It's OK to Not Be OK is a splendidly told tale, beautifully produced, solidly written and featuring outstanding performances from the three leads and super-solid work from a large and talented supporting case.
The story is set largely in and around a psychiatric hospital but where it would seem that the three leading characters are themselves in grave need of being institutionalized. The leading man, Moon Gang-tae, played by Kim Soo-yun, plays a caregiver with infinite patience who must live his entire life in slavery to his autistic brother, Sang-tae, outstandingly portrayed by the veteran actor Oh Jung-se, to a point where he is clinically depressed because of the relentless grind. He needs therapy, support, and, truth be told, a day off and a roll in the hay - none of which he ever allows himself to take (despite the fact that two beautiful women are on his case). Even when he has the opportunity to spend the night with one of them, he is so overcome with guilt and depression that he treats her beyond shabbily and then abases himself to his brother, who as can be expected reinforces his humiliation. Sang-tae is not to be blamed for this - he can't help himself - but, for a long time, all the mental health professionals surrounding Gang-tae ignore his obvious symptoms and needs and do little to help him to find balance. This enables a series of dramatic moments, to be sure, but it occasionally lends an air of unreality to the proceedings.
The leading lady, Ko Mun-yeong, brilliantly acted by the sublimely beautiful Seo Ye-ji, is also a non-inmate, equally if not more in need of therapy. She plays a best-selling author of somewhat twisted children's fairy tales, with a knack for speaking the unfiltered truth about anything and everything in a way that is excruciatingly uncomfortable for her interlocutors. (I will never forget the lecture to the patients in which she reinterprets Beauty and the Beast as an example of Stockholm syndrome.). For all her self-centered personality, she is, nevertheless, the first person who gives non-material help to Gang-tae. (Everyone else just offers food or a place to stay.) At one point, she asks him straight out the crucial question, "Are you going to sacrifice your whole life to atone for your sin towards your brother?", a sin that he had not in fact committed. You have to ask yourself why it is Mun-yeong, and not the health professionals, who first has this insight.
Sang-tae completes the trio. He is a talented illustrator but his gifts are overshadowed by his classically autistic personality, which makes him heavily dependent on his brother. Like Mun-yeong, however, he is a speaker of truth and he catches on in an instant if his brother is lying to him or trying to control him with petty deceits.
The show's conceit is that these three heavily damaged individuals will find in each other the means to overcome their misery and the traumas of their past lives which, this being a KDrama, are deeply and somewhat unnecessarily intertwined. It's a slow burning process. In a flashback to one point in their childhood, Mun-yeong witnesses Sang-tae fall through the thin ice of a frozen lake. At first, Gang-tae, knowing already that he has been condemned by his mother to a life of servitude to his brother, runs away, but he relents goes back and saves him. Gang-tae in turn needs rescuing from the icy waters, and Mun-yeong throws him a float that keeps him from drowning. When they meet again years later, Mun-yeong slowly falls in love with him (as he with her) and, often against her own selfish instincts (or perhaps to gratify them), she tries to rescue him from his all-encompassing misery.
Similarly, Gang-tae tries, at times, to help Mun-yeong overcome her worst self. No one else seems to think that she needs therapy or some other form of intervention. They just complain about her.
And Mun-yeong and Sang-tae form an unlikely bond. It begins unpropitiously, with Mun-yeong trying to get close to Sang-tae as a way to break through Gang-tae's iron reserve but in the end, a genuine working collaboration and mutual friendship transcends their relationship with Gang-tae - in one delightful scene at the end, the two force Gang-tae out of the room while they working together on a book. I suspect that people familiar with autism will find some (not all) of Gang-tae's behavior in the later scenes suspiciously un-autistic, but on the whole the show portrays mental health issues in general and autism in particular with great sympathy and some considerable delicacy.
There is, perhaps, some artificiality to the whole affair and it is not helped by some of the more irritating tropes of Korean dramas - repeated eavesdropping, characters get drunk, toss up and then forget everything, the incessant arm-grabbing (although for once the women do it almost as much as the men), and the frequency of scenes involving meals, including several irritating Subway product placements.
Among the supporting performances, some shout-outs: Kim Chang-wan as the hospital director, Kim-Joo-hun and Park Jin-hoo as the much put upon publishers of Mun-yeong's books, and in a bravura cameo turn, Kwak Dong-yeon as a patient who, with a major assist from Mun-yeong, hilariously disrupts his father's political campaign. There are many others. Perhaps the weakest is the young but very busy TV actress Park Kyu-young, as Nam Ju-ri, a nurse and long-time friend of the brothers, who is appealing but bland, probably because the part is not well-thought out. She descends from a leading role as a true rival for Gang-tae's affections to a distraction who hangs around many episodes after that triangle has been definitively resolved in Mun-yeong's favor.
What makes this show so watchable are all the extraordinary performances, lead and supporting, and the engaging character development and situational comedy and occasional drama that are more important than the relatively thin plot. The production values are strong and the use of Mun-yeong's fairy tales, especially the book she writes at the end with Sang-tae's illustrations, is moving and lovely. And I would be remiss not to mention the beauteous Seo Ye-ji's stunning fashions. They are striking but there is no questioning how much she adds to them. In the language of books, this is a page turner. Sixteen hour long plus episodes never felt excessive.
The story is set largely in and around a psychiatric hospital but where it would seem that the three leading characters are themselves in grave need of being institutionalized. The leading man, Moon Gang-tae, played by Kim Soo-yun, plays a caregiver with infinite patience who must live his entire life in slavery to his autistic brother, Sang-tae, outstandingly portrayed by the veteran actor Oh Jung-se, to a point where he is clinically depressed because of the relentless grind. He needs therapy, support, and, truth be told, a day off and a roll in the hay - none of which he ever allows himself to take (despite the fact that two beautiful women are on his case). Even when he has the opportunity to spend the night with one of them, he is so overcome with guilt and depression that he treats her beyond shabbily and then abases himself to his brother, who as can be expected reinforces his humiliation. Sang-tae is not to be blamed for this - he can't help himself - but, for a long time, all the mental health professionals surrounding Gang-tae ignore his obvious symptoms and needs and do little to help him to find balance. This enables a series of dramatic moments, to be sure, but it occasionally lends an air of unreality to the proceedings.
The leading lady, Ko Mun-yeong, brilliantly acted by the sublimely beautiful Seo Ye-ji, is also a non-inmate, equally if not more in need of therapy. She plays a best-selling author of somewhat twisted children's fairy tales, with a knack for speaking the unfiltered truth about anything and everything in a way that is excruciatingly uncomfortable for her interlocutors. (I will never forget the lecture to the patients in which she reinterprets Beauty and the Beast as an example of Stockholm syndrome.). For all her self-centered personality, she is, nevertheless, the first person who gives non-material help to Gang-tae. (Everyone else just offers food or a place to stay.) At one point, she asks him straight out the crucial question, "Are you going to sacrifice your whole life to atone for your sin towards your brother?", a sin that he had not in fact committed. You have to ask yourself why it is Mun-yeong, and not the health professionals, who first has this insight.
Sang-tae completes the trio. He is a talented illustrator but his gifts are overshadowed by his classically autistic personality, which makes him heavily dependent on his brother. Like Mun-yeong, however, he is a speaker of truth and he catches on in an instant if his brother is lying to him or trying to control him with petty deceits.
The show's conceit is that these three heavily damaged individuals will find in each other the means to overcome their misery and the traumas of their past lives which, this being a KDrama, are deeply and somewhat unnecessarily intertwined. It's a slow burning process. In a flashback to one point in their childhood, Mun-yeong witnesses Sang-tae fall through the thin ice of a frozen lake. At first, Gang-tae, knowing already that he has been condemned by his mother to a life of servitude to his brother, runs away, but he relents goes back and saves him. Gang-tae in turn needs rescuing from the icy waters, and Mun-yeong throws him a float that keeps him from drowning. When they meet again years later, Mun-yeong slowly falls in love with him (as he with her) and, often against her own selfish instincts (or perhaps to gratify them), she tries to rescue him from his all-encompassing misery.
Similarly, Gang-tae tries, at times, to help Mun-yeong overcome her worst self. No one else seems to think that she needs therapy or some other form of intervention. They just complain about her.
And Mun-yeong and Sang-tae form an unlikely bond. It begins unpropitiously, with Mun-yeong trying to get close to Sang-tae as a way to break through Gang-tae's iron reserve but in the end, a genuine working collaboration and mutual friendship transcends their relationship with Gang-tae - in one delightful scene at the end, the two force Gang-tae out of the room while they working together on a book. I suspect that people familiar with autism will find some (not all) of Gang-tae's behavior in the later scenes suspiciously un-autistic, but on the whole the show portrays mental health issues in general and autism in particular with great sympathy and some considerable delicacy.
There is, perhaps, some artificiality to the whole affair and it is not helped by some of the more irritating tropes of Korean dramas - repeated eavesdropping, characters get drunk, toss up and then forget everything, the incessant arm-grabbing (although for once the women do it almost as much as the men), and the frequency of scenes involving meals, including several irritating Subway product placements.
Among the supporting performances, some shout-outs: Kim Chang-wan as the hospital director, Kim-Joo-hun and Park Jin-hoo as the much put upon publishers of Mun-yeong's books, and in a bravura cameo turn, Kwak Dong-yeon as a patient who, with a major assist from Mun-yeong, hilariously disrupts his father's political campaign. There are many others. Perhaps the weakest is the young but very busy TV actress Park Kyu-young, as Nam Ju-ri, a nurse and long-time friend of the brothers, who is appealing but bland, probably because the part is not well-thought out. She descends from a leading role as a true rival for Gang-tae's affections to a distraction who hangs around many episodes after that triangle has been definitively resolved in Mun-yeong's favor.
What makes this show so watchable are all the extraordinary performances, lead and supporting, and the engaging character development and situational comedy and occasional drama that are more important than the relatively thin plot. The production values are strong and the use of Mun-yeong's fairy tales, especially the book she writes at the end with Sang-tae's illustrations, is moving and lovely. And I would be remiss not to mention the beauteous Seo Ye-ji's stunning fashions. They are striking but there is no questioning how much she adds to them. In the language of books, this is a page turner. Sixteen hour long plus episodes never felt excessive.