I honestly only started watching romcom More Than Friends because of Shin Ye-eun (He Is Psychometric, Welcome) as female lead KYUNG WOO-YEON. I've been a huge fan of hers since her acting debut in web drama A-Teen and subsequently seeing her in more dramas made me an even bigger fan. This drama also marks the first time I'm seeing ex-Wanna One member Ong Seong-wu (At Eighteen) as male lead LEE SOO display his acting chops. The first episode alone hasn't really left a strong impact on me yet but let's dive in anyway.
INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)
We don't get much present day scenes from episode 1 alone, with most of it set in the past. That said, the episode does start in 2020, where we get introduced to our heroine Woo-yeon, who works many part-time jobs while also dabbling in her main hustle, calligraphy. One of these jobs is a serving gig at Eunyu Publishing Company's 20th anniversary celebration, where CEO ON JOON-SOO [ZE:A's Kim Dong-jun (Black, About Time)] is present. While he's the drama's second male lead, Joon-soo doesn't have any importance so far, presumably only noticing Woo-yeon's presence after she drops her tray of wine glasses.
Like most K-dramas, our female lead must have strife in her life, specifically going through boyfriends as if they're disposable goods. Within the first 10 minutes of this episode, we see Woo-yeon going on a date with her current boyfriend who suddenly he dumps her but strangely, she has little reaction to this, probably due to her having gone through the same thing over and over again. As it turns out, this faceless ex messages her after, telling her to give up dating as she doesn't "know how to love". Of course, this situation isn't news to her or her close friends, who have seen through every single one of her breakups over the past decade. Woo-yeon's completely resigned to her fate, accepting that she can't love anyone but we all know that's untrue because very soon, we get introduced to our male lead.
We get flashbacks over the years, where we see a drunk Woo-yeon calling an unknown number, lamenting about her depressing love life. We then cut to 2011, her high school years and here, we see her forging a close friendship with Lee Soo, our devilishly handsome hero who's massively popular among the female students. Behind his cocky exterior, he masks a broken family background. At this time, Woo-yeon is an aspiring author who has won many essay writing awards and aims to major in creative writing in college. Unfortunately, she's also the subject of bullying, which Lee Soo takes notice of and protects her in his own rough way. Along the way, she ends up befriending Han Jin-joo and Kim Young-hee, and their friendship follows them all the way to adulthood. These three friends all have problems in their lives and while not obviously shown to us, we'll probably get a better idea in future.
Over time, Woo-yeon falls for Lee Soo, who seemingly doesn't return her affection by behaving like a jerk to her. I mentioned earlier that Lee Soo has a broken family, even though they're hella rich, and this is a result of his parents' divorce. Much to his chagrin, his parents still maintain a close friendship and his mother even comes by their house, acting all chummy with his father. When our leads coincidentally meetup on Lee Soo's birthday, he even tells Woo-yeon that he dislikes birthdays and isn't happy about being born. His family situation must be worse than we think if he feels that way. Over the course of their conversation, it seems quite clear that both of them like each other and we can practically confirm this when Lee Soo asks Woo-yeon to meetup on Christmas Eve as he has something to tell her. Anyone in their right mind would think that he's going to confess his feelings for her and our heroine is no different.
On Christmas Eve, the pair have fun, watching a movie and shooting in an arcade, which Woo-yeon absolutely smokes Lee Soo in. At the end of the day, he gives her a teddy bear that he bought from the shooting stall after telling the owner that he needs it to confess to her. By this point, we're all in anticipation of what man has to say but everything comes crashing down when Lee Soo reveals that he's heading to the US for further studies. To be fair, we probably saw this coming but Woo-yeon is left reeling from this incident. The next day, after some encouragement from her mother, she rushes to the airport to confess her feelings for Lee Soo but the situation doesn't pan out well when he says that he rather remain friends. Our female lead is understandably crushed but she chooses to maintain their friendship, leaving the airport in tears, her world crumbling around her. Fret not though because she picks herself up fairly quickly and starts dating but as mentioned earlier, none of her relationships last long as her feelings for Lee Soo never died.
We fast forward to 2017, where Woo-yeon and her high school friends meet up at a bar that one of their gang opened. Presumably this is after another of her breakups and we then see our drunk heroine sitting outside, calling that unknown number again but much to her surprise, someone actually picks up the phone this time. Out of the corner of her eye, someone approaches her and kneels in front of her. It's probably no shock to anyone that the unknown number belonged to Lee Soo, who has returned to Korea unannounced and they finally meet once again. The episode ends with a flashback to one of the times Lee Soo seemed to be acting like a jerk to Woo-yeon but in actual fact he was trying to protect her from the bullies again. It's not hard to figure out that Lee Soo likes Woo-yeon too but as he was leaving to the US, he probably didn't want to leave Woo-yeon with the burden of waiting for him. Right now though, we don't have much confirmation of that but that's the most likely theory.
Personally, this drama hasn't really drawn me in yet. It seems like a normal romcom that's bound to be strewn with misunderstandings in our leads' path to finding love so I'll keep watching just to see what happens. It was also nice to see so many actors and actresses that I've seen before, like Block B's P.O. (Hotel del Luna), Ahn Eun-jin (Hospital Playlist) and Baek Soo-min (Gangnam Beauty) all as Woo-yeon's high school friends, Seo Sang-won (Record of Youth) and Ahn Nae-sang (Memorials) as Woo-yeon and Lee Soo's fathers respectively, and Kim Hee-jung (The Beauty Inside) as Lee Soo's mother. On a side-note, I said that Woo-yeon's friends Jin-joo and Young-hee also have their own struggles and we sort of get a glimpse of that in episode 1, with the former having never dated in her life and the latter having to work part-time jobs in high school to support her father, who's in the hospital (although we don't know what happened after that). We'll probably get more information as the series progresses.
Maybe it's because her first role was as one but Shin Ye-eun plays such a convincing high schooler, down to her mannerisms and behaviour when she's lovestruck. I very much enjoy her performances because she's so cute and dynamic. As mentioned before, this is also my first time seeing Seong-wu acting and wow, he's really good at portraying cocky attitude. As one of the members of Wanna One that I never really paid attention to, it's good to see that this is the path he's taken after the group disbanded and I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of his acting.
The literal translation for this drama is Number of Cases and while it might not mean anything immediately, as we see from the ending title card, the drama will revolve around the number of times that friends become lovers. What can we infer from this? Well, I guess we're going to be seeing a lot of the shenanigans that ensue in Woo-yeon and Lee Soo's journey into becoming More Than Friends.
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