MaryMeKpop

This one was an interesting one and I definitely didn’t think I would like it as much as I did. ‘Doona!’ follows the complicated relationship between Lee Doona (played by Suzy) and Lee Won-jun (played by Yang Se-jong) as they navigate their careers and life while attempting to keep their relationship together. The drama was just recently released on Netflix and was directed by Lee Jung-hyo, the same director with impressive and popular works including ‘Crash Landing on You’, ‘Romance is a Bonus Book’, and ‘Heartless City’.. which sort of made sense the more I watched this drama because it was breathtaking, beautiful, and airy.

I’ll be honest – I didn’t actually really intend on watching this drama nor did I have any interest in it. I knew the drama was going to be popular based on the two popular actors playing the leads and also because of the decent amount of promotional hype towards it. However, I initially had no plans of watching this drama at first because.. well.. I thought it was just going to be another idol/celebrity-driven drama. I thought it’d be as simple as Doona and Won-jun meeting each other as housemates, falling in love, and then separating. And while ‘Doona!’ was all of those things, it was also so much more and earned my trust a few episodes in. I was impressed in unexpected ways.

I do think the directing played a huge part in elevating the drama beyond its simple premise. Female lead and male lead meet by living under the same roof and female lead was a former idol? She’s blunt, a bit disrespectful, has no friends, has a toxic relationship with her mother, suffered mental health concerns during her idol career and then she suddenly falls in love with this random college student who happens to move to the same house she’s living in while in Seoul? How good could this drama be? And while ‘Doona!’ wasn’t anything spectacular or amazing or groundbreaking, I found that I enjoyed just how simple it was. It’s minimalistic with its story and its characters but does enough to get you to buy into these two components and the directing definitely played a role in that. So you follow Doona as she navigates this retirement phase in her career and the concerns and high expectations that led to her current situation. Then you watched her put her trust in Won-jun who unconsciously treated her like a human being and not as a celebrity. And you watched as the two went from being strangers to housemates to friends to eventually lovers. It wasn’t as simple as it all seemed. There were quite a few layers in each of these phases and transitions.

Since I didn’t have the highest of expectations going into this drama and I was simply basing it off of the premise, I thought Doona and Won-jun were going to quickly fall in love by episode two. I thought those romantic feelings towards each other were going to develop pretty quickly and it wasn’t until I was watching episode 3 that I paused and thought to myself: wow, Doona and Won-jun still weren’t romantically involved with each other like I expected. In fact, it was during this time that Doona supported Won-jun and his confusing feelings towards his high school crush, Jin-joo. And it was at this moment that I finally admitted to myself that I enjoyed this drama much more than I thought I would. ‘Doona!’ did a good job with the details and laid everything out piece by piece. It made sure not to skip over anything and gave us the full details into how everything unfolded. Whether that was Won-jun’s relationship with Jin-joo, Doona’s last performance that triggered her retirement, her complex relationship with her manager In-wook who took her in at a young age – ‘Doona!’ showed us everything we needed to know. It took its time with its storytelling and I appreciated that.

The drama also took its time in developing Doona and Won-jun’s relationship and did a good job in showing how gray things were with them. It wasn’t always black or white. It wasn’t always easy or pretty. They really wanted to be together and wanted to somehow find a way to make their relationship work but they also had other commitments or obligations that they needed to take care of. Doona fell in love with Won-jun because she appreciated just how genuine and kind and caring he was towards her; Won-jun initially had no plans in falling in love with Doona and didn’t even know who she was at first but he also had no issues in admitting that he unexpectedly fell for her. There were moments in their relationship that were beautiful and there were also moments that were rocky. And I think this all made sense given that Doona and Won-jun were young and they didn’t know a whole lot about love and romance and relationships and falling for someone who you could trust and rely on. They found that piece in each other and navigated through these emotions and turmoil together. Though the ending left things open-ended, it also made the most sense. They will always carry a piece of the other person with them wherever they go, they will cherish the memories and experiences that they created together, and they will always miss each other because they’re still young and naive and because they feel like home to each other. But Won-jun and Doona will also push on and move forward with their own lives because that’s just reality. Won-jun and Doona were able to live in their own world and create their own universe when they were together but it also wasn’t sustainable. Reality brought them back down to earth.

I also liked how multi-dimensional Doona was as a character and how the drama gave us insight and context into her life. She was recruited by her manager to train at a young age, eventually debuted as a successful idol, and then took a break due to the pressure. On the outside, it seemed as if she was entitled, rude, and bratty; she didn’t give off the best impression. But as you watched each episode, you learned that there was so much more to Doona and her story. Sure, she could be a bit blunt and straightforward at times but she was someone who just wanted to be loved for who she was and not as the celebrity who performed on stage. She wanted to have friends, she wanted to live a “normal” life, she wanted to be freed from the expectations that suffocated her as an idol. She found that peace and solace in Won-jun which was why she fell for him and why she still missed him even after she returned to her idol life. Doona’s story wasn’t all black or white either and the drama confidently painted a picture of her life for us.

‘Doona!’ contained characteristics of idol dramas that you may have seen before: the performances, the singing, the dancing, the fans, the other members in the idol group. But that was just the surface and under that surface consisted of so many other components. While Won-jun and Doona’s relationship was the primary focus, there were also other characters (like Park Se-wan’s character I-ra who was a bright spot) and emotional storytelling (as seen with Doona’s story) that proved this drama was much more than what it seemed. With talented directing, beautiful cinematography, good acting, and a simple script that knew what to do with its story, ‘Doona!’ delivered in more ways than one.