2026

The first ~20 episodes were a bit of a slog to get through, and it doesn't really hit its stride until about halfway through.

As always, the screenwriter has an exceptional way of exploring themes I'd never thought of before, I really loved where they went with the grandma character, showing that they also deserve to be given the chance to still try something new, whether that be friendships or something they missed out in their youth due to the insurmountable pressure to raise and family and be a housewife/caretaker for your husband. I found her renewed relationship with her in-law to be especially adorable.

I also liked the overall theme of mortality. You really never know who is going to leave and at what moment. "The order of our births may be already determined (aka age hierarchy), but not the order of our deaths," as the father said pretty early on.

Now, some things that left me wanting more. The theme of starting over is heavy in this drama. But... all the storylines kinda led to the same place by just... working hard? While satisfying in its own way, it just wasn't presented very realistically, and I wish we had a character somewhere in the storyline whose ambitions just didn't work out -- maybe they had to pivot, had a hard time accepting that, but in the end had to come to terms with the harsh reality.

I also wasn't totally blown away by the characters and how they developed, even the "rotten" ones. I like that there is more nuance in how the screenwriter is presenting such personalities, as it is quite often true that we are merely products of our upbringings, but at some point it just felt like the same storyline rehashed over and over again to no avail. No one changed or learned anything, and one character in particular frustratingly just kept getting sent back to start with their feet running in exactly the same direction.