[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Our Beloved Summer" Episode 5

Noo-ah (played by Kwak Dong-yeon) is Woong's rival in art. That's a bit too kindly of a word for it, since Noo-ah has accused Woong of plagiarism. His exact motives are unclear, given that we know Woong didn't commit plagiarism, since the alleged piece is based on an influence that dates back to his high school days, and was witnessed by Yeon-soo. Despite this entire storyline being presented with serious urgency, nothing really comes of it. "Our Beloved Summer" almost immediately segues into the backstory of Ji-woong's longtime friendship with Woong.

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My main issues with "Our Beloved Summer" as usual mainly have to do with editing. The drama will briefly pique my interest with one topic only to just completely go off on another almost entirely unrelated topic. Noo-ah himself doesn't even show up again after the party. Instead Lee Joon-hyuk, still inexplicably credited as special appearance rather than supporting cast, apologizes to Woong about the entire questionable ethics of forcing Woong to work alongside the man who is casting a cloud over his reputation.

I had been kind of hoping that "Our Beloved Summer" would try to deal with the professional ethics of what Manager Jang did. It was deliberately antagonistic to expect Woong to work with Noo-ah with no advance notice. But instead the whole apology scene inevitably goes into how Woong still has unresolved feelings for Yeon-soo. The drama then practically taunts me by having Manager Jang himself say that of course everyone aside from Woong himself already knows this.

Because that includes us, the viewer! Why is so much time spent on all this redundant material? To make matters more irritating we also have the documentary crew forced to suffer through more scenes of subjects obviously trying to mug for the camera. In the first place the documentary crew shouldn't be suffering. It's their job to take lots of footage, most of which is incredibly boring. In the second place, all these scenes do is make our lead characters seem obnoxious.

Take Sol-i's situation with the large party making a reservation, asking for octopus, and just canceling. Nominally this is a situation where we should be seeing Sol-i with sympathy, yet she manages to be so annoying there's no way of feeling pity for her. I have the same issue with nearly every character in "Our Beloved Summer" where characterization that should be sympathetic in theory comes off as tedious in execution.

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~Now airing, Mon, Tue 22:00 on SBS.

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