Why did the production team of “Twenty-five, Twenty-one” change their mind at the last minute?
“Twenty-five, Twenty-one” should’ve believed in the power of a beautiful fantasy. The reasons why the ending to this youth story is a bummer.
tvN’s Friday-Saturday drama “Twenty-five, Twenty-one” has been pretty and refreshing up to the 10th episode, which exploded the vibe of youth like a school trip to the beach. However, its tone has changed significantly since then. Unfortunately, the latter half of this story, containing the best acting of actors Kim Tae-ri, Nam Joo-hyuk, Bona, Choi Hyun-wook, and Lee Joo-myung, the development and joy of new discoveries, has been overly stretched out. Until the 10th episode, the drama has been running enthusiastically as a refreshing youth drama with the fresh atmosphere of a summer night, but since then, it has rapidly turned into a familiar romantic plot that shows the repetitive process of a love relationship going through ups and downs.
The freshness of “Twenty-five, Twenty-one” stems from the spirit of intentionally bringing the cliché of youth in the 1990s. It is a period drama based on the 90s, but it is not just a drama that brings out the nostalgia from only the background. “Twenty-five, Twenty-one” is the achievement of restoring the essence of trendy dramas from that time when they used to say cheesy lines and incorporating them with today’s female narratives. On top of that, the team once again twisted the love triangle relationship, which is the basic composition of this genre, and instead of betrayal, anger, and jealousy, they made solidarity and friendship the vertex of this triangle relationship.
According to the standard of this genre, Baek Yi-jin, played by Nam Joo-hyuk, should be a charming prince on a white horse, but in this drama, he is not. However, Baek Yi-jin is not just there to show Na Hee-do (Kim Tae-ri)‘s solid character background and growth in the series. He also creates his own path. Ko Yu-rim, played by Bona, who can be named the best discovery of this year, is not a typical female villain who does terrible things because she has everything but cannot have the male lead’s heart. Her character is complex, three-dimensional, and realistic, ranging from arrogance and self-righteousness to inferiority, compassion, reflection, and determination. Actually, she is the busiest character who grows up while playing the subplot of building a friendship as a good rival and best friend of Na Hee-do as well as being the sub-couple with Moon Ji-woong (Choi Hyun-wook).
The reason why “Twenty-five, Twenty-one” has come to be such a lovely and pretty youth series was thanks to the fresh but familiar cliché and the fresh energy of the characters who enhanced their own growth without being eaten up by the romance plot. Until the 10th episode, each character’s personal story in the character build-up was not used for the intention of jerking tears from the audience, providing a clear and fresh atmosphere. In particular, this refreshing feeling explodes thanks to the great performances of the actors.
However, from episode 11, tears burst as if someone has turned on the faucet. While Baek Yi-jin and Na Hee-do‘s romance is at the forefront, Na Hee-do solves the misunderstanding which has been there for more than a decade through a stormy sobbing with her mother. After that, the story of Go Yu-rim‘s immigration has also been a river of tears. Since then, the cliché of this trendy drama, which has created an atmosphere full of excitement and freshness before, is used as a tool to cover loose relationships (conflict and conciliation) and probability (what is a reporter typically)?
A scene in episode 15 clearly revealed that “Twenty-five Twenty-one” took reference from “La La Land” and trendy dramas in the 90s. The greatest disappointment from the second half of the drama was not whether the viewers would like or dislike the result of a romance that begins in the 90s and ends like “La La Land”, but this drama, which used to create such fresh content and dense stories with cliché in a smart way, began to apply cliché of tears in order to cover the possibility of becoming unconvincing to the audiences. Na Hee-do, who made a breakthrough from trendy dramas in which the female lead is saved by the prince with a white horse and became a female protagonist who led the story developments, suddenly turned into a mistress who keeps waiting for her boyfriend in tears. In the case of Baek Yi-jin, he is like the male lead of “La La Land”, who moves far away from love to a place where he has nothing. However, there are still many regrettable points in the way changes and growth of Baek Yi-jin in the sense of his profession before reaching success was depicted.
It’s good to see the great fantasy of the special relationship between Na Hee-do and Ko Yu-rim, which was one of the charms of this drama, has transformed into best friends. But from the latter part of the drama, one of the most complicated characters Ko Yu-rim, who has so many delicate emotional lines, suddenly lost her strong image and became a fragile girl with only a pretty face. The growing story symbolized by fencing has also stopped since then. Meanwhile, the friendship story, which was in charge of creating the refreshing youthful theme of the drama, gradually disappeared and was also pushed to the background. The youth times of the characters when sharing dreams, solidarity, and love were forgotten for a while and only appeared again in the final episode.
Even though the drama seemed to be all about moments of the present that could last forever, it actually expressed unexpected sorrows and bittersweet emotions in the time of youth that remains as a vague memory after passing by it. In the final episode, the emotions of love and pleasant scenes of youth were still shown as flashbacks. However, the narrative of a breakup to convince that love would somehow not be fulfilled is too loose and unrealistic. It is also regrettable that the unreasonable developments in the relationship between Na Hee-do and Ko Yu-rim as well as Na Hee-do and Baek Yi-jin, who had to part ways as one left for another place and due to the September 11 attacks, are not persuasive enough to touch the viewers.
The 1990s “Twenty-five, Twenty-one” was not a retro drama or a kind of exhibition hall of memories, but more like a comic world that depicts some other worlds out of reality. And the sense of immersion in the fantasy created in it was great. Among content dealing with the 1990s, it was the most unique approach that did not go into the memories of those days too detail. Not only was it a lovely and interesting story itself, but it also became a way to evoke the youth memories of the 20s that many viewers might have forgotten.
Twisting the cliché to restore the essence of the excitement and refreshing vibe of the old days was such a great achievement of the drama but in the second half of the story, it became too obvious in capturing another taste of realistic love. It is not easy to complete a story about youth growth because it’s quite hard to find a time to stop that feeling after it reaches the climax.
