Was it Love?

In 2005, Noh Ae-Jeong(Song Ji-hyo) was having the best time of her life. As a student of Hankuk University Arts department, being among people who were as passionate about filmmaking as she was, it seemed like her future was very much set. Sadly life had other plans for her, and not in a good way. An unexpected pregnancy forces her out of college and into motherhood, and before she realizes it, she is a mother of a young girl, working several odd jobs in order to put food on the table and roof over their heads. It isn’t until 2020 that she finally gets a chance to realize her dream of producing a film. However, as luck should have it, that also comes with many strings attached.

Equally frustrating is life for her 14-year old daughter, Ha-Nee (Uhm Chae-young), who is desperate to find the father who abandoned them. In spite of being raised with a lot of love by her mother and grandmother (Kim Mi-kyung), she still feels a void. Knowing how sensitive her mother is on the topic, she buries this desire to find her father for years. However, when four men show up in their lives fourteen years later, and each seem to have some connection with her mother in the past, Ha-Nee starts wondering if one of them is her dad. Goo Pa-do (Kim Min-joon) is an ex-gangster with a secret and the financier for Ae-jeong’s movie, Oh Yeon-woo (Koo Ja-sung) is Ha-nee’s homeroom teacher and Ae-jeong’s friend from fourteen years ago, Ryu Jin (Song Jong-ho) is a successful actor and Ae-jeong’s senior in college, and Oh Dae-oh (Son Ho-jun) is a famous author, and her boyfriend while in college. When Ae-Jeong is tasked to produce a movie written by Dae-oh, with Ryu-jin as the lead, it stirs up a lot of old unwanted memories and emotions making life hard for everyone involved.

What makes Netflix‘s Was it love a good watch is this emotional conflict that everyone goes through, especially Ha-nee. As a child born out of wedlock, clueless about her father, wondering if someone is her father, but having no one to ask, is an emotional trauma no child should go through. How tangled up all the relations are, and how each on tiptoes around the other with the fear that they might hurt the other person, is what makes this show such an emotional watch. While I wouldn’t call this show flawless (there were a few things that could have been done differently), with some good writing and quite a few humorous as well as emotional moments, it was still a pretty good watch.