Meru

This drama has destroyed me! There are so many dark themes that will leave you devastated.
This drama is a story about the love-hate relationship between two best friends who practically grew up together. It’s also about being human, making mistakes, forgiving, and the importance of self-love or self-hatred.

What really impressed me about this drama was how we as an audience felt the exact same things as one of the main leads Ryu Eun-jung. We see the story of the two girls becoming friends and growing up together in 4 parts of the drama:

1. Their childhood in elementary / junior high school. She loves her friend Cheon Sang-yeon first, then at school she wants to hurt her, then they become friends, E.J. also loves S.Y.’s family members (mom and brother). S.Y. becomes like a second family to her. S.Y. however develops jealousy and hatred towards E.J. during these years because she gets all the attention from her family members that she rarely gets but craves. They fight over sth again but rekindle when S.Y. runs away from home and hides in E.J.’s house. She starts feeling warm motherly love from E.J.’s mom. The scene in which she eats her noodles and cries into her bowl broke my heart. These childhood scenes were so important to further try to understand S.Y.’s behaviour.
Then, her brother dies and the only person who is really there for her is E.J. The latter starts feeling pity for S.Y. which adds to their already complicated relationship of seeing each other as rivals (in E.J. eyes S.Y. has everything she wants aka money, wealth and a big house, and in S.Y.’s eyes E.J. has everything she wants aka a loving mother amd people in general loving her).

2. part is a fast forward to uni life, E.J. is at uni, happily studying and dating a guy with the same name as her first love aka S.Y.’s brother who died. Soon S.Y. also joins the uni, as we later find out not because of E.J. but because of her secret crush on E.J.’s boyfriend that she has had for many years when they met in a chatroom. Seeing how again E.J. has the person that S.Y. is so desperately craving for, leads to her eventually trying to manipulate Kim Sanghak (the boyfriend) into helping her while keeping it secret from E.J. As viewers, we see whats happening and although we feel sad and pity for S.Y. because she does want to find out about her brother by using S.H. we also do notice that she is using her brother as an excuse to get closer to S.H. and create a drift between E.J. and S.H. sth that a best friend should not be doing.
In the end, it comes to a huge showdown of E.J. breaking up with S.H. because of S.Y. and a huge fight between the girls when S.Y. refuses to accept the apartment money from E.J. because of her pride. A pride that eventually might be the reason for her loneliness and for pushing people away. In that scene I felt really mad at S.Y. because her mother was dying too and she could have used the help from E.J. since she was also like someone from the family. But probably S.Y. did it on purpose because she really did NOT want E.J. to be part of her family under any means. She didn’t even tell E.J. that her mom was gonna die which made me even madder.

Then the 3rd part of the show is them as adults, now working in the film industry. The scenes here really made me the angriest about S.Y. She has become totally spiteful and emotionless after her mother’s death. She shows up at E.J.’s office as a co-producer and we also see Kim Sanghak joining. He still has feelings for E.J. and S.Y. still has feelings for S.H. or she is more like obsessed with him in an unhealthy way. We see her confessing her love to him but he of course denies her. She breaks down and ends up getting drunk at some point, when she pleads E.J. to not date S.H. because she loves him but can’t have him so she doesn’t want her to have him either. That scene just blew my mind!!!! And E.J. did tell him that she can’t date him again, just for S.Y. because I do feel that she was actually thinking about rekindling that love. But her pity for S.Y. was so inherently deep, a feeling she had to live with all her life since her childhood. But then, what does S.Y. do??? She steals E.J.’s project and her director and founds her own company because she wants to see E.J. destroyed just like she is 🤯🤯🤯 She can’t live with the fact that she is fine… I was so shocked and hated her as much as E.J. did.

The last part of the show is the current situation of S.Y. coming back into E.J.’s life. She has terminal cancer and wants to end her own life in switzerland and asks E.J. to help her and accompany her to the facility in Switzerland.

This last part of the drama was the hardest to watch. Again, as viewers we do feel pity for S.Y. but we also remember what she did to E.J. so we can understand why she acts so dismissive towards her. This drama challenged my way of thinking in many ways: Is pity enough to love someone? No, it isn’t. The love between the two girls goes deeper than pity. It’s them seeing themselves reflected in each other. It is also envy, and striving to love oneself that they see in each other.
Can you really love someone again and again despite them hurting you? Yes, you can. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. It means remembering especially well what they did to you and why they did it. Especially childhood friends have a huge significance on us, almost as if they are our family. They shape us in our formative years so loving them is almost unconditional.
The way that E.J. forgave S.Y. is almost like empathizing with a villain who had a very tough life and is now trying to become a better human being, but eventually will have to die. So this is your last chance to say goodbye.

Now for the other characters, apart from Eun-Jung, Sangyeon and Sanghak, E.J.’s mother was one of the most important characters. She was the epitome of unconditional love. She saw right into S.Y.’s heart and how much she was in pain and how much she strived for love and affection. She didn’t see SY for her actions but for her pain and struggles. EJ later says “My mom thinks that not everything bad is all bad.” I think this quote says it all.

And then ofc we have SY’s mother and her importance in EJ’s life and how she showed EJ what she herself couldn’t see in her: That she is talented as well. She also helped her replace her pain over her deceased father br creating something beautiful. It seemed that SY’s mother was showing more affection to EJ than to her own daughter which added to the viewers feeling sadness and pity for SY (because EJ’s mother treated SY nicely but she also treats her daughter well). I think the relationship between SY and her mother was one of the most complicated ones. It made me really sad: How she didnt show to her daughter at first, and then how SY pushed her suffering mother away after her brother’s death and even blamed her mother for his death, how then her mother got sick and also died and SY felt regret over wasting her time with her mother on blame, pain and resentment… Her mother has always loved SY but she just wanted her to become a kind human and that’s why she was so strict with her as a child.

One of the messages of this drama might be: We are not perfect, we are human. Humans have faults and humans make mistakes even if they’re aware of those mistakes, even if they keep doing the same mistakes again and again without any effort of improving, even if they hurt others with it; we are all just humans who will have to live through a cycle of suffering endlessly…

I am sure I could write more about this drama and its characters as it was so challenging to read all the emotional struggles they were all going through. Definitely worth a watch but I could never rewatch this!