This review may contain spoilers
Bravo, My Patience! A Lesson in How to Desecrate a Decent Premise.
This is going to be a bit lengthy but please bear with me. Bravo, My Life is a textbook example of a decent story idea that was ultimately desecrated by poor execution and a total lack of common sense. The premise, a 19 year old girl (Seo Dong-hee) becoming a single mother to her nephew after her brother is killed in a hit and run had massive potential. This is especially true when you consider she was forced into this life after her brother’s wife, Baek Seung-joo (if she even qualifies as a "wife") abandoned her newborn for a teenager to raise.
However the actual experience of watching this was a chore as the writing was riddled with massive plot holes that made the 120 episode journey irritating to endure. That isn't to say there weren't bits I enjoyed, I particularly liked the early stage bickering between Dong-hee and Cha-yeol when they first started working together.
The next issue I couldn't stand was the caricature like acting. This story required deep emotional resonance but the performances were overwhelmingly stale or just plain bad. While the actress playing Dong-hee is decent, her character was written poorly, it felt like a relic from an early 2000s K-drama. If you dropped her into Boys Over Flowers or Playful Kiss, she would fit right in. She made one dumb decision after another reaching a point where it felt like it went beyond "I’m kind or forgiving" to "I’m mentally retarded and like to be walked over." Tell me why she kept smiling at Baek Seung-joo after the lady told her to her face she didn't like her and that she purposely threw away the gift Dong-hee bought for her? Or when Baek Seung-joo was jealous and kept being mean and malicious to her at work because of Cha-yeol, why are you still acting nice to this lady? She tried to get you fired for goodness sake! Her "goody-two-shoes" persona went beyond virtue into pure stupidity like when she allowed a coworker to steal her mood board and take credit for work she had spent all night completing.
Now unto the person responsible for this hot mess: the director. The director is arguably the person most responsible for this "hot pile of trash." With a competent director this could have been a fun watch. The first thing I noticed was the sets, my goodness they were bad! The house for the wealthy family who owned a fashion business made no sense, I tried but couldn't make sense of what their home was supposed to be. I know budget plays a role but this was the worst house set I have ever seen. It would have been better if they had just replicated an IKEA showroom. Nearly 80% of the locations were obviously cheap sets that stripped away any sense of realism making the drama feel like a low budget stage play. (I will give them credit though the cars the wealthy characters drove were actually nice.) I even blame the director for the flat characters, a little direction could have added nuance to these two dimensional caricatures turning them into actual human beings because the core characterization was good but the execution was bad. The writers had potential but stupidity from them and everyone else in charge of creative decisions ruined it.
Then the acting from everyone was subpar with the exception of Cha-yeol, Bang Hye-ran and Baek Seung-joo and maybe Dong-hee and Choi Mi-kyung. Kang Sung-wook however was arguably the worst. I couldn't understand why the right corner of his lips was always lifted, the man literally smiled his way through his own divorce and through the entire film. No matter the gravity of the situation at hand you could trust him to smile it away.
The wardrobe department was another disaster and a dunce was in charge of dressing the actors. Why was it that only the men were well dressed, along with Baek Seung-Joo’s mother, Bang Hye-Ran who in my opinion was the best dressed in the show. At the beginning Dong-Hee was supposed to be a struggling single mother who did not go to university and worked a minimum wage job yet she and her son Him-chan wore pristine, newly minted clothing. So tell me how could she afford these clothes not only herself but Him-Chan (her son) too. And why were their pajamas perfectly ironed? Why was Him-chan dressed like a "little young master" instead of a child of a struggling mother living in a one room at the restaurant backroom? If she earns minimum wage this shouldn't be possible. It would have made more sense for their clothes to look cheap or rumpled at first then slowly improving as their situation did.
Baek Seung-Joo was another person whose wardrobe I couldn't stand looking at. She was supposed to be the team leader in a fashion company but I couldn't understand what was going on with her wardrobe. Sometimes she was well dressed and other times she looked like an ordinary office worker. Isn't she supposed to look to the nines? Aren't they creating some of the best clothing in the fashion industry in Korea? And she is in charge of this but doesn't dress the part? Even after marrying the owner's son her wardrobe never received the "rich daughter-in-law" upgrade you’d expect. Her mother was better dressed than her, they gave the woman even better color combos.
Then there was the hair. Never in my over 15 years of K-drama watching have I seen a drama this long not change a single person’s hair throughout its 120 episodes. Oh wait, the writer lady had a slight glow-up but everyone else? The same way you met them is the way they stayed until the end. Not one person had their hair cut or color changed or their hairstyles switched up. Baek Seung-Joo had her hair packed up from the beginning, to her wedding (yes, I’m serious her wedding hairstyle was the exact same as every other day) to the very end of the show. No straightening, curling, perming or anything happened to any character despite the show supposedly spanning 9 years!
Finally, I have to mention Him-chan. I didn't want to do this but I did not like Him-Chan’s acting and I think this could be attributed back to the director. This boy is still a child and needs proper direction especially when displaying emotions however all through the drama we got the exact same expressions. All he ever did was smile. When his future stepfather was in a coma, he was smiling while praying. You scold Him Chan, he smiles. He meets strangers who by the way he shouldn't be talking to and he's smiling again. His character was also poorly written. He was the picture of a perfect child, kinda like a miniature version of Dong-Hee. He only acted out once when he broke his hand but aside from that one time he never misbehaved or acted out. Frankly, I'm not sure the writer has ever been around a child that age because even the most well mannered child has their hair pulling moments, the only difference is that it's not often. Ironically Him-Chan’s constant smiling made me think he should have been cast as Kang Sung-wook’s son instead.
If you read till this stage, thank you that couldn't have been easy as this took me quite a while to write. I don't know if you agree with everything I said or if you see my point. Please note I did not hate the drama as I watched it till the very end, I just hate how a really good drama was handled poorly and lost its potential to be a really good show. If you are looking for family oriented dramas that are better executed try “Father is Strange” (my personal best, there wasn't a single plot hole here and yes it's a long form series as well) and “Stars Falling from the Sky” this one is what Bravo, My Life wished it could've been, it's also about a struggling single mother who was forced to take of children that aren't hers.
However the actual experience of watching this was a chore as the writing was riddled with massive plot holes that made the 120 episode journey irritating to endure. That isn't to say there weren't bits I enjoyed, I particularly liked the early stage bickering between Dong-hee and Cha-yeol when they first started working together.
The next issue I couldn't stand was the caricature like acting. This story required deep emotional resonance but the performances were overwhelmingly stale or just plain bad. While the actress playing Dong-hee is decent, her character was written poorly, it felt like a relic from an early 2000s K-drama. If you dropped her into Boys Over Flowers or Playful Kiss, she would fit right in. She made one dumb decision after another reaching a point where it felt like it went beyond "I’m kind or forgiving" to "I’m mentally retarded and like to be walked over." Tell me why she kept smiling at Baek Seung-joo after the lady told her to her face she didn't like her and that she purposely threw away the gift Dong-hee bought for her? Or when Baek Seung-joo was jealous and kept being mean and malicious to her at work because of Cha-yeol, why are you still acting nice to this lady? She tried to get you fired for goodness sake! Her "goody-two-shoes" persona went beyond virtue into pure stupidity like when she allowed a coworker to steal her mood board and take credit for work she had spent all night completing.
Now unto the person responsible for this hot mess: the director. The director is arguably the person most responsible for this "hot pile of trash." With a competent director this could have been a fun watch. The first thing I noticed was the sets, my goodness they were bad! The house for the wealthy family who owned a fashion business made no sense, I tried but couldn't make sense of what their home was supposed to be. I know budget plays a role but this was the worst house set I have ever seen. It would have been better if they had just replicated an IKEA showroom. Nearly 80% of the locations were obviously cheap sets that stripped away any sense of realism making the drama feel like a low budget stage play. (I will give them credit though the cars the wealthy characters drove were actually nice.) I even blame the director for the flat characters, a little direction could have added nuance to these two dimensional caricatures turning them into actual human beings because the core characterization was good but the execution was bad. The writers had potential but stupidity from them and everyone else in charge of creative decisions ruined it.
Then the acting from everyone was subpar with the exception of Cha-yeol, Bang Hye-ran and Baek Seung-joo and maybe Dong-hee and Choi Mi-kyung. Kang Sung-wook however was arguably the worst. I couldn't understand why the right corner of his lips was always lifted, the man literally smiled his way through his own divorce and through the entire film. No matter the gravity of the situation at hand you could trust him to smile it away.
The wardrobe department was another disaster and a dunce was in charge of dressing the actors. Why was it that only the men were well dressed, along with Baek Seung-Joo’s mother, Bang Hye-Ran who in my opinion was the best dressed in the show. At the beginning Dong-Hee was supposed to be a struggling single mother who did not go to university and worked a minimum wage job yet she and her son Him-chan wore pristine, newly minted clothing. So tell me how could she afford these clothes not only herself but Him-Chan (her son) too. And why were their pajamas perfectly ironed? Why was Him-chan dressed like a "little young master" instead of a child of a struggling mother living in a one room at the restaurant backroom? If she earns minimum wage this shouldn't be possible. It would have made more sense for their clothes to look cheap or rumpled at first then slowly improving as their situation did.
Baek Seung-Joo was another person whose wardrobe I couldn't stand looking at. She was supposed to be the team leader in a fashion company but I couldn't understand what was going on with her wardrobe. Sometimes she was well dressed and other times she looked like an ordinary office worker. Isn't she supposed to look to the nines? Aren't they creating some of the best clothing in the fashion industry in Korea? And she is in charge of this but doesn't dress the part? Even after marrying the owner's son her wardrobe never received the "rich daughter-in-law" upgrade you’d expect. Her mother was better dressed than her, they gave the woman even better color combos.
Then there was the hair. Never in my over 15 years of K-drama watching have I seen a drama this long not change a single person’s hair throughout its 120 episodes. Oh wait, the writer lady had a slight glow-up but everyone else? The same way you met them is the way they stayed until the end. Not one person had their hair cut or color changed or their hairstyles switched up. Baek Seung-Joo had her hair packed up from the beginning, to her wedding (yes, I’m serious her wedding hairstyle was the exact same as every other day) to the very end of the show. No straightening, curling, perming or anything happened to any character despite the show supposedly spanning 9 years!
Finally, I have to mention Him-chan. I didn't want to do this but I did not like Him-Chan’s acting and I think this could be attributed back to the director. This boy is still a child and needs proper direction especially when displaying emotions however all through the drama we got the exact same expressions. All he ever did was smile. When his future stepfather was in a coma, he was smiling while praying. You scold Him Chan, he smiles. He meets strangers who by the way he shouldn't be talking to and he's smiling again. His character was also poorly written. He was the picture of a perfect child, kinda like a miniature version of Dong-Hee. He only acted out once when he broke his hand but aside from that one time he never misbehaved or acted out. Frankly, I'm not sure the writer has ever been around a child that age because even the most well mannered child has their hair pulling moments, the only difference is that it's not often. Ironically Him-Chan’s constant smiling made me think he should have been cast as Kang Sung-wook’s son instead.
If you read till this stage, thank you that couldn't have been easy as this took me quite a while to write. I don't know if you agree with everything I said or if you see my point. Please note I did not hate the drama as I watched it till the very end, I just hate how a really good drama was handled poorly and lost its potential to be a really good show. If you are looking for family oriented dramas that are better executed try “Father is Strange” (my personal best, there wasn't a single plot hole here and yes it's a long form series as well) and “Stars Falling from the Sky” this one is what Bravo, My Life wished it could've been, it's also about a struggling single mother who was forced to take of children that aren't hers.
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