So. Yeah. I started something new.
It's short -- only three episodes of an hour each. And it's been on my list for awhile but only recently came up where I can watch it in my region. And...it has Ji Soo. It's Page Turner. And probably a sadder, more angsty thing than I would normally pick right now, but, hey, it's got a young, energetic Ji Soo with a purple streak in his hair. I've been meaning to see him in something else since Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (and his brief cameo in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Ju).
The mother is played by Ye Ji-Won, who played a character I loved (Jennifer) in Thirty but Seventeen and it's so weird to see her play a character now that I really, really just want to smack. As a mother, she completely offends me. Not only is she using her daughter as a surrogate for herself, she tries to make her cheat and step on other people. Just, ugh.
There's also Ji-Soo, playing Cha-Sik, a top athlete. He's got a promising future with potential scholarships and all kinds of things with pole vaulting, etc. but a chance accident finds him with a diagnosis that means he needs to give up sport. He's an upbeat, goofy guy and this throws him for a loop. He doesn't know who he is without sport.
Anyway, after a particularly contentious meeting, Jin Mok prays for something bad to happen to Yoo-Seul...and it does. She gets in a car wreck (her mother was driving and not paying enough attention because she was too busy talking about her future plans for her daughter and drove out into an intersection). As a consequence, she loses her sight. Jin Mok finds out (I think he's literally still at the church or wherever when he gets the call about the accident) and is full of guilt.
He goes to the hospital to visit her, bringing rather useless flowers (though, to be fair, at the time he didn't know she'd completely lost her sight). Meanwhile, Ji-Soo has run into Yoo-Seul, who asks him for directions to the roof. Once there, she plans to jump. It's not her lack of eyesight...in fact, she was almost glad. It's that her mother has told her (in front of a horrified doctor) that now she'll just have to play and practice the piano that much harder.
Jin Mok has it out with her and gets his world turned a bit upside down when he hears that she doesn't even like piano and can't stand the thought of it any more and doesn't want to live with her mother pushing her any longer. She jumps...but Ji Soo is there to catch her. He didn't actually take her to the roof, but to the parking garage, because he suspected something. Having overheard her dramatic speech, he tells her it's partly her own fault (he can't fault a mother for anything, seeing as he's got serious hero worship going on with his mom and would do anything for her) because she never told her mother she didn't want to play and pretended to like it and always went along. Which is somewhat true, but not the whole truth, as dear old mom is pretty horrible. Pageant mom.
But he's having his own crisis as well and breaks down later on his mom. What should he do with his life? What does he have to live for without sports? She takes an old picture that she claims is her with his dad out of an album and shows it to him, along with some info about who she says that is -- a famous pianist and very intelligent man. She convinces him he's got way more than just sports. He decides he wants to play piano and follow in his dad's footsteps so he can maybe someday meet him. I suspect that man really isn't his dad, but who knows. Basically, she wanted to give him something to aspire to...I don't know that she even imagined he would take it to literally mean piano.
And that's the first episode. Durrrr. I'm going to try and not write up that much about the remaining two hours. Anyway, adore Ji-Soo so far. Such a nice job, both in his bouncy up mode and in the breakdown crying mode. The actors playing the other two leads are good as well and glad to see Yoo-Seul finally standing up to her mom at the end of episode 1. Not sure yet about Jin Mok beyond the fact that at least he feels guilt. We'll see. She was horrible to him, but he was pretty horrible as well (including when he was a kid).
Edit: finished it. It ended a bit too open for me, though also on an emotional high note, so I suppose I shouldn't really complain. But I do feel like they could have had 5 more minutes to just give a bit of closure to the relationship between the three leads -- it was almost more about the mothers in the last little wrap up than the kids. Anyway, all three of them did a great job and hit the mark with their characters. I did enjoy it and I'm glad I watched it. Could have easily enjoyed watching it as a longer drama because they were great together. Not sure if I'd watch it again or not. Maybe, after awhile. But definitely a worthwhile watch.
Edit (again): After some further reflection, one very simple addition would have (mostly) fixed the ending for me (though, to be fair, I really want more closure than this)...at one point, they show a picture of Yoo-Seul holding her trophy for the duet competition and she's smiling for the first time in any of her award pictures (so, yay, she actually is enjoying playing piano). But it's still a solo pic of her. If they'd just made that a photo of the three of them, that would have given a roundness to the ending that it didn't have. They wouldn't even have had to make it romantic (though Cha-Sik's character definitely had a bit of a crush on her). Just a friendly thing would have been fine. But the story really needed SOMETHING with the three of them to finish with.
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