REVIEW: Nevertheless,
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 0 out of 5 stars
SYNOPSIS
*From MyDramaList*
Park Jae Eon finds dating a waste of time but likes to flirt. Even though he is friendly and cheerful towards all, he does not pursue others. Park Jae Eon is a master of “push-and-pull” who doesn’t get swept up in emotions. Jae Eon draws firm lines between himself and other people and doesn’t reveal how he feels. Yet when Park Jae Eon meets Yoo Na Bi, he wants to cross those lines. Yoo Na Bi wants to date but doesn’t trust love. After a bitter experience with her first love, she doesn't believe in destiny anymore. But when she meets Park Jae Eon, he has a magical effect on her that challenges Na Bi’s decision to stay aloof.
RAMBLING
*beware of spoilers*
Did I just watch the most divisive K-drama of all time? Maybe. I feel like watching Nevertheless alongside a million other people with access to the same social media was a cautionary tale. The debate over which dude Nabi should end up with, which boy was better, the merit of the plot, and every other minutia of this headache of a show was raging in every corner of the Internet. I haven’t seen such religious-like fervor for picking sides in a Which one? argument since the Team Edward vs. Team Jacob of my youth.
Did I like Nevertheless? Yes, but mostly no. I thought it was gutsy and dauntless in a way other K-dramas don’t dare. The high 19+ content rating made people sit up straight, and I’ll admit that I raised an eyebrow myself. But I do the same thing when while sitting in a movie theater after a sea of green, clean trailers, a red-band trailer comes on. Nevertheless felt just like that: a challenge to the cookie cutter shows that pervade the K-drama World®. The cinematography was different, the dialogue was new, the Gen-Z characters smoking cigarettes and working on ~art~ were different.
The camera focused in on the characters, close-ups common, eye contact, a breath, a touch, everything about it seemed like the showrunners wanted Nevertheless to be an experiential viewing, atmospheric and frenetic. I appreciated all of this, the breaking-ground of it all. If this is where K-drama is heading, I’m on board to see where it all leads.
However, let’s talk plot. I don’t think anyone was prepared to watch unreliable narrators and deeply flawed individuals. K-drama leads are often sympathetic, display minor defects, hell, they’re at least likeable. Nabi and Jae-eon were hard to watch. Nabi is this unbelievably chill personality, an artist with low self-esteem, and apparently, prone to the bewitchment of a common fuckboy. I’m not sure the show warranted all this expanse of time showing Nabi in her head about this obviously toxic, obviously bad relationship with Jae-eon. The “push and pull” from the MyDramaList synopsis was really an emotional seesaw played out in elongated moments and painstakingly awkward, slow conversations between people, Nabi trying to read between Jae-eon’s lines, except he’s not giving her any, instead only serving indecipherable looks. So I’ll say that a major flaw of trying to execute this romantic relationship (if you can even call it that) was pacing.
For a show where every character (except one) is studying art in school, they did remarkably little creating. So much time is spent moping around, lazing around the studio, daydreaming, and just acting foolish versus actually working on their art. It was especially annoying to see absolutely no progress on Nabi’s one art project throughout the one semester; it stayed the same for months in the timeframe of the show.
Jae-eon is at once a red flag. He’s a menace to all women, and he doesn’t even know it. He’s flirtatious and tantalizing, an expert manipulator. It takes Nabi half the show just to work up the resolve to say NO to him. The screenwriter/showrunners give you next to no information about him; we know as much as Nabi does. We see no parents, no siblings, no vibrant home life, no friends to speak of. It’s frustrating to see his small deceptions and glimpses of his private life and still not be able to connect with Jae-eon in any meaningful way—and this is me speaking as a viewer; I’ll not begin to describe how Nabi was tortured.
The enigma that is Jae-eon reminded me of the vampires from the Twilight series of my youth: so beautiful and alluring, but the beauty hides a true nature so terrible that it’ll kill you. The butterfly tattoo was the most marketed tramp stamp I’ve ever seen. Every time Jae-eon showed up, he was shot from behind just so we could see the damn butterfly. His famous pickup line, “Do you want to see the butterflies?” would have entered the zeitgeist had this show not crashed and burned.
Did they have chemistry? I think so. It’s difficult to wade through this criticism when I’m still seeing red, but I believe I saw some chemistry. It could quite literally be the camera playing tricks on me, since every touch, embrace, and stare was dwelled on, but I think they worked to a certain extent. I’ll put it this way: I’ve seen LESS chemistry between leads in other shows.
I spent the majority of the show mildly annoyed with all of Nabi’s friends because they weren’t really friends. They gossiped and talked shit about her behind her back; they sometimes didn’t want her around; and they never seemed to care about her. She was more of an acquaintance to an art school made up of 10 moody kids.
You could argue that the one exception was Oh Bit Na, the unapologetic “pick me” girl masquerading in a lightweight goth queen costume. She had the most interaction with Nabi, even warning her against trying to start a relationship with Jae-eon, a notorious campus fuckboy. In that respect, she was a friend. But her personality was so wishy-washy and volatile—she could try to help Nabi’s love life as much as maliciously poke fun at her and her weakness. She was an art school slacker and prided herself on sleeping around, saving countless boys’ names in her phone by quirky descriptions rather than actual identities. And she had her own B love line with Nam Kyu Hyun, which I found WAY more interesting than Nabi and Jae-eon.
It’s hugely unfortunate that actor Kim Min Gwi got unilaterally cancelled after his cheating scandal emerged, and the showrunners decided to—get this—cut him out of the show. Listen, if Western celebrities got cancelled because of cheating, Hollywood would be out of business. I think this was a ridiculous misstep by the production, and such a disproportionate punishment to the crime. Cheating on a significant other in his personal life should not have cost him such a great role—one he was actually slaying!—and possibly his fledgling career. They literally cut him out of scenes, and even in ones where he was actively speaking with on-screen characters, he’s blurred with a narrow depth of field or just out of focus all together, placed off screen talking to the other person as if he’s their gotdam conscience.
There’s no need to rehash the perfect Yang Do Hyuk (played by Chae Jong Hyeop) aka Potato Boy. He was just a pure soul, and Nabi didn’t deserve him. I will say that their relationship went further than being one-sided. He worshiped Nabi, kept her high up on a pedestal, and Nabi had a serious point when she said that although she’s comfortable and happy with Do-hyuk, she couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing him because she’s not as good and perfect as he thinks she is.
Nabi didn’t learn anything during the course of the show. She set her expectations way high and never did anything to achieve them, nor did she lower them slightly so that she could succeed. It happened with Jae-eon: she hoped desperately that he’d sober up and become boyfriend material knowing full well that he avoids commitment like the plague. And I saw it also with her own artistic career. Her dream was to study abroad in Paris, although she knew that she’s not the best artist, not even the best artist in her class. Yet she still applies to a top school, one that’s a crazy longshot to get into. With her final art piece being so elegant and stunning, everyone is surprised that she got rejected from studying abroad. The reason? She chose an ivy league school versus a tier II or III school that would get her ass to Paris.
Jae-eon seemingly shows the most growth by the end of the show, literally setting free his butterflies. But I fail to find this compelling at all. A man realizing that he’s the problem? What a concept.
I want to jump into the end game for Nabi and Jae-eon. The rain conversation in episode 9 was huge. Jae-eon confronts her outside her house, in the pouring rain, while drunk—aggressive. She moves to walk past him, but he grabs her arm so hard that she drops her umbrella and looks pained—even more aggressive and threatening. Then he proceeds to have the most straightforward and charged conversation of the whole show. He smugly asks if Potato Boy still likes her even after witnessing them going into her house together. She’s shocked that Jae-eon knew, and he digs his own grave even further by cruelly saying that Potato Boy looked like he was going to burst into tears. Nabi ends up saying that she regrets all their time together, wishes it never happened, that she blames herself (not him) for deluding herself into thinking that he could be sincere. She says she never wants to see him again and up she goes, leaving both boys out in the rain—a stunned fuckboy and Potato Boy’s umbrella on the ground.
And after all that, she still ends up with Jae-eon. It felt like the show was giving a lifeline to all those naive women out there who think they can change a problematic man. The reformation of a fuckboy is virtually the thesis of the show. And I hated that.
No amount of striking cinematography and OST can stave off the ruin of this show. She didn’t need to choose Potato Boy, but she should have chosen herself. It may be more realistic for a young person to launch headlong into a relationship he or she knows will hurt them, but let me tell you, it sucks to watch the plane crash slowly. If the man doesn’t speak to his mom, but she buys him a Maserati for his birthday to compensate, RUN.
Did you see Nevertheless? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!
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