If one were to pose the question "Do you like Brahms?" to any of the characters in this sad limp rag of a drama, you can be sure that the answer, whether yes or no, would be a lie. That's because every single character in this piece practices deception reflexively. It's like the old joke about politicians: "How do you know politicians are lying?" "When they move their lips."
Now as I have observed elsewhere, lies are normal fodder of drama, but what is so obnoxious about this one (and characteristic of Kokowa dramas) is that every one lies, tells half-truths, obfuscates, and misdirects at every possible occasion and often for no reason other than to satisfy the need of the writer, in this case Ryu Bo-ri, to cause her characters to continuously inflict pain and discomfort on themselves and everyone else. (Ryu Bo-ri is a woman but she takes a sadistic delight in torturing her characters, especially, but sad to say not exclusively, the female ones.)
I watched this after I saw Park Eun-bin as Extraordinary Attorney Woo, one of the best shows I have ever seen in any language. And this was such a disappointment. It's one of the most depressing shows ever. Ms. Park plays a late starter as a violinist who attends a music school where the professors and other students, more talented than her, look down on her and do everything they can to reinforce her natural diffidence and lack of self-confidence. Her family too beats up on her at every turn. Her best female friend dumps her, after haranguing her and walking away without listening to her. No one except her kindly boyfriend is nice to her, but he too almost never listens to her play and offers her not one word of encouragement about the music. Every time he asks her how she's doing, she lies to him and pushes away his earnest efforts to get her to open up just once (ironic, since he himself never opens up either and repeatedly lies to her - how could any relationship built on complete lack of candor ever succeed?). So, we have to endure episode after episode when she is humiliated and belittled, made to run errands for a casually beastly teacher who spends her time during lessons filing her nails and texting, getting picked on by her boyfriend's disgusting agent, subjected to cruel gossip by her classmates, thrown over her by her best friend, and constantly made to feel uneasy because her boyfriend keeps meeting his former lover, to all of which she submits meekly until her spirit has been completely crushed. Do we really believe that happiness is giving up your passion for an office job?
In the meantime, our hero, played by Kim Min-jae, is a talented pianist burdened by a worthless father whose wife constantly covers for his financial failures by sponging every cent of her son's earnings. He is plagued by a clingy woman, a more talented violinist from a rich family played unsmilingly by Park Ji-hyun, who dated his best friend for years while he was in love with her and she with him; he is endlessly humiliated because she and her family keep bailing out the revolting (never-seen) father - you just know that none of this ends well until the artificial happy ending. He falls for the heroine, but he never really gives himself to her and he is endlessly less than honest with her. The audience is left with no one to root for, as pretty as the leads may be.
There's a trumped up happy ending, sort of, although it involves Park Eun-bin's character giving up music, but it's really unfair on the audience to have to endure 15 ½ episodes of relentless misery for one not all that uplifting finish. I hope that Ms. Park will never again allow herself to play a character so supine, so willing to bear any amount of abuse, just to satisfy Kokowa's predilection for riling up the audience and giving them long-deferred gratification when some (not all) of the oppressors get what is usually (and is in this case) a quarter-baked comeuppance that does not begin to compensate for the misery they have inflicted. We would like justice to be served and it just isn't, in anything like a sufficient measure to satisfy all the negative feelings that accumulate watching this sad-sack story.
I have one other significant complaint. This is, supposedly, a story set in and around a music university, with many of the characters being classical musicians when they are not lying, bullying, being stepped on, etc. Why then is there so little actual classical music? The OST is a long series of dreary songs, each less memorable than the other, with plodding lyrics. With the whole classical music canon available, why couldn't we have had more of that? And perhaps it would have slowed things down a bit, although not more than the usual endless diet of meals and cups of tea, but how about some actual concert extracts that are longer than a couple of bars? If I am asked, Do You Like Brahms, my answer is, I couldn't tell after watching 16 hours of this show.
Now as I have observed elsewhere, lies are normal fodder of drama, but what is so obnoxious about this one (and characteristic of Kokowa dramas) is that every one lies, tells half-truths, obfuscates, and misdirects at every possible occasion and often for no reason other than to satisfy the need of the writer, in this case Ryu Bo-ri, to cause her characters to continuously inflict pain and discomfort on themselves and everyone else. (Ryu Bo-ri is a woman but she takes a sadistic delight in torturing her characters, especially, but sad to say not exclusively, the female ones.)
I watched this after I saw Park Eun-bin as Extraordinary Attorney Woo, one of the best shows I have ever seen in any language. And this was such a disappointment. It's one of the most depressing shows ever. Ms. Park plays a late starter as a violinist who attends a music school where the professors and other students, more talented than her, look down on her and do everything they can to reinforce her natural diffidence and lack of self-confidence. Her family too beats up on her at every turn. Her best female friend dumps her, after haranguing her and walking away without listening to her. No one except her kindly boyfriend is nice to her, but he too almost never listens to her play and offers her not one word of encouragement about the music. Every time he asks her how she's doing, she lies to him and pushes away his earnest efforts to get her to open up just once (ironic, since he himself never opens up either and repeatedly lies to her - how could any relationship built on complete lack of candor ever succeed?). So, we have to endure episode after episode when she is humiliated and belittled, made to run errands for a casually beastly teacher who spends her time during lessons filing her nails and texting, getting picked on by her boyfriend's disgusting agent, subjected to cruel gossip by her classmates, thrown over her by her best friend, and constantly made to feel uneasy because her boyfriend keeps meeting his former lover, to all of which she submits meekly until her spirit has been completely crushed. Do we really believe that happiness is giving up your passion for an office job?
In the meantime, our hero, played by Kim Min-jae, is a talented pianist burdened by a worthless father whose wife constantly covers for his financial failures by sponging every cent of her son's earnings. He is plagued by a clingy woman, a more talented violinist from a rich family played unsmilingly by Park Ji-hyun, who dated his best friend for years while he was in love with her and she with him; he is endlessly humiliated because she and her family keep bailing out the revolting (never-seen) father - you just know that none of this ends well until the artificial happy ending. He falls for the heroine, but he never really gives himself to her and he is endlessly less than honest with her. The audience is left with no one to root for, as pretty as the leads may be.
There's a trumped up happy ending, sort of, although it involves Park Eun-bin's character giving up music, but it's really unfair on the audience to have to endure 15 ½ episodes of relentless misery for one not all that uplifting finish. I hope that Ms. Park will never again allow herself to play a character so supine, so willing to bear any amount of abuse, just to satisfy Kokowa's predilection for riling up the audience and giving them long-deferred gratification when some (not all) of the oppressors get what is usually (and is in this case) a quarter-baked comeuppance that does not begin to compensate for the misery they have inflicted. We would like justice to be served and it just isn't, in anything like a sufficient measure to satisfy all the negative feelings that accumulate watching this sad-sack story.
I have one other significant complaint. This is, supposedly, a story set in and around a music university, with many of the characters being classical musicians when they are not lying, bullying, being stepped on, etc. Why then is there so little actual classical music? The OST is a long series of dreary songs, each less memorable than the other, with plodding lyrics. With the whole classical music canon available, why couldn't we have had more of that? And perhaps it would have slowed things down a bit, although not more than the usual endless diet of meals and cups of tea, but how about some actual concert extracts that are longer than a couple of bars? If I am asked, Do You Like Brahms, my answer is, I couldn't tell after watching 16 hours of this show.