Charming92
Greece
This review may contain spoilers
One Warm Word falls into the relationship/marriage drama category of the kdrama genre. It depicts the life of marriage, its ups and downs, its problems and ways to get through them. It was a rather heavy drama, difficult to digest, certainly not for everyone, but quite good at what it wanted to present.
STORY
I will start by introducing the ideas and meanings of the drama. It doesn't talk about the affair at all. We vaguely get the reasons behind the affair. The drama basically wants to present what happens AFTER an affair. What happens to the person who commited the adultery, him/her and their family, as well as on a more social level. The description made me think that we get to see how it started and why it started, like other dramas with similar premises but this isn't the case here. The show wanted to express the repercussion of such an act. On a second level the drama wants to pass the message of 'Work on your marriage' No matter how broken it may be, and seemingly dead, it might not be, don't throw your marriage away because something happened (it doesn't have to be cheating), work on it with your spouse, divorce isn't always the answer.
The drama is character driven, nothing happens here in terms of backstory and secrets ect, just 2 couples who are working things out in different (or quite similar) ways. I can understand people calling it boring, and i won't argue with that, the show does get dragged quite a lot, especially in the middle where it felt like it was going around in circles. I do believe that in a marriage after adultery people don't just *choose* what's best, so the writters took a more realistic turn here and i appreciated that, but that didn't stop the show from becoming boring, and i've seen other dramas with similar premises that didn't get boring.
The overall experience of the drama was great, but i did have 3 quite sizeable problems with it:
1. Exaggerated situations. I will not elaborate on this because i will have to post spoilers. It is basically that in order to establish how bad adultery is the situations they introduced felt far fetched. I kind of felt like when i was a kid and my parents were scolding me like: 'This is what will happen to you when you cheat, so don't do it, ever'. Some of the situations were shocking and gave me chills, and sometimes they felt exaggerated and laughable.
2. Unreasonable character choices. This was my biggest problem and the main reason the show got an 8 and not some higher grade. I basically had problems with Ji Jin Hee's and Kim Jee Soo's characters. Their choices were unreasonable just to please the idea of 'work on your marriage', what they chose to do, felt forced and wrong in my opinion, and that made a question pop into my mind: 'Should we always work on something that is dead? Is it always worth it'
3. Overall the drama doesn't depict the concept of infidelity right in my opinion. It rather felt like a one-sided presentation of why you shouldn't do it. I know they wanted to focus on the repercussions of this, but how can we evaluate what happened if we don't know the whole story. We only vaguely were told the reasons of the adulterers, and they only had 1(!) scene together. This is one sided imo, to force us not ship them at all. I am not dead set on shipping adulterous couples, but i want to see the whole story, i want to see what each couple has to offer and then choose on my own who should be with who and for which reasons.
CHARACTERS
Spoilers ahead, feel free to skip this part if you haven't watched.
Yoo Jae Hak. I can understand people hating him, he deserved to be hated, but i didn't hate him for the apparent reasons. Yes he cheated and he is guilty, but i didn't hate him for this. I didn't hate him when he had literally no remorse over what his did (this rather shocked me), i didn't even hate him when he tried to turn all the situation around and blame his wife. And no, i didn't even hate him when he stated stupid excuses for having the affair. He basically said he was unhappy, since everything that he ever did weren't his own choices, but things dictated by others, his parents ect. Yes, i understand where you are coming from, but noone forced you to marry, you should have standed up in front of your parents and spoke your mind. I don't know what the appropriate thing to do is in Korea, but saying no to marrying someone you don't want isn't a trangression to any set of unwritten good manners rules, right? What actually made me hate his guts was the fact that he clinged to a loveless marriage. And hence what i said about unreasonable character decisions before. What was that? You never loved your wife, you loved the fact that she gave you 2 sons, you loved the fact that she was there, and you loved your family, NOT HER! You said you were unhappy and you did say you LOVE the other woman. OK THEN, LIVE UP TO WHAT YOU SAID AND LEAVE!! Divorce man, divorce yes! Why cling to something that, it isn't only dead now, it was NEVER ALIVE TO BEGIN WITH! He apparently felt obligated to be with her because his dead daddy dictated him to. Unhappiness is right there saying hello to you....
Song Mi Kyung. Ew, what a character, i hated her even more. She was borderline crazy for me. It was so obvious she had the 'good person' syndrome. She entered a loveless marriage, she was in love, but never recieved love, she did everything by herself in this marriage, bring up children, pleasing a bitch of a mother-in-law, convincing herself that she is happy with the grains of love her husband gave to her. She was the best possible wife so he would have nothing to nag about, and then convinced herself, that she is happy. What is that? The fact that in this loveless marriage it took him 20 years to cheat once, is unrealistic to begin with! Consider yourself lucky. She argued that she loved him a lot, and that she can accept him the way he is. Ok then, he is a cheater, accept it! Oh no? You can't? Then leave! And there she was being a total bitch saying i hate you and i cannot forgive you, but i don't want a divorce either... o.O This made no sense to me. I couldn't root for them to be together, there was literally NOTHING there for them to work out. Their marriage was sickening and wrong, they had formed a very weird siblings-like relationship or a mother-son/father-daughter relationship and then had 2 kids...
Both characters were unreasonable. This was the worst and best part of the show at the same time. Life's goals must be happiness. What this show showed was that, if you are married you aren't allowed to divorce, stay there and if you love your spouse you get to have a second chance, if you don't you have to stay unhappy forever. This is wrong for me, the fact that the show had a happy ending was also unrealistic, especially in the case of these 2. At the same time, however, how can we expect 2 people who have never savoured happiness in their lives, who always were pressured into things, never loved, to suddenly man-up and leave a dysfunctional relationship? How can we expect 2 people in such an unreasonable situation to act... reasonable. The only way i can excuse and understand them is thinking this: Couples who are on the verge of a break down will clutch at straws, and those straws are each other, even if they aren't each other's best option, they are their only, and it is safer that starting over with someone new. Now this is REALITY! Reality isn't always reasonable, is it?
Kim Sung Woo. The most loveable character! The show forced you to root for him, and they put a great actor in this role, you just couldn't resist! The most important lesson about his character was that people deserve a second chance, the usual saying of 'once a cheater, always a cheater' isn't always true (oh, but it is!). I did feel his character was rather too good to be true, but he was the most reasonable one.
Na Eun Jin. I base what i said about exaggerated situations on her. Yes, she cheated and she is to blame, but omg, come on, 3 of the 4 leads here cheated, none of them got through all the hate and left-loathing and self-panishing she got through. I guess it is because she is a woman, this is a reality not only in korea but world-wide, but i guess it is even worse there. I didn't hate her, i couldn't to be honest, i was mostly angry at her for not knowing what she wanted for 20 episodes, and in the very end i do believe she settled for the most ensuring choice.
What i loved is that the drama told us that a broken marriage isn't a result of infidelity but infidelity is a result of a broken marriage. Still the first couple had NOTHING going on for them, while the 2nd one had communication problems, love was there, and if love is there everything can be overpassed! Love isn't something that can be pushed though, it has to come naturally. The overall compalsive meaning of 'stay inside your marriage no matter what' bugged me. Maybe i am a home wrecker i don't know, i just believe that happiness should be our goal, marrying someone doesn't mean they are the right choice 100%.
ACTING
I am not sure how i feel about the acting here. Special thanks to Ji Jin Hee and Lee Sang Woo for saving it to be honest.
Ji Jin Hee. His character was very straightforward and serious, he did feel like he had no feelings, but his character was like that. He had a few scenes that there were tips of his feelings being let out, and JJH express them perfectly, as a man who has learned to surpress his feelings deep inside and at the same time as a person who just hurts.
Kim Jee Soo. I am not sure lol. Some of her scenes were dramatic and sincere and amazing in every way, and some others were all over the place. What was that? Her character was borderline crazy so i blame that. I couldn't emotionally connect with her or understand her at all, and she was supposed to be the 'good' guy so for me she failed.
Lee Sang Woo. He was great, he was amazing, he was sensuous, he was almost flawless. I loved his character development, i loved his dramatic moments, they were sincere, he made me feel all his second thoughts, all his doubts and his dreams and his hopes. Wonderful actor.
Han Hye Jin. Nope, she didn't do what she was supposed to do. She was overacting most of the time, and in all those moments she fell short. I'm sorry girl, but no.
Special mention to Han Groo, she was great and especially to Park Seo Joon. This is comes from someone who doesn't really like him, he was very good here, another case of an actor's talent being wasted in fluffy rom-coms when he has so much more to offer than that!
REWATCH/RECOMMEND
I would recommend it only to people who enjoy character driven shows. People who want a backstory and rapid plot developments this is not for you!
I wouldn't rewatch this, firstly because it was difficult to watch and understand and secondly because it got dragged in the middle.
STORY
I will start by introducing the ideas and meanings of the drama. It doesn't talk about the affair at all. We vaguely get the reasons behind the affair. The drama basically wants to present what happens AFTER an affair. What happens to the person who commited the adultery, him/her and their family, as well as on a more social level. The description made me think that we get to see how it started and why it started, like other dramas with similar premises but this isn't the case here. The show wanted to express the repercussion of such an act. On a second level the drama wants to pass the message of 'Work on your marriage' No matter how broken it may be, and seemingly dead, it might not be, don't throw your marriage away because something happened (it doesn't have to be cheating), work on it with your spouse, divorce isn't always the answer.
The drama is character driven, nothing happens here in terms of backstory and secrets ect, just 2 couples who are working things out in different (or quite similar) ways. I can understand people calling it boring, and i won't argue with that, the show does get dragged quite a lot, especially in the middle where it felt like it was going around in circles. I do believe that in a marriage after adultery people don't just *choose* what's best, so the writters took a more realistic turn here and i appreciated that, but that didn't stop the show from becoming boring, and i've seen other dramas with similar premises that didn't get boring.
The overall experience of the drama was great, but i did have 3 quite sizeable problems with it:
1. Exaggerated situations. I will not elaborate on this because i will have to post spoilers. It is basically that in order to establish how bad adultery is the situations they introduced felt far fetched. I kind of felt like when i was a kid and my parents were scolding me like: 'This is what will happen to you when you cheat, so don't do it, ever'. Some of the situations were shocking and gave me chills, and sometimes they felt exaggerated and laughable.
2. Unreasonable character choices. This was my biggest problem and the main reason the show got an 8 and not some higher grade. I basically had problems with Ji Jin Hee's and Kim Jee Soo's characters. Their choices were unreasonable just to please the idea of 'work on your marriage', what they chose to do, felt forced and wrong in my opinion, and that made a question pop into my mind: 'Should we always work on something that is dead? Is it always worth it'
3. Overall the drama doesn't depict the concept of infidelity right in my opinion. It rather felt like a one-sided presentation of why you shouldn't do it. I know they wanted to focus on the repercussions of this, but how can we evaluate what happened if we don't know the whole story. We only vaguely were told the reasons of the adulterers, and they only had 1(!) scene together. This is one sided imo, to force us not ship them at all. I am not dead set on shipping adulterous couples, but i want to see the whole story, i want to see what each couple has to offer and then choose on my own who should be with who and for which reasons.
CHARACTERS
Spoilers ahead, feel free to skip this part if you haven't watched.
Yoo Jae Hak. I can understand people hating him, he deserved to be hated, but i didn't hate him for the apparent reasons. Yes he cheated and he is guilty, but i didn't hate him for this. I didn't hate him when he had literally no remorse over what his did (this rather shocked me), i didn't even hate him when he tried to turn all the situation around and blame his wife. And no, i didn't even hate him when he stated stupid excuses for having the affair. He basically said he was unhappy, since everything that he ever did weren't his own choices, but things dictated by others, his parents ect. Yes, i understand where you are coming from, but noone forced you to marry, you should have standed up in front of your parents and spoke your mind. I don't know what the appropriate thing to do is in Korea, but saying no to marrying someone you don't want isn't a trangression to any set of unwritten good manners rules, right? What actually made me hate his guts was the fact that he clinged to a loveless marriage. And hence what i said about unreasonable character decisions before. What was that? You never loved your wife, you loved the fact that she gave you 2 sons, you loved the fact that she was there, and you loved your family, NOT HER! You said you were unhappy and you did say you LOVE the other woman. OK THEN, LIVE UP TO WHAT YOU SAID AND LEAVE!! Divorce man, divorce yes! Why cling to something that, it isn't only dead now, it was NEVER ALIVE TO BEGIN WITH! He apparently felt obligated to be with her because his dead daddy dictated him to. Unhappiness is right there saying hello to you....
Song Mi Kyung. Ew, what a character, i hated her even more. She was borderline crazy for me. It was so obvious she had the 'good person' syndrome. She entered a loveless marriage, she was in love, but never recieved love, she did everything by herself in this marriage, bring up children, pleasing a bitch of a mother-in-law, convincing herself that she is happy with the grains of love her husband gave to her. She was the best possible wife so he would have nothing to nag about, and then convinced herself, that she is happy. What is that? The fact that in this loveless marriage it took him 20 years to cheat once, is unrealistic to begin with! Consider yourself lucky. She argued that she loved him a lot, and that she can accept him the way he is. Ok then, he is a cheater, accept it! Oh no? You can't? Then leave! And there she was being a total bitch saying i hate you and i cannot forgive you, but i don't want a divorce either... o.O This made no sense to me. I couldn't root for them to be together, there was literally NOTHING there for them to work out. Their marriage was sickening and wrong, they had formed a very weird siblings-like relationship or a mother-son/father-daughter relationship and then had 2 kids...
Both characters were unreasonable. This was the worst and best part of the show at the same time. Life's goals must be happiness. What this show showed was that, if you are married you aren't allowed to divorce, stay there and if you love your spouse you get to have a second chance, if you don't you have to stay unhappy forever. This is wrong for me, the fact that the show had a happy ending was also unrealistic, especially in the case of these 2. At the same time, however, how can we expect 2 people who have never savoured happiness in their lives, who always were pressured into things, never loved, to suddenly man-up and leave a dysfunctional relationship? How can we expect 2 people in such an unreasonable situation to act... reasonable. The only way i can excuse and understand them is thinking this: Couples who are on the verge of a break down will clutch at straws, and those straws are each other, even if they aren't each other's best option, they are their only, and it is safer that starting over with someone new. Now this is REALITY! Reality isn't always reasonable, is it?
Kim Sung Woo. The most loveable character! The show forced you to root for him, and they put a great actor in this role, you just couldn't resist! The most important lesson about his character was that people deserve a second chance, the usual saying of 'once a cheater, always a cheater' isn't always true (oh, but it is!). I did feel his character was rather too good to be true, but he was the most reasonable one.
Na Eun Jin. I base what i said about exaggerated situations on her. Yes, she cheated and she is to blame, but omg, come on, 3 of the 4 leads here cheated, none of them got through all the hate and left-loathing and self-panishing she got through. I guess it is because she is a woman, this is a reality not only in korea but world-wide, but i guess it is even worse there. I didn't hate her, i couldn't to be honest, i was mostly angry at her for not knowing what she wanted for 20 episodes, and in the very end i do believe she settled for the most ensuring choice.
What i loved is that the drama told us that a broken marriage isn't a result of infidelity but infidelity is a result of a broken marriage. Still the first couple had NOTHING going on for them, while the 2nd one had communication problems, love was there, and if love is there everything can be overpassed! Love isn't something that can be pushed though, it has to come naturally. The overall compalsive meaning of 'stay inside your marriage no matter what' bugged me. Maybe i am a home wrecker i don't know, i just believe that happiness should be our goal, marrying someone doesn't mean they are the right choice 100%.
ACTING
I am not sure how i feel about the acting here. Special thanks to Ji Jin Hee and Lee Sang Woo for saving it to be honest.
Ji Jin Hee. His character was very straightforward and serious, he did feel like he had no feelings, but his character was like that. He had a few scenes that there were tips of his feelings being let out, and JJH express them perfectly, as a man who has learned to surpress his feelings deep inside and at the same time as a person who just hurts.
Kim Jee Soo. I am not sure lol. Some of her scenes were dramatic and sincere and amazing in every way, and some others were all over the place. What was that? Her character was borderline crazy so i blame that. I couldn't emotionally connect with her or understand her at all, and she was supposed to be the 'good' guy so for me she failed.
Lee Sang Woo. He was great, he was amazing, he was sensuous, he was almost flawless. I loved his character development, i loved his dramatic moments, they were sincere, he made me feel all his second thoughts, all his doubts and his dreams and his hopes. Wonderful actor.
Han Hye Jin. Nope, she didn't do what she was supposed to do. She was overacting most of the time, and in all those moments she fell short. I'm sorry girl, but no.
Special mention to Han Groo, she was great and especially to Park Seo Joon. This is comes from someone who doesn't really like him, he was very good here, another case of an actor's talent being wasted in fluffy rom-coms when he has so much more to offer than that!
REWATCH/RECOMMEND
I would recommend it only to people who enjoy character driven shows. People who want a backstory and rapid plot developments this is not for you!
I wouldn't rewatch this, firstly because it was difficult to watch and understand and secondly because it got dragged in the middle.
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