Wrote this quite a while back but didn’t think I want to post it. I will just do it and at the end of it I also mentioned all the good shows I have seen this year. I thought the show will do no wrong but a friend of mine gave up after 5 episodes so do take my words with a pinch of salt.
I will reproduce the 2 posts on my FB here. Together they will be my musing on the show.
Hello, it’s me, the dude who watches too many shows and can’t shut up about it.
I am like the umpteenth dude out there. After a hard day’s work, I just want to curl up and watch something that doesn’t tax the brains too much. But the thing is movies and shows like these seldom resonate with me and they are only good while they lasted. The ones that stay with me usually are amalgamations of many aspects like great writing, directing, acting and the whole nine yards. Out of these there is a rare breed that defy the odds, seemingly simple in execution but has the depth of twenty thousand leagues. Our Unwritten Seoul fits into last category for me. This will be an ongoing post because the show isn’t over yet and we are only into ep4. As of now the IMDb score is 8.5 and it’s 8.8 on Douban, these are the type of numbers that will make me throw everything aside and dive right in.
Twin sisters Yoo Mi Ji and Yoo Mi Rae are different in everything except their faces. Yoo Mi Ji the younger of the twins, has ended her short heyday as a promising track and field athlete and is currently living a free-spirited life in a small village. On the other hand, the older sister, Yoo Mi Rae, has been walking the path of the elite since her school days and is currently an office administrator in a corporation. The twins, who are physically identical but lead starkly different lives, embark on a bold charade, switching their lives.
The premise feels ripe for a comedic farce with lots of scenes of gross out behaviour, something Hollywood will probably do with the premise, but not here. There is comedy here but it stems from a place of truth and it’s never out to milk cheap laughs. You will laugh because the situation will remind you of what happened to you in a different guise.
Park Bo-young plays both Mi Ji and Mi Rae with such glorious delineation you will never be confused with who is who. This is a calling card role and I am very sure the people at Baesang Film Awards will remember what she has accomplished. She owns both roles, you will marvel at her acting but you will also draw the life lessons from her dire situations. Mi Ji has been trapped in a rut she couldn’t get out of all because of one moment on the running track, while Mi Rae is in a godforsaken job in a toxic work environment she can’t get out from. Watching their little victories every day is something I didn’t know I needed so much.
At one point Choo asked me how they shot the scenes with both of them in the same frame and I explained the work they had to do just to accomplish that and Choo was impressed.
I like how even the side characters get fleshed out till the point they feel so familiar and after a while you will realise you recognise who they are in people in your life and also in yourself. I love how they are depicted in that you can never know someone completely. Everyone has a facade they put on for any situation and there’s a secret part everyone hides. I don’t know about you but I find that very true.
We finished ep3 last night and at one point I shared with Choo that this is the first brilliant episode and the theme is about the power of kind acts. I said that choking back on my words and stopped talking after that because if I had carried on I would have been a mess. The theme of being kind has been done many times but seldom do I see how it helps the recipient of the kind act emotionally. Storytellers tend to want to underscore the person doing the kind act. When I saw the old lady go all so ecstatic with seeing a person she has funded with a scholarship that she makes a meal for him when she only makes meals for two is deeply moving. It made me realise that as much as we should dow out kind acts, we also hope to receive them.
I can take slow burn when there is a purpose to it. I mean the slow burn journey has to have destination that resonates emotionally. Perhaps it makes you understand the human condition better or maybe even make you understand yourself better. This show goes about its way patiently and the impact lands, hard. Sometimes it can be so subtle and nuanced like the quick scene of Mi Rae’s boots at a farm and you will see boots on her co-worker much later on and the realisation of how her sincerity in how she does her job has rubbed off on him. I love beautiful scenes like this which feel so handcrafted to perfection.
Okay, that’s it. I hope this is enough for some of you to check out the show but I do feel the show demands a patient audience who is not afraid to be in touch with his or her emotional self.
I am not checking this stream of consciousness musing for grammar mistakes so be kind to me. Going to pick Choo up for our next HKM place for dinner.
If you want to know how dark a human heart can become, watch Squid Game S3. If you want to know how much goodness a human heart is capable of, watch Our Unwritten Seoul.
We finished the former 2 nights ago (I might muse about it later on) and we finished the latter last night with our eyes teary and hearts full. It has been a while since I watch a Kdrama so good I felt like my heart would explode in a flurry of rose petals. The themes resonated with me so much – depression, loneliness, self-worth and what’s the measure of success in life. It’s how the themes are handled that gives them so much emotional heft.
I have watched a lot of Kdramas and I can probably surmise the ingredients of what makes the good ones great. The first thing is whether the studio has a sizeable budget for the music department. The songs and music in this show can easily fit on two CDs and as I am typing this I can still hear the lovely opening theme in my head. The second thing is how the show treat its secondary characters – the great ones always know how to flesh out these side characters till the point they inform the main characters and the storyline. For one moment these secondary characters will own the show. Our Unwritten Seoul does an amazing job in this aspect. Watch out for the mothers’ stories in Beom-Hong and Ok-Hui, and most definitely the backstory of Kim Ro-Sa. If their stories don’t make your heart ache and make you reflect on life, make an appointment with your psychiatrist, you need help. There are other salient aspects that make a Kdrama stand out like a stellar cast, cinematography, writing and others, but I don’t think Our Unwritten Seoul boasts a solid cinematography or does it have a cast of A-list stars (I might be wrong), but the writing is out of this world. As I am typing this I can still hear some of the beautiful lines being underscored in my mind.
“Was this thrown away because it deflated? Or did it deflate because it was thrown away? Am I living like this because of the way I am? Or am I like this because of the way I live?” – Yu Mi Ji
“You know that my only talent is being healthy.” – Yu Mi Ji
“You know that my special talent is enduring things.” – Yu Mi Rae
“What is this feeling? I clearly messed everything up. But somehow, it’s easier to breathe. For the first time in forever, I feel like I’ve taken off an invisible mask.” – Yu Mi Ji
“A person’s heart is like a door. And I’m an expert at knowing exactly when that door is closing.”– Yu Mi Ji
“You don’t make someone your role model just because they’re like you.” – Lee Hosu
“I wanted to keep you by my side because of your strengths, but you were by my side because of my weakness.” – Lee Chung Gu
“Being unemployed is a fight against your own mind and the clock. When everyone else is working and you’re home alone, you think too much. And the more you think, the more you lose track of time. You wonder if the clock’s broken, before you know it, the whole day’s gone. And 99% of those thoughts are useless. Thinking about the past only brings regret, and thinking about the future only brings anxiety.” – Yu Mi Ji
“If a deer runs away from a lion, does that make it trash? If a hermit crab hides in fear of being eaten, is it a coward? They’re all just trying to survive. You’re hiding to survive, too. No matter how pathetic or messy it looks, anything you do to survive is brave.” – Grandma
“No one decides when to start falling in love for the first time.” – Lee Hosu
“Life is like poetry. From a distance, it looks like an indecipherable code, but if you look closely with a heart willing to understand, only then will you see the meaning within.” – Kim Rosa
Imagine listening to the quotes above with the context. The writing is sublime, full of wisdom, truth and euphemisms of life. At times, I even felt Lee Kang the writer wrote the lines for me like balm to my open wounds and succour to my tired soul. I love how the plot moves, always unhurried, but always with a purpose. In great Kdramas writers sometimes try something risky like in Reply 1988 we are given ACD….GH and you will realise the writer intentionally leaves out the B and then somewhere down the road when you least expect it, the B is revealed and effect is quite something. Our Unwritten Seoul goes on a different track. We get the ABC….GH and we thought we understand everything and then somewhere down the road we see the B again from a different perspective and I am sure you will go HOLY SH$T and I mean it in the nicest possible way and it cements the theme that a human soul can always surprise you in unexpected ways.
The cast is stellar here and everybody brought their A game, everybody is so convincing in their roles Again I must make special mention of Park Bo-young who is so good in both roles you will never get lost with who she is in that moment. Park Jin-young with his soulful eyes is the perfect casting choice. The love story is so gentle and heartfelt.
There is one moment late in the last act that made me go “oh no… why do they have to do this illness-of-the-week crap!” It was the only moment that made me jump out of the story and I hate storytellers who do this crap. You have paved the road for the audience to be vested in the characters’ stories, why is there a need to take a cheap manipulative shot? I sat in my seat feeling so pissed and shaking my head in annoyance, and then it happened. I realised the storyteller had one more life lesson to give and one more hug to give you. This story arc culminates in one of the most sublime lines I have heard and many tears later and when the episode was done, I asked Choo if I could rewind back to that scene to type out the quote. She said yes immediately. Don’t worry, I won’t be sharing that quote here and the beauty of that quote is that it has been teased since the beginning of the show and revisited a few times in different episodes, but now we finally get to hear its entirety and the play with perspective is sheer class.
This is easily one of the best shows I have seen this year and my list of great 2025 shows include Paatal Lok, Paradise, Adolescence, When Life Gives You Tangerines, The Pitt, Andor, Severance and Dept. Q. I lay my heart out bare because I like to think I am a good barometer of good shows and I like to think my wall of words can at least persuade some of you to watch Our Unwritten Seoul and be blessed by it like what it did for me. And talking about barometer of good shows, a friend messaged me as I was watching the last episode, giving me the heads up on Bad Thoughts on Netflix. He also has a barometer but probably on another level from mine. He said “it’s fu&king offensive and hilarious. Give it a watch, especially “Health”. Holy sh&t I have never laughed so hard!” My friend has sold the show to me and he had me at “*fu&king offensive and hilarious”. (4.5/5, this score is for Our Unwritten Seoul, not Bad Thoughts)