So, summary time. Nam Haeng-Seon (Jeon Do-Yeon---same age as me!) is the female lead. Back in school, she was a national athlete in handball. But then tragedy strikes as her older sister drops off her very young daughter with their mother with nothing but a suitcase and no way to contact her. When the mother Jung Yeong-Sun played by the ever-the-mother actress Kim Mi-Kyung (is it even a Kdrama if Mi-Kyung isn't a mom in the show?) goes after the daughter, she gets in an accident and dies. That leaves Nam Haeng-Seon to raise the little girl and her brother, who is autistic, but verbal. The brother, Nam Jae-Woo, is played by Oh Eui-Sik, who I always enjoy. And the daughter ("modern day"), Nam Hae-E, is played by Roh Yoon-Seo.
At first calling Haeng-Seon "aunt", the young Hae-E soon asks if she can call her "mom" and a family is born. Fast forward to years later and Haeng-Seon is running a side dish restaurant and cooking with her mom's recipes (her mother had owned a restaurant). Haeng-Seon's good friend from her handball days, Kim Yeong-Joo, is played by Lee Bong-Ryun, an actress I always admire for her goofy/strange/oddball sidekick/best friend characters.
Now, let's talk about the male lead: Choi Chi-Yeol played by Jung Kyoung-Ho. In present day, he is a star maths teacher who works at one of those cram schools. He's rich and successful but so stressed that he literally can't keep food down and barely sleeps. But when he was a young, poor student (with a father who died), he used to eat at Haeng-Seon's mother's restaurant, where she kept him fed and provided moral support. (Oh, look, a past connection...but at least they weren't childhood friends) His assistant is Ji Dong-Hui played by Shin Jae-Ha.
To make this very long summary shorter, their lives become intertwined as Haeng-Seon tries to get Hae-E into the cram school, Chi-Yeol discovers he can eat her food, and the neighbourhood mums get all nosy and up in everyone's business. Oh, should have mentioned that they all think Haeng-Seon has an absentee husband in another country because the friend had spread that around to protect her from gossip (as being a single mother is apparently so EVIL in South Korea).
But...I haven't at all talked about the whole OTHER crazy sideplot. See, this is one of those shows that has two totally divergent plots shoved together. On the one hand, you have all the family / neighbourhood / gossip / slice of life stuff. Then they throw in past trauma and a serial killer.
Yeah, you read that right. It was obvious immediately who the killer/psycho had to be, though they tried to mislead you into thinking it was Hae-E's friend/wanna be boyfriend's recluse brother. But there was only one person it COULD be that would have attacked all of the people that were attacked. I'm not going to go all into this bit of the plot because, honestly, I could have done without it. It's there for the tension and the DRAMA but I think the show would have been actually better without it. And they also just dropped bits that made it seem silly. Like, the first girl that was attacked...she goes down and...is never mentioned again. Another victim, who hated Chi-Yeol...why in the world was he so obsessed? How did this random psycho kid just drop off the face of the earth and reinvent himself without any help from anyone?
Anyway. Like I said at the beginning, there were tons of things that were predictable. Like, you knew from episode one that at some point, Hae-E's real mom would come back. But I'm not going to go into all of that either.
Let me instead just say what I liked! I liked that the main leads were older. I liked the family dynamic and relationships. I really enjoyed Chi-Yeol. Haeng-Seon's character could be somewhat annoying sometimes, but she was believable. I liked the character arcs. Liked all the supporting characters. You definitely root for all of them (well, other than the serial killer dude). It is a show that, if you think on it too hard, you could get annoyed. BUT if you just let it go, it was supremely enjoyable and one of my favs so far this year.
Am I glad I watched it? Yes! Would I watch it again? Hmmm, not entirely sure I'd do a re-watch, but maybe. Would I recommend it? Yes, definitely.
PS I also left off talking much about the mom group but I wanted to kill them all and burn them with fire (which was the point), so I'll leave it at that.
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