Vintage81

Beautiful Gong Shim started with a quirky, lighthearted premise and a lot of potential, but unfortunately it never fully delivered. While the early episodes were watchable, several issues became more apparent as the drama progressed. The romance moved at a glacial pace and felt surprisingly juvenile, and as the show went on, the family drama increasingly overshadowed the charm and humor that initially drew me in. By the end, I was fast-forwarding just to get it over with.

The ending, in particular, was ridiculous. The one-year time jump was bad enough, but then the male lead somehow couldn’t contact the female lead for the entire year? Yeah, okay. (Insert the biggest eye roll imaginable.) It brought back strong True Beauty memories, except this time there wasn’t even a compelling second male lead for me to emotionally fall back on. Honestly, I found myself wishing the female lead had ended up with no one at all and simply moved on to find someone new.

The lead couple had moments where they were kind of cute together, but it was hard to ignore that the male lead felt significantly older than the female lead. While the drama insisted they were only about four years apart, the real-life fifteen-year age gap was obvious and made their dynamic feel unbalanced. What made this even more frustrating was that both leads behaved like middle schoolers when it came to their relationship—poor communication, constant misunderstandings, and interactions that felt immature rather than endearing.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a drama I’ll be rewatching. Beautiful Gong Shim had potential, but in the end it was too long, too juvenile, and too frustrating to justify the time investment.