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| Zo In Sung (Jo In Sung) as Oh Soo |
***************SPOILERS*****************
Before I really delve into this drama, I want to get my two main critiques out of the way. First, I think 16 episodes was not long enough for this particular story to unfold. I don't think that Oh Soo and Oh Young shared enough sweet, intimate moments or enough painful moments for us viewers to really build a strong emotional attachment to them as a couple. If this drama had 20 episodes, I think we could have also seen more of Jin Sung (Kim Bum) and Hee Sun's (Jung Eun Ji) characters and their cute romance. Kim Bum and Eun Ji are two popular actors who are building quite a large fan base, but neither of them had more than a few minutes of screen time per episode. As for my second critique, I wish
That Winter, the Wind Blows would have kept the same feeling of the first 3 episodes throughout the entire show. Those first scenes were pretty but had a dark, twisted side lurking beneath the softness that the show's aesthetic displayed. To me the later episodes relied heavily on the typical Korean drama tropes like the sick person in love, the evil mother (or mother-like figure), the self-sacrificing bad guy, and the jump through time in the last episode in order to sort things out without really explaining anything, and it lost the magic I felt during the first week it aired.
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| Song Hye Kyo as Oh Young |
Now let's discuss the final episode. It began in a rather gruesome fashion. Oh Young was bleeding in a bathtub after just having cut her wrists, and Moo Chul (Kim Tae Woo) was stabbed by a thug and proceeded to violently break the thugs shoulder and arm. Of these two bloody scenes only one is fatal, and I am sad to report that Moo Chul died. Even though he was a bit of a douche, I liked him. He was busy protecting everyone without taking any credit for it. Again, his character could have seen a lot more development had there been 20 episodes in this series. But, the important thing about the first part of this episode, I suppose, is that Oh Young survived that bloody night, and, happily her surgery a few days later.
Of course she forgave Oh Soo for lying to her about being her brother. He was the first person who came into her life and really had fun with her and made her feel loved and happy. Even though Secretay Wang (Bae Jong Ok) had taken care of Young for most of their lives, Young didn't trust her because of the deceptions she carried out surrounding her sight. I had trouble believing the resolution of Secretary Wang returning to Young because I'm not sure how Young found the strength to forgive her, and I felt the plot line involving her, Myung Ho, and the company was left unresolved.
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| Kim Bum as Jin Sung and Jung Eun Ji as Hee Sun |
The ending that came about in the final 10 minutes of the series was a happy one for most characters. After stabbing Oh Soo to save his family, Jin Sung moves to the country with Hee Sun to live the simple life away from the city and gambling. We see this after the show jumps about a year into the future. At this point Oh Young has survived surgery and can see. Her vision isn't perfect, but it looks like a soft filter from Instagram so she seems to be pretty satisfied with it. And after a fake-out conversation between Jin Sung and Hee Sun that makes it sound like Oh Soo is dead, it is revealed that he is serving tea near Oh Young. At first I had a horrible thought, "Oh no. He better not have lost his memory." Thank god they didn't use that trick again because Oh Soo and Young needed another hot kiss to end the drama. On that note, another positive thing to add about
That Winter, the Wind Blows on top of my many critiques is that Zo In Sung and Song Hye Kyo shared some soft, sexy kisses in the final episode, redeeming them from the forced kiss that happened a few episodes earlier.
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| Soo and Young, fighting! |
Don't forget to download the beautiful and addictive That Winter, the Wind Blows OST
just click here!
Watch That Winter, the Wind Blows with English subtitles
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