Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 2 out of 5 stars
Synopsis
*partially taken from Dramafever*
Yoon Jin Ah (Son Ye Jin from The Truth Beneath) is a store supervisor in a coffee franchise. Despite being in her thirties, she is still single. An easygoing and kind person, Yoo Jin Ah enjoys her life and her friendship with coffee shop owner Seo Kyung Sun (Jang So Yun from Secret Love Affair). But for a while now, Yoo Jin Ah has felt rather empty inside. Seo Joon Hee (Jung Hae In from Goblin: The Lonely and Great God) is a character designer at a video game company. Handsome and goofy, he is the younger brother of Yoon Jin Ah’s best friend. He doesn’t take life seriously, and enjoys the simpler things, like getting free food from his sister’s bestie. Seo Joon Hee has returned to Korea after working overseas for three years. Yoon Jin Ah used to think Seo Joon Hee was rather immature, but after three years, he seems to have changed into a likable, sensible man. Grappling with her new feelings for her best friend’s younger brother, will Yoon Jin Ah finally become something more than just the pretty “sister” who buys him food? Also known as “Pretty Noona/Sister Who Buys Me Food.”
Rambling
*beware of spoilers*
I needed a couple days to calm down and collect my thoughts on this because the last episode had me ugly-crying, I was so invested.
Something In The Rain was really good. Damn near perfect. And it leaves behind such a lingering feeling. This is a noona romance of the highest caliber.
Jin-ah is a 35-year-old coffee brand manager, depressed and stuck in a pitiful relationship with a man who is everything her mother wants in a son-in-law: good job, excellent education, and a stellar family background. In other words, Jin-ah’s mother is a hypocritical, vain, selfish bitch who tries to assert control over her family in the name of protecting their reputation and future. Her mom is obsessed with the pedigree of her children’s significant others (More on that later…)
The cinematography was moody and gorgeous. The shots were unobtrusive, as if we were viewing this character and her surroundings from a far-off vantage point. I liked that we weren’t all up in her business; the distance was polite almost.
Jin-ah is at once a submissive, quiet, elegant sort of woman who does her best to keep the peace. She doesn’t relish in confrontation, so much so that she endures constant sexual harassment in the workplace rather than stand up for herself. The show makes a point of making her out to have low self-esteem and little pride or dignity. All of this done in the restrained filming style, almost giving the show its only eminence.
Her best friend since childhood, Kyung Sun, is a motherly single woman in her 30s. She had to grow up quickly when her mother died, her father left her, and she had to finish raising her younger brother, Joon-hee.
The romance between Joon-hee and Jin-ah doesn’t start immediately. Rather she has to mourn her previous relationship with Dick (we’ll call him that, since his name is unimportant). Not only did Dick break up with her, he cheated on her with a much younger woman. She exacts revenge not through overtly calling him out in a public place or confronting him with all her anger; she secretly plants her lipstick in his car for the new girl to find. It quickly makes the girl up and leave his sorry ass.
I thought the ordeal with the ex-boyfriend would end soon thereafter, but the show took a different route. Things escalated (culminating in a kidnapping and car crash). A misunderstanding causes Dick to think Joon-hee is Jin-ah’s boyfriend and that she has been cheating on him this whole time, too. This sobering fact offends him and and his fragile masculinity, so Dick tries to get her back, even unapologetically showing up to a family dinner her ignorant mother invited him to. That scene was tense. There’s little music to cue the audience to what they should be feeling, so you just watch the train wreck happen.
It was so telling to me that Jin-ah refused to tell her parents that they broke up because Dick cheated on her. Instead she pulls a cheap stunt, going completely out of character by dressing up in a short, tight dress and caking on some make-up to make her literally look like a loose woman, the younger woman that Dick prefers. Her parents tease out what happened to their relationship, and unbelievably, the mother blames her for Dick’s philandering. Besides almost punching the screen, I realized that this was the crux of the conflict in the show. The disapproving mother and her twisted morality concerning her daughter’s love life.
Jin-ah and Joon-hee together at last was simply magical. It transcends good chemistry. These characters fit. They were absolutely in love and magnificently made for each other. Joon-hee cherished Jin-ah in a way that she had never experienced before, and that was the thing of it. Were they willing to brave the fire (her hellish disapproving mother) to be together in the long run? The answer is complicated.
At first they presented a united front, consulted with each other and supported each other. This was easier before they came out as a couple. Once her mother got involved, it was a losing battle, mostly because of Jin-ah’s own personality.
The romance between Jin-ah and Joon-hee is punctuated by the fact that Jin-ah lies or withholds the truth from Joon-hee so that he will not worry about her, or show up guns blazing. She did this throughout the final chapter of her and Dick’s epic saga; she did this when her workplace sexual harassment came to the forefront; and she did this when her mother was trying to tear them apart. When you only share the good things with each other and never the bad, it makes the foundation crumble. It only breeds distrust.
It goes without saying that Jin-ah’s mother was a witch who was cutting down their relationship with her razor-sharp tongue, but Jin-ah helped by staying silent, choosing instead to let her mother say and do as she pleased.Jin-ah also made numerous mistakes with Joon-hee, the worst ones being (1) going on the blind date that her mother set up for her, (2) declaring their break-up in front of her crazy mom and a stunned Joon-hee, (3) declining Joon-hee’s offer to go live with him in the U.S.
Number 3 is what had me boiling in the last couple episodes. Jin-ah’s workplace sexual harassment was not an isolated case and the show does a terrific job of setting it all up. There’s evidence (videos, texts, etc.), all the girls are upset, the male managers don’t know what they did wrong… and then the plot thickened. The managers tried to silence the victims, the owner of the company tries to appease the women with a fancy dinner, the girls are intimidated into thinking their stories are invalid because everyone will think they let the abuse happen (i.e., because they said and did nothing for so long, they nonverbally consented). It was a prickly storyline, and the one constant was that Jin-ah, with her newfound confidence and no-bullshit attitude, was going to go through with holding those men responsible.
Her only request was that everything, names and all, be disclosed and those involved be punished by the company. The capable and no-nonsense owner was interested in the harassment until it jeopardized the company. Then the situation took a turn for the worse when a sleezy lawyer told Jin-ah to drop her accusations and presented her with falsified texts and video of her in questionable situations. She declares, “I will never let them have their way” and storms off.
Throughout all this, I am supportive of her. She wants to fight because she has been wronged. But here’s where it gets sticky: Joon-hee is trying to solve a different problem of theirs. He signs up for another years-long stint in the U.S. branch of his company with the intention of taking the recently kicked-out Jin-ah with him. It solves the issue of where she will live, and they can escape from her family’s ridiculousness.
She moves into a new single-bedroom apartment and lies to Joon-hee while he’s on a short business trip. She had the opportunity to tell him before, even though he showed her all his cards. That’s when they stop being on the same page. And it was frustrating, no, maddening to watch.
Jin-ah completes the separation by refusing to come with him to America, saying that she surely would have if she was her former self. But his love for her and their relationship has changed her. She won’t leave town when things are at their worst. She has to see everything through until the end. It was an awful way of asserting her independence and it ultimately wrenched them apart.
The last episode featured the expected time jump; Jin-ah is almost 40 now and Joon-hee is presumably in his 30s. What made me cry was that she made a bad trade. She might have put to bed the sexual harassment case, to the detriment of her career, and she might have shown her parents that she can live on her own without them, but she is now back to square one. She’s miserable, in a bad relationship with another dick, and she’s unfulfilled. She spends her days reminiscing on the idyllic relationship she had with Joon-hee.
I cried when she quit her job. I cried when she meets Kyung-sung again after avoiding her for years. I cried when she tries to tell a pained Joon-hee that they should go back to how it used to be between them. She was still making mistakes even after she realized the ones she made a few years prior.
The move to Jeju Island was only a balm. She needed to truly get away from it all, finally run away like she was supposed to do with Joon-hee. He goes after her there, because someone needs to humble themselves before they can be together again, and I still take issue with the fact that he apologizes to her and says “it was all my fault.” WHEN IT WASN’T. The literal rain, which was sort of featured throughout the show, was overdone in this finale episode and their ultimate reunion scene.
The ending shot of them smiling and laughing again by the Jeju Island waters was soothing, although not particularly satisfying. I wanted them to endure when it was the most difficult, and by “endure” I mean stay together. I fully blame Jin-ah here, because if it wasn’t for her pride, they wouldn’t have wasted so much of their precious time apart from each other.
A word on the OST music: lovely. Heightened everything you were feeling and is worthy of listening over and over again.
All in all, this show was compelling and addicting. It was sweet and infuriating. And even after everything, I can’t hate it… which is the biggest parallel to Jin-ah and Joon-hee themselves. Even after everything, they still love each other.
Did you see Something in the Rain? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!
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