By: Cameron Tyo
March, 3rd, 2024
Spoiler Alert: This review could contain mild spoilers for the show It’s Okay to Not Be Okay.”
It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is a romantic comedy with just a little mystery and suspense. It was produced by Studio Dragon and ran for a span of 16 episodes. The story follows Moon Gang-tae (Kim Soo-hyun), a caretaker at a psychiatric hospital who moves periodically in the spring in relation to a traumatic event that happened to his brother Moon Sang-tae (Oh Jung-se), who gets nightmares every spring because of the appearance of butterflies. After a chance encounter with famed author Ko Moon-young (Seo Yea-ji) at a book readthrough event, Moon-young ends up becoming somewhat obsessed with Gang-tae after witnessing what appears to be his cold stone demeanor in which he acts to appear strong in front of his brother, suppressing his emotions and tries to get his attention, which ends up with her moving back to Seongjin in her family’s old mansion.
From here, the plot shows the advances of Moo-young, and we get to learn more about the Moon brothers and the bond they have and of Moon-young’s tragic past as a child. We are introduced to other characters, such as Nam-Juri (Park Gyu-young), who used to be friends with Moo-young and is seemingly in love with Gang-tae despite sentiments not being shared. The people surrounding the main characters, such as Jo Jae-su (Kang Ki-doong), the Moon brother’s best friend who moves wherever they go, Lee Sang-in (Kim Joo-hun) and Yoo Seung-hee (Park Jin-hoo), employees of SangSangEsang publishing company where Moo works, and the patients and employers of the OK psychiatric hospital also have their stories told.
The story did well at showing different types of mental health issues and how they might occur in individuals. From thigns like mania, alcohol abuse, dissociative identity personality disorder PTSD, etc., the scenarios they are presented in always seem legitimate, never overexaggerated, and how the individuals deal with their problems in the episode in which the health issue is present shows how it is okay to not be okay. It shows the challenges people with mental health have to go through and, at the same time, how the employers of OK care for them.
I like how each episode’s title represents a story in which morals and elements of the story are followed in the episode, whether it is to compare and contrast story elements to the events of a particular episode or to help show characters’ growth following along the morals of a story. This is the case of actual books and titles of books present in the K-Drama. I thought this was a unique concept.
Going into more detail about the characters, I liked the idea of Moon Gang-tae and Sang-tae being themselves. Gang-tae ends up realizing that while being autistic, his brother is thoroughly capable of fending for himself with any job he works, and the way he handles certain things that might occur sporadically shows he can make his own responsible decisions.
Moon-young and Gang-tae’s relationship is very tumultuous, but I love that as the relationship is forming, Moon-young is able to feel like more of a family by being accepted by Gang-tae’s brother and the people around him despite her cold and harsh demeanor due to her antisocial personality disorder caused from her relationship between her parents, specifically her mother.
While the story with the main characters unfolds, a little sweet romance blooms between Jui-ri and Lee Sang-in. Furthermore, you have Jae-su, who believes he is being left behind by whom he considers his best friends because they spend more time with others like Moon than him. I enjoyed seeing Sang-tae become more of a flushed-out illustrator and, by doing so, get more and more over his fear of butterflies as he paints a mural for the OK psychiatric hospital. Speaking of the hospital, I love the random interactions among the other hospital’s workers and patients. They are involved with comedic and also pretty saddening moments, especially among the patients, as it tells why they are at the hospital in the first place. Some of my favorite featured supporting characters include Kan Pil-ong (Kim Ki-cheon), Oh-Ji-wang (Kim Chang-wan), Joo-Jeong-tae (Jung Jae-kwang), Park Haeng-ja (Jang Young-nam) and Sun-Byul (Jang Gyu-ri). They all added life in some sort of way to the hospital and moved the plot even just slightly.
The story was beautiful, and many moments made me visibly cry as the plot twists, tragedies were revealed, and heartwarming moments between many characters occurred. No one’s life in this drama was presented as perfect, typical of anyone’s life. The show also wasn’t stereotypical in the ways they showed any of the mental health issues.
The soundtrack that appeared in the show only helped to amplify the sadness I felt during the happy moments and depressing moments that happen after sudden acts of outbursts that really can just happen in real life. The romantic plotline in this story is one of the rockiest I’ve seen, and I appreciate the story for presenting it as such. It also happens to become more of a steamy romance.
I liked how most of the mystery plotline revolved around what happened between Moon-young and her mother and how it related to the Moon brothers. It wasn’t the main focal point as it didn’t need to be. You just needed a general idea of the relationship to get a sense of connection between three of the four main characters. When the plot twist ends up happening, it’s not the craziest thing in the world as the inference can be made, but it can still be shocking, especially knowing about the horrible things she has done, which does get into heavy spoiler territory, so I won’t discuss it much.
Some smaller things I liked were the art direction in which the story went, as well as the intertwined actual acting with storybook pages of books relating to events happening in an episode, etc. I loved the many different outfits of Moon-young that just showed her classy and rich side, which seems to be the norm for her.
Overall, I think that the show was a very good watch. It’s not perfect, but again, it is hard to earn that status. I loved how the main, supporting, and one-off characters interacted with the plot and the creative decisions by the producers and directors, like how the characters should act, the outfits they wear, the music and art direction, etc., to create a beautiful story. The story features different plotlines showing mental health and the treatment of people with it in a fair way. I would recommend anyone who enjoys a romantic comedy to give this one a try. Especially one with good comedy and just a bit of suspense added into the mix to change up the pace of the show.