Let’s Meet in an Unfamiliar Season (Drama special review)

2 December 11, 2022June 27, 2023

[Drama special review] Let’s Meet in an Unfamiliar Season

by Dramaddictally

Two strangers ride out the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in neighboring rooms in this KBS drama special. Isolated and alone, they become confidants in quarantine, but question how they’ll fare in the outside world.

EPISODE 1 REVIEW

We begin our story in a setting that’s become all too familiar in real life, though still hardly represented in dramas. It’s 2020 and OH HEE-JOO (Han Ji-eun) is making her way into a residential treatment center for Covid-19. She follows a nurse — suited from head to toe in protective gear — into her private room, where she’ll spend the next fifteen days alone. Hee-joo has no symptoms of the virus but tested positive after working with someone who did.

The opening shots connote alienation, isolation, and darkness, but suddenly gain warmth when we see Hee-joo spread out in her new space. It’s essentially a spacious and comfortable hotel room, where her only complaint is that the window doesn’t open very wide (the staff allows only a crack of air to come in but otherwise wants the patients contained). She has her laptop and phone, still able to work, and can even order things to be delivered.

On her first day, the patient next door, MYUNG KI-JOON (Kim Gun-woo), calls out to Hee-joo from the crack in his own window, asking for a favor. He arrived straight from the airport, where he tested positive getting off a plane from Australia, and broke his phone on the way. He asks Hee-joo to log into his social media and contact a friend of his to send him a new phone. Here, the drama has a strange tonal shift where what appeared to be an observational story about the recent global pandemic, turns into a rom-com.

At first, Hee-joo is annoyed with Ki-joon — who is bored with no phone or TV and is constantly trying to talk to her through the window. But on Day 2, she gets fired from her photography job, with her boss blaming her for bringing Covid to their office. He’s so angry that all the staff is out getting tested “because of her,” he tells her not to come back even after the quarantine.

Meanwhile, Ki-joon has realized that he can use the landline to make calls to other rooms in the building. He calls Hee-joo just at the moment when she needs to vent about being fired and lends a helpful ear. However, the medical staff — getting a busy signal in Ki-joon’s room during their twice-a-day check-in — rushes into his room thinking something is wrong. They reprimand him for using the phone and the two neighbors (now becoming friendly) go back to conversing at the window.

Since it’s so uncomfortable to try to talk and hear through the small opening in the window, Hee-joo rigs up a child-like telephone system from paper cups and a string. She tosses one end to Ki-joon and the two begin to talk in earnest. He tells her he’s a pastry chef, who was also just fired, which is why he was returning to Korea from Australia. They talk about their major upsets in life — she feels like she can never live up to her mother’s expectations, and he feels guilty for leaving his noona (his only family) behind in Korea when she married someone he didn’t approve of.

Even after Ki-joon’s phone is delivered, he pretends he never got it, and the two keep at their paper cup conversations. We see them living out certain moments in their pasts as they discuss them, as well as imagining the future. The idea is that they are talking so deeply about themselves that each feels like they are experiencing what the other is saying, but the drama tries a little too hard to force this on us and the scenes meant to show their growing connection feel stunted.

When her fifteen days are up, Hee-joo is allowed to leave. Ki-joon, however, has to stay for a few weeks longer because he has developed COVID symptoms and even spent a few days in the ICU. The two say their goodbyes through their paper and string phone and it’s clear that Hee-joo wants to leave behind everything from her stay — including him. Ki-joon, though, wants to meet on the outside once he’s allowed to leave. The two still have not seen each other’s faces, but he suggests a spot to meet in the park and says he’s sure he’ll recognize her anyway.

Hee-joo declines and leaves the treatment center to go about her life, which includes having to find a new job. When Ki-joon is finally out of treatment, he goes to the meeting spot in the park at the time and day he suggested. Hee-joo isn’t there (as she said she wouldn’t be) and Ki-joon starts to scour the city for her, spending days holding a sign in her neighborhood with her name on it.

At the end of another day of trying, Ki-joon goes to a convenience store to buy a drink and the cashier is Hee-joo. The two do not recognize each other. Not only are they wearing masks, they still have no idea what the other looks like. Ki-joon leaves, throwing away a cake he made that reads, “Happy Birthday Hee-joo.” Hee-joo sees the cake and knows it’s for her.

One of the secrets she divulged to Ki-joon was that she’s never had a birthday cake because her sister’s birthday is the day before hers. They only do one cake in her family, and that’s her sister’s. Being a pastry chef, Ki-joon had promised her a cake, though he didn’t know when her birthday was. Every day, he’d been carry a new cake as he searched for her in Seoul.

Hee-joo rushes out of the convenience store and finds Ki-joon in the street. They finally meet face to face — or, at least, mask to mask. Hee-joo realizes he’s been looking for her, trying to give her a cake, and she rises on her toes to kiss him through their masks. The two then go to a coffee shop where they nervously reveal their faces to each other and begin their relationship.

Unfortunately, the drama tries to do too much in its one-hour time-slot and doesn’t really succeed at any of it. It seems to want to capture the worst struggles of 2020, the dedicated work of medical professionals, and the alienation of quarantine, but refuses to take any of them completely seriously because it also wants to be a rom-com. The final sequence could be seen as satire — kissing through masks, using hand gel before holding hands — but I think it’s really trying to be cute.

The scene in the coffee shop, where they reveal their faces, is genuinely a cute moment, but it comes too late in an otherwise contrived script. The treatment center — which is boring for the characters — is quite boring as a setting too, and the interesting stuff doesn’t start until they meet outside. While all the ideas here are admirable, this one needed a little more time to gel.

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1 Reply1988 -❣️Mother Bean❣️

December 11, 2022 at 11:14 AM

@dramaddictally thank you. This sounded really ambitious for an hour show but the concept of talking without seeing each other like going to confessional or being on a phone call. It sounded sad that she wanted to walk away and leave everything behind but it must be like going on holiday and then trying to maintain contact with someone you chat to at the hotel trying to meet outside of the context of the relaxing setting with the busyness of life doesn’t work easily and can spoil the memory.

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Dramaddictally

December 11, 2022 at 2:15 PM

Yes, and in this case it's the opposite. She found her time at the treatment center sullied (or "contaminated") and didn't want to bring any of it back into her regular life. And he was a part of that time she didn't want to remember.