Our Beloved Summer (2021)

Our year hasn’t ended yet.

Originally written on Apr 02, 2022

K-Dramas are so dumb, in a good way. Our Beloved Summer is the perfect example. After the first episode, it is incredibly predictable how the story is going to develop. You know right away that they’re getting back together. It’s obvious some people are going to try to come between them. Things from their past are coming back to haunt them. It’s all so... by the numbers. Yet, it’s still so much fun to watch and find out if you’re right or if the show has some surprises in store for you.

Our Beloved Summer is such a good comfort watch. Its premise is very interesting, following two people, Kook Yeon-su and Choi Ung, who met each other while shooting a documentary many years ago. Things turned sour, which led to them losing touch. It’s a lot of fun to see how they change throughout the years, growing up while growing more and more apart. When faith leads them to each other again, their adventure starts anew, and it’s very sweet to see them try to figure out their past and try to salvage whatever’s left of their broken relationship.

As with a lot of K-Dramas, Our Beloved Summer is a couple of episodes too long. When it seems that the story is nearing its end, a wrench gets thrown into the works to stretch it out considerably. This should’ve been 12, maybe 13 episodes tops, which would’ve helped a lot with the pacing. Yet, by the time the credits rolled, I wish I could spend more time with these people, because they are just so much fun.

"Everyone has unforgettable memories from a certain year of their life. They cherish those memories so much that it lasts a lifetime. And our year hasn’t ended yet."

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good to see a couple of enemies became a couple with full of romance

drama ini tuh punya kelebihan yang ga dipunyain romcom drama lainnya, dari segi musik, cinematography nya, cerita, alur, cast, bahkan lebih dari kata bagusssss........... pokonya kalian pecinta rom-com, harus nonton ini karena mereka segemoy ituuuu...palagi kalau kalian udah nonton the witch part I atau habis nonton drama ini baru nonton film itu bakal ngerti dahhh, pokonya choi wooshik sama kim dami chemistrynya sangat diancungi jempol ... trus pokonya seru banget, aku udah rewatch dari satu tahun lalu ga selesai selesai, rewatch terussss saking serunya, ini tuh salah satu drama yang buat diriku hampa setelah nonton episode terakhir ... pokonya harus nonton iniii

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Food for the heart, food for the soul

"Our Beloved Summer" is HOW a slow-burn, romance drama should be done. It sunk its emotional hooks into my heart and never let go – and remains my bar for a good drama of this genre. The writing is thoughtful and witty, the acting is nuanced, the language of love is conveyed through beautiful cinematography instead of endless prattle, but the best part is what's under the hood.

Using the reality documentary as a narrative tool, the story of Choi Woong (Choi Woo-shik) and Kook Yeon-soo (Kim Da-mi) comes to life through this unique lens. It grounds this love story squarely in the age of digital and connects it to a young demographic.

It's roughly divided into 3 phases: the puppy love of teenagers, the tumultuous and tortured relationship of twenty somethings, and the hard realities of professionals dealing with career and adulthood. But there's another invisible division to the storyline: on-cam and off-cam. The docu cam follows them all throughout capturing the milestones of the couples' lives. Off cam, the storytelling becomes more eloquent, telling us what REALLY happens BTS.

In an age when most K-dramas are mindless time-sucks, "Our Beloved Summer" is a worthy investment in time. It offers so much more to deconstruct than just relationships. its about growing up. It's about the dumb luck of success and failure that happens despite your laziness or hard work. It's about vulnerability and art. It's about the futility of ambition in a career-obsessed society. It's about how loving adopted parents trump a biological father who chickens out.

The documentary narrative tool also gives viewers the BEST ending I've seen in a while in a K-drama with that garden scene where it's stated that they've gotten married (thank God no marching-down-the-aisle scene) and it's time for the next installment of their reality show.

Here are the other things I love about this series:

• Best acting by far by a male and female lead – and at this point, I've watched a lot. Choi Woo-shik IS Woong – his subtle acting makes a loser character lovable and multi-dimensional, while Kim Da-mi pulls off the hard feat of making an obnoxious character like Yeon-soo relatable, even sympathy-worthy. In the end, I understood her, even though she is the most flawed character in the series and the main source of heartache. I am also surprised that I didn’t hate the dominant-woman/weak-man dynamic of the lovers – while I love strong women leads, I hate irrational ones – and Yeon-soo can be irrational. And until Woong, I have never empathized with a weak, spoiled male lead, let alone stay with him on his journey to finding his passion. I guess that’s a testament to Woo-shik’s superb acting.

• In terms of pacing, I wasn’t bored by this – the dialogue was mostly fast-paced with only a few lags. But it still cements my view that romances, no matter how well directed or scripted, are stretched at 16 episodes at 1 hour each. Even this gem of a script lags a little in the middle like that forced vacation in a secluded mountain resort. Still, that episode redeemed itself with the bicycle scene and that heart-wrenching kiss-in-the-rain hilltop shot that is simply gorgeous.

• The love triangle is so well-crafted and so well-interwoven my heart bleeds for the other Woong (Kim Ji-woong). Despite the fact that he’s hot and the physical opposite of Woo-shik's character, it’s clear why the female lead fell for Choi Woong – he oozes brooding charm and vulnerability, and complements her like water to fire.

• The sub-plot of Ji-woong’s mom is the only unsatisfactory storyline for me, but that’s a minor complaint.

• Kudos to the scriptwriter that the subplot of the second love triangle featuring the girl idol doesn't deteriorate into hackneyed. (Her story even manages to make a statement on cancel culture.) Even the "confrontation" scenes between this character and the female lead are sad but not sappy and circumvents the cliche of fighting females.

• I am thankful the showrunners did not belabor the LDR – no tired drama there, just mature people dealing with distance.

• The adoptive parents and grandmother are so well-scripted and cast: folksy-smart, angelic, loud or sharp-tongued at times, and never one-dimensional the way peripheral characters go. Even the subplot of Woong's biological father hanging around him skirted the usual melodrama.

Over-all, "Our Beloved Summer" is epic in its ambition to tell an intelligent urban love story through nearly three decades. And it succeeds in delivering the swoons (because in the end that's why we watch romances, right?) without the guilt of saccharine trope.

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A gentle touch to your heart

I strongly believe that showing true emotions should be the main concern of any love story. Can you tell if someone is in love if they don't say a word? If they just stood there looking at each other, would you tell if that was true love?

Luckily, this was the main goal of this show: to bring you into the perspective of someone who is in love with their complete opposite. As cliché as it may sound, opposites do attract each other in most cases.

Of course, there were things that could have been fixed in order to make this truly masterful piece of a love story. For example, the secondary characters are not really relatable, and sometimes you may even feel bored by them. But when the two main characters were put together in the same frame, you immediately forgot about everything else, and you were driven into a wonderful place, and you wish with all your heart that this kind of love happened to you at least once.

The soundtrack of this show is now in my top 10. So I can't really praise it that much without looking like a fan, but I do have to say that it was perfectly matched with some scenes, which resulted in them being engraved in my memory.

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I know I am minority here but I found it boring and filled with unlikable characters

6/10 is my rating. This is a 2021/2022 South Korean coming of age/time gap romance with 16, 60-70 minute episodes.

First I provide a unique synopsis then review.

Synopsis

Choi Ung (Choi Woo-shik) and Kook Yeon-soo (Kim Da-mi) first got to know each other while participating in a docu series in high school featuring the best student and the student with the lowest grades academically. Not hard to imagine they did not get along well which made for some very comedic moments in the series. A decade later we find out they dated for years but suddenly broke up in such a hurtful way they vowed to never see each other again. But one of their close friends becomes a producer with the production company that is still getting traction out of their original docu series. Looking for hit content, the company pressures Kim Ji-ung (Kim Sung-cheol) their producer friend, to get the two back together for a sequel to the hit docu series. But Ji-ung secretly had feelings for Yeon-soo since high school and is reluctant to draw the two back together. Still, he caves to the oressure from his work and talks his friends into participating in the project. Things have changed though as Choi Ung is now a mysterious and successful artist who has fans. Fans such as NJ (Rohn Jeong-eui) a top idol who likes the art “Go-oh” (a secret pseudonym Choi Ung does his art under) creates but also has a crush on the artist. Now that things have changed, and time has passed, will this new project bring the two ex-lovers back together or drive them further apart?


Review

If you like straight drama and slice of life, that doesn’t depict the sunny side to life, you might like this. In fact, I think most of the people that rate this very high would fall into that category. In the other reviews, I read before watching this, I saw a lot of it’s a lot like reality. The characters were well developed. The interactions were real and raw. For me I am not a fan of just straight drama, I like a little bit of comedy at least sprinkled in or at least a plot that has some levity. In general, I did not enjoy this drama. I yeah.found it boring through a lot of it and repetitive, and I wouldn’t rewatch it. None of the characters were compelling because I did not like them except for the actress. It was emotionally heavy and I felt like I was watching people be emotionally abused.

Spoilers

The number one thing I did not like about the show was Yeonsoo was just completely unlikable. The way she treated Choi Ung was emotionally abusive. First there is the Cherrie blossom thing where he wanted to go see the cherry blossoms, but she said she couldn’t find the time. But then she obviously did find the time because she had a pocket full of cherry blossoms and sprinkled it over him like there there’s your cherry blossoms. It was such a demeaning way to show somebody something they had wanted to see, but they tried to spin it like it was a romantic thing. That was a jerk move. Later they have a date day, which I had the sense they hadn’t had in a long time, and she let him think she was going to break up with him the entire day. Yeonsoo led him here and there, never asked him what he wanted to do, just kind of pushed him along. He wasn’t enjoying it because he thought it was a break up date. Then at the end of the day they have this emotional scene where she basically ridicules him for thinking they were gonna break up and then tells him out of the blue that she is in love with him. The level of emotional manipulation in that scene was hard to watch. It was cruel. But she was not the only one in the family that was an emotional abuser. Later in the series, the grandmother, Kang Ja Kyung (Cha Mi Kyung) tells him not to blame Yeonsoo because she was poor, and the grandmother taught her to be the way that she was. Somehow this convinces him that Yeonsoo’s abusive behavior is okay and he not inly accepts her back but practically begs her and says things were his fault. I found that whole thing entirely disturbing from a psychological perspective. Just because you were poor and raised to be mean as a defense mechanism does not mean being an emotional abuser is acceptable. She would even badmouth him to other people when he wasn’t around, never supported him in his art endeavors and always held the thread of break up over his head. That is living on egg shells and it is a typical pattern for a narcissistic emotional abuser. So I never wanted to see them get together. In fact I was happy any time he stood up for himself and pushed her away.

in the beginning, I liked the grandmothe. She had raised her granddaughter and worked so hard to do so and the relationship between her and Yeonsoo started out as something very heartwarming. But later in the series it’s revealed she’s not very nice to a close friend she has to the point where Yeonsoo mentions it and says she should apologize and be nicer But what really made me not like the grandmother when when she was so mean to Choi Ung about making Yeonsoo cry. She did that without knowing any details just assumed he was the villian in the situation even knowing and acknowledginhpg how her granddaughter was. Then she gives him that whole story about Yeonsoo and how he should just understand her because she raised her that way. What?

I did not like Choi Ung’s producer friend, Kim Ji Ung (Kim Sung-Cheol) as he lusted after his friend’s girlfriend not based on some deep connection but simply because he found her pretty. He also took a lot of the very limited affection of Choi Ung’s parents knowingly and yet seemed like he thought he was doing Choi Ung a favor. I wanted him and Yeonsoo to wind up together as they were both sort of crap people.

His manager/friend Gu Eun-ho (Ahn Dong-goo) was a horrible manager. He is obsessed with NJ (Roh Jeong-eui) such that he interferes with Choi Ung and NJ getting together. I wanted to see Choin Ung date NJ. She probably would not have been a long term girlfriend but she would have shown him other possibilities. She thought he was great, loved his art and was always nice to him. Rather than tearing him down she would have bolstered his career.

His parents were confusing. His mother, Lee Yeon-ok (Seo Jeong-yeon) did have the one time she took care of him when he was sick that showed some close emotional ties but that was it. His mother and his father, Choi Ho (Park Won-sang) mostly seemed to like and spend more time with Choi Ung’s friends than with him. They even left his art show early which was weird.

I disliked most of the characters so much I did not care aboit them or anything they were doing. I only liked sweet, talented, sensitive amd emotionally abused Choi Ung and NJ whi was like a breath of fresh air. NJ was the only descent person in Choi Ung’s life and he oassed her over for Yeonsoo. I did not find it credible that not one but two men would be completely onsessed with Yeonsoo.

#OurBelovedSummer #ChoiWooShik. #KimDaMi

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Incredibly Well Done - But Not a RomCom

I don’t have a lot to add beyond what other reviewers have already said. But I’d thought I’d make a few points to perhaps make it easier for folks to make a decision to watch, or not.

This series is not a RomCom. While there are comedic moments, most of the time this is more of a drama. There is lot of sadness as things don’t go well for the main couple. The picture on the movie's page makes the couple look super happy. This was not the case for many episodes.

Having said that, there are quite a few positives aspects to the story. For example the ML’s family is a very positive storyline (with some backstory, or course).

The storyline is intricate and well crafted. The different threads weave seamlessly together and come together well at the end.

The acting is really good. I think this was a tough assignment for the actors, but they pulled it off so well. I’d also call out the casting as superb.

I think I could point out a few things I would like to have seen come together a bit differently, but that does not at affect my recommendation. Despite the fact I thought this might not be my cup of tea:

If you OK with a story that some might consider a bit “slow” and that is not very happy a lot of time, then by all means watch this series. It is well done, well acted, and quite touching. I give it a 9/10 rating.

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Continuación del webtoon

Cuando terminé de leer el webtoon de Aquel año nuestro quise ver de inmediato el k-krama. Me sorprendió gratamente que el mismo fuera una continuación de la historia del webtoon diez años después de donde nos quedamos.
Eso hizo que cada capítulo no supiera de qué iba a tratar, en el dorama nos enteramos que ellos cortan, pero vamos a ver si pueden darle una segunda oportunidad al amor ahora que son mas maduros y aprendieron mucho de sus vidas. Me encantó la historia, la música (aunque a veces demasiado repetitiva) y la manera en que profundizaron en los personajes cosa que el webtoon no hubo tanto detalle. Aquí sí, hace que los entiendas mejor, por qué actuaron y actúan de tal modo.
Muy bello, lo recomiendo 💜.

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