Spring is a time of confession. As the winds grow warmer and the sun shines brighter, the changing tides of life seem to nudge our heart to the surface of our palms. Sometimes these tides are soft, glassy waves folding on each other; other times, they push and shove, breaking at sharp edges. We seem to chase new beginnings, confront harsh endings and, after it all, watch the flowers bloom at our feet.
Written by Lim Sang-choon and directed by Kim Won-seok, When Life Gives You Tangerines (폭싹 속았수다) is a four-part slice-of-life series released weekly throughout March, totaling 16 hour-long episodes. Lim uses the changing of seasons to mirror Ae-sun (played by iconic singer and actress Lee Ji-eun, famously known as IU) and Gwan-sik’s (played by Park Bo-gum) pathway through life in Jeju-do (Jeju Island), Korea. With the saccharine first love of spring and the bittersweet goodbyes of winter, the series presents love and loss hand in hand.
It is not often that I come across a story that so closely reflects my own family’s; through this show, I realized that it is the story of many. Even though I was born and raised on the West coast, the story of Ae-sun and Gwan-sik is one that I so clearly understood. From the Korean cultural references and nuances to the experience of being a daughter, Lim’s ability to write dialogue so concise yet emotionally hard-hitting releases the waterworks at full speed.
Episode after episode, it seems that Ae-sun and Gwan-sik are meant for each other but can never catch a break. At the beginning, Ae-sun is orphaned after the passing of her haenyeo mother, leaving Ae-sun the main caretaker of her younger half-siblings under the roof of a callous stepfather. Yet, “Steelheart” Gwan-sik always seems to be by her side: selling her cabbages at the town market, crying with her as she grieves for her mother and bringing her extra fish when he notices her stepfather refuses to feed her.
By her teenage years, Ae-sun wants nothing more than to marry a rich man on the mainland in Seoul and escape the Jeju-do fishing life, seeing money and a college education as the ticket to her dream life of being a renowned poet. “Literary Girl” Ae-sun realizes that the solace and comfort she finds with Gwan-sik outweighs the easy life she is offered by a coldhearted man from the city, and so (in a quite dramatic, very rainy, Romeo-and-Juliet-esque scene) she chooses Gwan-sik. Through a time-capsule film style, we oscillate back and forth between the green youth of Ae-sun and her middle-aged years.
Despite her disapproving in-laws, Ae-sun starts a family with Gwan-sik and the rest is history. The on-screen chemistry between IU and Park is a rare thing to find on television nowadays, and the fact that it comes so naturally makes their story all the more believable and seamless. Sometimes, romance dialogue can feel too forced and bring viewers out of the narrative, but Lim crafts a relationship so natural between Ae-sun and Gwan-sik that it seems like we have truly known them since their beginning as childhood friends. There is beauty in a plain, simple love, and a refreshing balance is built between Lim’s candid writing and Kim’s nostalgic scene-setting.
I always knew that my mom had emigrated from Korea to start a family in the States. When I was younger, I wondered if she ever regretted leaving all that she knew on the other side of the world to learn a whole new life. To this day, whenever my mom and I drive to downtown Los Angeles on the 5, she tells me about how she first learned to drive on those roads. Sure enough, it was extremely difficult and scary, especially coming from a place where she was so used to the subway. She’d drop details here and there about her side of the family, a majority of whom I’d never met before, and I’d try to put together the pieces to figure out who she was at my age.
Watching this series, I saw both myself and my mom as a young woman in Geum-myeong, Ae-sun and Gwan-sik’s first child and eldest daughter. I myself am not the eldest daughter and neither is my mom, but the story of resilience, girlhood, womanhood, love, family and life resonated with me in a way that a TV show never has before. When Ae-sun and Geum-myeong would bicker and fight in a way that I know all too well, I was reminded that it is my mom’s first shot at life too, and that she was also once an angsty 19-year-old. I was reminded of the stories that she’d told me of her as a college student, like when she got only one of her ears pierced to easily hide it from her dad.
The dynamic between Ae-sun and her daughter reminded me of my own mother and I, and how I’ll probably be going through the same things she did a few years in the future. It is not a perfect relationship, and it is certainly not always an easy one, but it has gotten easier over the years as we come to understand each other more. Indeed, love would not be the radiant force it is if it were a perfect thing. Lim takes the viewer through overlapping arguments and dialogues that build empathy in viewers. We are led to see Geum-myeong as stubborn and ungrateful after refusing her mom’s money to study abroad in Tokyo, and then this is all taken down as we watch her later bawl her eyes out on the plane there.
When I was in high school, all I wanted was to move away from my hometown and have complete, all-consuming freedom, but now, I find myself wanting just one more home-cooked meal when spring break comes to an end. You truly do not know the value of what you have until it leaves you, even for a little while. And when it comes back, you are overwhelmed by how much you have needed it, and how much it actually matters.
When Life Gives You Tangerines is a story that bridges holes dug by generational divides. We are driven to understand and sympathize with both the steadfast parents and immature children in the cast, and in the process, we are forced to reflect on our own words and choices. It is the story of everything you were thinking but couldn’t say in a single moment in time. In the end, we cannot redo things we’ve done in life, but we still have time to express our feelings as the brisk winter gives way to a forgiving spring.
