First of all, I didn't intend to see When the camellia blooms.
The title of the drama was expected to be a melodramatic drama, so I thought I could not expect the thrilling thrill that I could feel in my favorite thriller genre. However, there were many good comments about this drama on SNS, so I thought I'd watch it until the 2nd episode, and I fell in love with it in just 5 minutes.
There are three things that this drama is better than others.
The first is the perfect scenario, the second is the character, and the third is the plot's balance.
1. Prejudice, one of the scariest words in the world.
The main character of the drama, Dong-baek, is a victim of a life of prejudice. The owner of a widow's bar, who is raising a baby alone, has a hard life in the middle of neighbors’ rumors, and prejudice. But Dong-baek was living like hell by taking care of her own flower bed. She got abandoned by her mother, went to an orphanage, spent a time when she was ostracized at school and had no friends, and later adopt into a good family, but she suffered from adoption cancellation just because she grew up in a bar as a child. Miracle, Dong-baek says there was no miracle in her life, but only one miracle happened to her. One miracle happens to Jung-suk, Dong-baek‘s mother, whose condition has become serious because she didn't do blood dialysis in time. And that miracle was the result of all the people in Ong-san. The chief constable Mr. Byeon was waiting for an ambulance with Dong-baek on board to pass, while Gyu-tae used his own personal connections to rent an ambulance with the best medical facilities in Korea and Ja-young gives her the best doctor in Korea. And the people of Ong-san are all cheering and worried. You can't help shedding tears of emotion at this warm scene. I'm sure many people would have been moved to tears because the director did a really dramatic production of escorting her mother. The drama also shows a perfect narrative. In the seventh episode, Deok-soon said that the relationship between Dong-baek and Yong-sik could be just a passing shower. But in the ninth episode, Dong-baek says she learned how to avoid showers thanks to Yong-sik. He said to Dong-baek, "If you care about youself, others will cherish you, too," and added, he can't even touch his feet, let alone hold her hands. But they had contact with their feet even before they were born. Dong-baek said her life was like an apple tree on the sand. The waves came, and there was no earth to hold under her feet, and there were no other trees to lean on, but people stood next to her and mixed their roots, and there was a sea breeze, sand grains and pretty sky that would have become so hard and unknowingly wriggled around her. The script of the writer who plays with these beautiful lines and words, and the director who directed the script have made many wonderful scenes in the drama. That's why you should watch this drama.
2. There's no character consumed uselessly in this drama.
Gyu-tae, who had seemed absent-minded since the beginning of the drama, climbed directly into an ambulance that escorted Dong-baek’s mother in the last episode and shouted, "Step on it“, being more than any other governor or lawmaker in the world. Ja-young looked like she would not shed a drop of blood when he was by the side by side, but in the last scene, she seemed like a strong person who would prevent any power in the world.
You know the people in the marinated crab street that tormented Dong-baek from the beginning and looked at her with prejudice. As Chan-sook said, "It's okay for an older sister to bully her sister, but she won't let anyone touch her," and she felt like she was more friendly than anyone else in the world when she started supporting Dong-baek. And Deok-soon, rankd no. 1 in Ong-san, could sympathize with Dong-baek after seeing her past, who was suffering from the prejudice that she was a single mother with a baby. Among the titles of the episodes, there are three mother-related episodes. Perhaps that’s why there are so many narratives in this drama that represented their feelings toward their parents. And at the end of the narrative, there was a 까불이, a joker. In the end, it was not his father who was a murder. It was Heung-sik. He's been a psychopath that's been killing animals since he was a child, but it's also the bias that made him become the psychopath who killed people like this. The cold eyes that looked at him dirty, the eyes that looked at him as an uneducated, and the prejudices that made him unable to stand up for himself unlike Dong-baek caused him to go the wrong way because no one around him was holding him. So the father blamed himself for failing to catch Heung-sik, and every time Heung-sik committed the murder, he went out wearing his shoes to prevent his son from making up as if he had done it, so he would cause an accident at the construction site and stop Heung-sik's crime. So Heung-sik, who couldn't control his desire, apparently met this desire by taking medicine on cat food, not human.
3. The plot's balance.
The director, Cha Young-hoon, who produced the drama, said that it consists of 40 percent romance, 40 percent humanism and 20 percent thriller. After hearing this, I assumed that the story would be about a human drama with a thriller history, but this When Camellia Blooms is amazing because this is a human drama with a human dramatic setting, a color, a romance, and then quickly turns into a thriller.
There are several scenes where this genre change is produced in a great way. In the 7th episode, like lovers are dating, they shop together, smile on the bus, but suddenly there come the letters left by the 까불이[GGa-bul-i] in front of Yong-sik's eyes, instantly creating an atmosphere of ferocity. Even after showing a sweet romance, turning into a thriller without warning, the director made the drama impossible to watch with a smile, and he made us worried about when it might be showing signs of 까불이[GGa-bul-i] even watching a romance drama. 까불이[GGa-bul-i] is the word that is used to make fun of a person who flirts and acts recklessly. 까불이 is a noun, and this came from the verb, 까불다, which means ‘to act lightly and carelessly’, or ‘to be impertinent and presumptuous’. There's one scene that I pick the best. The appearance of Nak-ho in the 11th episode, who came to catch Hyang-mi who didn’t pay back his money and was escaping, creates a scary atmosphere. Hyang-mi is getting nervous, and Nak-ho is scolding Dong-baek who is worried about Hyang-mi, and the screen turns short and shows Ja-young leaving, determined to divorce Gyu-tae, and Jessica who is angry at Jong-ryul being photographed at Ongsan Baseball Stadium, showing many people suffering and grieving. Then, the screen shows him dragging Hyang-mi with her hair, and suddenly Dong-baek hits Nak-ho on the head with a pot. Hyang-mi admires saying to herself, “Hero is the end-of-the-minute”. Seeing Yong-sik’s apperance, and Hearing the unique BGM, background music, Viewers can smile, thinking that "No matter what Nak-ho does, there's nothing to worry about." However, at that moment, you can see Heung-sik carrying with his cat feed, 까불이[GGa-bul-i] who has always been described vaguely appeared clearly for the first time. So, the third advantage of this drama is that the romantic element shown in the title and the humanistic element of Ong-san, one of the countrysides in Korea has the perfect balance between the thrill elements that can be felt at an unexpected time.
