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a wholesome experience
Two days after I finished this show I found myself looking at a Korean street, late at night, say midnight and wondering what would be the life of people who live around here, who walk these street during the day and if they have someone to love to come back to. This is exactly the feeling I was left with after I finished this show.
This show is a wholesome experience. Not in a way life changing, this show is misappropriated and mis advertised in a romantic genre, which is why it took me two years to watch this show, also the same reason people rate this show so low. It is a love story, yes, but its also much more than that. The romance serves its purpose, it ground the show to the reality of two people working in the toxic competitive environment of Hagwons. This is slice of a life. The romance helps it cure of much of the bitterness, conspiracy and evil plots. And the maturity of the leads makes it worthwhile for us to also go along with them as they face severe issues and targeted insults. I don't like to see one lead walking away from another because things are getting tougher for her or him. I want them to face things together. The show goes into so much detail about education in modern Korea and about the ideological conflicts that I found myself wanting more of that than the love story. I wanted to hear closely about their debates, the purpose of teaching to improve ranks, get into good college versus acquiring life skills. This is the one of the few Korean dramas that makes you want to actually think.
The leads in the drama are not the typical Korean leads,they work within the system, they have their grey areas, and they are in conflict with them both idealogically and morally. The male lead didn't join the Hagwon because of his devotion for female lead, or because he wanted to teach something great. He joined because of ambition, familiarity and nostalgia. Frankly, I was not convinced by how their relationship started. As the normal Kdrama fan should say, there was no 'seollem '. But as I have learnt, these things might arise out of personal bias, and given enough time we are convinced, if the drama is convincing, which it definitely was. The acting was world class, especially Jung Ryeo-won and the two female antagonists. Everything about Jung Ryeo-won sold me the reality that she was a Hagwon teacher, not a beauty queen or a fashion icon, beautiful as she is. So kudos to the production department.
Story wise, the best thing about this drama is how the character arc for the supporting cast evolved. They were given liminal space but they evolved so naturally there could have been separate episodes just for them. Teacher Pyo was my favorite character. He held the ideological compass of the show and thankfully the writer saved him.
There is one scene, where Mr Pyo has resigned from his school job and one of his students brings her reading journal to him, an exercise no one did, cause it was not necessary. This is the best reward for teaching- a student going out of her way to learn something out of syllabus. How the director handles his emotional state, the camera follows him as he runs down the stairs, never getting a close-up, is what I should call good direction. Of course, he was Ahn Pan-seok.
This show is the perfect example of why a Kdrama works best with 16 episodes. A lot of people complain about the 13th, 14th episode dragging a show, but in this show, it definitely does not drag but lifts up this show to even better level.
This show is a wholesome experience. Not in a way life changing, this show is misappropriated and mis advertised in a romantic genre, which is why it took me two years to watch this show, also the same reason people rate this show so low. It is a love story, yes, but its also much more than that. The romance serves its purpose, it ground the show to the reality of two people working in the toxic competitive environment of Hagwons. This is slice of a life. The romance helps it cure of much of the bitterness, conspiracy and evil plots. And the maturity of the leads makes it worthwhile for us to also go along with them as they face severe issues and targeted insults. I don't like to see one lead walking away from another because things are getting tougher for her or him. I want them to face things together. The show goes into so much detail about education in modern Korea and about the ideological conflicts that I found myself wanting more of that than the love story. I wanted to hear closely about their debates, the purpose of teaching to improve ranks, get into good college versus acquiring life skills. This is the one of the few Korean dramas that makes you want to actually think.
The leads in the drama are not the typical Korean leads,they work within the system, they have their grey areas, and they are in conflict with them both idealogically and morally. The male lead didn't join the Hagwon because of his devotion for female lead, or because he wanted to teach something great. He joined because of ambition, familiarity and nostalgia. Frankly, I was not convinced by how their relationship started. As the normal Kdrama fan should say, there was no 'seollem '. But as I have learnt, these things might arise out of personal bias, and given enough time we are convinced, if the drama is convincing, which it definitely was. The acting was world class, especially Jung Ryeo-won and the two female antagonists. Everything about Jung Ryeo-won sold me the reality that she was a Hagwon teacher, not a beauty queen or a fashion icon, beautiful as she is. So kudos to the production department.
Story wise, the best thing about this drama is how the character arc for the supporting cast evolved. They were given liminal space but they evolved so naturally there could have been separate episodes just for them. Teacher Pyo was my favorite character. He held the ideological compass of the show and thankfully the writer saved him.
There is one scene, where Mr Pyo has resigned from his school job and one of his students brings her reading journal to him, an exercise no one did, cause it was not necessary. This is the best reward for teaching- a student going out of her way to learn something out of syllabus. How the director handles his emotional state, the camera follows him as he runs down the stairs, never getting a close-up, is what I should call good direction. Of course, he was Ahn Pan-seok.
This show is the perfect example of why a Kdrama works best with 16 episodes. A lot of people complain about the 13th, 14th episode dragging a show, but in this show, it definitely does not drag but lifts up this show to even better level.
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