TL;DR? Irritating and a tad too drawn out, there is still a little gem of a story here that might be worth your time. If you have the patience!
I don't really do dramas where lead characters find out they're terminally ill. That just sounds like a recipe for heartbreak, and I try to avoid that when at all possible. In fact, I think the only other drama that I have intentionally watched with a similar story line would be Scent of a Woman, and that drama handled the sad material way better than this drama did.
Sa Rang, the daughter of the terminally ill woman in this drama was absolutely freaking amazing. In fact, I'd hazard to say that she is one of the best child actors that I have ever seen. Her character was so strong and yet impossibly adorable. If I could guarantee that I could have a kid like her, I might consider procreating. Both of the main leads in this drama started out incredibly annoying, Mi Rae moreso than Yeol. They were both childish and insufferable at times, and it took quite a few episodes for either of them to grow on you. But once you get a couple of episodes in and Mi Rae stops being so overbearing, they both really start to grow and shine.
However, no matter how much Mi Rae grows on you, she is still an odd combination of awful mother and really good mother. I mean, it's obvious that Sa Rang is loved, and maybe this is a cultural difference, but they just let her wander wherever she wants to go. She is ten years old and is left to her own devices for a vast majority of the time.
Story line wise, this show dragged a lot. I think it could have seriously benefited from a 10 or 12 episode length rather than 16 episodes. They would set up these really great plot points, and then utterly destroy them by the end of the episode. And all of the back and forth was just infuriating. Make up your mind already, guys!
Did you ever watch that episode of Friends, the one where Phoebe finds out that Monica and Chandler are dating? She wants to get back at them for not telling her and the other sooner, so she and Rachel devise a plan to prank them. As the episode goes along, each party finds out what the other is planning, and it leads to the hilarious "They don't know we know they know we know." It was hilarious for a 20 minute episode, all of the crazy shenanigans. Now, take that same idea, throw in some cancer and instead of 20 minutes, turn it into a 4 episode arc and you have the later episodes of this show. It got beyond tedious.
Another thing that bugged me about this show was the "villain", Han Yeol's boss. He was evil purely for the sake of being evil. And I'm exaggerating with the use of evil there. He was a bad guy, and an absolute jerk, though as villains go he is probably fairly tame. His characterization made no sense, his hatred of Yeol is never satisfactorily explained. It's like the writers knew they wanted to give us an obstacle, but didn't really want to put effort into that character. I like my villains to be a little more nuanced, to give us a little more of a reason for their sudden redemption.
And while all of those feel like legitimate reasons to maybe take a pass on this show, I still think that it is worth the effort! The relationship between Mi Rae, Yeol and Sa Rang, while clunky at times, was an absolute delight to watch. Yeol's smile just absolutely melted your heart, and once you start this drama, you find yourself hard pressed to turn it off and not find out what happens with Mi Rae in the end.
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