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The Realism Might Piss You Off
To whoever reads this lol!!! I may stand out among some reviews where I will say I did enjoy this drama, but it's not without its flaws, some of which I agree with the common opinion, while others I think are a bit of an overstep. Keep in mind these are my own thoughts, so just as you want me to respect yours even if I may or may not fully agree, please also respect mine.
To go with the Review categories.
STORY;
Overall, I liked the story. The pace was good, and the weekly release made me want to keep coming back, despite the chaos on screen. To bring it back to the title, this drama felt realistic in that it can be relatable to what can and might have happened to couples in real life, and I think that is why it's pissing people off. The idea that a couple who have been together for 10 years have now reached the crossroads of either going ot the next step or ending it is both very realistic but can also be very frustrating, as we saw with the show. IT was a very long conversation that was dragged on to 14 episodes due to them being so entangled in each other's lives that trying to break apart seems too complicated, and they have no idea where to begin or might not really be aware of it. Hence why the one-month dating happened, and FL and ML fell for other people so easily. Not because it was new sparks or butterflies or easy, but because they needed something to accept that their relationship was over for a while.
Mi Do
The fact that Mi Do and Namgung, as we learned, stopped having sex six months prior to the story starting was, in my opinion, a more obvious symptom of other issues, with the most obvious being miscommunication that started out small but slowly got bigger as the years went by. One of the big ones for me was when Mi Do hid the fact that she was paying Namgung's mom to stay away from him for almost 3 years (might be 2, I forgot lol!!!) and never seemed to reveal that to him any time soon, since he found out by accident, just like her kissing Taesung, where she was trying to hide it, and he found out by accident. In both cases, she wanted to hide them from him. And she does seem to have a Hero Complex, where she always felt that she needed to save Namgung and protect him as a way to make her father's death, who died saving Namgung 's life when he and Mi Do were seven, justified, and if Namgung is safe, her father did not die for nothing.
Namgung
And Namgung isn't really different, just in a different way, and it's a bit harder to see since we don't really get internal monologues like Mido, so it's harder to paint his personality. But he was a hypocrite in a way. He is clearly very, very good in social settings, given his upbringing, so he knows how to read people and their emotions, and there is no way he was not aware of SuA's feelings for him, at least to some degree. Of course, he probably thought it was a crush at first, but he still used it a bit to his advantage even before he fell for her. He knew which string to pull and what to say. Of course, this part is just a theory, but it does seem likely. And just like Mi Do, he had this need, as we saw, to pay her and her family back for taking him in and taking pity on him. So he felt like he had to prove himself worthy of the kindness and pity, which sort of created this cycle: he gets pity, he loves the people who give him pity, then hates himself for being seen as pitiful and weak, has to prove he deserves it, they then see he is always trying to belong with them, and they keep feeling pity for him, and the cycle starts over again. But since, as we saw, kindness is part of Namung's personality, it was hard to notice because he helps for the pure sake of helping, with no other gain or sense of ego, and it's hard to notice his low self-worth and feeling of being pitiful.
Taesung
I KNOW. Man is the embodiment of toxic and ass hole. But I saw that in a short video review. He is probably the most honest of the leads because he says what neither the FL nor the ML wants to admit to themselves, and what most of us are either too proud to admit or too naive in the K-drama land to say. He is being mean about it 1000%!!!! And he could show empathy, but because it was never really taught to him, he doesn't know how to show it properly. SO when he says FUXX OFF, it basically means "I like you" in his language. It's hard for him to understand kindness and true affection because it was either never given to him or used as currency. So whenever he has it, he's so desperate that he will lose it like he lost everything else, that he became a certified ASSHOLE to everyone and ends up manipulating and emotionally hurting people to get what he wants, as he said. Should he and Mi DO be together? In all honesty, I don't know because if the roles were gender-swapped and Taesung was a girl and Mi Do was a man, it would be a bitch and a cheater that some may say deserve each other in basic terms and might actually slut shame this female version of Taesung and possibly socially crucify and drag the male version of Mi Do through the street to burn him at the stake. Will they make it in the long run? No idea; they're not the same people as at the beginning of the drama, so who knows.
SuA
Probably the most innocent if we compare her to the other three, BUT she is no innocent either. Just like Namgung, she knew what she was doing and kept doing it anyway. The friend/colleague who crosses the line between friendship/workplace and romance, whether they are aware of it or not. But like the other three, it makes her human because emotions are not exactly an exact science, and we can't predict how we will feel 10 days from now if we keep talking and bonding with someone, especially since SuA's case is the first love that she never forgot because he showed her what, at that point in her life, no one else really did: kindness and Compassion. And I think that is what drew them to each other. He showed her a kindness and respect no one in her life- not her father, not her friend and of course not her bully ever showed her. And she showed him the same in turn, helping him realize his sense of self-worth and self-respect. But does it excuse what she was subconsciously doing? Not exactly, since she thought it was her fault that Mi Do and Namgung were fighting, but her saving grace seems to be that she would rather see him happy, even if it wasn't with her...WELL, until the elevator scene in episode 13, which I think should have been longer so I could hear her come back.
ACTING/CAST;
10/10 for SURE!!!. Nothing bad to say about the acting. All four leads were top-notch and very well cast in their respective roles, and especially a shout-out to AHN EUN JIN and SEO KANG JUN for their mutual chemistry, but also with their respective love interests, who are still rookie or up-and-coming actors who themselves are amazing. LEE JOO AHN (his first main role, I think) and JO A RAM are so convincing in their roles, and they really play well as two people either desperate for love or falling more in love with someone.
MUSIC;
The music wasn't very memorable; it was typical K-drama music, but nothing really stood out to me. The themes and tempo did fit with the story and scenes sometimes. I do like, for example, the one with the first snow scene, where the FL and ML are with their SML and SFL, respectively. It fits well with the tone and where the story was going.
REWATCH;
Despite being a good and realistic story, I also do not think it is a very rewatchable drama since now we have all episodes, and since you can now just watch everything, the build-up of the story can make a second rewatch more boring and skip certain scenes because we all know now how it ends and where it is going. The wonder and unknown is what seduces viewers on a first watch and makes you want to binge it, but...once you finish it once, you might watch again, which is what I am doing, but only the parts I liked or found worth rewatching, such as the scenes of Namgung and Sua in Namhaedo, with Sua doing her little grumpy kitten look.
OVERALL;
That's why I think them falling for other people is just another symptom of the problem that piled up over 10 years, which is why it seemed so easy for them to develop feelings for their new partners. Not just because of the butterflies or the sparks, but more because of what they both seemed to need. Teasung let Mi Do be more raw and honest with herself by drawing out her pent-up anger and matching her energy, while SuA helped Namgung heal his sense of self-worth. IN both cases, whether it's a physical or emotional act of cheating, it is not okay. It is disrespectful to your partner, but as we saw in the story, it was just the final straw for bigger problems: they slowly stopped communicating properly over the years and couldn't see that the breakup should have happened long ago. But again, because their lives are so DEEPLY rooted in each other, and because they built a life together and around each other, it becomes almost impossible to see.
A relationship ending is still a grief to process, and the longer it is, the longer it takes to deal with it. Because you are saying goodbye not just to your partner but also to the person you were with. And whether it's 10 days, 10 months or 10 years, the person you are at the beginning will not be the same person you are at the end of the relationship. People change and relationship dynamics change, and in the FL and ML case, their dynamic was changing cmapred ot at first, with Mi Do's hero complex and Namgung gaining confidence as the years went by; the shift started to happen, but the discomfort was never talked about, and that festered and kept building, leading up to the no-sex and eventual kissing and then falling for other people for them to realize that the romance is gone or might of never actually been there in the first place.
To go with the Review categories.
STORY;
Overall, I liked the story. The pace was good, and the weekly release made me want to keep coming back, despite the chaos on screen. To bring it back to the title, this drama felt realistic in that it can be relatable to what can and might have happened to couples in real life, and I think that is why it's pissing people off. The idea that a couple who have been together for 10 years have now reached the crossroads of either going ot the next step or ending it is both very realistic but can also be very frustrating, as we saw with the show. IT was a very long conversation that was dragged on to 14 episodes due to them being so entangled in each other's lives that trying to break apart seems too complicated, and they have no idea where to begin or might not really be aware of it. Hence why the one-month dating happened, and FL and ML fell for other people so easily. Not because it was new sparks or butterflies or easy, but because they needed something to accept that their relationship was over for a while.
Mi Do
The fact that Mi Do and Namgung, as we learned, stopped having sex six months prior to the story starting was, in my opinion, a more obvious symptom of other issues, with the most obvious being miscommunication that started out small but slowly got bigger as the years went by. One of the big ones for me was when Mi Do hid the fact that she was paying Namgung's mom to stay away from him for almost 3 years (might be 2, I forgot lol!!!) and never seemed to reveal that to him any time soon, since he found out by accident, just like her kissing Taesung, where she was trying to hide it, and he found out by accident. In both cases, she wanted to hide them from him. And she does seem to have a Hero Complex, where she always felt that she needed to save Namgung and protect him as a way to make her father's death, who died saving Namgung 's life when he and Mi Do were seven, justified, and if Namgung is safe, her father did not die for nothing.
Namgung
And Namgung isn't really different, just in a different way, and it's a bit harder to see since we don't really get internal monologues like Mido, so it's harder to paint his personality. But he was a hypocrite in a way. He is clearly very, very good in social settings, given his upbringing, so he knows how to read people and their emotions, and there is no way he was not aware of SuA's feelings for him, at least to some degree. Of course, he probably thought it was a crush at first, but he still used it a bit to his advantage even before he fell for her. He knew which string to pull and what to say. Of course, this part is just a theory, but it does seem likely. And just like Mi Do, he had this need, as we saw, to pay her and her family back for taking him in and taking pity on him. So he felt like he had to prove himself worthy of the kindness and pity, which sort of created this cycle: he gets pity, he loves the people who give him pity, then hates himself for being seen as pitiful and weak, has to prove he deserves it, they then see he is always trying to belong with them, and they keep feeling pity for him, and the cycle starts over again. But since, as we saw, kindness is part of Namung's personality, it was hard to notice because he helps for the pure sake of helping, with no other gain or sense of ego, and it's hard to notice his low self-worth and feeling of being pitiful.
Taesung
I KNOW. Man is the embodiment of toxic and ass hole. But I saw that in a short video review. He is probably the most honest of the leads because he says what neither the FL nor the ML wants to admit to themselves, and what most of us are either too proud to admit or too naive in the K-drama land to say. He is being mean about it 1000%!!!! And he could show empathy, but because it was never really taught to him, he doesn't know how to show it properly. SO when he says FUXX OFF, it basically means "I like you" in his language. It's hard for him to understand kindness and true affection because it was either never given to him or used as currency. So whenever he has it, he's so desperate that he will lose it like he lost everything else, that he became a certified ASSHOLE to everyone and ends up manipulating and emotionally hurting people to get what he wants, as he said. Should he and Mi DO be together? In all honesty, I don't know because if the roles were gender-swapped and Taesung was a girl and Mi Do was a man, it would be a bitch and a cheater that some may say deserve each other in basic terms and might actually slut shame this female version of Taesung and possibly socially crucify and drag the male version of Mi Do through the street to burn him at the stake. Will they make it in the long run? No idea; they're not the same people as at the beginning of the drama, so who knows.
SuA
Probably the most innocent if we compare her to the other three, BUT she is no innocent either. Just like Namgung, she knew what she was doing and kept doing it anyway. The friend/colleague who crosses the line between friendship/workplace and romance, whether they are aware of it or not. But like the other three, it makes her human because emotions are not exactly an exact science, and we can't predict how we will feel 10 days from now if we keep talking and bonding with someone, especially since SuA's case is the first love that she never forgot because he showed her what, at that point in her life, no one else really did: kindness and Compassion. And I think that is what drew them to each other. He showed her a kindness and respect no one in her life- not her father, not her friend and of course not her bully ever showed her. And she showed him the same in turn, helping him realize his sense of self-worth and self-respect. But does it excuse what she was subconsciously doing? Not exactly, since she thought it was her fault that Mi Do and Namgung were fighting, but her saving grace seems to be that she would rather see him happy, even if it wasn't with her...WELL, until the elevator scene in episode 13, which I think should have been longer so I could hear her come back.
ACTING/CAST;
10/10 for SURE!!!. Nothing bad to say about the acting. All four leads were top-notch and very well cast in their respective roles, and especially a shout-out to AHN EUN JIN and SEO KANG JUN for their mutual chemistry, but also with their respective love interests, who are still rookie or up-and-coming actors who themselves are amazing. LEE JOO AHN (his first main role, I think) and JO A RAM are so convincing in their roles, and they really play well as two people either desperate for love or falling more in love with someone.
MUSIC;
The music wasn't very memorable; it was typical K-drama music, but nothing really stood out to me. The themes and tempo did fit with the story and scenes sometimes. I do like, for example, the one with the first snow scene, where the FL and ML are with their SML and SFL, respectively. It fits well with the tone and where the story was going.
REWATCH;
Despite being a good and realistic story, I also do not think it is a very rewatchable drama since now we have all episodes, and since you can now just watch everything, the build-up of the story can make a second rewatch more boring and skip certain scenes because we all know now how it ends and where it is going. The wonder and unknown is what seduces viewers on a first watch and makes you want to binge it, but...once you finish it once, you might watch again, which is what I am doing, but only the parts I liked or found worth rewatching, such as the scenes of Namgung and Sua in Namhaedo, with Sua doing her little grumpy kitten look.
OVERALL;
That's why I think them falling for other people is just another symptom of the problem that piled up over 10 years, which is why it seemed so easy for them to develop feelings for their new partners. Not just because of the butterflies or the sparks, but more because of what they both seemed to need. Teasung let Mi Do be more raw and honest with herself by drawing out her pent-up anger and matching her energy, while SuA helped Namgung heal his sense of self-worth. IN both cases, whether it's a physical or emotional act of cheating, it is not okay. It is disrespectful to your partner, but as we saw in the story, it was just the final straw for bigger problems: they slowly stopped communicating properly over the years and couldn't see that the breakup should have happened long ago. But again, because their lives are so DEEPLY rooted in each other, and because they built a life together and around each other, it becomes almost impossible to see.
A relationship ending is still a grief to process, and the longer it is, the longer it takes to deal with it. Because you are saying goodbye not just to your partner but also to the person you were with. And whether it's 10 days, 10 months or 10 years, the person you are at the beginning will not be the same person you are at the end of the relationship. People change and relationship dynamics change, and in the FL and ML case, their dynamic was changing cmapred ot at first, with Mi Do's hero complex and Namgung gaining confidence as the years went by; the shift started to happen, but the discomfort was never talked about, and that festered and kept building, leading up to the no-sex and eventual kissing and then falling for other people for them to realize that the romance is gone or might of never actually been there in the first place.
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