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overthinkingkdrama · 4 years

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Exit Review: When The Camellia Blooms

Synopsis

Dong Baek is a single mother running a small bar called "Camellia" in the village of Ongsan. She is pretty, softhearted and smiles easily, but because of her status and her job she is ostracized and mistreated by the people who live there. Since she's had a string of rotten luck and misfortune since childhood, she considers this pretty much par for course. She's never known what it's like to be treasured, but lavishes all of her love on her son.

One day, simple-minded busybody cop, Hwang Yong Shik, moves back to his hometown of Ongsan from Seoul and falls precipitously in love with Dong Baek at first sight. He then proceeds to make a nuisance of himself around her bar, because all he wants to do is spend time with her and protect her from their nosy, judgmental neighbors. At first Dong Baek is confused and annoyed by all the attention Yong Shik's infatuation brings, but as she spends time with him she finds herself increasingly disarmed by this guileless, straightforward young man who seems to adore her without any reservation.

Complications ensue from all sides, but especially when Dong Baek's ex, Kang Jong Ryul --who since their break up has become a famous baseball player and reality star--shows up in town and begins to show an interest in their son's life.

Oh, and also there's a serial killer for some reason.

Review

Story: The plot of When the Camellia Blooms is unfocused at best, at worst it is completely all over the place. But it was clear from very early on that it had no intention of being a tightly plotted and paced narrative but rather a shotgun spray of character pieces about community, humanity and parenthood scattered across the village of Ongsan. As a ensemble piece I think this drama largely succeeds, although there was a good portion of the characters that I didn't care for or could have done with a lot less of. (Jong Ryul and Gyu Tae in particular come to mind.) However, because of the lack of focus at times the show seems to meander with no clear sense of direction.

I know I harp on tone issues in dramas frequently, and if any drama would at face value seem guilty of that sin WTCB seems like a flagrant offender. However, something about how up and down and everywhere the drama was worked for me in terms of tone. Putting the small town gossip circle right next to the violent serial killer plot almost struck me as a stoke of brilliance. At least I felt like we were on the very edge of an epiphany. Because, in many ways, that contrast may have--and I do emphasize may have--been the point. That petty, shallow, silly people with good intentions and maybe not a lot of brains, live right next door to twisted, evil, calculating people. That all of us are kind of in this together, and as Yong Shik rather brilliantly says "we out number you" you being the evil people. While the bad is always with us, there's a silver lining with it, and a certain humor and absurdity to life that we can laugh at together if we have the sense to see it.

Acting: I think it's really the veteran cast that carries this drama. Especially Lee Jung Eun (who plays Dong Baek's mother) manages to do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting for the drama in a way that I appreciated but didn't expect.

For me, the stand out performance in the main cast was Kang Ha Neul as Yong Shik, a character who, in the hands of a lesser actor, might have been too frustrating for me to watch, but he somehow turned into a really appealing and charming male lead even though he wasn't the smartest or smoothest guy around.

I thought Gong Hyo Jin was just fine as Dong Baek, but I couldn't shake the awareness throughout that I was watching Gong Hyo Jin and that on top of that I've seen other dramas in which I liked her better. Gong Hyo Jin isn't really one of those actresses who disappears into a role. Especially in dramas. She seems to essentially play variations on herself. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, but when that's the case then it's even more incumbent on the writing to give us something to hold on to and to love about the character. I felt like WTCB got a lot of mileage out of how likable Gong Hyo Jin is as a person, and didn't necessarily hold up its end writing-wise to earn her previously banked audience good will. But hell, this might just be me.

All this being said, many of the characters are quite cartoonish and over the top. The drama has a distinctly comedic bent, despite some of the heavy subject matter. This is not a collection of subtle, restrained performances.

Production: WTCB nails the small-town homeliness of Ongsan. I think all the sets look great. A little ugly and rundown, cluttered and lived in, but colorful and alive. From the marinated crab restaurants with their giant plaster crabs hanging outside, to the small town police station, to the baseball pitch, and especially in the shabby warehouse interior of Camellia that Dong Baek has done everything in her power to make feel inviting--with questionable success. This drama has a retro-feel without actually being a period piece. It’s something that I tend to really enjoy about dramas that are set outside of Seoul. I think the feel of the production earned the drama a lot of good will from me.

I liked the way this drama looked and felt to watch overall. Although I could have done without some of the black and white “thriller” sequences that started and ended episodes in the beginning of the run. I thought they just made the tonal shifts between the humor and the crime elements feel even more jarring.

Feels: WTCB is a sentimental, feel-good show that overstays its welcome. I say this a lot, but this drama could have stood to be shorter. I think 16 episodes would have been more than enough to tell the story they were trying to tell and would have spared the audience some of the more repetitive and frustrating character arcs. (Initially I had sympathy for Jong Ryul’s character, for instance, but then he just wouldn’t go away. And every one of his scenes filled me with increasing irritation.) Some character arcs were artfully handled, but because the show frequently didn’t seem to know what kind of story it wanted to tell, the arcs that were weaker really stood out.

All that being said, WTCB handled a few choice emotional beats incredibly well. Without spoiling anything too much there is an episode later in the run that is structured around a certain character’s last interactions with a series of people before a calamity happens. The audience has already been let in on the secret at this point. We know what’s about to happen, and that lends a poignancy and pathos to this character that they didn’t previously have. Suddenly things that would otherwise be trivial seem significant. It’s a really fine example of television writing, and it’s almost worth watching all on its own. (Hopefully this isn’t too vague to be understood.)

At times Dong Baek’s downtrodden damsel shtick gets a little bit much, and it’s hard to tell if it’s being played for humor or if the writer isn’t actually in on the joke. But it’s satisfying when she stands up for herself and goes after what she wants. The handling of the central romance, surprisingly, worked for me even though I was skeptical of Yong Shik in the beginning. I was particularly impressed by the plot line involving Dong Baek’s relationship with her mother. That was the relationship that I think rang truest and that the drama got the most mileage out of. It was also the only one that nearly made me cry at points. WTCB also has a really exultant and life-affirming finale. It wrapped the whole drama up well and ended it on a high note, which lord knows is a hard enough thing to do in dramaland on its own.

Would I recommend When The Camellia Blooms? It would probably depend on the type of drama watcher I was talking to, but I think for the right kind of person WTCB would be just the thing. 7/10

#when the camellia blooms #when camellia blooms #kang ha neul #gong hyo jin #exit review #kdrama reviews

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