This review may contain spoilers
Crash Course Not-Just-In Romance
I'm pretty disappointed with how this drama ended, and I also believe they should've given it a different title.
In the beginning, I thought it was gonna be a simple "slice of life" romance drama, only to later find out it would have emotionally difficult themes in the ongoing episodes. Maybe that was a mistake on my part by not researching more in depth beforehand, but I do believe they should've approached these themes (suicide, mental health, school pressure, etc.) differently.
The ending bothered me the most because they made everything seem "lovey-dovey" when in reality, people suffered, lives were lost, and yet no changes were made in the system that caused the disruption in the first place. I wanted to see how the characters truly felt during these unfortunate events, how they recovered or didn't recover, the psychological development.
Bang Su-a was having hallucinations and extreme intrusive thoughts because of how stressed out she was from school and the pressure her mom put her through. And what happened in the end? She got into med school, continuously studying, her mom showing off her daughter's success, and yet not a single word on how difficult it must've been for her to get to that point. The only piece of information we got was Su-a's mom calling a friend who owns some sort of "clinic".
Furthermore, Choi Chi-Yeol and Jeon Jong-Ryeol's conversation in the restaurant in the last episode left me, simply put, confused. They're both admitting how stressful it must be for students from a teacher's pov, and they're both mentioning things that students do to "make it" (academically speaking), and yet, after that serious thought-provoking conversation, they move on like nothing happened because they're conclusion is: "The educational system and the parent's mindsets are to blame. A mere star teacher's guilt won't fix anything." Like what?
Sure, maybe I'm looking too deeply into this, after all, it's a romance drama about an unlikely but adorable pair, Choi Chi-Yeol and Nam Haeng-Seon, but why add such serious and worrying sub-plots and themes to a show like this one?
This show explores themes such as suicide, academic and social pressure, and mental health, but it's almost like it doesn't actually explore them. It really just touches the surface and then moves on to the main plot.
It makes me question: What were the writers trying to say? Is academic pressure really a big deal in Korea, and does it have to change? Or was all of this just for show so that the main romance plot wouldn't bore the audience and take up too much of the time on screen?
Overall, it's a nice drama, but I'm not sure what the moral of the story is.
In the beginning, I thought it was gonna be a simple "slice of life" romance drama, only to later find out it would have emotionally difficult themes in the ongoing episodes. Maybe that was a mistake on my part by not researching more in depth beforehand, but I do believe they should've approached these themes (suicide, mental health, school pressure, etc.) differently.
The ending bothered me the most because they made everything seem "lovey-dovey" when in reality, people suffered, lives were lost, and yet no changes were made in the system that caused the disruption in the first place. I wanted to see how the characters truly felt during these unfortunate events, how they recovered or didn't recover, the psychological development.
Bang Su-a was having hallucinations and extreme intrusive thoughts because of how stressed out she was from school and the pressure her mom put her through. And what happened in the end? She got into med school, continuously studying, her mom showing off her daughter's success, and yet not a single word on how difficult it must've been for her to get to that point. The only piece of information we got was Su-a's mom calling a friend who owns some sort of "clinic".
Furthermore, Choi Chi-Yeol and Jeon Jong-Ryeol's conversation in the restaurant in the last episode left me, simply put, confused. They're both admitting how stressful it must be for students from a teacher's pov, and they're both mentioning things that students do to "make it" (academically speaking), and yet, after that serious thought-provoking conversation, they move on like nothing happened because they're conclusion is: "The educational system and the parent's mindsets are to blame. A mere star teacher's guilt won't fix anything." Like what?
Sure, maybe I'm looking too deeply into this, after all, it's a romance drama about an unlikely but adorable pair, Choi Chi-Yeol and Nam Haeng-Seon, but why add such serious and worrying sub-plots and themes to a show like this one?
This show explores themes such as suicide, academic and social pressure, and mental health, but it's almost like it doesn't actually explore them. It really just touches the surface and then moves on to the main plot.
It makes me question: What were the writers trying to say? Is academic pressure really a big deal in Korea, and does it have to change? Or was all of this just for show so that the main romance plot wouldn't bore the audience and take up too much of the time on screen?
Overall, it's a nice drama, but I'm not sure what the moral of the story is.
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