Life & Death

I started watching When the Camellia Blooms a few years ago but only made it through a couple of episodes before I gave up on it; I'm not a fan of bar movies, and it was painful to watch what the lead female had to put up with (very similar to my own experiences way back when I was a bartender.) I always wondered how it would end, though, so I decided to give it another try. Warning, there are spoilers ahead!

It's an odd series to say the least. It tells the story of Oh Dong-baek (Gong Hyo-jin), a single mother who after giving birth to her child moved to a semi-rural town and opened a back street bar named Camellia. Let me solve one mystery here: Dong-baek means camellia in Korean, so she named the bar after herself. In flashbacks we learn Dong-baek has a pretty hard time with the locals and running her business; she's also the witness to a serial killing.

Six years later, Dong-baek meets Yong-sik (the very exhuberant Kang Ha-neul), a cop who basically falls in love with her at first sight. Suddenly it seems the serial killer decides to make Dong-baek his next victim, while the celebrity father of Dong-Baek's child suddenly shows up and learns he has a son. There's also a scheming mother pretending to have dementia, a thieving, blackmailing bar maid, Yong-sik's rather scary mother, a group of local shopkeepers who harrass Dong-Baek, and pretty much the kitchen sink of cops, teachers, a politician and his ruthless lawyer wife, and bar patrons.

With this series it was a case of too much plot, too many characters and the inability or reluctance to resolve anything logically (or sometimes, at all.) Case in point: Dong-Baek's son Pil-gu becomes jealous of Yong-sik and demands his mother not marry the cop. Dong-Baek agrees and breaks up with Yong-sik. Then Pil-gu disappears for a couple of episodes, and when he shows back up it's as if the whole break-up never happened. This also happens with the celebrity father and his current wife, whose background story is very spotty and not well thought-out. Scheming mother also has a very tangled past, and shows up for one reason, then another, then another, and then has a stepdaughter who appears, makes a stink about mom being a gold-digger and threatens to go after her life insurance policy (the beneficiary is Dong-Baek, of course), and reveals how much she needs money as she drives off, never to show up again.

Despite the kitchen sink of a story I got through the entire thing this time. There really wasn't much to like about the lead female; Dong-Baek is either helpless, having a self-pity party or crying over something that hurt her feelings throughout all the episodes. Yong-sik was better, but as a character he constantly comes off a bit like someone on the spectrum. The identity of the serial killer was likewise fumbled quite a bit at the end, as was the entire resolution of that plotline. Going from sobbing crying jags to cold investigative moments to ridiculous comedy moments makes this series quite a roller coaster ride, and not in a good way. I think it's too jarring, overly cluttered with stuff and at times completely confusing to make it enjoyable, but if you want to give it a go, it's available on Netflix.