I didn’t really care for Han-Su story line with Eun-Hui, it was honestly just weird and awkward and then the fact he leaves and doesn’t live there is just like why did we waste that much time on someone that doesn’t live there. It was also hard to watch Eun-Gi’s grandma treat her the way so roughly when she is just a little kid that needed some reassurance. I would never treat kids like that, I honestly couldn’t figure out why she was so harsh on a young child. I would have liked some more resolution on some of the story lines but overall I think they did a good job of wrapping up the loose ends.

I really think this is a worthwhile drama that has something in there for everyone as it covers a lot of ground and age groups.

The last drama that I finished was Love All Play which is about Park Tae-Yang (Park Ju-Hyun) is a badminton athlete and is returning to a professional team after a 3 year break after an incident. She was a contender to a star but because of her break she has to build back her abilities and strength. It also stars Park Tae-Joon (Chae Jong-Hyeop) who also decides to join the same team as Tae-Yang he feels like he is scared to actually know his true potential that if he actually tries his best he won’t measure up. He tries to act like he doesn’t care and it becomes his character.

I thought that this drama would have more badminton playing in it but found it was more focused on the characters and the drama between them. It also focuses on Park Tae-Yang’s guilt about the incident that she was involved in and that she feels guilty to even play badminton. It gets somewhat tiring and I didn’t feel like this drama was that unique or different then the typical drama. Two characters want to be together but because of other people around them they should be the last people that should be together. I kinda got frustrated in the drama and actually wished they would play more sports and I am not the type to like watching sports! Some characters were just the worst like basically all of Tae-Joon’s family and I really wished he would have told them off at some point but he doesn’t really and treats his mom way too well for the way she acted. He treated them all too well and at some point would have just wanted Tae-Joon and Tae-Yang to just be together and excommunicate his family. I don’t really mean it, but I was so frustrated by the situation at times.

I also found Tae-Yang’s character to get on my nerves at times, I don’t know why but I found her annoying at times. Also they have some weird romance moment that was kinda disturbing to me and just skipped over because it seemed so wrong on so many levels, the whole taking advantage of someone that is emotionally traumatized and weak. It just really gave off the wrong message and feel they should not have put that in.

The drama still kept me interested though in how it was going to turn out and was happy that it wasn’t a sad ending and there was some healing that happened. I wish they would have given a better ending of like who won the game at the end, which I thought was weird they didn’t put in there. I wish they would have given us more time with the ending instead of spending so much time with the characters being depressed and moping. It just felt tiring at some point.

Overall it wasn’t the greatest sports drama that I have watched but it was decent.

I just want to highlight a Chinese drama called Reset. It is about a college student Li Shiquing and a video game designer Xiao Heyun who are stuck in a time loop. They are stuck riding a bus that is about to explode and after they die, they wake up in the bus again. They have to find a way to stop the bus from exploding to escape from this endless time loop. I really thought this was a well done drama that actually made a time traveling drama that makes sense and doesn’t just turn into nonsense. It kept me on the edge of my seat a lot of time. They keep working out different simulations to try to stop the explosion. Each time they do a loop they get more and more information and discover the secrets behind the disaster. It really keeps you engaged the whole time and you want to binge it to find out the secrets. I don’t want to say too much in case I give away any of the clues but I highly recommend this drama if you like time traveling dramas.