caseit
This review may contain spoilers
Too slow, too fast, or just right?
I both loved and loathed this show while watching it. As many others have said, it is a slow-paced, slice-of-life drama. The atmosphere of this show is really wonderful, with a great OST, lots of slow, lingering shots of nature and montages of people happily going about their daily lives in a small, country town. It is genuinely pleasant to watch, and I loved that aspect of the show.
The atmosphere fits in well with the slowness of the plot. The female lead is returning to her hometown, and you slowly get to know her and her troubled past in the first few episodes while you enjoy the atmosphere and get to know the area. It takes a while, but I did enjoy getting to know Mok Hae Won this way, with bits of her past interspersed with her present as she readjusts to country life. During this part of the show, the male lead is somewhat mysterious, with the viewer mostly learning about his feelings through his actions and the blog posts read at the end of each episode - you only know what Mok Hae Won knows.
This changes around the mid-point of the show, where they shift to show us more about Lim Eun Seob. This is one of the parts I didn't love - the show gave us a lot of time with Hae Won and her feelings, but it felt like they rushed Eun Seob's history in some ways. We solved most of his mysteries in the course of two or three episodes, between Hae Won's confession and the couple officially getting together. Honestly, this was the first drama where I was surprised when the couple kissed - I didn't feel like the show had adequately shown us Eun Seob's feelings and explained his change of heart after he initially rejects Hae Won.
I generally enjoyed most of the episodes from 10 - 14, as the leads were mostly happy together and we got to know the side characters. There were one or two episodes in this part which felt pointless upon reflection, but overall not terrible. Hwi and Jang Woo are the best.
Things went south again for the ending. The last two episodes just weren't very good, plot-wise, at least for the leads. The side plot characters felt like they all had their appropriately wrapped up endings, but I did not get the same feeling from the main couple. Their central "issue" as a couple was around their future - would Mok Hae Won stay or go back to Seoul? Would Eun Seob mysteriously run off again? Especially with Jang Woo's speech about finding happiness in simplicity and the overall atmosphere of the show, it felt like the point of the show was for the couple (esp Hae Won) to officially come to the resolution that their simple happiness was with each other in this small town. In the end, I didn't quite get the sense that they had done that. I'm pretty sure that's what happened, but it felt rushed. For once, I wished that the show had slowed down to show me a bit more. Somehow, in an incredibly slow show, the writers didn't have time to fully resolve the story of the main characters.
Basically - sometimes this show was too fast, sometimes it was too slow, and occasionally it was just right.
The atmosphere fits in well with the slowness of the plot. The female lead is returning to her hometown, and you slowly get to know her and her troubled past in the first few episodes while you enjoy the atmosphere and get to know the area. It takes a while, but I did enjoy getting to know Mok Hae Won this way, with bits of her past interspersed with her present as she readjusts to country life. During this part of the show, the male lead is somewhat mysterious, with the viewer mostly learning about his feelings through his actions and the blog posts read at the end of each episode - you only know what Mok Hae Won knows.
This changes around the mid-point of the show, where they shift to show us more about Lim Eun Seob. This is one of the parts I didn't love - the show gave us a lot of time with Hae Won and her feelings, but it felt like they rushed Eun Seob's history in some ways. We solved most of his mysteries in the course of two or three episodes, between Hae Won's confession and the couple officially getting together. Honestly, this was the first drama where I was surprised when the couple kissed - I didn't feel like the show had adequately shown us Eun Seob's feelings and explained his change of heart after he initially rejects Hae Won.
I generally enjoyed most of the episodes from 10 - 14, as the leads were mostly happy together and we got to know the side characters. There were one or two episodes in this part which felt pointless upon reflection, but overall not terrible. Hwi and Jang Woo are the best.
Things went south again for the ending. The last two episodes just weren't very good, plot-wise, at least for the leads. The side plot characters felt like they all had their appropriately wrapped up endings, but I did not get the same feeling from the main couple. Their central "issue" as a couple was around their future - would Mok Hae Won stay or go back to Seoul? Would Eun Seob mysteriously run off again? Especially with Jang Woo's speech about finding happiness in simplicity and the overall atmosphere of the show, it felt like the point of the show was for the couple (esp Hae Won) to officially come to the resolution that their simple happiness was with each other in this small town. In the end, I didn't quite get the sense that they had done that. I'm pretty sure that's what happened, but it felt rushed. For once, I wished that the show had slowed down to show me a bit more. Somehow, in an incredibly slow show, the writers didn't have time to fully resolve the story of the main characters.
Basically - sometimes this show was too fast, sometimes it was too slow, and occasionally it was just right.
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