Our Blooming Youth (Review)
Our Blooming Youth is a period and mystery drama, or comedy released in early 2023, one of several popular period dramas this year (like Joseon Attorney, and The Secret Romantic Guesthouse). While overall the series is rather entertaining, it very closely follows the tropes established by other Korean period dramas taking place in the Joseon era, and, therefore, fails to impress viewers with its plot or any originality.
The premise of the show is focused on two characters: a cursed Crown Prince, Lee Hwan (Park Hyung-sik), and Min Jae-yi (Jeon So-nee), a noble girl who is blamed for the murder of her entire family. They join forces to resolve a mystery behind the prince’s curse and the murder of the Min family.
One of the main themes of the show is a cross-dressing trope: Min Jae-yi (Jeon So-nee) is forced to hide her identity, dresses as a man, and under the disguise of court eunuch serves prince Lee Hwan (Park Hyung-sik). Her closest friend and former servant, Ga-ram (Pyo Ye-jin) also disguises herself as a man and serves as an apprentice of Kim Myung-jin (Lee Tae-sun), a learned man, and one of the closest allies of the prince.
The show focuses on two mysteries or conspiracies which overlap with each other: The first one is centered on mysterious events which took place 10 years before the time the show takes place, and which led to the destruction of Byeokcheon village. These events are connected to the prince’s curse, and to the death of Jae-yi’s family. The other conspiracy is a usual power grab by the show’s main villain, Right State Councilor, Cho Won-bo (Jung Woong-in).
The main plot points and ideas behind the show are then just pretty standard for Korean Joseon dramas. Like always, the villains are corrupt councilors and their cronies. The victims are poor and unprivileged people of Joseon. Our heroic prince, as always, takes their side in the quest for justice. In the meantime, he becomes enamored with main female lead, and we can obviously expect a happy ending.
I suppose the idea behind the show was to structure it like a mystery drama: with a slowly unraveling truth behind the crimes and other mysterious events. It is quickly established that Min Jae-yi was behind resolving several crimes in the past, and the viewers could’ve expected that she will be a sort of female Sherlock Holmes uncovering the mystery. And while initially the show seems to go in that direction, Jae-yi is quickly overshadowed by the male leads, who ended up doing most of the work and take away Jae-yi’s agency as a character. That’s a very curious decision, where the series first establishes that Jae-yi is very talented and smart, and then spends most of the time showing that the prince and Myung-jin are even more learned or talented than she is: it’s like creators at some point decided to change the direction of the show.
The conspiracy or conspiracies in the show are overly complicated, which is to be expected, but ended up being mostly disappointing. Many of the events, as explained, are not believable or even probable. While initially Jae-yi explains that there is a rational explanation for everything, the final solutions given are not very rational at all (without going into spoilers). That, together with a very bland and stereotypical villain, leaves the viewers with some dissatisfaction.
Also, those who expected the show to be focused on romance will be mostly disappointed: the relationship between the main leads is slow burning and superficial. The second leads are mostly written as comic reliefs, especially Ga-ram (played by Pyo Ye-jin known as one of the leads of Taxi Driver), who ends up being a stereotypical uneducated and simple girl, which is a waste of Pyo Ye-jin’s talents. The second leads share a secondary romance arc which feels mostly unearned, since they got even less time for the development of their feelings than the main leads.
While the show seems to be focused on cross-dressing, this theme is treated here mostly as a gimmick. The gold standard in that genre in recent years seems to be The King’s Affection with Park Eun-bin. Park Eun-bin is slowly becoming one of the most prominent Korean actresses of our times, so perhaps it is difficult to expect that level of performance in every show, but it seems that Our Blooming Youth doesn’t even try. Both female leads behave and act as women, they do not try to change their behavior to match men they pretend to be. Also, while Park Eun-bin’s Lee Hwi in The King’s Affection is constantly challenged with trials and events which may result with revealing of her true identity, Min Jae-yi in Our Blooming Youth lives mostly undisturbed as a man for most of the show (and it’s happening while the posters with her likeness are visible all over the town).
One of the memorable elements of the show is the score from Nam Hye Seung, Park Sang Hee, Jeon Junghoon, and others. Its orchestration heavily uses traditional drums and other percussion instruments, providing the show with a unique atmosphere.
So, while Our Blooming Youth is a mostly enjoyable and entertaining show, it suffers from some shortcomings, especially in terms of the overall plot of the show, and too much reliance on established tropes for period dramas of this type.
Our Blooming Youth on Wikipedia and MyDramaList
(Edited with additional paragraph about the score on April 17)
