When I say I wish I could love like in the stories, this is what I mean.

We don’t often come across stories that resonate with the way we grow up, think and fantasize of life.

When life gives you tangerines, a South Korean television series written by Lim Sang-choon, directed by Kim Won-Seok and starring IU, Park Bo-gum, Moon So-ri, Park Hae-joon, Kim Seon-Ho and many more, has fiercely played with a million hearts, broken them and stitched them together piece by piece. Starting from the storyline, the way the characters are portrayed, the scenery, the setting, the comfort, everything felt like a huge hug to life itself.

This is not just a story of a hero and a heroine. This is a story of life. A story dedicated to the delicacies and rawness of life; how hard it could be and how love could make it easier. No one could resist to write an appreciation to this masterpiece. And this one, is ours.

The Literary girl and the Steel heart

“Even as I gently press my heart to soothe it down, the moon wanes, yet the young heart remains.”

-Oh Ae-Sun

The story of Oh Ae-Sun and Yang Gwan-Sik is not perfect, but it is beautiful in its own way.

Oh Ae-Sun, the literary girl, who reads and writes poetry, who dreams and loves her people is also a mother’s daughter, a woman raised by women, who knows what being a girl is and who strives to make her dreams come true.

Yang Gwan-Sik, the steel heart, who could literally cross the ocean with his bare hands for his love. He is a son who tries hard to make people understand that all he ever knows is to love, a husband and a dad who sees his family as his universe.

And their love, its not fated, its not dramatic or grand. They loved each other like a habit, a reflex, like a routine since childhood; as if they have decided to choose each other against the world and stitched their names on to each other’s fates. Their love was beautiful, the kind that whispers, ‘I wish to grow with you’, the kind that stays, the kind that never lets the other be looked down by others, the kind that fights. They didn’t have everything, but they had each other.

We all probably watched them and thought, I want that. They are each other’s home; No matter how many times they moved, they were always home.

And every time Gwan-Sik asked, ‘Are you happy?’ and she smiled through her tears, ‘I am happy’ — we all fell a little harder. They make us believe that love like this exists and we all deserve it too.

“He makes my whole world sweeter.

Is that why? Is that why my heart is always in spring?”

They were each other’s spring.

Even their parenting felt too real. From the first time they met their Geum-myeong and wondered how they would protect her, to when they became grand parents, they showed the bittersweet complexity of raising a family.

Every episode seemed like a journey through their love, proving that love never really ends. Perhaps we all lost to them, to their quiet, unwavering love when Ae-Sun opened her shelves after Gwan-sik’s death and found a huge stack of hair pins. That’s just how their love is… Subtle, fierce, expanding, fighting and warm.

Geumeundong – the boat

Just as their love formed the roots, Geum-myeong’s story is the branch that continues to grow — firm, fragile and reaching for the sun. Geum-myeong, the eldest kid felt a bit close to heart. It was beautifully portrayed how she balances her dreams, her family and her love, all at once, without breaking ties with any. The way she was raised as a dad’s princess and her mom’s warrior, the way she chose herself over a love that demanded to break the castles she has been building since childhood, the way she fell in love again- slowly, fully and voluntarily and the way she tries to build herself, deserves to be remembered.

Eun-myeong, the carefree, reckless kid was also the one who is insecure and somehow the one who tried hard to show himself out like his sister. He too, in ways, is like all of us, somehow trying to fit in a world that demands perfection and somehow never being enough.

Dong-myeong, in his short life, got a love so pure that it lingered long after he was gone. When life gives you tangerines doesn’t just tell Dong-myeong’s story, but it cradles all his memories and life in the fragile circus of grief and love.

The Setting and Soul

This show is fierce and equally soft, just like Jeju island, a place filled with crowded markets, boats, ships and harbors, unrelenting waves and seafood, of course. Then the mainland, with its own hue filled days and snow filled nights. Everything was captured in a way that makes us feel not just like a spectator, but like a part of the chaos. Starting from the night Ae-Sun and Gwan-sik tried to run out of Jeju, dressed rich and carrying only fire in their hearts, to the night when Geum-myeong met her Picasso after he ran behind her bus for hours, they made us live through all of it. We dived, walked, ran, drove and even flew alongside them that we could even tell how Jeju would smell like, how their boat would creak when they get in and how home would feel like.

We love how this drama elucidates the stories and lives beyond generations. It makes us understand the pain of Oh Ae-Sun’s mother, everytime she dives into the sea, leaving her kid behind on the shore, the love which Oh Ae-Sun and Yang Gwan-Sik share. It makes us understand the difficult, subtle, untold parts of life; the way someone would come into your life and all of a sudden, make it magical, the way our parents love us, the way we love them, the pain of losing a child, the helplessness of letting go of a place that holds most of our life’s memories, the joy of building our home, the vulnerabilty of losing our first love, the pain of giving up on our dreams and everything little and big in between.

When this line came in,

“Parents dwell on what they couldn’t give.

And children dwell on what they couldn’t get”, we all felt it a bit close, right?

Just as Geum-myeong keeps stating,

“Life goes on for the living”,

Life is not practiced and executed perfectly. Life is jumping in the ocean with no life jacket, no dramatic drum rolls and no safety masks. Just the tide, it’s ebbs and flows, and you. But maybe it becomes bearable, even beautiful, with love by your side.

So when life gives me tangerines, I wish I could peel it off carefully, slowly and with love and share it with those I love, sit under the moon and eat.

This show has been a reminder to slow down life, to look around, to notice the little joys and to celebrate love; To love completely and slowly.

“The wind goes whoosh.

My heart goes boo-hoo.”

-Yang Gwan-sik

Maybe this is what we call… love.

*Screenshot Source: When Life Gives You Tangerines / Netflix*