Record Of Youth

 

Title: Record of Youth

Genre: Romance, Life, Youth, Drama

Leads: Park Bo Gum, Park So Dam, Byeon Woo Seok

Premise: Model and makeup artist fall in love while struggling with family pressures and expectations and growing pains as a youth making a life for themselves.

Rating ★★★★☆ (4.5)

Describe the show with a hashtag: #MostUnnecessaryBreakupEver

Reasons to watch

• Beautiful visuals
• Relatable family issues
• Couple Chemistry

Reasons to skip

• Unnecessary Breakup
• Unnecessary love triangle

Opinions

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

This drama started so well! I was pained by the last two episodes. This was a refreshing slice-of-life drama. With everyday characters you could actually imagine existing in real life. There's family drama but nothing over the top. The female lead is strong-willed but not at all annoying, and the male lead is not toxic or douchey. The friendships are portrayed realistically, as we know there can be jealousy among friends, but all issues were resolved very well. The daddy drama was also very realistic. You could see things from the fathers perspective while acknowledging that he could have expressed his concern a lot better. He made his son feel small, and no father should make his son feel like that. I also like that the male lead didn't just brush it all away. It was far more realistic that he was still a bit hurt or resentful, so I understood why he didn't acknowledge his father in his award speech. Kdramas like to gloss over parental hurt and just shove forgiveness down our throats when we know it's not always that easy in real life.

So why not five stars? Well, that's because they ruined a WONDERFUL drama with a USELESS breakup! And I really do mean useless. I totally get the FL getting overwhelmed by her BF's popularity but homie was going to enlist anyway, that would have naturally cooled things down. It wasn't oh I don't love you, I need to rethink how I feel. Nope, just I need space...well military enlistment would have achieved that goal, but noooo, they just had to have that second to last episode break up for no good reason. The second reason they lost half a star is because of the almost love triangle they set up. It was clear the girl had absolutely no feelings for him, and dude, that's your best friend's girl! That one part turned a good character into a potential scummy dude. They recovered well but there was enough of it to be yucky.

Conclusion: An absolutely beautiful drama, I just wish they didn't throw in the needless breakup. I would totally recommend this. It's a great watch.