1
This review may contain spoilers
A more dramatic companion piece to "A Dating Sim"
In some ways, a companion piece to “My Dating Sim”, “Business As Usual” is a more angst-filled version, and it takes off where “My Dating Sim”, in a sense, ended.
It includes two fellow office workers, highly credentialled, one a designer, the other an editor, working on a joint project referred to as a Dating Manual. Min Jun and Jin Hwan had had a passionate but brief fling when at university together, and now, eight years later, they reunite at their workplace and try to put back together the broken pieces of their previous relationship.
The title, “Business as usual”, is double entendre, meaning the pair of former lovers behave towards each other on a business level, and on another level, it means the outcome of their relationship now will be the same as before. Some considerable time and effort is devoted to the two leads working out what went wrong eight years ago and trying to see if a second attempt at a relationship will be better than the first.
All those well-meaning posters on social media who “wish the characters would just talk honestly with each other” are met here with the reality of sometimes that just isn’t enough. Even when Min Jun realises the mistake he made and breaks down with the sadness of what his misunderstanding cost him, his residual fear of further heartache dominates his actions. Played with well-judged restraint by debutant actor Chae Jong Hyeok, Min Jun is the inner voice inside of all of us that says, “But wait, what if I’m wrong…”.
Director Min Chae Yeon, in her second BL series, judges the mood nicely throughout, such that the various loose ends in the supporting characters and story lines do not feel as if they in any way spoil the happy ending.
It includes two fellow office workers, highly credentialled, one a designer, the other an editor, working on a joint project referred to as a Dating Manual. Min Jun and Jin Hwan had had a passionate but brief fling when at university together, and now, eight years later, they reunite at their workplace and try to put back together the broken pieces of their previous relationship.
The title, “Business as usual”, is double entendre, meaning the pair of former lovers behave towards each other on a business level, and on another level, it means the outcome of their relationship now will be the same as before. Some considerable time and effort is devoted to the two leads working out what went wrong eight years ago and trying to see if a second attempt at a relationship will be better than the first.
All those well-meaning posters on social media who “wish the characters would just talk honestly with each other” are met here with the reality of sometimes that just isn’t enough. Even when Min Jun realises the mistake he made and breaks down with the sadness of what his misunderstanding cost him, his residual fear of further heartache dominates his actions. Played with well-judged restraint by debutant actor Chae Jong Hyeok, Min Jun is the inner voice inside of all of us that says, “But wait, what if I’m wrong…”.
Director Min Chae Yeon, in her second BL series, judges the mood nicely throughout, such that the various loose ends in the supporting characters and story lines do not feel as if they in any way spoil the happy ending.
Was this review helpful to you?
