Now, We Are Breaking Up (2021)

Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but it is mine

okay, I've seen the bad reviews for this drama but in my opinion, it needs some redemption... though I might get negative reactions with this review. But honestly, it's not a bad drama AT ALL! I've seen worse than this.
It's not so bad as reviewed by other watchers, I guess it's just a difference in preferences.

on their acting - I see most as describing their acting as bland and expressionless, but I think it's just that their characters have went through a lot to remain lively. Personally, I don't think they are "expressionless", and are just portraying how a "commoner/non celebrity" would react on a daily basis, cause I myself don't talk animatedly. Maybe their characters' MBTI are both "I" so they are more serious than other dramas' characters. Also, maybe because their characters are supposed to be classy, that's why they should look prim and proper (I doubt that you could see lively expressions from the Queen and the Royal Family on their daily lives). Honestly, I hate very animated acting, it feels exaggerated and over the top, and I won't be able to connect to the drama much since those kind of acting feels fake on the onset. I don't know any non-celebrity people who have that kind of lively and animated expressions. And the acting does not have to be in their facial expressions, but should be felt through their eyes, and watching them for 16 episodes, I saw happiness, sadness, hurt and love through their eyes, which is why i cried with them (leads, and the supporting characters). So in my opinion, their acting was "real life".

on their fashion - I noticed that this drama was in close collaboration with Esteem (a highly commended fashion agency in South Korea which has most of the top models) so I doubt that this fashion drama "has no fashion sense" like what others said. Fashion doesn't need to be extravagant, and could be simple and classy, like Sono's design. I think the image of Sono was more the prim and proper, simple and dressed down ladies.

on the story - Okay I know the confusion from the title, but I think they were being poetical with it. Like we should be breaking up since it's the right thing to do, yet our hearts tell that we should still go ahead and be in love. So while in the process of "breaking up" we stay in love, meaning there's no actual breakup at all, cause we can't let go of each other. On how it's possible to fall in love with brothers, I don't think it's the first drama in history that went that road. East of Eden (SKorea) sort of had a brother story, Scarlet Heart (China and SKorea) had the same, Fox's Romance (China), Tayong Dalawa (Philippines), Sand Princess (Thailand), and I'm sure there's more. And the attraction started way before knowing the connection with the brother, so I'm assuming it is possible to happen in a DRAMA. That's what fiction can bring to the table, more of listening to the heart than the mind.

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Utter disappointment

The chemistry between the leads is the worst i have seen in kdramas since i have been watching for 4 years. OST is fine with supporting actors only the shining light in this drama. Story is very slow paced with scenes not giving much excitement to tune into the next episode.

Also, as SHK was making a comeback i was expecting fireworks but got treated with a flopshow. Other side characters are great especially the CEO and his love interest who with their funny roles have made this drama at least watchable. The exo guy along with his co - workers are also good when compared to the leads.
Definitely doesn't have a rewatch value imo.

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Another noona dongseng drama

I have not enjoyed a single noona-dongseng drama, although some have been better than others. The best was probably Something in the Rain with Jung Hae In and Son Ye Jin, another popular noona. That explored the social issue of noona-dongseng couplings. However, this drama has nothing to recommend it. The premise of why they have to break up isn't fathomable to those of us who are non-Korean, as I believe it involves some kind of social taboo (e.g., Autumn in my Heart). Gee it's sad that they can't be together but why? The characters are uni-dimensional but perhaps the highlight for me was watching her close friendships and supporting one of them through a major life transition. I watch it purely for Jang Ki Yong ( just as I watched equally boring Song Hye Gyo's previous noona-dongseng drama purely for Park Bo Gum) and that's the only reason I'll finish this.

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Beyond redemption....

Boring. Lustless. A chewed up plot, absolutely no chemistry between the ML, terrible acting ( or complete lack of) by SHK who just cannot continue to have a career based on her beauty alone, and should not accept romantic roles with much younger actors ( must be very stressful..).
JKY , whom I liked since his "The boy next door" years ago, is just there... that's about pretty much sums up the acting of both.
What bothers me is why are they even in love?
almost every scene together is all about agony, sadness and unhappiness and new challenges...I cannot remember any scenes where they are just happily together, doing what couples in love should feel and do...
The KDrama industry is becoming more and more sophisticated with some amazing actors who successfully tackle complicated stories and script writing....There is not much room for below average series...and this series is just blah...

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What will the world say ....

The feelings of my stepmother and my half-brother’s ex-bride are more important to me than the great love of my life.
What will the world say ....
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1. The story is the life of 3 (40 year old) women in the fashion industry. (Now throw away the drama if you are not 30 years old)
2. Women are older than guys. (Problem? Forget this drama)
3. The story of the 1st cp after the first 4 parts is predictable and boring.
4. The supporting actors are better actors than 1.cp
5. If you saw Search: WWW - Jang Ki Yong - in that drama though this character but 1000x better - now zero chemistry
6. Concentrated struggle between family and career (Is a child such a problem in Korea yet? Are 40-year-olds still controlled by their parents? WTF)
7. Strong female characters? Which? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
8. Romance (cheating men?)
9. Women's friendship (maybe)
10. Adult children from spoiled marriages are harassed by elderly parents with control mania. Let them not be better off.
11. A Thousand Faces of Maternal Love (Dead Mother is the Best Mother ???)

This is what you will see. Are you interested? Not sure.

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What's the worst thing that can happen if you write a romantic/melodramatic drama? That the main cast has absolutely no chemistry.
This is what happened here. Unfortunately the main characters were not interesting as separate persons and their relationship had the stupidest problems. To the point in which, there isn't any conflict as to why they can't be together.
So she had an affair with an about to be married man, that turns out was a step-brother of our leading man. Too bad, the affair lasted a summer, and she, unknowingly of his demise, decides she is never going to love again.
But honestly ,her past relationship...like I don't see how it could have haunted her to the point of making her deny any present happiness.

The rest of the characters are no better, the other relationships go from totally toxic, to downright sad, to goofy. But I never got any real interest in any of them.

The only part that made me go back to watch was the fashion related plot, but this was ,at best, 5 mins per episode. Until the last episode. And it was presented as if someone, who was never heard of the fashion world, did a fashion drama. It doesn't really feel real.

If anyone else is here for Sehun, as an EXO-L, I am satisfied by his participation, but it was kept to the minimum. Which is sad because I feel his relationship with the company intern was one of the funniest. But maybe this was because the writers didn't get time to ruin it like most of the drama's relationships

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Melancholy romance, Parental control/abuse

A strange drama from start to finish. I can understand why it might get bad reviews because if you skip any of it you will definitely get lost. It feels like someone had a book of parables and wrote a script from it. Overall it wasn’t so bad although it had plenty of holes in the plot. There wasn’t a good ending which I don’t like. In fact, I didn’t understand the ending even after watching it twice. It was just horrible. The romance was morose and unrewarding. Needless parental control and abuse was front and center. However, above all that the acting was good, keeping in mind they don’t write the script.

The concept that breaking up is a necessity of life is ridiculous. Breaking up is a choice you make and live with the consequences or somebody else makes and you live with the aftermath. In this drama she did the breaking up and could care less about the consequences. He lived with the aftermath because he had no choice.

Most of the drama was spent talking about breaking up.

In the story she meets him at the airport and he looks hopeful, but she doesn’t go with him to Paris even though he asked her many times. They are officially broken up. She professes her love for him and thanks him for all his wasted effort. Then leaves to do her thing. When she gets home she comes up with this thought (parable): “Sadness comes by for a short while and loneliness brushes by like the wind in your life.” (Who comes up with this stuff?) I guess breaking up didn’t make her feel too bad.

She goes back and completes her resignation from The One. As she leaves she has these final thoughts: “I met someone, I loved someone, but we just can’t be together. That love has made a path and I walk down that path with love. The love that will come true. The love that will last forever. This is what those are.”
Omg, Really? That’s the way you feel after breaking up with someone you love?

I truly believe in the choices we make in life and the path that faces us because of those choices. However, you have to be smart enough to realize that each choice you make may lead you down a path that you really didn’t have to take to begin with.

The parental control issue, which by nature manifests itself into parental abuse was a little over the top. Young Eun is a 38 year old professional with a career and a good income. Her mother is a controlling, psychotic person that could care less about her daughter’s happiness and hates her husband. What right does she have to tell her daughter anything. Giving birth doesn’t give ownership. I realize the Korean society is different than what I’m used to, but it is 2021 in this drama. Young Eun was able to help everyone in the drama with her great insight on life but she can’t help herself by telling her mother to mind her own business? Jae Gook’s mother was every bit as bad. She’s not even Jae Gook’s biological mother but that doesn’t stop her from being a hateful controlling woman. Forgive me, but parental control/abuse has always been one of my least favorite aspects of KDramas, although I’m doing my best to get used to it.

The romance was awkward most of the time. The facial expressions were there but something was missing from the one on one chemistry. Maybe it was because she couldn’t think about anything other than breaking up. It’s really not their fault, the script was as strange as it gets. For example you love someone you have to leave them? What kind of creativity is that? The last time I heard that was in Record of Youth which was another strange drama.

In closing, I followed every word in this drama. If I misunderstood anything forgive me. My opinions are just that, mine and mine alone. I want to say that I liked the story concept which is the reason I didn’t rate it lower. Why couldn’t they come up with a better ending? Who even starts a script that has that kind of closure? Did they think it was thought provoking and insightful? Who knows, give it a try and tell me what you think.

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don't watch this... unless you have no choice.

I love the 2 leading characters, and the acting was ok. their relationship is as predictable as you could imagine in real life. the second leads stories are just bland. actually, everything is so normal that I just wonder why in the first place somebody needed to shoot that movie, and why somebody could like watching it. if I had to summarize, I would call it "melancholia", and conclude by "what a waste of time!"
there is 1 situation in which watching this could be nice: if you are sad/depressed (whatever the reason), and feel like crying out would help, be my guest!
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a few months later: I didn't know the personal story behind this drama. I am not saying this was made on purpose, but you'll agree that the timing is odd: Song Hye Kyo, the actress playing the main female lead, was divorcing at the time of the shooting. she met her ex-husband (yoo shi jin) on the shooting of "descendant of the sun" (2016). they married the next year and divorced 2 years later (2017-2019). so, when she chose this drama, she was divorcing. I find it very odd that I wasn't able to feel how deeply this must have hurt her.

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Do I have Alzheimer's if I don't remember what happened until now?

To answer: No, it's just that nothing happened.
I was very excited about this drama and, as I liked Jang Ki Yong, I hoped I won't mind the existence of Song Hye Kyo as a main character, since after watching her act in a drama made me avoid every single one that she ever acted on again. To be honest, I'll have to admit that JKY isn't any better in acting (he acts the same as a cheating boyfriend, son of a murderer, killer etc) but somehow his charisma makes it more bearable.
This being said, you can imagine what happens if you pair them: you try to cover a disappointing storyline with good looks. For some viewers that is enough but I'm sorry that not for me.
For only 2 episodes a week, you'd say you can watch them and not get bored but, after really trying, I couldn't. I stopped mid episode to write this review (I'm curios in a few months, when people will have access to all the episodes, if the percentage of people that dropped it will increase)
Nothing really happens, there is no central conflict (for real, I mean. They tried to come up with one but it is and isn't there), it feels like they're dragging the episodes so they can reach the end. Also, you can figure out the plot by yourself after watching 2 episodes.
One last thing that I want to say is that the "one night stand" kind of a situation is overly used to cover up a bad drama and it's beggining to be a clichee (the new post accident amnesia)
Life is short guys, watch a good drama.

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Don't waste your time. Please!

This drama waste a waste of my time and energy. The plotline really sucks, I felt like I was watching a production by an independent director and amateur writer. Don't know what the writer was envisioning writing this nonsense, However the actors tried their very best to deliver. Plot wise, this was not it for me and in my opinion can be marked as a overhyped, overrated drama.

If, However you want to support your favorite actors/ess you can as a dedicated fan/supporter. One more thing too add the synopsis talked about not being a fairy tail, ha! This drama was definitely a round about fairy tail.

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Such.a.mess.

OVERALL
This drama is the biggest false advertisement I've ever seen in a Kdrama, and the worst thing is, I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional. Watch it if you're very bored and very desperate, with no better alternative in sight. In any other case, skip.

THE STORY
I wasn't particularly into this drama based on the synopsis so I waited a long time to give it a try. When I finally did, the first episode intrigued me. It looked like it was going to be a serious, mature romance story, following two people who don't believe in long-term relationships. That's totally NOT what the drama turned out to be about. It ended up being a very classic, very tedious melodrama about two people with a bad kind of past connection who fall in love but face a whole bunch of opposition. And even then, I give it more credit than I should, because the drama tends to forget what it's about, especially in the few last episodes. Basically, it's a hot mess.

Besides an unclear plot, the problem of this drama is that there's really not much to make you care about it. After 4-5 episodes the show stops trying to sell the romance so it just falls flat. There's no cuteness, no deep emotions, no skinship, NOTHING. In the melodrama department, you're served every single cliché melodrama trope, but most of them end up not really resolved properly so it all feels like a waste of time. And the characters are poorly written, with zero development, so you don't care much about them either. And towards the end, they start making decisions that don't make sense at all, especially Yeong Eun. Like I said, a hot mess. Do yourself a favor, skip.

THE ACTING
Good, but that's not enough to save this drama. No chemistry between the leads though.

THE MUSIC
Ok, so here I have to give the drama props just because of the song "Stay" by Car, The Garden, which I fell in love with. But now that you know about it, you can just go ahead and Spotify it, and save yourself the trouble of watching the drama. You're welcome!

REWATCH VALUE
Null.

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