This review may contain spoilers
Enjoyable but slightly frustrating
This review may contain spoilers.
Always Home is a slice of life drama that follows the adventures of three teenaged characters as they grow up, go to high school and then attend college.
In the beginning the story reminded me of A River Runs Through It, because the two main male leads have similar personalities to the male main leads in that drama, but the female lead is very different than the female lead in that series...she has a stronger personality and seems more confident in herself. I think the actors that were cast as our 3 main protagonists were outstanding in their roles. It's hard to imagine someone else playing any of their parts.
I enjoyed the way the drama was written so that the lives of the parents were portrayed as being important to the development of our main characters. The parents were written fairly realistically, flaws and all. The parents suffered setbacks that affected their children, but also they demonstrated how to overcome adversities.
I also appreciated that our main characters were 'allowed' to fail from time to time. Often in dramas everything always works out and success is always achieved, but this drama was more realistic in the sense that the main characters experienced sadness and disappointment but still had to figure out how to carry on and move forward in life.
Of course, since this is a coming of age drama, there is some angst among friends and romantic situations that have to be addressed but I expected that. I think maybe some of that could've been condensed to make room for other things to be added to the drama (see spoilers below) but I didn't feel like it was too draggy most of the time.
Possible spoilers below!
As much as I enjoyed the drama, I was disappointed and frustrated with the ending...not the actual ending scene, but the way it left me wanting answers. I think it would've been a good thing to have an extra episode to answer the following questions:
Is Xi Chi still unemployed? Did Huan'er finish graduate school? Are Song Cong and Du Man really an item? When will Xi Chi and Huan'er get married?
As it was, I felt like I was given characters I cared about but I didn't get any closure...I didn't get to find out what happened between them after everything was said and done. However, in real life we don't always get answers, so maybe that's the point. In my opinion it would've been more satisfying to cut some of the length in the middle and add it to the end...or else add on an episode or produce a bonus episode.
Overall, though, I thought this was a good series, and I'll probably watch it at least once more.
Always Home is a slice of life drama that follows the adventures of three teenaged characters as they grow up, go to high school and then attend college.
In the beginning the story reminded me of A River Runs Through It, because the two main male leads have similar personalities to the male main leads in that drama, but the female lead is very different than the female lead in that series...she has a stronger personality and seems more confident in herself. I think the actors that were cast as our 3 main protagonists were outstanding in their roles. It's hard to imagine someone else playing any of their parts.
I enjoyed the way the drama was written so that the lives of the parents were portrayed as being important to the development of our main characters. The parents were written fairly realistically, flaws and all. The parents suffered setbacks that affected their children, but also they demonstrated how to overcome adversities.
I also appreciated that our main characters were 'allowed' to fail from time to time. Often in dramas everything always works out and success is always achieved, but this drama was more realistic in the sense that the main characters experienced sadness and disappointment but still had to figure out how to carry on and move forward in life.
Of course, since this is a coming of age drama, there is some angst among friends and romantic situations that have to be addressed but I expected that. I think maybe some of that could've been condensed to make room for other things to be added to the drama (see spoilers below) but I didn't feel like it was too draggy most of the time.
Possible spoilers below!
As much as I enjoyed the drama, I was disappointed and frustrated with the ending...not the actual ending scene, but the way it left me wanting answers. I think it would've been a good thing to have an extra episode to answer the following questions:
Is Xi Chi still unemployed? Did Huan'er finish graduate school? Are Song Cong and Du Man really an item? When will Xi Chi and Huan'er get married?
As it was, I felt like I was given characters I cared about but I didn't get any closure...I didn't get to find out what happened between them after everything was said and done. However, in real life we don't always get answers, so maybe that's the point. In my opinion it would've been more satisfying to cut some of the length in the middle and add it to the end...or else add on an episode or produce a bonus episode.
Overall, though, I thought this was a good series, and I'll probably watch it at least once more.
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