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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Something About 1% - 2016" Episode 16 - Final

At long last, through all their trials and tribulations, Jae-in and Da-hyeon are together and inseparable. It should come as little surprise that Da-hyeon's parents are the only real remaining obstacle, mainly because they're the only ones who haven't gotten a chance to participate in the plot yet. But even that doesn't last long, because Jae-in is not joking at all when it comes to sheer determination- even when it requires he do something rather out of character.

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That inspirational thrust is what has defined "Something About 1% - 2016" fairly consistently throughout the drama's run. While it's a generally sweet love story, the main reason the production team is able to pull off the impact they do is through sheer force of optimistic willpower. Whether the relationship between Jae-in and Da-hyeon is realistic is besides the point. The question is, how much work are they will to put in to make it realistic?

Because really, when we think about it, practically any potential relationship has some sort of supposedly insurmountable obstacle. And yet people are able to get married and make it work in spite of these difficulties. Why? Because they make an effort. They care. And that is ultimately how Jae-in and Da-hyeon are able to achieve a happy ending. It's not through the contrivances of screenwriting. Rather it's because they have decided, mutually and firmly, that this is what they want.

While I can easily applaud the drama for doing this one thing, the classically styled love story, exceptionally well, one glaring weakness does remain. Outside of the classically styled love story, very little has happened. Watching the opening credits got to be an embarrassment for me in the later episodes, since it's just a list of characters whose purpose in the story I can barely remember, and whose names continue to escape me.

Still, I suppose something had to be lost in translation. The original "Something About 1%" had ten more episodes to work with, and they were all consistently hour long. The wild swings between thirty and fifty minutes episodes have been the most baffling part of "Something About 1% - 2016", and I seriously wonder what technical reason could possibly be responsible for this inconsistency. Of course, the characters, performances, story and narrative performance were all quite well-done, so really, strange time allocation is a pretty minor quibble for a drama that on the emotional level was consistently very good.

Review by William Schwartz

"Something About 1% - 2016" is directed by Kang Cheol-woo, written by Hyeon Go-woon, and features Ha Seok-jin, Jeon So-min, Kim Hyung-min, Lim Do-yoon, Joo Jin-mo-I and Lee Kan-hee.

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