Zoecohen

Thank you for your comment! Yeah, I really felt that up until then the writing had been excellent and quite refreshing/unusual for kdramas, but they really just kind of gave up and went with a classic cliche. It was really disappointing and soured me on the ending of the drama.

Lol it's fine if you still disagree with me :)
I was pretty shocked that our beloved Hye Ja could be that awful to her own son too, but I think that disconnect was really deliberate, especially since protagonists aren't meant to be awful -- they're usually meant to be kind of perfect except for some minor "flaws" that just make them cuter or compelling or "different from all other women." But ironically, I think it was the show's commitment to showing an actual bad side of Hye Ja that I was really impressed by since most shows are too skittish to go there.

Haha no problem -- it's definitely confusing, but you can't help but feel that it's a great show, even when you don't fully understand it lol

I understand what you mean, but I also think that the point of the "made up" story held within in the first 10 episodes is that it's all based in or inspired by reality and is Hye Ja's way of processing a lot of things that happened in her life and processing a lot of her relationships with people. Thinking about things like what she would have done differently or why certain things might have happened. Also, the alzheimer's dream allowed her to process and redo some of the relationships she had in her life that maybe she wasn't pleased with the result of. For example, imagining that her son was really her father and the fact that he lost his leg was because she couldn't manage to save him from the truck without at least that much of a sacrifice. There's that moment at the end where her son remembers Hye Ja crying and apologizing for his amputated leg. In some ways, that might have been her owning the responsibility she probably felt for her son losing his leg all those years ago. Also, the way her "father"/son changed from being so happy and loving before the accident to being super cold and distant after the accident. That might have been her way to explain to herself why their relationship was so strained and distant. In these ways, even though the dream was completely fake, it pulled from reality and reformatted reality into a story that she could process and feel agency to make changes in. I think this is why it didn't feel like a waste for me -- because to the alzheimer's patient Hye Ja, that was her reality, and those relationships were her cherished memories. Just because they didn't actually happen doesn't mean they weren't real to her, more real, in fact, than reality.

I understand what you mean, but I also think that the point of the "made up" story held within in the first 10 episodes is that it's all based in or inspired by reality and is Hye Ja's way of processing a lot of things that happened in her life and processing a lot of her relationships with people. Thinking about things like what she would have done differently or why certain things might have happened. Also, the alzheimer's dream allowed her to process and redo some of the relationships she had in her life that maybe she wasn't pleased with the result of. For example, imagining that her son was really her father and the fact that he lost his leg was because she couldn't manage to save him from the truck without at least that much of a sacrifice. There's that moment at the end where her son remembers Hye Ja crying and apologizing for his amputated leg. In some ways, that might have been her owning the responsibility she probably felt for her son losing his leg all those years ago. Also, the way her "father"/son changed from being so happy and loving before the accident to being super cold and distant after the accident. That might have been her way to explain to herself why their relationship was so strained and distant. In these ways, even though the dream was completely fake, it pulled from reality and reformatted reality into a story that she could process and feel agency to make changes in.

Hmm not sure exactly what aspects of the drama you're looking to repeat, but here are a few recommendations. All of these had super real characters and deeply explored relationships (not just romantic):

My Mister
Life on Mars
Reply 1988
Just Between Lovers

I would say it's not the happy ending you expect when you watch the show. It's a bittersweet ending, but no matter whether you find it happy or sad, it's going to be a completely different ending than what you're expecting for the first 2/3 of the show. Can't say anymore without spoilers, but I would highly recommend!

Hm I don't fully know which parts you're talking about, but as regards the plot holes, I think that was the point the show was trying to make. There were various things throughout the show that didn't really make sense, like how her parents and friends accepted her getting old so easily, or how her plan to save Joon Ha worked out so perfectly, against all odds. But that's because through episode 10, it was all the confused reconstruction of memories and reality as an alzheimer's patient might view them. In the same way dreams don't totally make sense, but the dreamer never notices, Hye Ja was living in a world her mind created to work through and replay some of the most poignant and also most tragic moments of her life.

If you mean the way Hye Ja's "father"/son is treated, yeah, she was really awful to him. But I don't think the show was trying to show that she was this perfect person, or even that her son thinks that in hindsight she actually treated him well after all. I think rather than making a value judgment like so many kdramas do intrinsically in the way they depict events, this show was just trying to show the type of reality that might lead a person to treat her son that way, even if it's a reprehensible thing to do and not the correct way to treat him at all, and the son resenting his mother until he finally realized that while she treated him terribly and definitely scarred him, she also harbored some love for him, which she expressed in her own way. No, that love doesn't justify how awful she was to him, but at the same time, she was desperately trying to make ends meet and deal with the early and inexplicable death of the breadwinner for the family and the love of her life. She was probably doing the best she could do, even if the best wasn't very good at all. I think that's why the son was finally able to let go of his resentment. Seeing all the sides of her that her alzheimers' laid bare (like sweeping the snow off the road so he wouldn't slip, or feeling like him losing his leg was all her fault, or the way she loved and cared about him enough to bring him lunch at work, or the way she defended him at his job against the resident who wanted him to do all the recycling himself), the sides she had kept hidden all these years, made him realize some of what she must have been going through and how she really felt.

So everything that happened in the show through episode 10 was a combination of real events mixed in with imagined events or imagined events inspired by something that really happened in her life. As such, I'm not totally sure I can clear up everything to your satisfaction, but here's what I think:

The elder care center is real (as evidenced by the fact that it's in the same building and inhabited by all the people who appeared in her alzheimer dream), but it is actually a nursing home rather than just an entertainment center or scam. She probably changed it from a nursing home to an elder care center because that way she could come and go as she pleased, whereas in a nursing home, you have to stay put. I think the scam part of it was created by her brain partly because paranoia comes with dementia, but also partly because it was her brain's way of explaining and then processing Joon Ha's beat up face (from when he went to jail and was beat up in the 70's).

Yeah, Joon Ha only existed in her past, and he died very young at the hands of the military or police interrogators during wartime. That being said, there is a doctor in her current nursing home that happens to look exactly like him, purely by coincidence, and that probably mixed with her painful memories of his past and how he died. Also the fact that the nursing home/elder care center is a real place is evidenced by the fact that whenever the Joon Ha lookalike doctor approached the wheelchair man, he would freak out because he though the Joon Ha he had killed and robbed had come back from the dead to haunt him or something. Hye Ja wouldn't have realized that about the wheelchair man (I don't think), so that's a detail that was pulled from reality into her alzheimer's dream.

Yeah, I think her subconsciousness tried to help her create happier memories from all the pain and confusion she felt surrounding his death, so her mind created a scenario where he was beat up like she remembered, but she got to save him in this alternate reality rather than let him die alone and uncared for.

As for Chanel Lady, it's impossible to say based purely on what the show gives us, but my theory is that Chanel Lady was probably a real lady, but the details of her story and death might not be exactly like what was depicted.

Hope this helps! Just my own theories, so I could be wrong.

I loved him in Weightlifting Fairy, but he really blew me away in The Light In Your Eyes. Phenomenal acting <3

Wow I'm so impressed by how Jung So Min keeps pushing herself as an actor. Her acting chops are out of this world, and I love how she keeps taking on roles that are completely different from what she's played before!

I know we're supposed to feel bad for Nam Goong Yeong in episode 17 when Han Song Jeong unilaterally breaks the contract and cuts ties with him, but honestly what she said wasn't a lie -- he really was pretty awful to her when they first started working together, always forcing her to do things and pestering her so she couldn't actually do the work. I knew he grew a lot since then, but he really acted just like all the other stereotypical self-centered chaebol male leads in dramaland, despite being twice their age. I really dislike that kind of behavior in characters unless there's a true reckoning for their behavior, and not just a measly "I'm sorry" and that's the end of it.

Granted, by the universal law of dramaland, she becomes less reasonable later on...haha

I'm only on the 9th episode, but that grandmother is the most reasonable and logical person I have ever seen in all of dramaland lol

Haha I'll be honest -- I had to drop it because I just couldn't take it anymore. Being selfless is definitely commendable, but I think people also have a responsibility to look after and take care of themselves. But besides that, there were just too many characters I couldn't get emotionally invested in. Hope you manage to stick with it, as people seem to really love this show!

Episode 30 seemed really weird to me as compared to the rest of the show. Ha Jin has never cared about public sentiment before (she was fine when everyone hated her for all her villain roles and scandals early in her career), they've basically both lost their jobs, and everything is out in the open. Why would she want to break up? Plus, even when she felt awful towards him for (in her mind) leading to his first love's murder, she missed him so much that she couldn't bear to be apart. Yet now, when they have nothing left to lose anyway, she just walks away from him? And he just accepts it, just like that? Before, I really appreciated how this show's characters were kind and respected each other's decisions and opinions, but this seemed out of character for both of them (though very in line with dramaland cliches, unfortunately), given how steadfast and unwavering both of them had decided their love was. Did anyone else find this weird and jarring, or was it just me?

I just don't understand -- Tae Ho stood trial, which means he was probably found guilty, which means he should be in jail for the rest of his life...he killed 4 people (pilot, So Hee, the reporter, and the Chinese guy on the boat), manslaughtered one (Yeol), almost manslaughtered another and covered up that death (Jae Hyun), and attempted to kill so many people so many times! How was he out of jail and hanging out with everyone before he turned gray??

Yeah, he plays an excellent bad guy if that makes any sense haha

Jesus christ, this kid goes through so much in just five episodes! It really lives up to the melo tag...

Not necessary, though there are some characters and relationships you understand just a little better if you've watched the first season as well.