It's Okay to Not Be Okay is a 2020 Korean Drama from South Korea. It ran for 16 episodes.
Ko Moon-young is a best-selling children's book author. She also happens to be a cold Emotionless Girl verging on The Sociopath. Flashbacks indicate that some of her problems date from her youth, when her father, who had a mental disorder, tried to strangle her to death. In any case, she has little concern for the feelings of others.
Moon Gang-tae is a nurse/caretaker in a psychiatric unit. This may be because his older brother, Moon Sang-tae, is autistic; Sang-tae is his brother's caretaker as well. Sang-tae often has strange nightmares of being attacked by butterflies, memories caused by the singular traumatic event of their childhood—their mother's murder, which Sang-tae witnessed. Now Sang-tae's terror of butterflies forces the brothers to move every year when it's butterfly season. Sang-tae reads children's novels, and happens to be a huge fan of Ko Moon-young.
One day Moon-young is giving a dramatic reading of one of her books for the pediatric patients at the hospital where Gang-tae works. She is assaulted by an escaped mental patient, who is strangling her when Gang-tae bursts in and saves her life. Moon-young then pulls a knife and tries to stab the mental patient (It Makes Sense in Context), but Gang-tae grabs the knife and gets a nasty slash on his palm.
The next day, Gang-tae is called to the office of Moon-young's deeply apologetic publisher. While he waits, he meets Moon-young again. She is scornfully wondering what he's getting for a payoff when Gang-tae reveals that he knows her from long ago. In fact, when they were little kids they lived in the same town, and Gang-tae was the weird little girl's only friend.
Tropes:
- The Alleged Car: Sang-in's reduced circumstances after his publishing business has collapsed are demonstrated in episode 10 by his car. Sang-in tries to give Joo-ri a ride to the hospital, but the car's radio doesn't work, the heater is permanently stuck on, the radio doesn't work, and when Sang-in tries to make the radio work the windshield wipers turn on and won't stop. Finally the car just dies on the side of the road and they have to call a taxi.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Gang-tae finally says "I love you" to Moon-young in episode 15. This moment of drama suddenly turns to comedy when Moon-young keeps walking, and Gang-tae goes on a rant ("Didn't you hear me?") that is exactly the same as when Moon-young said "I love you" to him in episode 4.
- Answer Cut:
- Director Oh in episode 8 asks Gang-tae to help him keep an eye out for the mysterious ghost. He asks what Gang-tae would want in return. Cut to Gang-tae pulling down the bulletin notice saying that Moon-young's fairy tale class has been cancelled.
- Moon-young has brought out the wine for her and Gang-tae in episode 12. Gang-tae kind of ruins the romantic mood by talking about his brother, so she tells him that he can't talk about his brother, and every time he does, he has to down a whole glass of wine. Gang-tae shoots back that Moon-young has to chug a whole glass of wine every time she swears. Cut to Moon-young sitting on the floor some time later, drunk out of her skull.
- Artistic License – Biology: Episode 13 reveals that Dae-hwan was suffering from headaches related to his brain cancer on the night that his wife killed the Moon brothers' mom. So he's been suffering from brain cancer for, based on the ages of Gang-tae and Moon-young, 20 years. This is nonsense. People who die of brain cancer die from it in a year, two years tops.
- Artsy Beret: In episode 3 Jo employs Sang-tae as a caricaturist at his new pizza place. He tells Sang-tae that he'll pay 10,000 won per sketch, then places an Artsy Beret on Sang-tae's head.
- Back for the Finale: Several patients discharged from the hospital return for Moon-young's book reading in the last episode. Ah-reum, whose abusive husband drove her into a mental breakdown, comes back looking healthy and confident after spending time in America. Ki-do, seen in episode 3 and 4 exposing himself in public after having deep-seated inadequacy issues related to his father, is also looking better and says he's studying to enter civil service. Eun-ja, seen in episodes 4-7 after having a mental breakdown related to the death of her daughter, says she's back to running her restaurant.
- Becoming the Mask: Moon-Young initially only pretended to be friends with Sang-Tae as a way to manipulate Gang-Tae and and force him to go live with her. Over time, she began to regard him as a true friend and the closest thing she ever had to a brother.
- Beta Couple: The romantic sub-plot has Sang-min, Moon-young's perpetually stressed-out publisher, falling for Joon-ri, who is suffering from unrequited love for Gang-tae.
- Big Brother Instinct: Gang-tae towards his older brother, Sang-tae being mentally challenged and in need of help.
- Blade Enthusiast: Part of Moon-young's general creepiness is a fondness for knives. When she's eating at a steakhouse, she likes the steak knife so much that she takes it with her. When she shows up at the publishing company all the office workers scramble to hide any knives or scissors laying on their desks. One worker is away from their desk and left a letter opener lying out; Moon-young takes it.
- Book Ends: A Moon-young book reading goes disastrously wrong in the first episode and the last. In the first it's played for drama, as an escaped mental patient is rampaging through the hospital, and in the last it's played for comedy, as Moon-young and Sang-tae are arguing about who gets to read the book.
- Call-Back: A demented Park Ok-ran yanks a fountain pen out of Moon-young's hand in episode 11, slicing her across the palm in a manner very similar to how Moon-young sliced Gang-tae when he grabbed her knife in episode 1.
- Cat Fight: Moon-young's taunting of Joo-ri in episode 5 leads to your standard hair-pulling Cat Fight, one that is interrupted when Gang-tae shows up and pulls Moon-young away.
- Celebrity Cameo: Jung Sang-hoon, Korean TV star best known as a long-running member of the Korean version of Saturday Night Live, appears in one scene in episode 5 as the night clerk at a sleazy motel.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Nurse Park, who hangs around for the whole series as the businesslike, quietly competent head nurse at OK Psychiatric Hospital, without really adding anything to the story. That is, until episode 13, where she's revealed to really be Moon-young's insane, homicidal mother Do Hui-jae.
- Chick Magnet: Gang-tae is this, to the point that Moon-young refuses to allow him to attend classes in person out of fear that he'll be swarmed by adoring women.
- Childish Pillow Fight: In episode 8 Sang-tae and Moon-young have a fight over "Mang-tae", the little comfort doll that Gang-tae made for his brother years ago but recently gave to Moon-young. Gang-tae comes home and is disgusted to find Sang-tae and Moon-young fighting, with a torn pillow and feathers everywhere.
- Cobweb of Disuse: When Moon-young returns to the creepy Old, Dark House that was her childhood home, it's festooned with cobwebs of disuse everywhere.
- Comforting Comforter: It's actually a sign of character growth on the part of Moon-young, The Sociopath, when she puts a blanket over Sang-tae while he's having one of his meltdowns.
- Danger — Thin Ice:
- Flashbacks reveal that this is how Moon-young and Gang-tae first met. One day when they were children, he fell through the ice into a lake. Moon-young, in her typical sociopathic way, debated "Should I help him or not?", before tossing him a life preserver. They then became friends, a friendship that was shattered when she showed him how she liked to pull the wings off of butterflies.
- Episode 6 expands on this flashback. It turns out that the Moon brothers were goofing around on the ice when Sang-tae went out on the thin ice and fell in. Gang-tae pulled his brother out but was left flailing around himself, on the verge of drowning when a shocked Sang-tae shuffled away. That's when Moon-young, who watched the whole sequence of events, intervened by tossing Gang-tae a flotation device.
- Don't Split Us Up: The brothers' mother was murdered when Gang-tae was only 12. The cops came to the fairly logical conclusion that Sang-tae needed to go into an institution and Gang-tae needed to go to an orphanage. Gang-tae overheard this and, rather than let the two of them get split up, took Sang-tae by the hand and led him out of the police station immediately, and the two ran away.
- Door Judo: A gag in episode 6. Sang-tae shuts the door of Moon-young's mansion on Sang-in. So Sang-in makes to break the door down, only for Sang-tae to open the door as Sang-in is barreling towards it, causing Sang-in to zoom through the doorway and stumble to a heap in the hallway at Moon-young's feet.
- Dramatic Sit-Down: In episode 12 Gang-tae sits down heavily on a couch in Moon-young's house after finding the scary "I will come for you soon" note.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Ju-ri gets good and drunk in episode 7 after finding out that Gang-tae skipped work to spend the day with Moon-young. She even talks about how much it sucks to be in unrequited love.
- Emotionless Girl: Moon-young is ice-cold. She mocks Ju-ri when Ju-ri comes to get her to sign an authorization form for her father's surgery. After Gang-tae subdues Mr. Kim in the first episode, Moon-young spits that some people don't deserve to live.
- Empathic Environment: When Moon-young is driving back to Seongjin City in episode 2 to find Gang-tae again, a bolt can be seen over the ocean. When she actually makes it to the hospital, the lightning has turned into a torrential thunderstorm over the town.
- The Faceless:
- Moon-young's mother Hui-jae is seen often, in flashback, as a ghostly spirit, and in a portrait that's still in the Ko family's Old, Dark House. But her face is never shown clearly, always obscured by darkness or at an Unreveal Angle. In episode 12, in the murder flashback, we finally get close-ups of Do Hui-jae but still don't get a good look as the shots are close-ups of individual parts of her face, like her cold eyes or her lips curled in an evil smile.
- When we finally get a real closeup of Hui-jae in episode 13 it's a dramatic moment, with Hui-jae wearing a Slasher Smile as she tells about how she killed the Moon brothers' mom.
- Family Theme Naming: There's Sang-tae and Gang-tae. And years ago, when Gang-tae made a little doll for his older brother, Sang-tae decided it was the third Moon brother and named it Mang-tae.
- Flashback:
- An extremely disturbing one in the first episode reveals that when Moon-young was a teenager her father Ko Dae-hwan tried to murder her. That same episode ends with a flashback montage that reveals that Gang-tae was Moon-young's childhood friend and the inspiration for the Stop Motion story that begins the series—she fished him out of the river when he was drowning, and he befriended her and brought her flowers.
- There are many more flashbacks throughout the series. A flashback in episode 9 sketches out how Moon-young and Joo-ri were briefly best friends as schoolchildren. Episode 11 reveals why Sang-tae blamed his mother's murder on "the butterfly" and is terrified of butterflies: the person who killed his mother was wearing a decorative butterfly brooch.
- Flatline: Played straight in episode 13, as Dae-hwan's death from brain cancer in episode 13 is demonstrated by the monitor next to his sickbed flatlining.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Jo Jae-soo and Gang-tae are such good friends that whenever Gang-tae is forced to move by his brother's nightmares, Jo comes with them.
- Hilarious Outtakes: The series ends with episode 16 credits playing over a blooper reel of the actors blowing takes and lines.
- Hotter and Sexier: Most Korean dramas are very circumspect about portraying sexuality, but It's Okay to Not Be Okay is more explicit than most. The Shirtless Scenes with Gang-tae are standard for K-drama, but the Shower Scene with Moon-young isn't. Moon-young also is quite horny, caressing Gang-tae's pecs and talking openly about how she wants to have sex with him. Most surprisingly, in episode 16 there's a shot of the two of them in bed together, clothes scattered across the bedroom. They're just sleeping, but it's pretty unusual in Korean drama to see two people naked in bed together.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode is named after a fairy tale. Five episodes are named for the fairy tales created for this series as examples of Ko Moon-young's work, and the rest are named for pre-existing fairy tales.
- Important Haircut: A flashback in episode 7 shows Moon-young's mom refusing to let Moon-young cut her hair, getting violently angry, screaming at her daughter that her own hair was long and had to match. Later in that same episode Moon-young musters her courage and cuts her hair.
- Lap Pillow:
- Moon-young lays her head on Gang-tae's lap to take a nap, after he gives her the little "Mang-tae" doll back.
- Happens again in episode 16 when the two are cuddling on a couch after (apparently) having sex for the first time.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In episode 9 Moon-young gets one look at Gang-tae's hangdog face and says "Oh, I've seen that face on TV dramas." She says it's the face of a man who cheated on his wife, while in actual fact it's Gang-tae looking guilty after he told his brother on the phone that he went off on a trip alone.
- Left Hanging: In-Universe, Hui-jae was a mystery writer. Her last novel, The Murder of the Witch of the West, was left unfinished when she disappeared 20 years ago. Towards the end of the series Moon-young finds the manuscript.
- Leg Focus: Moon-young's gorgeous legs are often emphasized, like when she's first shown onscreen eating at a restaurant, with a knee-length skirt that shows off her calves, or when Ju-ri has come to her apartment to get a document signed, and Moon-young lounges on her couch in a robe, again showing off her calves. Then at least Once an Episode after that she's wearing some kind of short skirt or other leg-baring outfit.
- Letting Her Hair Down: A pretty dark example of this in episode 13. Nurse Park spends the whole series with her hair pulled back in a bun, proper for working in a psychiatric hospital. But when she sheds the mask and is revealed as Moon-young's deranged, psychotic mother, she's wearing her hair long.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Nam Ju-ri is the Light to Ko Moon-young's Dark. Ju-ri is a kind, shy nurse from a modest background. Moon-young is an antisocial, elegant dark children's book author often dressed in haute couture.
- Match Cut: Often used for scene transitions. The scene in episode 3 where Moon-young nearly hits a deer with her car, cuts from a shot of the deer, to a shot of a drawing of a deer in the next scene, on a carton of deer milk.
- Meet Cute: Subverted. It's certainly a dramatic version of Meet Cute when Gang-tae bursts in and saves Moon-young from being strangled by deranged Mr. Kim. But as Gang-tae reveals at the end of the first episode, it wasn't their first meeting; he recognizes her from when they were children.
- Moment Killer: Gang-tae and Moon-young are about to finally, finally kiss in episode 9, when the loud bleating of a deer breaks the moment. An angry Moon-young yells at the deer. (They do kiss later in that episode.)
- Morality Chain: As early as episode 2 Moon-young realizes that she needs Gang-tae to be this for her, that he can help her to be more human. She even calls him her "safety pin."
- Nails on a Blackboard:
- In episode 1 Sang-in is lecturing Moon-young about how she needs to not dress so much like Morticia Addams when she's about to give a reading to little kids. Moon-young gets irritated by this and deliberately scrapes her ceramic plate with the point of a very sharp knife, which makes Sang-in stop.
- Moon-young does the exact same thing in episode 12 to get Gang-tae's attention. She's irritated by all the young ladies in the pizza shop that have been cooing at handsome Gang-tae.
- No-Tell Motel: The hotel that Moon-young and Gang-tae stop at in episode 5. Gang-tae is just looking for a place to get out of the torrential rainstorm outside, but the night clerk asks him if he wants a room "for one night or just a few hours". Then the night clerk offers to provide various features, like a mirrored room, costumes, a vibrating bed, a "love chair", or a whip.
- Not What It Looks Like: Ju-ri is startled to find a shirtless Gang-tae wrestling with Moon-young in a doorway in episode 3. It turns out that Moon-young, showing her lack of boundaries, intruded in the locker room for male hospital workers, and Gang-tae was dragging her out.
- Old, Dark House: The "castle" that Moon-young's father built for their family is an arrow-straight example of this, being dark and creepy and located on the top of a hill in the woods. It's said to be haunted. There are Ominous Owls about the place at night to set the mood.
- Older Than They Look: Despite having a somewhat cute and childish appearance and personality that makes her look young, it is revealed in the final episode that Seung-Jae is at least 6 years older than Joon-Ri.
- Ominous Fog: One of the tropes used to establish the creepy mood when Moon-young is driving back to her family's Old, Dark House in episode 3.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Ominous Latin chanting can be heard as the soundtrack for the very disturbing flashback in which Moon-young's father is strangling her.
- Ominous Owl: A hooting owl is another of the tropes used to establish the creepy mood when Moon-young is driving back to her family's Old, Dark House in episode 3.
- Parting-Words Regret: Eun-ja's backstory. After her daughter got her an expensive present Eun-ja yelled at her for wasting money, and they had an argument. Eun-ja's daughter angrily walked away, into the street, and was immediately struck and killed by a car. Eun-ja's grief over this drove her into a full-fledged mental breakdown which is why she's in the hospital.
- The Pen Is Mightier: Flashbacks reveal that Do Hui-jae murdered Gang-tae and Sang-tae's mom by slitting her throat with a fountain pen.
- Product Placement:
- Very obvious for Angel-in-us coffee shop in episode 6. Sang-in and Seung-jae have coffee there, complete with an establishing shot that shows the outside of the coffee shop with the name. In episode 14 one of the nurses ostentatiously uses a "Lotte Eatz" app to order Angel-in-us coffee.
- Episode 8 has Sang-min and his sidekick visiting that mainstay of Korean Drama product placement, Subway. (Then Gang-tae and Moon-young go to Angel-in-us that same episode.). Characters dine at Subway again in episode 9.
- Promotion to Parent: Their mother's murder when Gang-tae was just 12 left him responsible for taking care of his mentally challenged older brother.
- Recursive Reality: In the first episode Gang-tae and his buddy Jo are pushing Jo's crappy old bicycle across a bridge. They pass a billboard advertising the new Korean Drama, It's Okay to Not Be Okay.
- The Reveal:
- Park Haeng-ja, the competent, efficient head nurse at OK Psychiatric Hospital, is actually deranged murderer Do Hui-jae, Moon-young's mom. This is revealed in episode 13.
- A less dramatic reveal comes in episode 14. Why does Director Oh keep Cha-hyung around as an orderly at the hospital, despite Cha-hyung being a screw-up? Because Cha-hyung is his son.
- Right Behind Me: In episode 13 Seung-jae is muttering about how Moon-young is always late and is inconsiderate to make her wait. She's surprised to turn around and find Moon-young four feet behind her, smirking.
- Round Hippie Shades: Kwon Gi-do is wearing stylish round frames when he arrives at the psychiatric clinic in episode 3. He looks like a hip young playboy, but it's revealed that he is in the throes of a severe manic episode.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Played with. Sang-in is used to covering Moon-Young's mistakes with money, but that method eventually has a limit and he tries to commit suicide when he realizes that Moon-Young's mistakes are already too serious to be solved that way.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: In episode 16, Gang-tae has Moon-young horizontal on a desk and is kissing her when the show cuts to a different scene. When the show cuts back they are cuddling intimately in a different location.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Why Pil-wong is in the hospital. The sound of jackhammers as Pil-wong is riding around on the bus takes him right into a traumatic flashback of the Vietnam War. He goes back to OK Psychiatric Hospital immediately.
- Shirtless Scene:
- More or less mandatory with handsome romantic leads in Korean dramas and happens in this one in the first episode when Gang-tae is changing in the locker room of the hospital.
- Another one in episode 3, when Gang-tae is changing in the hospital once again. This one is also used to demonstrate Moon-young's lack of boundaries or discretion, when she creeps in there to get an eyeful and then touches Gang-tae's chiseled pecs.
- Shower Scene: Some Fanservice in the first episode shows beautiful Moon-young taking a shower.
- Silver Spoon Troublemaker: Ki-do happens to be one because of his manic disorder, which makes him spend money irrationally and act inappropriately in public. So his father, who is an assemblyman, is ashamed of him and sends him to a psychiatric hospital. However, Ki-do acts up on purpose when his father is holding an election campaign, as he crashes it, tells people not to vote for him, and tearfully confesses to the attendees that he did this just to grab his father's attention.Ki-do: (in a choked-up voice) I just wanted his attention. I just wanted him to look at me. So I did tons of crazy stuff to get his attention. But I just ended up going crazy, everyone!
- Slasher Smile: Moon-young's insane mother Hui-jae does this a lot in episodes 14 and 15 when she sheds her fake identity of "Nurse Park" and lets her crazy flag fly. It's particularly unsettling when she does it during the violent confrontation with Moon-young and the Moon brothers in episode 15.
- Spit Take: Gang-tae does this in episode 7 when Moon-young asks him directly, "Have you ever slept with a woman?"
- Staggered Zoom: Sang-tae is finally able to explain his fear of butterflies in episode 12, telling Kang-tae that their mom was killed by someone wearing a distinctive butterfly brooch. Cut to Kang-tae remembering the photo of Moon-young's family that he discovered earlier that same episode, and a Staggered Zoom onto the distinctive butterfly brooch that Moon-young's mother was wearing in the photo. It matches Sang-tae's description.
- Staircase Tumble: In episode 2 Moon-young pushes the asshole critic down the stairs. He doesn't die, but he is yelling threats of revenge as he's hauled away on a stretcher. Moon-young is disappointed that he isn't dead.
- Stop Motion: The first scene of the first episode is a Stop Motion animation of a little girl fishing a little boy out of a river, saving his life; they become friends. This is demonstrated to be one of Moon-young's fairy tales. The ending of the episode reveals that it's also an animation of what happened in Real Life to Moon-young and Gang-tae, when she pulled him from an icy river.
- Straw Critic: The critic in episode 2 isn't just an obnoxious asshole who take bribes from the publisher in return for good reviews of Moon-young's books. No, he smarmily demands sex from her, or else he'll reveal that she has antisocial personality disorder. He's messing with the wrong person, as Moon-young pushes him down a flight of stairs.
- Title Drop:
- Director Oh plays guitar and sings a song with the patients at the asylum, with the lyric "It's OK to not be OK." (Episode 9).
- In episode 14, when Director Oh is berating himself for letting Nurse Park into his hospital, Joo-ri reminds him of his hospital's mission statement.
- Visual Title Drop: "It's OK to not be OK" is is the mission statement of the OK Psychiactric Hospital, as seen on a poster on the wall in episode 3.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: In the first episode Gang-tae is hugging a patient when the patient vomits all over his back. This is illustrated with a hilarious montage of shots featuring stuff like dead fish being poured onto a boat, grain being poured out of a grain elevator, a waterfall...
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Park Ok-ran, the patient in the asylum who claims to be Moon-young's mother, but is later revealed to be conspiring with Moon-young's real mother Hui-jae. We never find out what happened to Ok-ran, after she escaped the mental hospital and put the threatening note in Moon-young's house. All the real Hui-jae says is that Ok-ran is "a great actress" who is playing her show somewhere else.
