[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Our Beloved Summer" Episode 15

So apparently, Ji-woong's mother (played by Park Mi-hyun)is dying. In terms of the overall narrative, Ji-woong's mother has never been an especially important character, except maybe by omission. We can see why Ji-woong was so envious of Woong's life, given that Ji-woong didn't have a loving family like Woong did. So Ji-woong is mostly indifferent to his mother's decline, with enough self-awareness to realize that this makes him sound borderline sociopathic.

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As usual, "Our Beloved Summer" has the kernel of an interesting idea. Ji-woong's mother may not have been abusive, but she was so chronically depressed and alcoholic that she wasn't exactly much of a role model for adult relationships. But nothing is really done with this concept. A mostly irrelevant character-building flashback to this one time at a seafood market where Ji-woong messed up filming once only really establishes that Ji-woong is non-confrontational and cold-hearted, which we already knew.

There's just bits and pieces of a plot here that's too vague in broad outline to have any kind of an impact. The drama's penultimate episode also features some appearances from other abandoned plot hooks. Noo-ah explains that he was the true plagiarist all along. I'm convinced more than ever that screenwriter Lee Na-eun-I has no idea what plagiarism actually is. Drawing something similar to what a classmate is drawing isn't plagiarism, it's literally how you learn to do art at all.

Such an attitude might explain the drama's weird reticence toward actually developing any of its storylines, since any fully developed storyline would inevitably resemble other fully developed storylines. Even the central love story between Woong and Yeon-soo doesn't qualify as a storyline. I'm not sure anything they do this episode has anything to do with anything else they've done in any other episode. It's just some random anecdotes about a boyfriend and a girlfriend hanging out together.

"Our Beloved Summer" has emphasized the importance of aesthetic above nearly anything that could make the story even slightly engaging. I paid disproportionate attention to NJ's hair style here just because it was visibly different from anything else that had been seen up until now. I think I've already forgotten what NJ's arc was supposed to be, and I'm not sure if she was actually written with an arc or if the direction leaned so hard on Roh Jeong-eui's performance that she just gave the impression of one with her acting.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Our Beloved Summer" is directed by Kim Yoon-jin-I, written by Lee Na-eun-I, and features Choi Wooshik, Kim Da-mi, Kim Sung-cheol, Roh Jeong-eui, Ahn Dong-goo, Park Won-sang. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/12/06~2022/01/25, Mon, Tue 22:00 on SBS.

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