So if the current state of the world isn’t enough to get you down, you found the right show. I was very much looking forward to this ever since it was announced. The possibilities seemed endless with such a stellar cast. Like, they put everybody in the show. But sadly, we were given sob stories after sob stories. I understand that Koreans are sickly obsessed with sad stories but, really? Just go watch the news. To make things worse, stories were so manufactured and phoned in, it was hard to have any empathy for anyone. Nothing seemed organic at all as if the writer wanted to one up the last scene and storyline. Let’s see how many different sad stories we can tell in one show! And all of that happen to just a handful of people who all know each other!

To be fair, not all plot lines were created equal. I liked the first story where Cha Seung Won played a desperate dad who wanted to vicariously achieve his lost dream through his daughter. It got frustrating watching him stubbornly hanging on but all in all, it was a nice start. The other standout was the high school kids’ story. Their storyline was a bit jarring and came out of nowhere but I really liked how Hyun didn’t give up on his unborn baby and ultimately convinced Young Joo to keep the baby. But her sudden change of mind happened a bit too fast in my opinion.

I’m a huge Shin Min Ah fan but she was terrible here. She’s just not an emotional actress, sad to say. Maybe Seo Hyun Jin would’ve been great for this role. She needs to stick to happy roles where she smiles and laughs. She couldn’t give us a convincing crying scene even if her life depended on it.

I don’t think other storylines were even worth mentioning. Some side characters were better than others but nobody memorable.

I think I have 5 more episodes to go. We’ll see what happens.