Detailed:
This story is all about grief and its many dimensions. When Yu-Ri is suddenly killed in a car accident leaving her husband and newborn baby behind they, her family and her friends struggle. Yu-Ri exists as a ghost, unwilling to move on to her next life until she sees that everyone is doing well. One day, suddenly, she becomes a real person again, and has 49 days back in the real world.
The story goes through a number of phases as more people discover she's alive again, you find out back stories about how each person dealt with their loss and the feelings and emotions that led up to it. No stone is left unturned, no matter how painful.
Performances from the cast are amazing, particularly the two leads but honestly nobody gets left behind in this one, and when you have someone like Kim Mi Kyung on board you already know you've got a strong cast.
It's not all sad moments, there are some moments of great hilarity like when the three ladies decide to even the scores with the busy body rumour spreading mums at the school, these kinds of moments are dotted around and are just the ticket between some tougher parts of the story.
When I say sad, I don't mean that it's all bad stuff either, it's uplifting in its way and tries to talk about how you deal with grief, it recognises that it's just all ok, however you handle it.
I found myself drawn to watch every episode as it aired but knew each one was going to leave me in a funk by the end because it's just that good.
I loved every moment of this drama, but if you're not in the mood for what this has to offer skip it and come back when you are.
Very much something you can rewatch too, if you need something to trigger (or cover...) the tears to help you get over something else, put this one on and binge it until you feel better. I found the plot generally predictable but not in any negative way, this one's about the journey, and that just makes it all the better for rewatching.
Was this review helpful to you?
Mother's Love Will Never Abandon You ♡ A Sad Show With A Bobbled Ending
This is a good drama, but it made me sad - and not a cathartic "sad," like a Chinese or Shakespearean tragedy that is somehow fulfilling. This show brings on an empty sadness.In the +, the characters are all complex and thus, they remain interesting. I loved the cameo of Seobinggo and Shin Soon-ae from Oh My Ghost, which I consider to be one of the best romcoms ever made. OMG & HBM share a director, Yoo Je-Won. He has 10 works credited to him, all of which are rated 7 or higher. That's outstanding. So far I've seen Tomorrow With You(7-VG but major logical problems and a couple of crashes with consistency) The King: Eternal Monarch(7.9 it's different, and it's not perfect, but it's mostly excellent) and Abyss(4.7 Poor - it's awful, which hurts my feelings because I love Park Bo-young), and Oh My Ghost(10 - it's superb). His most popular shows are Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha & Crash Course in Romance, which are ones I haven't gotten to, yet.
This drama addresses weighty topics (death, loss, regret, guilt) and does it well. Yu-ri shows thoughtfulness and grace… and MOXIE. The best moments are when the ladies get together, especially when they don their sunglasses-of-doom.
There are shortcomings - too many for it to be considered a top-tier production. Some things that happen are unexpected, but the final outcome comes speeding down the road and arrives just as foreshadowed. There is poor resolution. We are treated to some final moments peeking a few years down the line, but it’s too brief and way too ill-defined, and we don't witness much of any healing. Not all the drinks that are poured are imbibed, meaning that many of the characters seem like they would get more of a story arc, but they just evaporated instead. The rules of the "game" are not laid out. Even when the reason Yu-ri came back is confirmed, it doesn't change any of the problems. It is actually a weak plot point: If that method works, we shouldn't need funeral directors or cemeteries as no one would ever stay dead. As lovely as that would be, it doesn't play well in this show.
Their effort to analyze the mother/daughter cycle is respectable. It seems the show's diffuse focus redirects the audience from an exploratory surgery that would provide a deeper analysis of the truth, to: "Take an aspirin and get some rest. It will all blow by "
In summary, this is not a feel-good drama. Don't look for that. It did not help me process my own recent loss: Don't look for that either.
IMHO...
Suggested Age 12& up.
Directing 6.7
Acting 8
Romance 3
Thought provocation 6
Was this review helpful to you?
The drama successfully explore this question. It is a emotional roller coaster ride , so those who are looking for fluffy or suspense drama, this is not for them .
It is story about how lives people affect when some one we love leave us unexpectedly , it just not affect the people who are left behind to live but also affect the person who died as well. The drama ask very important question - Are we grateful to what is given to us and enjoying each and every moment ?Most importantly - Are we grateful to the person who brought and raised us in this world?
The story starts off with a lighter note but as we move towards the ending and revelations it grew deep and heavy. To be honest after the light opening , the middle portion is bit slow and frustrating . The characters seems to go nowhere and closed up like a bottle which can explode any time. Only Oh Eui Shik character provide some comical relief to this heavy and confusing theme. But towards the end all the loose ends are tied properly and one can see that all characters have grown throughout their journey. Overall it is a well developed story which leave its deep impression on the mind.
Cast - I really like the cast and for me it was perfect , I don't want to replace any of the cast. I highly appreciate Lee Kyu Hyung acting skills . His portrayed his character very well, we can understand the dilemma his character went through .On the other hand , this was my first drama with Kim Tae Hee who Portrays Cha Yu Ri, and I am really impressed by her. Overall the acting is really good.
Music - I like the over all music of the drama. Background Music at various scenes is apt and help to create the perfect atmosphere for various scenes.
Rewatch Value - I don't recommend to re-watch because its heavy theme dramas and I can't imagine going through it again and again.
Overall its enjoyable drama for those who are looking for some emotionally challenging stuff.
Was this review helpful to you?
SHIT ???
The bigest shit I've ever watched. That "daddy" is the worst character I've ever seen, he's a complete dump. He comes to work, sits under his desk and pretends to do something, but when he gets home he's so tired and he's not going to do anything. And THAT CHILD must have been some kind of special needs child, because she didn't understand anything that was going on around her and she was doing some kind of shit. and when she hid in the freezer, I was defeated. She always does the most stupid things and lives in her own starnge world. The mother is also a bit out of it, just going on and on about her child and how she's not the greatest. I won't even comment on the ghosts, because they were horrible and made my blood boil. All in all I wasted 8 hours of my life watching this stupid family :)Was this review helpful to you?
Overly sentimental
This was way too melodramatic and gushy for me.Started off not bad at all, with Mama of the title and the ghosts she hangs out with, at the columbarium her ashes reside in, providing some light hearted and touching moments.
They are kept in line (with difficulty) by a no nonsense Shaman, Ms Mi Dong. There are no real vengeful inhabitants, most stay to watch over family, or because they have unfinished issues.
I found these characters and their stories the best part of the drama.
Once Cha Yu Ri inexplicably comes back to life, the story started to quickly nosedive.
It's a while since I've found a lead character as selfish and hopeless as her.
She's belligerent towards many other spirits, even though she's now in a position where she could help them.
She had been fixated on her daughter from the moment she passed and when she returns to the living, it transpires that being around her all that time came at a price.
She inserts herself into the toddler's life, with no care about her husband or his current wife, let alone the little girl. At this point, she has no idea how she came back, or whether it's permanent.
Instead of being extremely careful, she is eventually found out. On learning that she has 49 days on earth, after which she will leave again if she cannot resume her pre-death place on earth, she still carries on regardless and keeps it from everyone.
The emotional scars her death left on her widowed husband are deeper than the ocean, but she still spends most of the time concentrating on herself, whilst what I felt was using her daughter as an excuse.
The expectations she raises in her parental family, husband and best friend, cause so much more hurt and pain, it's infuriating.
Characters take ages delivering slow and overly paused dialogue, not answering questions, not saying what they should, and there is a LOT of wailing and beating of chests.
This story could have been so much more. The main character could, on being discovered, have come clean and used her time on earth well, instead of achieving very little until the last couple of episodes.
Instead of feeling sad for her, I was relieved when it was all over.
Definitely not one I would watch again, as I struggled to finish it first time around. So disappointing. If you like mushy, sentimental, melodramatic shows, however, you'll love it! (Not judging; each to their own.)
Was this review helpful to you?
On a side note though: Seo Woo is so cute!! I can't believe (s)he's a boy. Every time she smiled, my heart lit up and I awwed so much in this drama.
Was this review helpful to you?
Let us enjoy the today ALWAYS, as it is our "gift".
“Were you happy with you life?”
“Were other people happy because of me?”
And we will try to answer "yes" to these questions when the time comes. Yes?
YES! <3
I was very impacted by this story... The ending was happy, and at the same time it was not...
The performances, soundtrack and especially this story deserves much more than a score of 10.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
This drama really makes you cry like crazy HAHA In every episode you'll find yourself crying, if you're an emotional person like me. I really love the story, although it's a sad ending but it makes me think that a mother's love is very strong. She sacrificed her chance to live with her loved ones just so that her daughter could live peacefully without seeing any ghosts. So that's really heart-wrenching. This drama will make you reflect on your life and more. It has a lot of life lessons you can learn from it. For example, cherish your time with your loved ones because you don't know when you'll leave the world, etc. So that's why I gave a 9.5 for the story plot. Great flow, not too rushed. The rewatch value is 8 although I know it's a really good drama but if you don't wanna experience the pain of the drama again then you may consider not watching it as you'll be stuffing tissues in your nose for each episodes. But it's worth rewatching overall. Acting is great, they were really immersed in their scenes.Overall this drama is a classic. It's a must watch although it's gonna be very "heavy-hearted" for most viewers. I hope you find this useful :)
Was this review helpful to you?
‘Cherish life and don't take each day for granted’
I picked this up because I was in the mood for a Korean family drama and because of Kim Tae Hee. I hardly watched her dramas, but I know that she was the so-called number one beauty in South Korea, so I just wanted to see her.This drama was about Cha Yu Ri (Kim Tae Hee) while pregnant (her child was saved though), got hit by a car and died. She stayed on in the human world, watching her family and loved ones as a ghost (they couldn’t see, hear or feel her) and came back to life for 49 days after 5 years. If she managed to get back her original place that is, as wife of Cho Kang Hwa (Lee Kyu Hyung) and mother to her child, she could continue to live on, otherwise she would ‘die’ again and leave the world, but things were complicated because her husband remarried another woman, Oh Min Jung (Go Bo Gyul).
The good about this drama:
1. It reminded me of living a life without regrets. There were many meaningful sentences spoken in the drama and many a time, I was touched by them. The OST of the drama was also excellent in bringing out the emotions. If anything, this drama did remind me of living life happily, cherishing life and not taking each day for granted. And if there is something we want to do, we should do it now, because sometimes there is no tomorrow.
2. All the emotional scenes were convincingly done. The entire cast did well, especially Kim Tae Hee. I could literally feel her selfless love for her child. I believe this was because she just gave birth to her real daughter not long before she took on this role, so it should be quite natural for her.
The bad, though about this drama, were,
1. There were many other ghosts not related to Cha Yu Ri and her family in any way. Only snippets of their stories here and there throughout the drama, audience could not be vested into their stories, so they were more like fillers and distractions than anything else for the drama.
2. The female lead, Cha Yu Ri (Kim Tae Hee) coming back to life and having to leave after 49 days if she did not get her place back. I found this whole concept absurd and the scene where she came back to life, I found the entire scene bemusing. Her ranting, shouting, screaming at the top of her lungs on the street at the heavens up there and lo and behold, she suddenly became a human again, presumably having offended the gods up there or if we see it another way, presumably having touched heavens to turn her back to human again. I know fantasy dramas could be farfetched, but this was just ridiculous and absurd and didn't think it was that well done. Nevertheless, on hindsight, I guess the scriptwriter wanted to create this fantasy scenario out of a drama, whereby she came back to life and was able to say proper goodbyes to her family and loved ones before she ‘died’ again, which was of course something not possible in reality.
3. And then the reason why she came back to life was understood later. It was because her mother’s wish – which was to see her daughter once more. Her mother apparently wrote the wish on a piece of paper and the paper was hung with all others’ wishes in the temple. And after that she prayed every single day at the temple for this wish to come true. This was the illogical part to me. Just because of that, her daughter came back to life from dead?? Like, really?? Will this happen in real life?
4. There were lots of crying, saying sorry and thank you in the last few episodes. Really lots and lots of them. I had lost count of how many times ‘sorry’ was said in the last few episodes that they were no longer meaningful to me. And basically, Cha Yu Ri and many of the female characters were bawling their eyes out in the last 3-4 episodes. So much crying. Cha Yu Ri was saying sorry and thank you repeatedly in tears. By the last episode, I had enough. Such scenes, when shown repeatedly, lost their meaning when the reasons for the tears and apologies were the same over and over.
The ending was satisfying although not all ‘loose ends’ were tied properly. All in all, I would not use the sentence, ‘I enjoyed watching this drama’ because it was really heavy on the emotions in the last 5 episodes and only got heavier till the end of the drama, but I am not degrading this drama because it was meaningful and did remind me things about life which I had explained above.
And would I recommend this drama? Yes, if you are looking for a Korean family drama with many tearjerker-scenes and want to be reminded and be motivated to live more actively and meaningfully.
I know this is not something extraordinary, but it touched me when I was watching this scene. This was after her husband realized that Cha Yu Ri had been watching him for the past 5 years when she was a ghost. The conversation went like this:
Husband: “Weren’t you hurt when you saw me living a happy life without you? Were you okay with that?”
Cha Yu Ri: “It hurt. ….. A lot. …….Someone else was seeing the smile you used to make only at me. And someone else was holding the hand that only I used to hold. And someone else was in the place I was supposed to be at. It hurt.”
Husband: “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Cha Yu Ri: “But it hurt millions of times more seeing you cry alone. …….You woke up alone, watched Seo-woo alone and ate alone in an empty house without me. …. And you cried alone. …..That hurt so much that I didn’t even get jealous of the other person. It broke my heart but strangely I felt so relieved.
Husband: “I should’ve endured all that. It was something I should’ve endured even if it was agonizing. “
Cha Yu Ri: “You felt enough pain, you had endured enough. …… I only wanted one thing back then. ……I wanted you to put me behind you and go on with your life.”
Some afterthoughts:
1. The young 6-year-old Seo-woo, the daughter of Cha Yu Ri, is actually a boy! I was really taken aback and thought there was some mistake when I found out about this because he really looked like a girl in the drama with his two ponytails and pink clothing, but kudos to him, his acting was good and if the director had intended him to act like a cute little girl in this drama, it had been convincingly portrayed.
2. I have always felt so, but I am writing this out for the first time…The Koreans are indeed a community of people with strong emotions.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Plothole on plothole.
As someone said in another review "Unfortunately, in retrospect, the drama overexploited the main story and, in the end, it felt like nothing really happened, just the main plot and nothing else". The main plot being "Yu Ri is back to life."There's SO many plotholes and fillers.
- Having side ghost story is not uncommun but it's the first time I found them rushed and just there for the sake of being there. I found Kang Bin's story incomplete, same for Mi Dong who could have been an amazing side story imo ?
- I don't understand why they insisted on the whole ghost's favors thing for AGES when it was forgotten just after ?
- Guk Bong ...was there. But for what ? Nothing, he added nothing and he disappeared as fast as he appeared
- Min Jeong's character was so..empty ? It was so weird. She became emotionally capable in the last four episodes. + What is she doing all day ? She has a maid, a pick up helper, yet doesn't work nor go out. She's super "busy" for someone who has nothing to do except maybe go at the lawyer's office in the first episodes ? SeoWoo was ALWAYS alone. How come it took three nosy mothers for her to understand that SeoWoo wasn't talking ?
- The 4 last eps were crying. "I'm sorry" "No don't be" "There's nothing to do" on repeat.
I never saw a drama with SO much potential getting ruined like this. It's really like they focused on YuRi back to life and like nothing else mattered anymore. They tried adding bonus plot point but forgot about them seconds after.
I was really disappointed tbh. The actors are really a gem, but it's so so poorly written. (+ I don't even remember any of the OST)
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
The first time I watched this, I adored it... But I found issues with it after a few years...
The first time I watched this show I found it to be beautiful. The meaning of it, which it is. The love a mother has for her child, sacrificial and enduring... There was other symbolism and meaning I found to be beautiful, and actually most likely had saved my life. The story of the woman who committed suicide, and the moment she had she wished she had not. She watched her mother suffer for years because of a selfish and implusive decision. I have read countless stories of suicide survivors who right before they almost died, had regreted their decison. This was the case for her, but instead she was not able to come back. All of the characters realized the sacredness of life in the end. Like how Yuri protected her child from death, the son watched his family die before his eyes, the little boy who searched for his mother contiously after death, the man whose life was taken by a hand he thought he could trust, and the one who had purpously ended her life... Their deaths are all different, accident, suicide, and murder. Their are three pivotal moments in our lives, our conception, our birth, and our death. Not only to us, but also to those whose cherish us. Yuri had found the meaning in all three events. The show stands for her child saying hello and goodbye, but also Yuri saying hello and goodbye to her mother. The two sentiments in the show, Petals Fall, But the Flower Endures, and that not everything will be okay in life. In our afterlife it is, but in our life suffering persits and unexplainable events occur. These are profound, but throughout the years I found qualms I had with the show. I only watched it once, and I will never rewatch it ever again. First, it told of a story that love does not last forever. I think it is easy to believe so, because in the end their is death, and sometimes we outlive the people whom we cherish. But I don't believe that because we cannot phsyically love them in this life, we can't love them as ghosts or the memories of them. I watched a story, a near death experience, of a woman who had learned through her experience that her son would die in the coming years. The day had eventually come, and his death she had a premonition of. Her closing statement was extremely beautiful of her testament of love for her son, that her love became stronger for him because she was not able to be with him in this life. But she had hope for the next. Even though I took that belief with me when I had watched this show, I knew that in reality some stories are different. The most upsetting part about it, was that Kang-Hwa did not speak of Yuri after her death, their daughter did not know who her biological mother was (not that the viewer knows of until the end). I believe that their wedding picture stays hidden from view, and Yuri's family has yet to come around. To me, I found this extremely depressing. Although I cannot blame any man who has lost his wife, I think Kang-Hwa should have spoke of Yuri. Told of his devotion and love for her. But that wasn't the case. He kept it hidden in a box years after her death. Maybe, maybe that was how strong his love for her was. I am not sure. There was other qualms I had with the show, but I can't remember all of them, because it has been three years since I watched this. In the end, I was barely able to watch it anymore. I just couldn't phsyically watch it anymore. When Yuri tells her daughter that they will meet in her next life, and the last moment, when Yuri says goodbye to herself and walks away and disappears from this world. At that moment, I just could not stomach it. To me, there wasn't hope in the end. I don't know why, that was just how I saw it. I couldn't watch a show like this again, every day I question if I really wanted to watch it or not. It made me depressed for weeks after I finished it. Besides these, my biggest problem wasn't these, but actually that they casted a little boy to play the part of a little girl. Their claim was that they couldn't find an actress for the part, and that he had no problem wearing female clothing. They got a lot of controversy over it, and I didn't like it either. They should have changed the character to be a boy, but instead they found a little boy to play a little girl. That I truly have problems with, and I won't rewatch the show because of this reason.Was this review helpful to you?
Emotional but has some funny elements
Very nice drama ,emotional and amazing acting specially the lead actor. He is so brilliantly did acting ,I was totally attached with the character . Somehow he has been started his life somehow he is starting to move on but his past came in front of his eyes and slowly slowly he came to know so much that he felt sorry a lot and secondly after getting g second chance and he came to know it just for 49 days that was deviated for him but again he is ready to face reality.It is sad as well as happy ending.
Too good drama . I like male lead actor friend also because of him there is some funny scene as well as mae lead also did some funny scene .
Balanced drama.
Was this review helpful to you?
