It’s Okay To Not Be Okay lives up to the audience’s expectations with brilliant writing and amazing performances!
This K-Drama depicts a dark fairy tale mood coupled with entrancing portrayals.
- Main Cast: Kim Soo Hyun | Seo Yea Ji | Oh Jung Se | Kim Joo Hun | Park Gyu Young| Park Jin Joo|
- Streaming Sites: Netflix
- Thrill/Addictive Meter:
- Overall Rating:
- Rewatch Value:
- K-Dramas of Similar Vibe: Sky Castle | Save Me | My Mister | It’s Okay That’s Love |
It’s Okay To Not Be Okay Quick Plot Recap
Moon Gang-tae (Kim Soo Hyun) lives with his older brother Moon Sang-tae (Oh Jung Se) who is autistic. They travel from town to town very often rather frequently since Sang-tae witnessed their mother’s death who was murdered brutally and gets traumatized seeing butterflies when the seasons change as it reminds him of the murder of their mother. Gang-Tae works as a community health worker in a psychiatric ward at every place they settle in.
Circumstances lead both the brothers to Seongjin City. There, Gang-tae starts working at OK Psychiatric Hospital. It is the same city where they used to live when they were young. While working at the hospital, he connects with a popular children’s book writer, Ko Moon-young (Seo Yea Ji), who has an antisocial personality disorder and is extremely selfish, arrogant, and rude.
In the meantime, Moon-young forms a romantic obsession for Gang-tae after finding out that they crossed paths during their childhood. She follows him to Seongjin, where the trio starts to live together in her house and slowly begins to heal each other’s emotional wounds.
They reveal many secrets, seek comfort from each other, and move on in their lives. Moon Gang Tae and Ko Moon Young go against fate and fall in love, in the journey of finding their souls and true identities.
It’s Okay To Not Be Okay Series Peak Points *Spoiler Alert
The genre of the show is a psychological drama tinged with romance. This combination is really unique which makes this drama different and engrossing. This is also a character-driven kind of drama.
One needs to completely immerse themselves into the show fully to understand and go through the process of healing along with characters while watching the show. The initial episodes are both confusing and intriguing due to the characters especially Ko Moon-young as a child.
Kim Soo Hyun as Moon Gang-tae
Gang Tae has everything including a great body, intelligence, empathy, yet he keeps everything to himself and shuts people out. He pretends to be happy but actually, he is not. Contributing to his saddled life is his older brother Sang-tae.
Being neglected since childhood, and then working as a caregiver in a psychiatric ward of different hospitals, he has no fixed place to live. Also, his whole life revolved around caring for his brother. In some way, he has lost his personal life and forgot to live for himself and do what he really wants.
Seo Ye Ji as Ko Moon-young
Ko Moon-young is bold and possesses a strong personality. Having an antisocial personality interestingly makes her unique as her honesty is off the charts. How she got obsessed with Moon Gang-tae springs from her penchant to manipulate people. As she can’t do that with him, she becomes more interested.
But her being anti-social is due to her dark past and the trauma she faced during childhood. Adding to that, she is haunted by her mother in her dreams. All these experiences make her write dark fairy tales for children as she believes fairy tales does not exist in real life and reality is much more harsh and cruel
Oh Jung Se as Moon Sang-tae
Moon Sang-tae may be having autism but his character is actually the strongest influencer among the main leads. He is one of the integral parts of the show and his thoughts, feelings, and needs that are shown are very important to everyone. Sang-tae lives with a traumatic past after he saw his mother’s death and develops a fear of butterflies as the killer was wearing a butterfly brooch when she killed her.
In the series, Sang-tae has the most heart-warming character evolution. Initially, he wants Gang-Tae all for himself but when Moon Young comes into their lives, he feels neglected as he thinks his brother will leave him like he almost did in the past so he constantly pushes her away.
Later in the series, Sang-tae gradually opens up his heart to Moon-young and finally accepts her as a part of their family. How Moon-young also get to experience happiness from a family with the Moon brothers helped her to overcome her past emotional baggage. These are the most beautiful moments from the show.
Along the way, they meet the people of OK Psychiatric Hospital and everyone has their fair share of struggles. Most of them are haunted by their past. It is very pleasing to see them overcome their traumatic experiences and get back to normal life.
Thought-Provoking Portrayals
This show marks the comeback of Kim Soo Hyun to the small screen after military enlistment. His role is not as flashy or flamboyant as Moon Young and Sang Tae but is much more calmer and mature. The pain of being a neglected child and burdened to take care of his brother as well as someone who wants to be loved is portrayed effortlessly by the actor. His emotional scenes are so natural and perfect which definitely proved the quality of an actor that he is.
Seo Yea Ji’s role is also very challenging. To portray someone with a personality disorder who is rude, arrogant, selfish, and also has a traumatic childhood is quite a tough job. She did an amazing job with her character and she dominated the drama with her unique bravado. We cannot think of any other actor who could play this role with such perfection.
The role of Moon Sang-tae can be said to be one of the career-best performances by Oh Jung Se. He is incredible in his role which not at all easy to portray a character. His winning portrayal won everyone’s heart. One can feel his emotions, understand what exactly he is going through and that is the most crucial thing for an actor, to make the audience feel connected to his character and he successfully did so.
The supporting cast too did a great job as well. All of them portrayed their characters seamlessly which elevated the show even more.
Life Lessons
As the show deals with mental health, there are several life lessons that we can learn from this drama. Firstly, we must talk more about this topic to more people who are experiencing difficulties and are struggling with mental health and it is absolutely fine if one is not doing okay.
We must help people open up, speak their minds, and comfort others instead of judging them since we do not know how are they doing in their lives. We may face a lot of difficulties but we should never forget where our own happiness lies as we are the ones who can completely heal ourselves.
Time and love heal everything so that we can move on and look on the brighter side of our life. Although we may never forget but by forgiving we can replace bad memories with good ones.
Cinematography/Soundtrack
The cinematography and the animation are also noteworthy. The drama successfully created the atmosphere showcasing a dark fairy tale that fitted the story. The transitions from one scene to another- flashback and the present day was shown beautifully. The soundtrack of the show is also really amazing.
It’s Okay To Not Be Okay Series Musings
It’s Okay To Not Be Okay is a journey of the characters who all struggled with emotional pains, but found comfort by helping each other. So it is wonderful to witness their moments of healing and forgiveness. The amount of romance shown is just perfect for the story. It is innocent, with a smooth pace and a bit of witty progress. The lead couple has flawless chemistry and their dynamics worked nicely when put together.
However, the drama’s story is lightly spread in some of the episodes that it added up tiring. The funny and cute moments in the show are really sweet to watch. The show ended on a happy note where Moon-young liberated herself and found love in Gang-tae.
Sang-tae realizes his purpose and dreams of what he wants to do in life. With that, Gang-tae is also now free from the responsibility of taking care of his brother. He can now live his own life on his terms without any burden and also start a new life with Moon Young.
However, the main mystery is a little bit boring towards the end. Additionally, the side characters are mostly overlooked and are provided with some boring storylines. But the dialogues are clever and well written, the right amount of humor added to every scene and the horror vibes smoothly handled the rest of the show.
Overall, it is definitely one of the best Kdrama of 2020, and one will surely have a crazy emotional yet amazing time watching this show. If anyone hasn’t seen this drama till now, it’s the perfect time to binge-watch.
Photos: tvN
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