When Life Gives You ... An INTELLIGENT KDrama

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called ... life". I thought of this line while watching the final episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines. The drama opens and more or less closes with a very appropriate English-language song, Yesterday, but Prince's invitation does kind of sum up what the whole drama was about. Life, and getting through it.

This was a remarkable drama. It was the 327th K drama that I have completed, and the third which I have scored at 12/10. I score dramas at more than 10/10 when they impact me in some way that is more meaningful or more powerful than simply being a more or less flawless viewing experience. This drama scored 12 for touching me deeply and for overcoming an obstacle in the process.

I was a three year old middle child when my mother decided that the role was not for her and left it to my Dad. She made the right call, for her and us, but that experience has long coloured my interaction with Korean dramas. So many K dramas espouse extreme matrolatry, which (depending on how it's presented) either leaves me cold or induces rage.

When I started Tangerines, I thought "here's another one" the first couple of episodes were full of women shouting, all the time, and seem to be all about the magical mystical bond between a mother and her children, especially her daughter. That (to me) shaky start is one of the reasons why Tangerines gets 12/10 — because it became so very much more.

After the shouty women and familiar mean matriarchs settled down, the next few episodes were ‘academically’ interesting, presenting a view of a family dynamic utterly alien to me, but doing so in a way that was believable and engaging.

The episode that really sealed my conviction this drama was something special was the sixth. The raw and real human emotion on display, especially the seamless blending of grief and guilt was pitch perfect, and very painful to watch. It reminded me of a favourite K drama episode, the "cancer episode" of reply 1994, anchored by a stunning performance from Sung Dong Il. Unlike that drama though, this one was just warming up in terms of its emotional impact. I spent the final three episodes of this drama on an arc that started from slightly watery eyes and ended with open loud bawling. And loved it.

I'm not a fan of constant sadness or misery or melancholy in the dramas that I watch, Which is why I will never watch IU's Other famous lead role in a drama that its many fans describe as very, very downbeat (I think of it as "my misery"). This drama was not endless misery, despite often being very sad. In the very last episode a central character says that she learned life wasn't a seasonal progression from spring to summer to autumn to winter but that there were often spring days and often winter days. This drama made sure to include a realistic mix of both.

It really was a very intelligent drama which is a rarity. The characters behaved like real people, and said some very smart things and some very stupid things. There were no saints, and very few sinners. Which leads me to another thing that I really, really liked about this drama, another big part of the reason why I scored it 12/10. Karma.

Korean dramas talk a lot about karma, but seldom deliver. Countless K dramas have preached karma but then delivered stories in which very bad people did very bad things very often, and got away with it while good people suffered endlessly, the end. This drama's presentation of karma was possibly the best I've ever seen. It was presented not as revenge or justice, but simply as an expression of the reality that actions have consequences. My favourite example was that of the ruthlessly controlling mother (the closest the Drama came to an unredeemed ‘villain’) who paid a high and bitter price for refusing to let her son live his own life. The “punishment” really did fit the “crime”. At the other end of the scale, the drama was unusual in the frequency and prominence it gave to instances of good actions having good consequences. Kindness and selflessness were shown to be rewarded in ways and on a scale that were credible. The cameo from a long-time favourite Kim Sung Ryoung was the cherry on that kindness karma cake.

There is no question that romance was at the heart of this drama, a very sweet and touching lifelong romance. All the actors who played the two characters in the 50+ year arc of that story nailed their roles. In that LONG romance the character that surprised me most and got me thinking the most was Yang Gwan-Sik.

From childhood until the very end of his story, this character chose to be the supporting character in his relationship with the love of his life. In one scene, the subtitles show the child version of this character describing his future role in life as "first gentleman". That support role was very much his choice, and astonishingly rare for a male character in any East Asian dramas that I've seen. It also got me thinking about female characters who make the same choice, and whether I should reassess my opinion of female characters like that when it is clear that it is the character's own choice, as it most emphatically was with Yang Gwan-Sik.

I've said throughout that this drama was intelligent. That's a feature of its writing of course but since I don't speak Korean, my perception of it depends on the subtitles. Netflix subtitles are often contemned, but these ones felt okay. After 12 years and more than 400 K dramas I can at least grok the difference between banmal and jondaemal, and similar broad cues that do help fill in some of the inevitable gaps in subtitles. It felt like there were no howlers, and where I did understand more of the Korean, the choices made in the subtitles seemed understandable and defensible. So that seems like a win for Netflix. As does the fact that this felt like a Korean drama produced by Netflix and not simply a Netflix drama that happened to be made in Korea, which is true of far too many I've tried. This drama really felt like a K drama. So thank you, Netflix.

Besides the fact that the dialogue (as subtitled) felt intelligent, the other reason that gave me the impression this was an intelligent drama was the way it made me think. It made me think about my mother, and the barely-there role she chose to play in my life, but ESPECIALLY it made me think about my father, who did his flawed best as a single parent and victim of a psychically scarring childhood. And it REALLY made me think about mortality.

Every time this drama touched on people dying, it rang true. I've never experienced the kind of loss that episode six was all about, but I am old enough that both my parents are dead, and especially in the case of Yang Gwan-Sik, the dialogue between father and children was right on the money. Seeing a dying father fixated on saying “sorry” over and over and over again was so realistic, and felt so right, that I'm not sure I would have appreciated this drama as much if I had seen it before having seen those scenes for real in my own life. The memories of both "Spring" and "Winter" days from my own life that this Drama triggered are with me still, and have guaranteed this Drama will not be soon forgotten

To wrap this on a more upbeat note, a salute to Lee Ji Eun. This drama had a rock solid cast. There wasn't a single actor that I felt let the drama down in any way. But IU continues to amaze me. I enjoy her music quite a lot, but I am totally in awe of her career focus. Watching scenes in this drama where she was crying as a grief-wracked daughter made me think of the behind-the-scenes video of one of her recent tours – controlling and arranging everything, on top of every detail, then “acting” as IU. Intelligence, talent, focus and determination, a very appealing package, and one that made her the perfect choice for Yang Geum-Myeong. Having finally had an opportunity to watch her acting talent, it is my profound hope that she next attempt convince me of her acting range by taking on a romcom and show off her extreme prettiness.

With an extreme aversion to violence, and a deep distaste for fantasy, my tastes in K dramas don't often sync with the smash hits. This time, they really did. For making me think about "yesterday", for moving me to tears as its characters “gathered together to get through this thing called life", and in so doing reminding me of personal spring days and winter days, I am truly grateful that this drama was made. The literal Korean/Jejumal title of this drama apparently means "you did well" and to everyone involved in bringing it to life, I say "well done, thank you for NOT giving me a lemon."