[Drama special review] Dog Days of Summer

by Dramaddictally

Sweet, simple, and innocent, the KBS Drama Special Dog Days of Summer drops us into a historical heatwave to tell its coming-of-age tale. Set amidst the 2002 FIFA World Cup, our pubescent protagonist grapples with moving to a new city, in a story about life’s transitions and what it takes to pass through them.

 
DRAMA SPECIAL REVIEW

I’ve really come to love the annual KBS special and the opportunities it affords new talent. This edition is no different with our hero, KIM YI-JUN, played by the up-and-comer Moon Woo-jin. He’s played the younger versions of male leads in a ton of dramas — most recently his standout role in Castaway Diva (heartbreakingly good!) — but this is the first time I’ve seen him as the central star. He’s super talented, carrying this short-format drama like a pro, and almost on his own.

We meet the 14-year-old Yi-jun as he’s being trucked off by his father from Anyang (just outside Seoul) to Daegu, much further south. He’s going to live with his aunt and uncle for a while, just until his dad can pay off some debts. Of course, we all know what that means, and poor Yi-jun is going to be stuck with his hostile relatives for good.

The drama opens with the setup in its first shot. Cassette tapes for sale tell us we’re in the past, and newspaper headlines blare the good news that the Korea national soccer team is proceeding toward the World Cup. Apart from that, it’s hot. A heatwave is coming and on the bus ride to his new life, Yi-jun learns that Daegu is even hotter. Uh oh. Our young hero is in for a turbulent time.

The bumps begin as soon as he arrives and his aunt makes it known she doesn’t want him there. Then he starts his new school and gets mocked for his capital-district dialect. He’s already a bit shy and reserved, but when the teasing starts, he stops talking altogether — only to be hassled for being stuck up.

One of his antagonists is HAN YEO-REUM (Park Seo-kyung), a girl in his class who’s having a tough transition of her own, starting to get acne and winding up with blood on the back of her skirt at school. She’s alone in the classroom with Yi-jun when he notices the spot, makes her aware, and then hands her his track pants to change into. “Don’t tell anyone,” she says. To which he responds, “I don’t have anyone to tell.” She was snotty before, but that’s enough to change her attitude.

It’s not a mistake that this girl is named “Summer” when our story includes both a heatwave and teen boys exploring their first crushes. Yeo-reum takes a liking to Yi-jun after the track pants incident and this upsets the boy who likes her, JUNG JI-WOOK (Choi Hyun-jin). Both boys love basketball, but the school doesn’t have a team, so they play each other at a ragged hoop — until it turns into a fistfight due to Ji-wook’s jealousy. Not only does Yi-jun have Yeo-reum’s attention, but he’s also better than Ji-wook on the court.

Our hero keeps his head up, but he’s taking a beating from all sides. After the fight, he’s harshly reprimanded by his aunt and uncle and we learn that he promised his mother before she died that he’d go all the way with basketball. Now his stupid new school doesn’t even have a team! He hates it and on top of that he’s letting his mom down.

He runs off, back to Anyang, only to see that his old friends are moving on without him and his dad has no plans of taking him back. Our boy is in a bind, isolated and lonely, but he starts to see that the way through it is to move forward rather than back.

Yeo-reum turns out to be a great friend and they ask the principal (Kim Kwang-kyu) about setting up a basketball team. He’s skeptical and tells them it’ll happen when Korea wins the World Cup.

The backdrop of the soccer matches in all this works quite well for the story. Even though the boys are into basketball, not soccer, the heated competition in the middle of a literal heatwave weighs on all the events. By the time Korea makes it to the semi-finals and the whole school (not to mention the whole country) is watching, our leads find themselves in a tense battle of their own.

The drama’s climax lines up the historical happenings with the story’s arc very nicely in a kind of double sports match. And the beauty comes from its insistence that things can go well even when they don’t go the way you want them to. “It’s hot in Daegu,” Yeo-reum tells Yi-jun, “but if you bear with it, it gets easier.”

This one has a happy ending that doesn’t leave out any threads, but also doesn’t tie them in the tightest bows. The final scenes give us a wide-open sense that the best is yet to come — for Yi-jun, his newly made friends, and the way they see the world. There’s no out-right romance here because these kids are young, still innocent, and allowed to be exactly where they are. It’s a reminder that transitions are hard and adjusting takes time, but there’s a lot to look forward to on the other side.

 
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