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More Than Friends korean drama review
Completed
More Than Friends
1 people found this review helpful
by ltspada
Mar 9, 2022
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 6.5
Rewatch Value 3.5
This review may contain spoilers

How not to act in a relationship - a study in human psychology?

6/10 is my rating. This is a 2020 South Korean Romantic Drama with 16, 70 minute episodes.

Kyung Woo Yeon (Shin Ye-eun) met Lee Soo (Ong Seo-wul) as a high school student who was smart but bullied by the other kids because, although she was a smart kid, she came from modest means and was kind and liked to avoid conflict. Lee Soo (Ong Seong-wu) was wealthy and popular and admired Woo Yeon for her kind nature. He became her defender and friend. It was not long before Woo Yeon's 18 year old heart fell for Lee Soo and she was crushed when she confessed her feelings and he friend zoned her.

Lee Soo leaves to study abroad and Woo Yeon misses him and spends a lot of time drunk calling his old number and pouring her heart out to the open line. Ten years passes and Woo Yeon still has not gotten over Lee Soo. After working a series of part-time jobs, Woo Yeon is finally pursing her dream of being a calligrapher/writer. Lee Soo is now a highly sought after professional photographer. The two continue to be drawn to each other despite Lee Soo's insistence that he only loves her as a friend and Woo Yeon's profession that she still likes Lee Soo and is unwilling to be any less than a couple.

Woo Yeon and Lee Soo are now finally reunited in Seoul and wind up working on a project together. Woo Yeon, tired of being rejected, has locked her feelings up just as Lee Soo is beginning to acknowledge he likes Woo Yeon as more than a friend and perhaps always has. But Lee Soo is not the only man in Woo Yeon's life who sees her for the wonderful person she is. Have the two something more than friends missed their timing and hurt each other too much to ever have more or have they finally matured enough to be honest with their hearts?

This was a drama series with so much potential. The trope of starting as friends and becoming more is a rarer in k-dramas and those of us who like it tend to seek it out. I was excited by the title and premise of this and figured it would be a heartwarming account of people who had been friends for a long time then discovered their feelings were more. This was a train wreck of women who were just mean to the men in their lives. Seriously it was hard to watch the men be emotionally abused. Rather than run to them there were actually points where there was a break up and I was like good now get away from that toxic woman. Ye-eun confessed to Lee Soo multiple time and he rejected her kindly I thought. Basically told her he liked her but just as a friend. But that is where the title is confusing she never wanted to be just his friend. She kept telling him leave and get away. To me if you really care about someone you would be in their life however you could be but she just didn't want anything to do with him if she couldn't be his girlfriend. Then she would cry, miserably, and everyone would feel sorry for her. Okay I get that, it is heart breaking when someone doesn't like you back. But what got me was, later on, everyone blamed him for not accepting her feelings and making her cry. I thought that was completely unreasonable and ridiculous. No one is responsible for anyone else's feelings. You cannot make yourself love someone just because they want you to. I thought he let her down gently. The things is she never made the effort to know what was going on in his life and why he might have responded as he did. He was so nice to her and really made her school years livable by heading off bullies. Then she has a whole string of men she dates and breaks their hearts because she is unable to return their love because she is supposedly so "damaged" by Lee Soo's rejection. She seemed cold and heartless to me. Her mother even commented about her dating and hurting other people's precious sons. She has a longer term relationship with the CEO and he seems like the perfect guy but she strings him along while she is trying to decide if she still has feelings for Lee Soo. So she basically has two guys fighting over her and both feeling inadequate and heartbroken. I thought the CEO went a little over the top in his pursuit of her after she broke up with him but I can understand why he was confused about her absolute coldness. I really felt like she did not deserve any of the men in her life and was emotionally abusive to them. There were two side couples which started with really heartwarming relationships but then devolved into the same type of emotionally abusive relationship as the main character. All three women were horrible in my opinion and emotionally abusive to the men in their lives. You don't make a person walk on egg shells for fear of making you withdraw your affection - that is exactly what the three did. If the men did not do exactly as they wanted, and evens sometimes when they did, they would withdraw from them. I was really frustrated with the main character when he had an opportunity to travel the world and photograph for an airline and was originally not going to take it because she did not want him to leave. She comes around and is going to travel with him. But then she gets an opportunity in South Korea and he encourages her to take it. They agree that they should not give up their dreams or they will resent it later and decide to have a long distance relationship until he finishes. He rushes through finishing so he can get back to her and, as a result, cannot meet her fantasy of multiple calls a day. So, she breaks up with him. That made no sense to me and seemed entirely selfish on her part. Then he gets back and she is once again stringing the poor CEO along and pitting the two men against each other. She is like the ice queen. If you want to see episodes of men being emotionally abused by the women in their lives then you might be interested in this. Those that hate men and think they should be demasculinized may find this okay. I could not recommend this to anyone unless they are wondering how not to act toward someone you profess to love.
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