You and Everything Else Review
Director: Jo Young-min
Date Created: 2025-09-12 22:40
4.5
You and Everything Else Review: Directed by Jo Young-min and written by Song Hye-jin, 은중과 상연 is a 15-episode Korean drama starring Kim Go-eun, Park Ji-hyun, Kim Gun-woo, Kim Jae-won, Seo Jung-yeon and Lee Sang-yoon in leading roles. The drama begins as a story about two teenage friends, Eun-jung and Sang-yeon, who are tested and proven for friendship amidst jealousy, betrayal, and hurt that cannot be suppressed. It started with a friendship story, and the drama slowly transitions to a tale of competition, misconception, and finally forgiveness as they are left to clash with each other at the end.
You and Everything Else Review
When I first heard the length: 15 episodes of almost one hour each, my initial reaction was hesitation. Long-running dramas sometimes flag at some point and are just rehashing the same problems. But once I sat down and started to watch Netflix’s You and Everything Else, my interest was piqued. The show is anything but light entertainment. It’s very emotional and patience-testing. But once you get past the initial episodes, it grips you with its raw emotions and doesn’t let go.
Unlike most friendship series that bask in loyalty and its happy endings, You and Everything Else Korean drama, takes a more complex turn. Eun-jung and Sang-yeon’s friendship is complicated. They are not the kind of friends who proudly lift each other up. They are messy, filled with feelings of jealousy, admiration, guilt, and affection simultaneously.
As a viewer, I was pulled both ways. There were moments when I felt bad for Eun-jung and Sang-yeon. The two women wronged one another in unimaginably grotesque ways, and yet at great length, the show is determined to make us see that their agony stems from serious hurts and not reckless malevolence. The push-pull kept me riveted to the show, regardless of the repetitiveness the drama lapsed into at times.
Kim Go-eun (Eun-jung) and Park Ji-hyun (Sang-yeon) are superb. They reveal the hard chic of their characters, yet their frailties. There were times when I couldn’t help but dislike them, but immediately after that scene, they would make me feel their grief. Balancing the emotions is hard to accomplish, yet both actors did. The supporting cast, particularly Kim Gun-woo and Lee Sang-yoon, adds dimension without upstaging the leads. All the same, and at its core a two-woman show, it succeeds on the strength of their chemistry.
One thing that the show does extremely well is how well it addresses complex female relationships. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything about the nature in which jealousy, old wounds, and unresolved guilt can destroy otherwise perfect relationships. The series also addresses big-issue material like disease, dying, and forgiveness.
The series raises hard questions like, can you forgive a betrayal if you are dying? Do we owe a kindness to the person who wronged us just because they has little time? Most uncomfortably, is forgiveness ever genuine, or is it a means of assuaging guilt? These are what make the series gripping, if at times we feel pulled taut.
Even though I loved so much about this Korean drama You and Everything Else, I couldn’t help but overlook a few issues. Firstly, the pacing feels sluggish at times. Some drama gets pulled out across episodes, and that just doesn’t feel necessary. I also felt that the end, sentimental and lovely as it was, felt a little hasty. With 15 episodes invested, I wanted a more complex resolution between Eun-jung and Sang-yeon than that pretty swift forgiveness we get.
Without revealing too many spoilers, I’ll just mention that the later episodes are tear-jerkers. Sang-yeon’s condition and her wish to spend her few remaining days with Eun-jung drive the plot to emotional overdrive. Credit where credit is due, I appreciate that the show did not sugarcoat their history nor act as if everything was now hunky dory. It provided us a bittersweet finale, far from perfect, yet human.
The end brought me both tears and contemplation. There was no right and wrong. It was two flawed people who, despite everything, loved one another in their flawed way.
Summing Up
Overall, the aggressive storytelling, acting, and emotional realism were something that did appeal. All the same, slow-burning pacing, circular drama, and rushed finish did make the series less compelling than possible. Netflix series You and Everything Else is an emotional, character-centric drama for aficionados. It is an occasionally frustrating and yet ultimately rewarding viewing experience. Provided that you are willing to invest in a series that gets at that dark core of friendship and forgiveness.
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