This article contains spoilers.
Life can be very confusing when we’re young. Much of our emotional growth happens in that sensitive period after we’ve left high school, as we enter the world of adults and are at our most vulnerable.
Korean romantic drama Nevertheless is about young art students experiencing exactly this first brush with adult freedom. Their goal is to express themselves creatively, but their professor (Seo Jae-hee), aware how callow they still are, urges them to go out and experience life first.
Halfway through the series, the professor realises she has got more than she bargained for as she walks through the classroom. After perusing the disappointing projects of her students, it’s clear they have been distracted by their confusing extracurricular romances.
Most distracted of all is Yoo Na-bi (Han So-hee), a talented young artist who is struggling in her relationship with the rich, popular and aloof Park Jae-eon (Song Kang), also a brilliant artist. Early on she resisted her attraction to him, partly because she was still reeling from a bad relationship with an older lover but also because the debonair Jae-eon has developed a reputation around campus as a playboy.
Despite these misgivings, the pair do end up in bed together and start seeing each other, but only in her apartment at night. Absent any other label, Na-bi realises that, rather than a boyfriend, she has found a no-strings-attached sex partner. In contemporary Korean media, this is no longer the shocking state of affairs it used to be but, this being a K-drama, Na-bi yearns for something more.
Nevertheless: Song Kang, Han So-hee in Netflix K-drama romance
Before long, their undefined relationship hits some bumps in the road as Jae-eon appears to be hiding something from Na-bi. This turns out to be Yoon Seol-a (Lee Yeol-eum), which is the name that keeps appearing on his phone and who he obviously also likes.
When rumours start spreading around the school about them, Na-bi begins to back away from the relationship. She doesn’t want to labelled as Jae-eon’s new conquest and, influenced by the gossip, she isn’t sure she can trust him.
Things get more complicated when she bumps into her old friend Yang Do-hyeok (Chae Jong-hyeop) on the bus one evening. Polite to a fault and dazzling her with his warm smiles, he immediately becomes a rival for her affections, and begins winning her over with his culinary talents.
One day outside her classroom Na-bi meets Seol-a, who lies to her by saying she’s currently seeing Jae-eon.
Hurt and confused, Na-bi retreats to the countryside to heal and, as luck would have it, Do-hyeok is also back in their quaint coastal hometown at the same time. Not only that, but her classmates have also coincidentally planned a trip to the same village. Jae-eon isn’t expected to join them, but in the end, he does.
Na-bi’s confusion stemming from her physical relationship with Jae-eon leaves the door open for an interesting emotional journey, but in Nevertheless, the writers keep taking the easy way out by using cheap misunderstandings. Every challenge in the story comes about due to someone coming to the wrong conclusion about another person’s actions or behaviour.
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Yet even when a character is made aware of the misunderstanding, such as when Seol-a tells Jae-eon she lied to Na-bi, he doesn’t do anything about the falsehood that is both hurting her and putting a roadblock in the way of a relationship he clearly wants to pursue.
The same goes for the various secondary relationships in the show, include those between Oh Bit-na (Yang Hye-ji) and Nam Kyu-hyun (Kim Min-gwi) and Yoon Sol (Lee Ho-jung) and Seo Ji-wan (Yoon Seo-a).
The cool Kyu-hyun confessed his feelings to the spunky Bit-na, but she rebuffed him. Then, after she sees him with another woman, she realises she does not harbour any feelings for him at all. (Since actor Kim Min-gwi has recently been the subject of a real-life cheating scandal, showrunner JTBC has announced that his role will be cut down for the rest of the series, so we may not get a chance to see where this relationship goes.)
Sol and Ji-wan are the latest couple to join the fledging movement of queer representation in Korean drama. Their romantic attraction has yet to be explicitly stated, but the couple’s existence makes Nevertheless the latest show of 2021 to feature an LGBT pairing, following Run On, She Would Never Know and Mine.
Meanwhile, the burgeoning relationship between An Gyeong-jun (Jeong Jae-kwang) and Min-young (Han Eu-ddeum), two senior students in the school who wind up temporarily living together, feels wholly disconnected from the narrative. Yet given the rocky horizon for Bit-na and Kyu-hyun, perhaps these benchwarmers will be forced to step up to the plate.
Nevertheless is streaming on Netflix.
