The process was beautiful. The result was brilliant.

Where I feel a lot of things for one Kdrama: Twenty Five, Twenty One

When Bak Yi-Jin, a new reporter, has to cover a fencing match he just witnessed, he decides to lean hard into poetry. “The process was beautiful. The result was brilliant.”

The fencers (of course) love this over the usual dry coverage that they hear about their intense, exciting matches. Bak Yi-Jin, on the other hand, gets flak from his boss about it. He spoke from the heart to try to get people as excited as he is about fencing but this is not what a reporter is meant to do (according to his boss).

This is example 1.

In order, left to right (from the show): Ko Yu-Rim, Na Hee-do, Bak Yi-Jin, Ji Seung-wan, Moon Ji-ung

Example 2 involves Seung-wan who takes a stand at school when she witnesses a teacher, at different times, hit students over minor issues. Corporal punishment was banned the previous year in South Korea so she calls the cops on him. However, the cops sympathise with the teacher for having to deal with so many students but be restricted from using corporal punishment to keep them in line. Seung-wan is asked to apologize for complaining about her teacher so she decides to take a stand and quit school and study on her own.

Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a great show because of its actors (Kim Tae-ri is everything but Nam Joo Hyuk is no slouch), its pacing and details but I really appreciate it for capturing the optimism, and dare I say it (naivete), of youth. Over the course of the show, you can watch the world drain and temper the hopes and dreams of these youths till they can barely recognise the people they used to be. People will be unkind to you because of what they hear about you (or don’t hear about you). Nothing lasts forever, not even pain. You can try all you want but you might not change much etc.

Bak Yi-Jin is the first victim of adulthood - because of the IMF crisis and his father’s company going under, he drops out of college and does a number of odd jobs (including working as a newspaper deliverer which is how he meets Na Hee-do and at a bookstore where he meets Na Hee-do again) before taking the journalism exam and joining a news studio. Even though he’s only 4 years older than the other main cast members, he retains a sense of weariness that he loses only when he’s hanging out the main cast who are still in high school. He admits to enjoying his time with the group because their youth and belief in the world made him forget his cares for even a little while.

There’s a very active fan group on Reddit that was outraged that Na Hee-do is not in touch with her close friends from high school and that her daughter doesn’t recognise or even know them. However, despite feeling like I know the ins and outs of my mother’s life, I actually don’t know any of her college or school friends. Who was her first love? My mother doesn’t think of those times much herself, if I’m to believe her. It’s not surprising to me that Na Hee-do is not mourning that time of her life everyday but seems to have just…moved on. Onwards and upwards.

We know right from the beginning that Bak Yi-Jin and Na Hee-do will not end up together because her daughter’s last name is not his and her daughter does not seem to recognise him but their breakup still feels like a stab in the chest when it happens. You hope that the optimism of forever that only teenagers hold with such earnestness will prevail and that these two will be revealed to be together in secret or that the daughter will reunite them after being moved by their story. This, I suspect, is why Reddit is so up in arms about the ending. We look to shows for wish fulfillment and not for a reminder of life.

Unlike in fantasies, we find out that Na Hee-do stores her journals in her old room in her mother’s house where she does not live and that Bak Yi-Jin does think of her…when she’s the answer to a forgot password question (”Who was your first love?”). It’s not the kind of anchor you’d expect from an epic romance.

A stark contrast to other popular Kdramas where love prevails over all things - except here, Na Hee-do decides that she can’t accept a life where she will come second to her boyfriend’s career just like she did with her mother’s career and makes her decision to move on. Sometimes, love is not enough. The main couple outgrows each other, despite loving each other and being grateful to the other and moving on. The breakdown of something positive, despite their wish to be together, is hard to bear but easy to remember well. They’re borne back in gratitude but not in a wish to actually go back. I respect the show for surging forward and not circling back in an attempt to do fan service.

A couple of other reasons I loved this show:

• The trope of online friend being someone you know in real life is very clever upturned. Ko Yu-Rim, Na Hee-do’s fencing rival, turns out to be the online pen pal and the two of them end up being close friends. This relationship is given as much importance as the romance on the show which I really appreciated. Positive female friendships, despite the occasional bout of idiocy from Ko Yu-Rim, ftw! Friendships make a huge impact on Na Hee-do’s life and she does everything she can to be there for them.

• Moon Ji-ung, the second male lead, deserves a special shoutout for being the opposite of macho - he admits to his emotions, cries when he wants to, asks for help and is so gentle and kind that you can’t help but fall in love with him. His friendship with Ji Seung-wan is a pleasure to watch because it avoids all the usual downfalls of close heterosexual friendships.

If you’ve watched it, let me know what you think?