Kdrama Review: When the Camellia Blooms

Drama: When the Camellia Blooms
Genre: drama/mystery
Starring: Kang Ha Neul, Gang Hyo Jin
Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤


This one is a heartfelt drama that includes nearly everything a drama could have. A little romance, a little mystery, lots of  mean mother in laws, quirky friends, a precocious kid, an ex, a murder, scandal, orphans, a long lost mom, and death. I mean, everything!

I enjoyed it, mostly. I loved the romance, though I wanted more of it. It seemed our main leads were only on stage together for a very small percentage of each episode. It made me a little crazy sometimes.

I loved all the kid/parent relationships. In fact, this is what this drama is mostly about. And that is played up to the highest and made me weepy several times... because kid/parent relationships can do that to me as we know.

This story is about a single mom who comes into this small town (this one does not take place in Seoul which is unusual) to set up shop... shop being a bar. She lives there for several years, being tolerated by the townspeople, but not really being friended by them. But she doesn't seem to care until the time period of our drama and then she lets it all out.

There's a serial killer and he seems to be stalking our girl, which really upsets the policeman, who has fallen in love with our girl at first sight. And he is determined to 1. make our girl love him back and 2. catch the killer.

Meanwhile, the ex of the girl (and the father of her kid) shows up and decides his life is crappy enough that he would like to change it which means, be a dad now and also, get our girl back.

Many of the characters are shown in this picture. Can you feel the tension? LOL!

We also have the quirky friend who likes to steal from everyone, including our girl who has hired her. And we have the crazy towns ladies, and the lawyer and her wannabe governor husband. They have many issues And everyone has a mom who is getting way too much up in everyone's business!

And then the mom of our girl shows up and suddenly, everything gets really complicated.

So... I enjoyed the story. Except the killer dude part which I didn't understand why that had to be part of the story, I think everything else would have held up on its own with out that, but whatever. Everyone loves a mystery I guess.

Most of the side characters made me crazy and I had trouble sympathizing with any of them. And wow, did they all yell a lot! SO MUCH YELLING IN THIS DRAMA!! Whew. But in the end, most of them redeemed themselves and I was like, okay. Maybe you all can be decent people after all. I don't know.

My favorite part of this drama BY FAR was our main guy and the character he played. (Are you surprised? LOL!) What a bumbling awkward, perfectly sweet and nice guy he is! When he was on screen, all was well! I loved his interaction with nearly everyone in the drama, but of course the romance for sure. What there was of it. Gah, I needed more. But anyway. He was amazing. I have seen him in only one other drama (Scarlet Heart) where his character was completely different. Now I would love to see more of his stuff to see what other characters he has done.

He's so good at expressions! Love it!

My other favorite character was the kid.. what a crazy good actor he is! OH MY WORD, but the kids they find for these dramas sometimes. It blows me away. He was amazing and my weepiness usually stemmed from feeling the emotions he was portraying. Wow.

Anyway. The moms all made me mad. All of them so so selfish. Except the mom of our girl, and especially when we learn her back a story, she is an exception. but the other moms.. dang. They made me crazy.

This has been a very well loved drama across the kdrama fandom and I feel like an exception for having some issues with it, which is weird, because I usually love everything about every drama. So. Interesting turn of events there.

Not to say I didn't love it... I mean I really liked it a lot. Yeah. It's on Netflix so those of you who have pondered a drama but don't want to deal with another app... there you go. Link up above on the title, watch it on Netflix and let me know what you think! Netflix is getting a TON of dramas these days, so it will be so easy to find them and watch them for all of you!


Here's the trailer:




The cute song and moments: