TV Show Review Series

4 Seemingly Unrelated Thoughts About It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

a must-watch kdrama of the year, of ANY year

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is a korean drama centered around a romance between a nurse at an inpatient mental health unit and a children’s book author who appears to have Antisocial Personality Disorder.

I have such a series of raves and rants on this show, so let’s dive right in!

[1] The aesthetic of this show is PHENOMENAL

Let’s ease you into this TV show rant one step at a time and start with the aesthetics of the show. The true attention to visual detail in recent korean dramas, particularly ones destined for Netflix have been absolutely phenomenal, and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay tops that list.

From absolutely cinematic scenes to delicious food spreads that make your stomach growl to fantabulous and even outlandish outfits that test the limits of your understanding of fashion, this kdrama continues to tickle the visual senses as the plot unfolds.

[2] They discuss the intricacies of siblinghood and parental relationships

In It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, we learn about how Moon Gang Tae (male protagonist of the show) is molded into someone focussed on caring for others over himself. He was shaped into taking on a caretaking role by his own mother for his autistic older brother. When we first meet him in this show, we see exactly that, that she’d successfully done that.

Yet, as the story unfolds, we learn about how he fought this role, particularly as a kid just wanting his mom’s affection and love without needing to prove it by taking on this caretaking role.

This characterization was so deep but so healing to see in an Asian story. So often, I’ve seen a similar backstory in North American shows that label that parent as “toxic” and “codependent”. That characterization makes sense in North American culture that values individualism and emphasizes personal empowerment and autonomy. I don’t necessarily disagree with this conceptualization of the world, but rather always found that it was missing another half of me, as someone who grew up in North American culture but held on to a mixture of North American and Asian beliefs.

In this kdrama, they illustrate a more nuanced story. It’s up to the viewer to decide, based on their own context, how they feel about the mother and the mother-son relationship. But we also get to see two interesting and conflicting perceptions of his mother from Gang-Tae’s own perspective.

Flashbacks to childhood show how he yearned to be loved, to be treated as just as important as his brother. We see, through his regular flashbacks, that to him, he remembered those moments where he really had to fight for attention emerge. We see that resentment because to a degree, he had to grow up much faster in order to take on that caretaker role.

This is contrasted with other memories he’d forgotten but emerged later in the story, that his mother did center his needs and care for him. To a degree, the burden he carried shifted his memory to focus on the resentment to lose some of those more precious moments he spent with his mother.

I loved this depiction because it doesn’t show a black-and-white labelling. It shows the struggle. It shows how this struggle between resentment but also feeling genuinely cared for shaped into who he is. He didn’t need to label his mother in one way or another to move on.

Rather, the way out was to remember those memories of the good times and honour, release the resentment. That was the contrast between the scenes of his childhood and how he felt resentful, and who he ended up being as a result of stepping out of the shell he molded into as a result of his childhood.

[3] The use of children’s stories and metaphors to illustrate lessons

Personally, I find the fact that they use children’s stories and metaphors to illustrate life lessons to be one of the most attractive points.

We all know a few classic children’s that are supposed to teach us lessons, from the classic tale of the three little pigs, to the re-imagined version of the three little pigs from the wolf’s point of view.

(The first teaches of a story of investing in quality despite the effort it takes. The second teaches that perspective changes the narrative and experience of events.)

As the main protagonist in this show is a children’s author, particularly someone who struggled with regulating emotions and expression emotions (other than as anger). To a degree, her boundary overstepping actions can be seen as a way to self-regulate and soothe her emotions, not knowing a better way to manage them.

Another way she manages her emotions is by writing stories (this is explicitly stated by her editor at some point in the editor), and that really made me reflect. It was her way of being able to communicate with the world.

For example, her story of the Cheerful Dog, a cheerful dog who interacted all day with humans happily but at night fell quiet and silent, not knowing how to run free even though their leash was gone… This story paralleled the main protagonists’ own cage set by the expectations by her own mother.

Her “cutting off her own leash” involves cutting her own hair, symbolising that she no longer lived under the rigid expectations of how her mother brought her up to be.

[4] Has one of the best plot twists I’d ever seen

That is all I’m going to say. On this point. Watch it for the plot twist, please :)

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and technically, I should rename this to 3.5 random thoughts about this show, but, oh well. :’)

Ps, feel free to tweet me your poem response and I’ll be sure to RT and share it with the world!

^ by Xin Xin