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Thirty-Nine korean drama review
Completed
Thirty-Nine
5 people found this review helpful
by Tanlixia
Apr 4, 2022
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed 1
Overall 6.0
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

A Sad and Disappointing Story about Friends

This drama had so much potential but ended up being average at best.

We have three long-time friends who are not at all equals in this series. Mijo proves to be the main lead and hogs up most of the screen time with her lukewarm love story and grief. Chanyoung is gifted with a terminal cancer diagnosis and ultimately an ill-fated relationship. Joohee is the forgotten and left out friend who gets the least screen time even though I would've loved to see noona get that action because she finally gets it offscreen.

As someone who had someone very close to me pass from cancer at a similar age to Chanyoung, the story itself would speak to me and would be relatable in that regard. I can appreciate a story about a younger person suffering from cancer because unfortunately it happens. However, for some bizarre reason, Chanyoung's initial cancer diagnosis was shared with *Mijo* first and not her - thus giving Mijo the spotlight over Chanyoung over her own cancer. We end up seeing a lot of Mijo's grief throughout the series, so much that I would've rather seen her less. Her love story with Seonu was unremarkable and nothing to be excited about but he got a good chunk of screen time. We also end up being subjected to Seonu's unpleasant stereotypical awful dad and struggling adopted sister which I don't think really add to the story.

The series was all around well acted (Jinseok by far impressed me) and definitely brought me to tears at points. But I wish it were more balanced between the three friends. I would have loved for Joohee to have been a main player and to see her relationship actually develop. The finale was well done, so I will give them that. But I don't really recommend sitting through the whole series just to get to that point where you taste the bittersweetness and sadness of a trio of friends down to two.
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