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Drama not what I expected... and that's not a good thing

When you watch the trailer, or even read the title "Castaway Diva" - you expect a drama about a plucky and talented teen girl dreaming of stardom who gets crash landed on a deserted island. You expect to see her adjust to modern life after being rescued and all the ups and downs that come with that.

Unfortunately, that is not at all what we get.

Mokha's story is sadly placed on the backburner completely in favor of Kiho and Ranjoo. She is nothing but a background character. We get hardly anything about Mokha "adjusting" to life off the island. She seems to do miraculously well, despite having only a 10th grade education and being emotionally stunted at age 15. She is able to essentially become Ranjoo's manager immediately (again, despite having nothing but a middle school education) and seems to have no problem with modern technology. If she has trauma from the experience (which, frankly, she SHOULD) this isn't shown to us and plays no part in the story. After being alone on an island, she should be a little quirky and odd and unable to interact with other people well, but she has absolutely no problem whatsoever. I was looking forward to seeing all of those things portrayed on this drama but we got none of it.

So let's talk about what we did see.

The drama really wanted us to question, "Which brother is Kiho!?" but it was pretty obvious from the start. It also got pretty convoluted in the explanation of a certain brother losing his memory and not knowing about them changing their identities and so on. I was also so frustrated by their father. Of course, that is the point. But good god, it dragged on.

A positive note on this - the found family aspect with their step dad was magical. Truly, the greatest dad in kdrama award goes to him! What an absolute gem. We love to see it.

The other thing we saw - Yoo Ranjoo and company, which was arguably the worst part of this drama. No aspect of her story was interesting to me and there was absolutely NO resolution. I'm not sure if we are meant to view the CEO as a villain or if he was meant to be redeemed, because they didn't go 100% on either end. Especially the storyline at the end of them finding the receipt of album purchases (I won't get too into it), he gives us some complete bologna excuse that has no evidence or backing and we're just supposed to be like "Oh, OKAY!" and it is never brought up again.

All in all, the drama wasn't BAD. It was enjoyable for the most part. I just can't shake that this drama was not advertised correctly and that hindered my enjoyment tremendously. In fact, anything that was supposed to make this drama unique wasn't even there, and instead was just cliche.

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Two gentle souls healing from their past and gaining closure.

I'm majorly in my Im Siwan era and also a librarian... so when I heard about a drama about Librarian Im Siwan, of course I had to give it a watch!

In my initial readings about the drama, however, I read a few troubling things. "NO ROMANCE!" many people complained. "This isn't slice-of-life, this is a murder mystery!" or "It would've been better without the murder plot going on" which of course made me worried that this show wasn't going to be the healing and slow romance it is advertised as. Surprise murder is such an annoying Kdrama trope, so I was anticipating the worst. In my opinion, this WAS the healing and slow burn romance we were promised. So let's talk about that.

Firstly, the romance. I literally saw someone say there is "not much" romance here, and I actually wholeheartedly disagree with that. Was there a big, dramatic and mind-blowing kiss at the end? Nope, not even a little bit. The only morsel of "skinship" we get is the two leads walking along the beach, finally holding hands. While there was (basically) no physical moments, what we are given are sweet, wholesome emotional moments that I'll be thinking about for a long time. Daebum is quiet and so shy that he had to write down his thoughts on a piece of paper instead of actually speaking. We see his progression from hardly speaking, to staying up all night texting Yeoreom, to them going on their nightly job chatting up a storm. How can you watch these scenes and not feel your heart flutter? I would argue these kinds of scenes were much more heartwarming than just seeing them kiss or having a "steamy" scene. Would I have wanted more? Sure, I won't deny that. But, so many of these precious scenes had me grinning like an idiot and kicking my feet.

Now to the supposed all-encompassing murder mystery storyline. Sure, there was an air of mystery about the circumstances of Daebum's sisters death for the majority of the show... but I'm actually happy that it was essentially just a 2 episode arc of the two leads being detectives and solving the case. A lot of the comments made it seem like that's all this show was.. and that's definitely not the case. That said, Daebum NEEDED to learn to truth in order to move on, especially because this whole time he believed his own father murdered his sister, and he even blamed himself for the deaths as well.

Now to people saying that Yeoreom is a doormat, let's everyone walk all over her, that "learned nothing" by the end. You guys sure are sounding like Jiyoung and the way that she treats Daebum. Yeoreom is kind and generally soft-spoken, yes, but she stood up for herself when it mattered. Do you people really want her to dig heels in, cover her ears, scream at ect, the people who wronged her? She didn't apologize to Geunho's parents when she truly believed he was the culprit, she didn't take their bribes or let them walk all over her... but what she DID do was say, hold on a minute, let's think about this. If it wasn't for her having some compassion, being level-headed, and investigating, an innocent man would be in prison and no one would've gained closure. That is how Yeoreom grew from the start of the show.

This show had a lot of other aspects that I could've personally done without. The romance between Bom and Jaehoon was not my favorite. Jaehoon was very eager to love Bom, and she frankly wasn't ready for that in any facet. Bom's grandmother, the woman who raised and protected her, passes away, and I do believe the Jaehoon still made it about him. That said, Bom absolutely did things wrong. Bom going with Daeho instead of her date with Jaehoon was fucked up... but as I said, Bom is a really, really broken person, and Jaehoon wasn't giving her the time or space to truly heal.

Similarly, the Sungmin/Jiyoung stuff. I could've done without all of that. I liked Sungmin well enough, and in fact, I think his development through the show was quite nice. Who I didn't care for at all was Jiyoung, as I can't stand this type of character. The one that treats the MMC like a little brother that she has to take care of, constantly nagging him, that suddenly realizes "Wait! I loved him all along!" when another woman comes along. Not cute. Her jealousy of Yeoreom was just really gross to me, and the way she treated Sungmin was gross too. I'll be honest, I skipped most of their scenes by the end because it annoyed me too much.

Overall, I would highly recommend this show to anyone. This is about two gentle souls, beaten down by the harsh world. They found each other at low points and were able to truly heal together. No, it wasn't a sweeping romance. It was quiet, slow, and real. I absolutely adored their sweet and realistic love.

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