Review | K-drama review: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay – Kim Soo-hyun, Seo Ye-ji find love despite traumas in Netflix’s fairy tale romance
- Three damaged souls try to put their pasts behind them in the popular Korean drama series now streaming on Netflix
- The 16-episode series will have won over even the most lonely, frustrated hearts by the end
This review contains major spoilers of early episodes.
3/5 stars
Despite giving a deceptively difficult – and almost macabre – impression in its early days, the popular 16-episode series, not unlike its protagonists, soon morphs into a most heart-warming experience. A detour into crime mystery in the show’s last few episodes proves halfhearted at best; the few detective fiction fans expecting to learn the morbid details of what exactly happened should brace for disappointment.
Kim plays Moon Gang-tae, a 30-year-old carer living with his autistic older brother, Sang-tae (Oh Jung-se). Emotionally closed off since childhood when he was the less favoured son of their single mother, Gang-tae has also failed to develop any meaningful relationship as an adult, as he must move town once or twice every year to save his possessive brother from a lifelong nightmare, incurred when Sang-tae witnessed the murder of their mother 20 years ago.
When Gang-tae has a run-in with his brother’s favourite children’s book author, Ko Mun-yeong (Seo), somehow resulting with the latter stabbing him in the palm, their destinies become intertwined. The volatile Mun-yeong, as it transpires, is no less a damaged and lonely soul: she was raised in a remote castle by an abusive mother, a crime-fiction writer who is long missing and presumed dead; Mun-yeong’s dementia-stricken father, now living in Gang-tae’s hospital, wants her dead.