The Third Charm

raw, realistic, unique

First I'm 19 - which I think is very important in how I view this drama. This drama was recommended because I liked the drama Because This Is My First Life. I don't like time skips, but they were well executed in the drama. The cinematography of the whole thing was very beautiful. It didn't have a lot of unnecessary monologues and relied on implications, which as a viewer I love and appreciate. It portrayed the stages of a relationship really well and I really like how realistic it was. There were happy moments, and struggling moments too. I think the solid background of personalities in both characters also helped in understanding what was happening. For instance, I personally don't get people who dwell and give everything they have on a certain loved one. That said, the male lead giving up both his chemical major, and his police officer career because he wanted to move on was confusing for me. However, it showed a lot about him growing as a person. He was obsessed with planning and him suddenly going out of his plan said something about the shift in perspective. Him being like that seems to be understandable too considering that his personality showed that he was bac at social interaction. This was the first time he felt strong emotions towards a person, and this person appeared twice. She basically was his first love which he experienced twice. Their impact on each other is that strong as shown in the drama. When he was with his second girlfriend, it showed that he loves her. Female lead also shows how happy she was with her family. There's a saying that first loves last forever and no matter what happens, they'll always remain special. Seeing each other again 5 years after a break up does give mixed feelings. Maybe it's because they didn't have proper closure which is why they struggled identifying these mixed feelings. When main dude wanted to help her, as she visibly needed help, he wanted to do so without hurting people around him long-term. That caused him and his cop girlfriend to break off their marriage. As a 19 year old teenager, I didn't get this part. It was a jerk move but then in the end, it showed that sure there may be lingering feelings but he didn't end it to get back together. It just so happened that at that time, female lead needed help and the only person that can help her was main lead - that's because he knew many things about her life. To be honest, it would have been nice if her ex husband ended up helping her because although they did get a divorce, he did love her at some point and could understand her as well as main dude can BUT because he also caused her a lot of pain, it just can't happen. The ending showed that they were both healing through the help of each other. In the end, the drama wasn't necessarily a romance drama. It showed a realistic relationship that has many ups and downs. I really like how it ended with a quote. I also like how it ended with them finally getting the closure and relationship (not romantic) they wanted. Male lead ended up flying to New York as a chef - no more drastic changes in career paths, just him trying to become a better version of himself. Female lead is as happy with her life now as she continue to look after her brother, her bestfriend, and herself. The ending showed that although they both obviously aren't fully healed, they were able to lean to each other and get back up again. That said, the ending showed that people around you can push you to heal yourself but at the end of the day, healing is effective when you do it to yourself.

Side note from the main story though, I love male lead's sister a lot. Her independence, view in life, and how she carries herself in a traditional, and patriarchal society was very refreshing. Everything aside, I love the casting here. Both mains are very amazing at portraying implied emotions. I just really love how so many things were implied through symbolisms and never actually narrate it. Production is very 100/100 ! As a k-drama fan I am in love with it. The story can be stretched out more for better understanding of the situation but the main plot, thought, or intention was really nice.

Anyways, I believe that people will view this differently depending on their priorities and age. This is my rating a view for this drama as a 19 year old student, with no romantic relationship experience at all. In a few years I do wanna rewatch this again and evaluate it again from the perspective and mindset of that current age. See you guys in a few years!

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Really annoying

Honestly, the drama was good but throughout the entire thing, I found myself asking why the male lead is such a dumbass. If your girlfriend is going out with other men, dump her. It's that simple. She has dinner alone with another guy? Dump her. Imagine if a guy did that if he went to dinner with another woman, his girlfriend would be fuming. I hate this double standard, for men it's not ok but for women it's ok? No sir. Again, this is my advice if you want to live a happy life: If your girlfriend has male friends that she goes out with just the two of them, DUMP her. Also in the drama at some point, the male lead asked her to put herself in his shoes and asked precisely this, if the roles were reversed and she agreed she would get mad. Then again, if she knew it and she did it on purpose, it's malicious intent. Don't date this type of woman. And I'm not going off just on women here, don't date this type of man either. If you're in a relationship, be loyal, and make it clear to third parties that you're taken and you're not interested. Something that the female lead fails to do in this drama, she keeps both men on their toes. This really annoyed me.

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Very Dark And Metaphoric

i really believe the reviews and rating for the show is greatly exaggerated. this story shows growth through pain and in that way its very realistic! i love realism in dramas espicially romance ones. this show is NOT an fluffy romance, its an view of these two people life and their ups and downs. furthermore, i love how many metaphors and and symbolism this drama has. my favourite part was the message it gave of how you grow from your past experience to become an new version of yourself. its so true and i relate to that alot. one thing i didnt appreciate was the second pairings in the second half of the show. the woman he was going to marry was plain toxic and wanted to be the main character type of vibe. the man she married was too unstable for another marriage in my opinion. although this could of been easily avoided if the ml chased after the fl after their breakup, it shows life is truly unpredictable. i like the open ending but i would most definitely preferred if they got married as it would wrap the drama up nicely ! i would definitely reccomend this drama and i think you should give this an chance and watch it for its lessons and life teachings rather than an rom com

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I was very hesitant because of bad comments
But I guess I decided to watch it at the right time, because I like it. It’s not a typical happy end romantic drama. I guess some will find it very relatable, while others consider it not so good writing. I think this one is not for teens, as it is full of hard stuff like loosing your child, going through divorce or having a cancer….

Acting was excellent, which was expected considering the cast. My favourite actor with perfect eyes Seo Kang Joon. He just perfectly suits this charming nerdy guy, with a little bit tragic love story… and strong will)

The story shows different periods of life, hardships, like choosing your career at early age, when you are not sure what you want from life. Trying to build a career when you don’t have money. Searching for “true” love, when you don’t even know what it is. Being afraid of disappointing your parents and family, society and basically everyone around.

Someone said there is no character development. Well, I would disagree especially regarding ML. He was not a bad person to begin with, so there won’t be any villain to hero development. The development is more in how he becomes more mature. His dialogue with himself, from “I love you, and that should be enough for you” to “I hope you will be well even without me”. Letting go, when other person asks you, understanding yourself and accepting your feelings. Being a wholesome person when you are alone, and going your own way, instead of adjusting to someone. That was the development for me.

Regarding FL, I found her annoying sometimes. But again when watching this drama, I really could feel the dilemma between choosing what is right by you head or your heart. She had to go through a lot, and while I could relate to ML, happily I have never been through something she was through. In her storyline I really appreciated the depiction of divorce and her way though trauma. That is real life for a lot of people, but non-toxic divorce theme is not so popular with kdramas, which is frustrating because that is what happens in real life a lot, people just fall out of love.

In real life sometime life gets unexpected turns, people get hurt because of your actions, and you have to change your whole life. And this drama perfectly shows that you can love someone even if it hurts, and they are not “perfect” choice and you become more mature going through life hardships.

The ending is open. I usually hate open endings, because I like when stories are finished bad or good. However with this one… that seemed natural. And I am not sure if I want them to be together.
The ML can found someone more suitable for him. And FL… well she lost a child, and I don’t think she will be ready to get into serious relationship. They are just soulmates, who help each other live and that’s enough.

Overall I liked this drama, because it does not show the picture of “perfect” love story. And I would say for me the love story was not even the main story.
It is DEFINITELY not a watch for relaxing, and should be approached as something close to real life. And of course appreciating great acting skills and beautiful Seo Kang Joon.
Rewatch value for me is low because I don’t like rewatching “hard” dramas.

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A lukewarm "charm"...

She is a resolute hairdresser with versatile looks who can look both attractive or not, depending (ironically enough) on the haircut, and make-up... He is an average guy with average looks (he looks especially horrendous with the perm she makes him wear early on) who has his first kiss with her, which she iniciates, after which he falls DESPERATELY in love with her and cannot forget her even after 10 years or so. When they reunite, they clear the old misunderstandings and she lets the guy know that she really liked him back, too. Which makes him totally happy and they start dating (or dating again), with him acting like a desperate dog most of the time (he is a cop now, so he's only cool in the moments when he's arresting bad guys, etc.) and with her alternating between being annoyed/moved by it.

During their "second charm", whenever the hairdresser crosses paths with an attractive guy, it puts a strain on her relationship, because her cop boyfriend gets easily jealous and insecure. She breaks it off with him at one point. When there is nothing, the focus shifts on the secondary characters, but I never cared and skipped all of them.

Basically, nothing major really happens in this drama for more than ten long episodes (as far as I watched), only loads of super sweet romantic song/s keep playing. The drama uses summarizing montages of the previous scenes since early in the story, they come after each minor conclusion, and sometimes before conclusion is reached. It's like someone wanted us to watch MVs of the drama DURING the drama. Often I opened an episode and after watching like six or seven minutes of it, I lost my (mild) interest. I progressed only very slowly.

After the break-up in episode 10, episode 11 consists of us watching mainly the guy alone, and he is not very charismatic. Scenes of him traveling, sleeping, eating, learning to cook (gee, is this going to be a cooking show on the top of everything else I "like"?) create such a lukewarm atmosphere I did not even care that somewhere in the middle of it he got another girlfriend. Episode ends up on a cliffhanger with the hairdresser's return. But I had enough.

I'm not staying for the third charm.

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main idea -how not to behave with other people so as not to lose love and not hurt anyone

The drama made a double impression on me .. Idk if anyone reads the reviews but I will share .. Positive (to a greater extent) in the image of the main character Jooyoung and negative in the image of Young Jin, her behavior and attitude towards people in general .. At first it may seem that she is a good girl with a lot of problems and she feels sorry for her, but with each episode when the true character of the heroine is revealed, it becomes clear that the main egoist is she who thinks only about herself and does not take into account the feelings of people who love her .. trauma is trauma, but others must be respected .. I I’m not sorry for Yongjin .. how many people suffered because of her, how many people offended her actions, and even more so her ex-boyfriend whom she treated carelessly .. but when she saw him with another girl in the hospital, she immediately decided to leave although he was honest with her and nothing did bad .. to put it mildly, such an image of the heroine is not pleasant and repulsive to me. l, although he wanted to scream and quietly cried alone .. he was in so much pain! He always tried to understand her and do whatever she wanted! .. I sincerely felt sorry for the main character who in this drama is the ideal of a man (well, he is drawn to the ideal for the time being), even if not an alpha male, but sincerely loving and caring for his girlfriend .. she didn’t even let him finish when he probably wanted to invite her to marry and decided to part with him .. disgusting! she married the one she avoided, in the end, because of her mistake, she divorced the doctor .. how many people she had to break the fate of people!? to realize that time was lost and there was no need to leave Jooyoung initially .. and after a while she appeared out of nowhere and decided to return to him .. thereby testing his feelings for the girl he was going to marry .. that's because of people like her, but in life there are many of them, either men or women, but with a character like hers who simply play with the feelings of others without thinking about the latter, believing that they will be forgiven for everything and will always wait for them .. a big mistake. if Jooyoung was stronger in character and found the strength to forget her realizing her true attitude towards him, it would be great .. would not hurt another person who has nothing to do with it at all .. I think people like Yongjin should not be given in life they have a 2nd chance, because after a while they will also leave, marry another and then when it doesn’t work out they want to return to where they used to be loved and jealous .. not realizing that every person is a person and his feelings must be respected, reckoned with and thought before doing something if it concerns the feelings of another person. I don’t think that lovers should all forgive each other. fear? when she exchanges it for another again because she doesn’t like something ?! Both are involved in the relationship, and not one of them always drags them on itself ..
will update.
Although Jooyoung is not without sin.. might also wonder if he really loves his new girlfriend.. remember himself. Put yourself in her place regarding how Young Jin did to him in the past.. he does the same unfair thing to his girlfriend, hurts her.. ironic? Hmm maybe but then you don't feel sorry for him anymore for the past pain that he experienced himself .. this is the mistake of most people .. instead of sorting out their feelings before starting a new relationship, they use others like a pill .. , take risks and cripple life to others .., in turn, others do the same with the rest ... people are not a toy, but only a few remember this. So I would have waited for my Yongjin alone ..
Yonji's problem is that she has no dialogue. She expects everyone to understand her, but in fact she just wants it to be as she wants, but she doesn’t seek to understand others .. it’s already disgusting .. I don’t like this character of people .. what’s the fun not to say it straight, talk about my feelings people are not magicians to guess .. I don’t even feel sorry for her in the story .. all this is a matter of her stupidity .. while everyone did everything for her, she imagined herself to be God knows who, although she played the role of a victim by manipulating the feelings of others. Climbs into someone else's life knowing that the wedding ... it already depends on the character of the guy, of course, he is strong or a rag .. decide who he loves and not torturing himself or others (such a burden frankly annoys me, I don’t like people who do not understand their feelings, who they drag others into the swamp and then they all leave it like a draft). It’s hard to understand what the director’s idea was, but as for me, he probably wanted to show how not to behave with other people so as not to lose love and not hurt anyone .. I want to is to believe .. and not to promote stupidity in relationships ...

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Another Miscommunication Drama

"""Spoiler"""

I don't usually read reviews before watching a TV show as I would like to come to my own conclusion. OOH BOY, do I wish I read the reviews before wasting my Saturday away? One word to describe this series: "MISCOMMUNICATE".

The reason for how the first charm ended makes sense. FL's brother lost the ability to walk, and she was not confident in herself, so she ended the relationship. Differences in class and circumstance are valid reasons to break up. After that, the series headed straight to the gutter.

My main issue is with the second charm. FL was playing with ML the whole second arc. Both FL and ML are abysmal at drawing boundaries and expressing their emotions. Any person who grew up in a SEMI-functional family knows that you must respect each others ' boundaries if you want a shot at a peaceful relationship. That meant: 1) not going to a restaurant with another male on your birthday, and 2) maintaining distance with said male after he confessed to you. You don't have to grow up in a nuclear family (like FL) to have common sense. You cannot paint the series as "realistic" when the characters' actions cannot be replicated in real life (in healthy relationships). FL decided to end their relationship because he was "hurting", the "hurtings" that FL created. Just like in the first arc, ML did not even attempt to understand FL's decision or fight for their relationship. The main reason the FL decided to move on was because of the second FL's advice about regrets later on in life.

The death of FL's baby and the marriage in the third arc was a nutshot to the audience. Why break up with your boyfriend, only for you to find a husband in like a year? The baby is only introduced in the story as an explanation for the reason for the divorce. So many things....Even writing this is making me frustrated, and there are also better analyses of the third arc by other people so I will stop writing here.

On a side note:
I like to find tropes in shows and analyze what they are attempting to reflect about the real world.
Cheating, abusive, or emotionally absent husband? Shows the female audiences' dissatisfaction with their current relationship.
Separation between the main lead near the end? Shows the desire for liberation and exploration of one self before committing to a relationship.
As for this show, the trope is "the second love interest". This is where the show introduces an opponent to the FL/ML, allows them to mingle, and concludes that the 2 leads are meant for each other all along... except they even failed to do that! I have not yet been able to articulate what this trope expresses about the beliefs of the show's demographic. Hopefully, I will be able to in the future.

To end on a positive note, the make-up team and the actors/actresses did an amazing job at acting out different periods of the character's lives. I also stepped away from this drama with a profound idea: when it comes to relationships, do not just fill in the blank when you do not know the answer.

Thanks for reading.

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A Cycle of Indecision and lack of consequences caused the Drama Failed to Deliver

I don’t know—maybe what I am about to say could offend some people—but honestly, I did not fully understand the story. I usually accept any real-life drama that tries to portray a logical storyline, but for me, this one failed in that regard. The plot did not feel consistent, and the choices made by the characters often came across as confusing and contradictory.

Let me explain what I mean. From the very beginning, it was quite clear that the so-called “third wheel” had a motive. She entertained him, questioned the situation, and placed herself in ways that created tension. Eventually, this behavior led to the break-up between the main couple. After the separation, she entered his life more fully, and it seemed like she was finally gaining everything she had wanted from the start.

At first, she appeared happy with him, and that was the central point. She even had a child with him, which signaled the idea of stability, family, and a future together. But tragedy struck when the child died. That incident completely unraveled everything. It was as though she could not bear the sadness, the guilt, or the burden of loss. Instead of showing resilience, she detached herself from everything. Her character began to act strangely, almost unsettlingly, and slowly distanced herself from him. Eventually, she decided to separate from him completely.

Years later, after their time apart, she suddenly reappears and starts poking into his(main lead who make his life somewhere settled) life again. To make it worse, she initiates yet another break-up, almost as if she were repeating the same destructive cycle over and over. For me, this part felt unnecessary. It made the story lose coherence. If the drama had simply ended with the two of them no longer being together, the story would have felt much more logical and satisfying. That kind of closure would have respected the natural progression of events.

Instead, what happened was that the female lead’s character ended up becoming hateful—at least from my perspective. Her constant swinging back and forth between choices made her seem unreliable and selfish. It felt like she wanted to test every possibility without ever considering the consequences of her actions. But life does not work that way. You cannot just leave someone, then return later, and expect everything to go back to how it once was. Even if she did not openly admit she wanted him back, her actions made it clear that she still expected the door to remain open. But in reality, you cannot continuously get what you want without making sacrifices.

That was my lag with the story. The writers should have kept the female lead on one side—either she was fully committed to him, or she was not. Her indecision ruined her character arc. She lacked accountability, and because of that, the emotional weight of the entire drama collapsed. A break-up should have meaning. If a character chooses to walk away, then that character should also face the consequences of the decision. Without that, the drama becomes both unrealistic and unsatisfying.

The show did have potential. In fact, the premise itself could have worked if handled differently. But the lack of consistency in the female lead’s actions made it frustrating to watch. She was written in such a way that the audience could no longer sympathize with her. In the beginning, it might have been possible to understand her doubts or her emotional struggles. However, as soon as the back-and-forth cycle began, sympathy turned into irritation.

In the end, I think the drama could have succeeded if the writers had been bold enough to give it a clear and realistic conclusion. Show us that the two are no longer together. Show us that actions have consequences. Show us that people can lose love because of their own mistakes and choices. That kind of ending would have been far more impactful and believable. Instead, they showed that the two are together—or on the path to reconciliation. But then the real question arises: what will happen in the future? Will she suddenly find someone new as previous? Can the audience truly believe she will not act in the same unstable way again? If she could break up with him just because of someone’s confession, what guarantee is there that she will not do the same thing again in the future?

For me, the core message is simple: when you break up with someone, you must bear the consequences of that decision. You cannot simply return later and expect everything to fall back into place. Relationships require responsibility. Choices matter. Without that truth, the story feels hollow.

So, while some people may have enjoyed the drama, my honest opinion is that it lacked logic and emotional consistency. The female lead’s swinging nature ruined the story’s foundation. It was not really about love, healing, or moving forward. Instead, it became a cycle of indecision, unstable choices, and unrealistic second chances. And that, in my view, is why the drama ultimately failed to deliver.

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