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I admit it, when I first watched this drama in 2022, I did not like it.
Now, a few years later, I see that I was too hung-up about whether the publishing world was realistically depicted or not, when "Happy Ending Romance" is not about that.
No, it's a drama that tries to address several topics that revolve about one of the fundamental questions of life: What makes a life a good life?
It deals with issues around relationships between people (How will your choices affect the people around you?), around freedom of choice (Who gets to decide what is good for someone?), around honesty versus making a living (What does "success" mean?) and, ultimately, around he complexities that follow if you try to answer these questions.
This is where the story both has a strength, but also a weakness -- the characters' decisions in the past all have consequences, none of them were purely good or purely disastrous, but untangling them to see the right path forward is not easy, and requires that the characters be honest to themselves and to others. It's a strength because complex stories are usually more intriguing than straight-forward "red/green flag" romances. It's also a weakness because it requires great story-telling both in the screenplay itself and in the execution.
And this drama, unfortunately, does not reach the required quality and did not manage to evoke the right emotions for me. I think that the director did the story an injustice when they decided to start the drama with a strange, almost disjointed mix of present and flash-backs, showing the same scene repeatedly but giving us little new insight, and only tell the "big reveal" at the end of episode 7.
This way of telling the story and the backstory also put Kim Jungyhun in the "antagonist" category for most of the drama, when he should have been painted as a complex character with conflicting desires (actually, he could have been the most interesting of the three main characters).
I also feel that this should not have been a romance at all -- I did not feel a romantic attraction from Cha Jungwoo towards Taeyoung -- and in the other direction, it always felt more like a professional admiration. That the screenplay never made the exact relationship between Jungwoo and Jungyhun clear did not help. The romance was also irrelevant for the underlying topics, and everything would have worked as well, if not better, without it.
To evoke the right emotions in the audience, we should have seen and felt both writers' unhappiness in their situation. As it is, we got told, not shown and when we got told, it was too little, too late. This could have been a drama that starts with a stifling atmosphere, where everything is still, almost claustrophobic, living-but-not-alive to then finally end in freedom and light(ness).
Unfortunately, everything is bland and stays flat throughout. Neither the soundtrack (often too loud and misplaced in tone), nor the lighting, or anything except for the dialogue really changes between beginnning and ending. The sets showed that the designer tried but has no idea how a bibliophile lives -- why would you fill a perfectly fine shelf with knick-knacks and put your books on the floor? And why would you not put up another book shelf as long as you have the wall space? -- and they also missed an opportunity to make a greater distinction between Kim Junhyun's cold, still, and sterile house and Han Taeyoung's cozy and warm flat.
All in all, the drama failed to connect my emotions with those of the characters, and that might be why I didn't like it when I first watched it. I wonder if the director even had a clear vision of what story they wanted to tell?
Note that this is not the fault of the actors -- actually, they were the highlight of this drama. I loved Taeyoung's puppy energy, the long-suffering but loving friend Kang Woojoo, and the professor was appropriately disgusting. I would like to see more of all actors here in the future.
Was it good?
It's watchable but doesn't reach it's potential.
Did I like it?
Not really. I had to put in too much rational thought to understand what the drama's theme was, and it didn't make me feel with the characters.
Would I recommend it?
Not really.
Now, a few years later, I see that I was too hung-up about whether the publishing world was realistically depicted or not, when "Happy Ending Romance" is not about that.
No, it's a drama that tries to address several topics that revolve about one of the fundamental questions of life: What makes a life a good life?
It deals with issues around relationships between people (How will your choices affect the people around you?), around freedom of choice (Who gets to decide what is good for someone?), around honesty versus making a living (What does "success" mean?) and, ultimately, around he complexities that follow if you try to answer these questions.
This is where the story both has a strength, but also a weakness -- the characters' decisions in the past all have consequences, none of them were purely good or purely disastrous, but untangling them to see the right path forward is not easy, and requires that the characters be honest to themselves and to others. It's a strength because complex stories are usually more intriguing than straight-forward "red/green flag" romances. It's also a weakness because it requires great story-telling both in the screenplay itself and in the execution.
And this drama, unfortunately, does not reach the required quality and did not manage to evoke the right emotions for me. I think that the director did the story an injustice when they decided to start the drama with a strange, almost disjointed mix of present and flash-backs, showing the same scene repeatedly but giving us little new insight, and only tell the "big reveal" at the end of episode 7.
This way of telling the story and the backstory also put Kim Jungyhun in the "antagonist" category for most of the drama, when he should have been painted as a complex character with conflicting desires (actually, he could have been the most interesting of the three main characters).
I also feel that this should not have been a romance at all -- I did not feel a romantic attraction from Cha Jungwoo towards Taeyoung -- and in the other direction, it always felt more like a professional admiration. That the screenplay never made the exact relationship between Jungwoo and Jungyhun clear did not help. The romance was also irrelevant for the underlying topics, and everything would have worked as well, if not better, without it.
To evoke the right emotions in the audience, we should have seen and felt both writers' unhappiness in their situation. As it is, we got told, not shown and when we got told, it was too little, too late. This could have been a drama that starts with a stifling atmosphere, where everything is still, almost claustrophobic, living-but-not-alive to then finally end in freedom and light(ness).
Unfortunately, everything is bland and stays flat throughout. Neither the soundtrack (often too loud and misplaced in tone), nor the lighting, or anything except for the dialogue really changes between beginnning and ending. The sets showed that the designer tried but has no idea how a bibliophile lives -- why would you fill a perfectly fine shelf with knick-knacks and put your books on the floor? And why would you not put up another book shelf as long as you have the wall space? -- and they also missed an opportunity to make a greater distinction between Kim Junhyun's cold, still, and sterile house and Han Taeyoung's cozy and warm flat.
All in all, the drama failed to connect my emotions with those of the characters, and that might be why I didn't like it when I first watched it. I wonder if the director even had a clear vision of what story they wanted to tell?
Note that this is not the fault of the actors -- actually, they were the highlight of this drama. I loved Taeyoung's puppy energy, the long-suffering but loving friend Kang Woojoo, and the professor was appropriately disgusting. I would like to see more of all actors here in the future.
Was it good?
It's watchable but doesn't reach it's potential.
Did I like it?
Not really. I had to put in too much rational thought to understand what the drama's theme was, and it didn't make me feel with the characters.
Would I recommend it?
Not really.
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