Review of Summer Strike / 아무것도 하고 싶지 않아

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I’ve been really catching up on my television shows during this time, as I feel like I would actually go insane if I wasn’t doing something besides applying to jobs, freelancing, and working on the blog. I came to realize during this time that if I didn’t have something dedicated to do and a purpose, I would actually go insane in a way that isn’t productive. I need to have a purpose, and working has been a way to find that.

One of the many ways I’ve been staying sane is that I’ve been getting through a lot of Asian dramas that I’ve been meaning to watch. I’ve even managed to get through some of the Turkish television series that have also been on my list, but I procrastinate on because I never had the time and would watch a Korean show first.

This blog post is specifically dedicated to Summer Strike, which I watched because of two reasons. The first is the fact that it was set in the Korean countryside and was about a slower pace of life. I was inspired by the drama When the Weather is Fine to watch more of these shows, as this is my pipeline dream. I also saw Im Si-wan was the male lead in this, and I wanted to watch it because of him.

This is a fairly short drama at only twelve episodes, so I got through it over the course of a week. It didn’t take too long, although this blog post is going to come out much later because of my publishing schedule.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

Leaving behind a life in the busy city, a young woman finds solace with a librarian and the residents of small town.

Our female lead in this show, Lee Yeo-reum, is the one who kicks the plot off in this series. She’s 28 and working at the same job she’s been at forever (specifically five years), but she wants a change in her life. She’s tired of the rat race and living in the city, so she decides she needs to quit her job and sell everything in order to learn how to live properly.

So she does just that. She sells pretty much everything she owns, puts the rest of it into a backpack, and then heads to a small town on the sea called Angok. It’s there she encounters the friendly genius Ahn Dae-beom, our male lead, although they don’t get off to a great start at first.

Yeo-reum lands cheap rent at an abandoned billiards club on a second floor. This is going to play a major clue later on in the series, as it was Dae-beom’s family’s billiard club and an unfortunate murder happened there years ago. The second half of the series is about finding out the true murderer, especially when something happens to one of the beloved side characters.

As Yeo-reum settles into this town, even if temporarily, she begins befriending the other people who live and work here. From a high school student, who’s followed around by a fellow classmate with a puppy crush, to eating and drinking a lot at a local restaurant full of elders, the world is now Yeo-reum’s oyster.

Although she spends a lot of time at the library and befriends both of the librarians there, she’s also learning how to live life again after spending so much of her time at a cubicle. A lot of these slice of life dramas tend to be in a similar vein in this way, but I feel like both of the main characters in this show hold their own weight and are distinguishable in their own ways.

Another side plot is that Dae-beom is a math genius, and the professor who he used to work with arrives in town and tries to get Dae-beom back into his lab. He’s convinced that Dae-beom is the key to solving a certain problem that mathematicians have been struggling with. However, Dae-beom doesn’t know if he’s ready to go to Seoul and leave everything behind.

That specifically happens when the murder subplot becomes the main plot. The romance aspect comes more into play, but if you’re looking more for direct romance, this isn’t going to be the show for you. It’s more about the development of them coming to like each other, and the most we kind of get is them holding hands at the very end in an intimate way. Which is fine with me, but I know other people might be looking for that.

Overall Thoughts

All in all, I liked this drama a lot and was entertained as I watched it, but I honestly don’t know if it’s memorable enough for me to watch it again. I liked both of the leads and felt that the plot throughout the show was resolved quite neatly, and it feels pretty authentic in the way that the tropes aren’t completely forced.

However, I just don’t know if this is a show that was entirely unique. I really liked When the Weather is Fine because of how it incorporated literature and the weather, but the math and side characters in this one didn’t stand out in this series as much. I wanted more from it in different ways, although I don’t know how to articulate what exactly it was missing.

It’s a fine show though, and if you haven’t seen it already you should probably go ahead and watch it. It’s worth seeing at least once if it seems up your alley. I have no regrets in watching it at all. As I mentioned before, I would say I enjoyed this one and have positive thoughts beyond the fact I feel it’s missing something.

So go watch it if you interests you! You could binge watch over two weekends, or one if you’re looking to have a bed rot kind of day.

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