Missing the feel good factor

This was a messed up melodrama with more tears and negativity than I expected. Many of the characters are hardly likeable. Their thoughts and actions are despicable, small minded, selfish and short sighted, but the director has really done a good job of bringing out why they would think and behave that way. The angst, jealousy, pettiness, rage, self pity and loneliness of the leads were well brought out. Would have liked more feel good friendship scenes in the beginning so that the bitterness of the final episodes were balanced out. A redeeming factor is that all the leads are easy on the eyes, and since they are well off, the aesthetics even indoors was pretty. I didn't like how the parent characters didn't get the usual closure we expect from kdramas but I guess they wanted to keep it closer to reality. What happened to Sae Joo's mom lying in the hospital? How did the parents wedding get cancelled amicably? Did the father and son finally get along after both recovered? There are a lot of dragged out episodes where simple honest communication among friends and parent-child would have brought clarity and peace of mind to both sides, so this made it frustrating for me as a viewer. The shortness of the episodes kept me watching an episode now and then until it got over. Definitely not rewatch material, but a one time watch, first melo genre for me. I now feel like watching a typical romcom with likeable characters and all the cliches possible (butterfly moments, umbrellas, back hugs, cute jealousy, arm grabs and heartfelt confessions), just to erase out the negative emotions brought out by this melodrama and remind me why I started watching kdramas in the first place!

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