Honestly, Doona is not very likeable at first. I really find her chain smoking habit off-putting on top of her unhinged behavior. She's rude to blow cigarette smoke to his face. But I want to know what her deal is.
The person that I was invested in was Won Jun. I want him to succeed in all his goals in life.
What got me hooked after two episode are Yang Se Jong, beautiful shared house, pretty cinematography and lovely OST. I also like Jin Ju, his childhood friend and crush. So I wonder what will happen to them.
Whatever may come, I plan to finish this show.

I got to her needing therapy way before him! Hoped for better, but dropped after 1.

Thanks @dramaddictally for the weecap. I think for a short series there should be more to hook us in at this stage of the drama. I think because it’s short and bingeable people will continue in the hope that it is just a slow start.
I compared it to Love to hate you which was also bingeable but it had humour and created an interest in the backstory to the unlikeable lead. In Doona! it feels like too much hard work without much reward to find out what is going on with her.

Yang Se-jong! Yelling his name is really the only way I can account for the exclamation point in the show’s title.

Actually, my Y chromosome can think of another reason for it.

None of this sounds like a budding romance. Tbh the teaser also wasn’t able to show much promise. I feel like this might be a toxic relationship in the making, a bit like nevertheless but less intimate scenes. Where viewers might remain unsatisfied with the direction of the story or the romance (where it might feel like a forced romance).

Except physical attraction, I never understood why they're interested in each other, they were very different and they never really shared their feelings.

The hospital scene was so weird. First, why the nurse was so angry about the fact she didn't call a guardian? She's an adult and she's conscious. She's the patient, so if you need tell her something, tell her directly! When I was at the emergency for my arm, even if my mother was with me, the doctor talked directly to me. And the appointment with the surgeon, he didn't ask me to come with a guardian, I was alone and he explained things to me.
So the whole scene was not romantic at all. Who chooses socks with fingers separated, when the purpose is to maintain her warm? It's like glove and mitten!

Her change of attitude after that was odd too. She wasn't hit to the head, but she got a change of personality suddenly.

KIM JIN-JOO was the interesting character of this drama and I would have liked to see more scenes with her.

Wow @Dramaddictally that is a lot of content for a First Impressions post. Your writing is awesome as always and the opening sentence is just perfection. 👍

Thank you for taking one for the team and sitting through the episode (or two) because I certainly couldn't.  🤣

Hmm, @dramaddictally, hmm. Maybe we are seeing the same things, but having different reactions to them. You say (rightly), "...the individual stories of our leads don’t have me rooting for them as a couple." Because it doesn’t seem to me that this is the right end-game for us, or for the story.

It's like this show has as its fundamental, fraught tension what you *want* to happen in a relationship, what you would like to *get out* of a relationship, and what should happen for this drama to “make sense.”

I am truly enjoying this—the FF-img is minimal, but admittedly present (especially when it’s only scenes of our ML brooding)—and recommend it to all others who simply want a relationship drama. No serial killers (so far)!

I've only seen the first episode, so no spoilers or sense of this show as a whole here. It didn't blow me away, and I agree that the chemistry between the leads isn't exactly setting fire to my screen, but because we're just at the beginning, I can't say I saw that as some huge problem. Clearly, this is supposed to be a character-driven story, so I expected flawed characters and difficult circumstances to establish the conflict. I didn't feel the need to binge this one as soon as the first episode ended, but I did want to see what would happen next, so I'll watch it throughout next week.

What I Liked:

--This drama looks and sounds beautiful. I love the shots of Won-joon's cozy room that show us how warm it feels and how they contrast with shots of Doona's expansive yet cold and lonely space. And as someone who doesn't care for kpop, I was worried about the OST, but it's pretty dreamy so far.

--Speaking of my dislike of kpop, I also tend to find depictions of idol life (on and off the stage) in dramas to be so over-the-top and cringey that I typically ff. But the scenes we've gotten so far were directed, shot, and edited in an intriguing way that didn't make it so I was thinking about the whole meta-narrative of Suzy (a former idol, no?) playing a former idol.

--I appreciate that Won-joon doesn't feel like a caricature of the everyday nice guy, but a genuine, down-to-earth young man with normal college-life struggles (never having enough money, trying to stay on top of his studies, dealing with obnoxious sunbaes and trying to fit in, and harboring a long-standing crush on a woman who only sees him as a friend). Yang Se-jong plays these types of parts well because he has an earnest, genuine presence.

--And finally, I like that Doona is obviously so troubled and somewhat unlikeable. There was definitely potential in the beginning for me to decide she's just annoying and turn off the show, but I hung around, because I'm interested in where we go from here.

What I Didn't Like:

--I blame "Worst of Evil" for the fact that I'm already burned out (hee-hee) on excessive depictions of smoking, but look, we get that Doona is self-destructive and unhappy; she doesn't need to be smoking in almost every scene. The shots of the full ashtrays would be enough.

--That in his tirade, Won-joon never specifically referenced the fact that Doona blowing smoke in his face (which was incredibly rude) led to him losing a job he needed. Attacking her apparent entitlement was justified, I guess, but why not simply stick to the specific thing she did that caused harm to him?

Verdict So Far: Intrigued but not yet fully engaged.

It doesn't have to be romantic to be good or interesting. Everybody here loves My Ahjussi and it was just about 2 people with problems becoming friends and helping each other. This is the story here, though their friendship does have some sexual tension.

I agree, first ep was boring. Her character was superficial and behaved in an artificial way, it's like drama thought she would be mesmerizing smoking dozens of cigarettes in slippers.
It does get better from the second episode on, or so it seems, I'm still on ep 4, but it's become a nice story though still not the average romance people might have been expecting from this.

Just randomly dropping here to mention that parts of this was filmed in my uni, and my roommate's ratty old bike accidentally became a background extra in episode 3. 🤣

For the first episode and half of the second one I just didn't get Doo Na. I think that she felt so random and crazy because we saw everything from Won Jun's perspective.
I liked her way better after that.

Won Jun is cute and nice, it makes sense she wants to be his friend.

The smoking seems weird. A number of years ago, smoking became sort of taboo in KDramas. People could hold a cigarette, maybe even put it in their mouth, but they never actually lit it.

Even the cigarettes look weird. Black paper?

Suzy, too, looks weird. Yes, the role needs her to look like a member of a Kpop girl group, but still. She used to look distinct, recognizable. Here, she looks run-of-the-mill.

Back in 1977 there was a European film named 'That Obscure Object of Desire'. Doona reminds me of that film. An enigmatic, troubled, beautiful woman and the feckless man who becomes obsessed with her. The series feels rather French, where the 'beautiful heroine suffering from ennui' was an entire genre unto itself.

I actually enjoyed the drama - my only feedback would be that they needed a better actress than Suzy... it is a complicated role and I wonder if someone like Seo Ye-ji would have killed it!! Yes it was a slow burn but quite realistic in depicting the emotional push-pull... I binge watched (some fast forwarding) but I would recommend it.

I have in the past stopped watching a kdrama after 1 or 2 episodes but, they did not have Bae Suzy. I'm confident it will pick up. I hope she quits smoking. I really liked the line.... something like.... you're not stable if you carry a bottle of wine around to hit someone over the head.