Mar

The themes I enjoyed in Summer Strike are found family and coming up with your own criteria for what brings meaning to your life and how you want to live it. After the FL experiences the pain of her mom's death, she moves from Seoul to a small seaside village called Angok to find healing. She moves into an abandoned billiards building, which is the setting of a past crime and one to come. The library is where she spends much of her time and where she meets the reserved and intelligent ML, who is a part-time librarian and has his own family trauma. The ML doesn't speak to her at first, but they develop a kind and caring relationship with one another over time. I enjoyed that their relationship was based more on friendship than romantic chemistry and that they could count on one another. She also develops a close friendship with a high school girl named Bom, who has a lot going on underneath her tough exterior. The drama doesn't overly explore the FL's healing in a direct way after the first few episodes--I almost forgot the reason why she came to Angok in the first place! The writers are too busy putting her through more trauma. At the end of the drama, we see that the FL has created a life in Angok both personally and professionally that makes her feel at peace. I found the FL to be likeable, although the drunk scenes got tiring. The ML and FL running scenes gave me Run On vibes, hehe. Oh and shout out to Sung Min, who was annoying at first but turned out to be my fav support character.

What I didn't like:
--Women shielding men from the consequences of their behavior, in particular Bom's grandma's protection of her son. Bom shouldn't have had to deal with that. She’s a child who should be protected.
--The unreasonable townsfolk who hate the FL upon her arrival.
--The drama’s treatment of the ML's selective mutism was odd. In the beginning of the drama it was a thing, and then it kinda gets forgotten or suddenly cured.
--Why is a severely cognitively impaired person allowed to roam around unsupervised?
--Why doesn't the FL lock up the building? It's treated as if people can come and go into the building where she lives freely.
--The show doesn't know what it wants to be. It starts off wanting to be a healing drama and it quickly piles on more trauma and then it becomes a thriller at the end. It tries to do too much.
--There's too much trauma, not enough healing.

If you are looking for a comfort watch or a romantic watch, this isn't it. This is about a girl who experiences trauma on top of more trauma while being a part of and solving a thriller case with her newly found family and rebuilding her life to eventually find peace. Proceed with caution.