Wild Chives & Soybean Soup

Title:	Wild Chives & Soybean Soup: 12 Year Reunion
Alternate Title(s):	N/A
Genre(s):	Melodrama, Romantic Comedy
Episodes	26
Network:	JTBC
Year Produced:	2014
Available to Watch On:	DramaFever, Hulu, dramafans.org

Summary: Wild Chives & Soybean Soup is a k-drama that has several intertwined stories that all revolve around three families: Yoo, Jang, and Joo. The primary story begins in 2002 with high school students Yoo Joon Soo (Lee Won Geun/Nam Gung Min) and Jang Gook (Yoon So Hee/Lee So Yeon), who fall in love and conceive a child after a night of drinking and celebrating a World Cup win. The families quickly object to their relationship and they are ultimately torn apart. Jang Gook, unable to cope, flees to the US to heal her broken heart. The show then fast forwards 12 years and the couple is reunited by a strange twist of fate. Other key narratives involve friendship, parent-child relationships, one-sided love, marriage, and divorce.

RATING:

♥♥♥

Sad. I wish it had more episodes.

Recommendation: It is a little difficult to review this k-drama because it was just starting to hit its stride when the series was canceled. Consequently, the ending is rushed and somewhat disappointing with many of the major plots being resolved inadequately or not at all. I think it is worth a watch but with an understanding that you'll be left with more questions than answers. While I personally feel that family themed dramas don't translate well into 50 episode arcs, I thought this one might be moderately successful. I was obviously wrong as the viewers didn't tune in for it. Still, the teen and adult cast are all strong actors and I wish them the best on their next projects.

Other Thoughts (And Possible Spoilers): It was disappointing to learn that this 50 episode k-drama had been reduced to 26 episodes because of low ratings. Twenty-six episodes is clearly not enough to tell the full story, but, then, 50 would have been excessive. In all honesty, I have yet to come across a family themed k-drama that was structured well enough to accommodate that many episodes (I have since been proven wrong with Jang Bo Ri is Here). The series could have wrapped up nicely at 30-35 episodes. Alas, we will never know if some of our favorite characters found happy endings.

For the sake of brevity, I am just going to touch on one particular area of the drama that I found both interesting and annoying. Moms in general get a bad rap in k-dramas. They are depicted as either angels or demon spawn from hell. If they aren't busy donating their eyes to blind children while on their deathbeds then they are busy committing corporate fraud to ensure their sons' will inherit the family business. See what I mean? Not surprisingly, all the mothers in this series are permanent members of CRAZY TOWN- I imagine that falls somewhere right before Hell.. They are throwing drinks at each other in public, storming each others houses, paying off unwanted girlfriends, and spoiling their children rotten. This has inspired me to create the K-Drama Mama Scale o' Crazy. How would you rate your favorite k-drama mamas?

I didn't add the devil horns!