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pktljames

Indiana, USA

pktljames

Indiana, USA
When the Camellia Blooms korean drama review
Completed
When the Camellia Blooms
42 people found this review helpful
by pktljames
Nov 23, 2019
40 of 40 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.5
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 9.5
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 5.5
This review may contain spoilers
This show is very well acted and has an interesting story line. Lots of people LOVED this show and if you are a fan of cute romances, quirky characters, and a mystery plot as well, you might really enjoy it.

However, for me, there are too many of my pet peeves that are a big part of this show. Now these are MY pet peeves so it no doubt influenced the way I saw the show. they may not bother you at all. But below are my thoughts.

I'm not a fan of bullies who don't learn to stop bullying, people who consistently doubt themselves or whine, and irrational parents. This show has all three. Thankfully there wasn't any Noble Idiocy, so that was indeed a plus.

For example, There is a group of women who are terrible bullies to the FL. I mean horrible. Later in the show, they stop bullying her, but they don't actually change which means someone else could and would fall into their bullying. They don't have any consequences for their actions and they practically try to destroy the FL before they ever try to be nice. It's simply not ok. Also there are two characters who resort to blackmail in very cruel ways and who also don't seem to ever see it's wrong. And yet, we are supposed to care what happens to them. One even dies and I still couldn't find myself empathizing with her situation...I even found myself annoyed to see her in flashbacks sometimes. We are supposed to see all these people as complex humans where they grow and learn...but they don't really grow...at least not where you could tell. They all had seriously rough lives and you're supposed to understand how they came to be who they are now, but it doesn't work for me. It feels more like instead of changing, they just adjusted their focus to NOT being a pain for the main characters anymore. Like if a bully gets beaten up by his prey, so the bully quits bothering that target and finds another target. The bully doesn't change though.

There's a male character who seems to be the only person who actually changes a little from being a horrible human to a decent person, but even he seems like he could fall back into his old ways easily...though you are given hope that he won't. I did grow to understand the FL's Mom and I could empathize with her because she really does seem to try to make amends and be better.

The FL is a great actress, but the character ended up bugging me. She was mousy at first and then she'd get strong and you'd want to root for her, but then she'd fall back into her old pattern. Back and forth, back and forth. UGH! Just stop. I wanted to shout at her, "Yes, your life was miserable and you were given a LOT of hardship, but look, you survived and things are getting better...stop dwelling on what you never had!" I got very tired of her whiny side.

I did like that they used voiceovers to tell part of the story. It was an interesting aspect of the production. They also did a good job with interweaving the backstories. Though I didn't particularly like most of the characters, I did understand their connections a bit through the backstories and that was good, but in some cases (like with the ML's Mom) instead of helping me like her more, it made me even more frustrated with her character.

As I said, LOTS of folks loved this show and it could have been that it just hit all my pet peeves for me. You might love it.
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