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One Day Off: Episodes 1-4 (Series Review)

Beautiful, brilliant, and bothersome, the first four episodes of One Day Off take us on a journey through contemporary life — and the reasons we need a break from it. Lee Na-young is masterful as the solo traveler who will lead us to a mirror, so we can catch a glimpse of ourselves.

 
EPISODES 1-4

I have nothing but praise for this show. And I’m tempted to just run through it, scene by scene, and give away every morsel of detail. But what would be the fun in that when the truth is, you need to see it for yourself to truly experience it.

To set the context, we’ve got a single woman, age not specified (but I’d say, late 30’s, maybe 40), who teaches Korean literature at a high school and leads a somewhat dull existence. When her students peer out the windows of the classroom, dreaming of escape, our heroine stands at the front of the class and does exactly the same.

She tells us that in late 19th century France, there was a psychiatric condition known as “dromomania,” which was characterized by an uncontrollable urge to wander. People left behind jobs and families and just took off, in a kind of “pathological tourism.” But, she asks, was it really madness that caused them to travel? Or was it the dread of going mad in their daily lives that made them leave?

The woman behind these words is PARK HA-KYUNG (Lee Na-young), and she begins each episode by restating a simple premise: “When longing to disappear, I take one-day trips. I walk, eat, and let my mind wander.” From there, each episode is bracketed in its own story, with new characters and encounters. And yet, as the episodes pile up, a continuity starts to develop.

We begin with a trip to a mountain-top temple, where Ha-kyung learns how to practice meditation. They take all the smartphones away and everyone sits crossed legged on the floor in front of a panoramic vista. Ha-kyung tries to count to ten, but is distracted by her thoughts, again and again, and has to keep starting over. It’s here that we learn what kind of show this will be as we gain access to our heroine’s inner monologue, following her thoughts moment to moment.

In this first day trip, she meets a few others at the temple, but most are spending a much longer, introspective stay. There’s a novelist (Seo Hyun-woo), who tries to get to know her, and a woman who’s practicing Noble Silence (meaning she’s taking a break from speaking for a while). This woman and Ha-kyung go walking through the wooded hills together, silently, communicating only to taste berries, sniff pine cones, listen to birds, and finally view an incredible sunset.

The drama knows when to take its time and direct our attention to what it’s trying to tell us, which is something different in each episode. At the temple, the camera lingers on natural details (bugs, leaves, light, rocks) and we focus on Ha-kyung’s thoughts. At one point — in the absence of her phone — she thinks, “We always want a new place. Once that place is reached, there’s a relentless pursuit of another. We’re bound to get lost that way.” And in this context, it seems to be a comment on the distractedness of contemporary life, as we jump from screen to screen.

While the first episode has a light and airy feel, the tone of each episode is different and, once we reach the mid-section, it’s not an easy, breezy show. The second excursion takes us to a small town where one of Ha-kyung’s former students, KIM YEON-JOO (Han Ye-ri), is trying to make it as an artist. This is the most comical of the four installments, but there is something dark underneath as we see a group of young entrepreneurial creatives, pretending to be friends but really existing in a shark tank together.

Yeon-joo is a painter, poet, and performance artist, and by all accounts her work isn’t good. She’s fidgety and insecure and wants desperately to be liked. And this is really the theme of this episode as it explores these young people who are so representative of our times. There’s a genius joke when Ha-kyung is introduced to a content creator and he says, “Like and subscribe to my videos.” And she responds, “Yes, I’ll like them if I like them.” (Do I detect a little Zen in that?)

Each episode is increasingly my favorite, and if you only have time to watch one, I recommend Episode 3. It’s titled “Meta-romance” — and that’s exactly what it is. It takes place on a trip to the Busan International Film Festival, where all the drama’s independent-film-style camera work does its meta job by making us feel like we are the ones watching a small film at the festival.

The episodes are only 25 minutes long and yet Episode 3 does tremendous things — hitting the emotional notes of a romantic movie, making me fall in love with the characters, and breaking my heart at the end. Yes, it’s that good.

As a Korean literature teacher, Ha-kyung remarks that no one writes romantic stories anymore (more meta), and while at the festival, she meets aspiring filmmaker LEE CHANG-JIN (Gu Kyo-hwan). The two hit it off, in an oddball way, and wander the city streets at night, discussing their random thoughts, like the fact that “cute” has no opposite (which I never thought about before, but is totally true).

At the end of the night, he buys her a bag of mandarins and leaves with the promise of meeting in the morning to watch the last movie screening before they both head back to Seoul. Ha-kyung can’t sleep, thinking about this bizarre night she’s just had and the prospect of tomorrow. She arrives early to the theater the next day, waits and waits, and he doesn’t show up. She watches the film alone, gets on the train to go home, and looks at the mandarins wistfully.

It’s not the end of the episode, and back in Seoul, we get another meta-moment, when we see the characters have a near encounter — but they do not see each other. Chang-jin thinks to himself, “We could meet again someday in this unending movie.” And then he looks directly at the camera and says, “Cut!” It’s perfect from start to finish, and I have a million interpretations, but for now I just wonder if the joke will continue. Will we meet him again someday?

The final episode for this week is also my favorite, but I know it won’t be for everybody. Half of its 25-minute run takes place in a bus station and involves a political argument between an elderly gentleman (Park In-hwan), a middle-aged man, and Ha-kyung (who represents the younger generation in this context). This is the episode I would most like to transcribe, word for word, in a running dialogue to exhibit how brilliant the writing is: so brilliant that even talking about it feels like I’m ruining it and I encourage everyone to just watch it. But be warned, even though it ends on an uplifting note, it still left me melancholy — and there was no episode after it to try to change my mood.

The thing that’s impressive here is that the argument is so of the now, and so global, that I feel like every one of us has probably had this exact argument in the last few years. What’s not relatable is how cordially it finally ends, with everyone achieving a modicum of understanding for each other as simply fallible and human. But I also think that’s the point it’s making: couldn’t we all be a little more humble?

I’m so impressed with this show. It’s a slice-of-life, but it is picking and choosing the slices that are most relevant to today’s society and building into what I feel is a kind of treatise. It’s current, touching, and troubling, and has a heroine that’s intensely likable. She’s thoughtful, curious, open, and kind, but also confident, instructive, and self-assured. She doesn’t strike me as someone who’s traveling to try to find herself, or who travels alone in order to find someone else either. In fact, she seems to already know who she is, but is just not satisfied with the mundanity of life.

I was surprised to learn that this is the screenwriter’s first drama, but not so surprised that the writer and director have worked together before on a film. The writing and direction blend skillfully and the drama takes liberties with how to show us information. A handheld camera is often used at the beginning of an episode, when Ha-kyung first arrives in a new place, almost like she needs to gain some stability there before the camera can sit still.

To acquaint us with a new place, we get artful snippets of small towns, faded photos of fish, still shots of buses, and a visible sense of nostalgia. Sound is also adroitly employed, like when Ha-kyung rides an escalator at night and its rhythm is a singular sound, as if she’s the only one in the entire city. It’s artsy for sure, with evocative captures of plastic bags blowing in the wind and French paintings of travelers that look strikingly similar to Ha-kyung. But the faded light turns crisp when it needs to, and the warm, comforting palettes seem mostly like a reminder that we’re not alone on this journey — someone is gently guiding us.

I’ve only seen 50% of this drama but it’s shaping up to be among my favorites of 2023, and maybe of all time. After I watched this week’s episodes, I watched them all again, moving from the emotional impact I felt on the first viewing to the mindful take-aways I was gleaning from the second. It feels more like an independent film than a drama, but it succeeds at everything it’s attempting, and I’m glad it’s taking the risk. If this is the future of dramaland, let us all wander madly into it.

 
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I've been describing this drama as 'startling', though I'd be hard pressed to describe why exactly. I've also watched it twice through, myself. The scene where she's talking to Busan Film Festival Guy and he's abruptly not there was certainly startling.

This show prompted me to look up a couple Hong Sang-soo indi films that I haven't yet seen to watch this weekend. 'The Novelist's Film' and 'The Day After' are queue'd-up.

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Thanks @dramaddictally for your lovely recaps. Only completed two eps as I promised myself I would go slowly through this show so as to appreciate the tonal accuracy of each scene. Now I want to watch the next two in a big gulp. Episode 4 sounds like Thanksgiving dinner with Trumpy relatives.
This show renewed my faith in K-dramas after too many darkness-filled plots peopled with characters displaying the worst aspects of human nature.

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the opposite of cute is ominous. think about it. cute things attract, ominous repel.

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Don't get me wrong, I'm usually the first in line for anything French, but leave it to the French to come up with a concept like "dromomania." This show sounds like a Kdrama encapsulation of a Sartrean existential story, or perhaps even a fictionalized excerpt from one of his "Being and Nothingness" diatribes. I get it, but it requires a deep sense of spiritual ennui to be relatable, and I'm not really in that place. It's going on my list, just for one of those moods.

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Thanks for the weecap @dramaddictally, I loved this mini series too. The bite sized episodes said so much. I was desperately looking for a common theme was it the presence of the sea, mindful eating and drinking that makes us acknowledge what we are tasting, the gorgeous sunsets, the multiple sides to people? The jury is still out, but I feel by the end we will see a common thread.

I love the way they end by introducing the essence of the character in the next episode.

When the women were watching the sunset in the first episode I was pulled out of the moment as I suddenly went from thinking ‘it’s so pretty’ to ‘don’t linger too long, remember you still need to get off the mountain before it gets dark’. As I caught myself thinking this, I wondered how often we miss out of the joy of the moment because of the ‘keep it moving’ mentality.

The randomness of the man in the third one left me with a big question mark over my head. How did they became separated when they had been standing still? They had very different experiences of the same moment but both felt the other had disappeared on them. His not showing up at all was a disappointment. I pictured him over sleeping and running in late or that they missed each other when she kept moving from one place to another as they had not been specific about the meeting point.

It was interesting that when they both intentionally looked for a wheat noodle restaurant in Seoul they found that it had been there all along. I have noticed for a while now just how specific the menus are for restaurants in Korea as people often look for a Blood sausage place, a wheat noodle place etc.

His demonstration of the keep bumping into each other doorway dance was an eye opener, I have often wondered how they choreograph it to look so natural as the first time makes sense but the second and third doesn’t ever happen in real life. It almost felt like he was trying to evoke her presence by doing that. But, I also wondered if he does that every time he goes through a restaurant door anyway and she was unfortunate to get caught in the trap of calculated connectedness. As when he said what’s the opposite of cute I suddenly thought of meet cute as unexpected randomness and then the opposite would be calculated and what if he was in fact a stalker. I dismissed it as being traumatised by the uniquely K drama mismatched genres but then the restaurant door moment brought it back to mind. I do think I have been impacted by K dramas into involuntary reactions to certain scenes, the key one being someone crossing a road, I immediately expect a truck of doom. It’s only when I watch Japanese or Chinese drama road crossing scenes that I know I can relax.

I do think this is short story telling at its best. I almost feel there needs to a special category of award for these types of dramas. They are either short form like this and the KBS specials that tell one story per episode or a short series like Finland papa.

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I like your comment because I really do like it. :)!

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I believe the networks do have awards for short series and specials.

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Wee I love this, it is pretty, stylist, and contemplative, yet still light weight. I love Lee Na-young's wardrobe (❁´◡`❁)

Ep.3: Do not attempt with Fate! Ha ha ha it doesn't work that way, if you really want it make an appointment and schedule it. Ha ha

Ep.4: Aww crying on the bus for no reason, have been there, done that. Life is hard, I know. 🥺

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I felt the same way about Ep 3 until @reply1988 mentioned the randomness in "meet cute" and how it is not suppossed to be a calculated move😅😅

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The scenery is beautiful. The rest is bothersome. Well, at least for the first two episodes. Masochism may lead me to the others. Or not.
I do love this premise so much. Wandering around and meeting new people in ordinary circumstances. Reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Straight Story.

However, while the movie makes every second meaningful, here it is the opposite. Things happen, but we never really find out what drama wants to do or say.
The teacher wants to be nice and say and do kind things but we don't know exactly why. Being nice is great, as long is not just the easiest choice. We don't know this FL. In ep 2 for instance, is she afraid of being honest or is she just thinking it is better to be supportive? If she isn't going to say anything why drama makes such a big deal of the supposed low quality of the work?

It is almost as if she doesn't care at all, and all this places and people are in a zoo she is visiting for the day. She comes, she finds them amusing, she leaves. It's disturbing to use such heartfelt premise in such a cynical manner.

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@dramaddictally Your review is wonderful and captured the beauty of the series. Loved reading it.

I immediately knew the drama was for me as soon as the camera cut from the flying plastic cover to the train journey. In my POV, I feel anyone facing an existential crisis can relate to the protagonist, especially the dialogues in the 4th episode were she feels alone and the grandpa points out that she is single and doesn't know much about life because she doesn't have kids.

Even though the episodes can at times be hard hitting with simple conversations or dialogues, at the end of each episode a breeze of calmness washes over us instead of a sense of foreboding.

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The scene where she's on the beach recalling her only childhood vacation, then reflecting that she's now the same age as her parents must've been, mirrors a similar line I recall from the old American TV series 'Thirtysomething' from back 35 years ago. Apparently every generation reflects on life after they've hit the age their parents were when they were children.

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Based on the rave review of @dramaadictally and the response of three of the smartest commentators on dramabeans, @jossie4cheryl, @mikey and @reply1988 I watched these four episodes while I was on the exercise bike late this afternoon. Obviously, that is not the ideal format for this intellectually ambitious drama. Usually I watch shows like Taxi Driver, where seeing Lee Je-hoon beat up 25 thugs singlehandedly is an appropriate adrenaline rush and makes me pedal faster.

Now that I’ve seen it through my sweat, though I have a few things to say. I’m apologize to Drama Beans commentators that I’m going to default to my pretentious “scholarly” mode of discourse. My interpretation is not going to be any better than anyone elses, but I’ll be sure to write in a less comprehensible way, to make it sound more profound.

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So, my overall assessment of these 4 episodes is that they are really good, with a structural reservation:
I’m not sure that the episodic/kdrama format quite works for this one. The major themes are consistent throughout, but it just feels a bit too fragmentary to me. Maybe that. Why didn’t they just release all the episodes at once? What’s the point of splitting it into 2?

Anyway, given its French context the Lee Na Young's character is clearly a Flâneur or more gender appropriately a Flâneuse, wandering not the urban boulevards, but the countryside of Korea, as a detached, modern observer. Appropriately the main theme is a very modern one of authenticity vs. illusory, “artificial” experience.

The first episode, which is by far the funniest, is also the most trite, with the dabblers at the monastery contrasted with the sincerely devout woman, who connects her genuine spirituality to nature. (But that woman practicing fake laughs was hilarious.)

The second episode, which is more cringey than funny, is better, in my opinion, exposing the pretenses of a modern art that it is not at all authentic to the artist, but instead is based on pretense—the “self-portrait” is just titled that because the artist couldn’t think of a name. She is a poseur, as are all the artists in the house; the badly sung pop song by the FL accompanied by jazz, an ultimate modern music, is more authentic than she is. (Not that I find the artist an unsympathetic character.)

The third episode I liked the best, because of the way it makes use of cinema, the ultimate modern media both in terms of chronology, and in the way it used technology to call into question the nature of reality. That the male “director” of the episode’s love story claims to be on the credits of the Georges Meiles’s 1902 “A Trip to the Moon” one of the first narrative films, shows he’s a symbol more than a real person. The FL has a true cinematic experience, which is emotionally moving, but illusionary—her love disappears before he ever truly materializes

The fourth episode was not as resonant with the theme of the previous three-the old man is the classic delusional senior, for whom the past is better than the present; the FL argues the case for the continual struggles of contemporary life; in the end a traditional snack overcomes the false dichotomy set up by generational conflict, which is itself is a product of modern society.

Okay, that’s enough from me!

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Thank you for sharing that summary of the themes especially episode three it helped to make sense of it.

The old man’s story made me think about the times they must have lived through and how experiences are felt differently depending on stage of life and the role taken in the choices that have to made. It also made me think about the rebels who often grow into the very people they hated as a youth.

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The best part of this drama for me is the different places and how they are filmed. It makes me travelling with her, I like this feeling. The last year, I went to see a play "Winter in Sokcho", so it was nice to see the place.

Now the different encounters are kinda weird. And I I wish we learn more about her.

I don't know what they were watching in Busan, but it really didn't make want to watch it. But I liked the Satie music. He wrote weird indications to play it, so I guess it matched this kind of story.

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Talk about a pure slice-of-life series. Episode 1 has many symbolic elements of a society hidden in plain sight in nature. Park Ha-Kyung (Lee Na-Young) teaches Korean literature at a high school. To escape her ordinary days, Park Ha-Kyung decides to take one day trips on Saturdays. Lee’s dress and look is plain which suits her journey of discovery of herself. She is smart but introverted; practical but a dreamer. Her day trip to the temple brings her in contact with many odd but normal people who want to get to know her, but she quietly moves aside to be alone. She seems to have an instinctual wanderlust to remove herself from her mundane life in Seoul. Everyone who has the urge to travel, go out to the park, hike in the forest can relate to Ha-Kyung. Silent Jung-A takes Ha-Kyung, now a lost soul in the forest, on a simple but close interaction with nature that climaxes at sunset on top of a pile of rumble that is cathartic.

Episode 2 reinforces the fact that teachers can have profound influence on their students. But they may only reach one a year. Artists by nature stray off the normal path. Yeon-joo has a few strange friends in the small town where she has settled to foster her art. Her first exhibition could have gone badly as her friends speak the cruel truth at times, but Ha-Kyung stays true to her principle of helping her students find their dreams while she starts to awaken her own.

I found Episode 3 interesting because it connected Ha-Kyung’s surprising tarot scene with the title “Meta-Romance.” She continued to think about the prospect of meeting someone soon. Soon, a vivid daydream emerged repeating her own thoughts. Meta-fictional is fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and traditional narrative techniques.
I found this episode an unconventional introspection of a woman who wonders about the lack of love stories (in her own life) to think about how a chance opportunity could yield one in her own life.

Episode 4 had the least action but probably more meaning. Family vacations tend to have lasting impact memories. When Ha-Kyung sits alone on a beach where she remembers a crowded summer of tourists, she is reminded good times can take a back seat to bad times. Her father struggled at work back then just as he struggles with technology today. Just as she stares into the vast sea, she is insignificant as she is on a customer service telephone call. When she is drawn into an old man’s debate of what’s wrong with the country, it is much later she realizes that the old man has lived a longer struggle than herself that may have made him bitter. She sees him fawn over his grandchild, she now understands as she remembers the societal code to respect one elders, which she herself is heading now with her first gray hair. She is no longer frustrated with her father asking her for help; his...

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... appreciation for her was enough to bring a smile to her day. I think we are left to wonder if Ha-Kyung’s introspection on her life will slowly change.

I find the pace, acting, direction and subject matter excellent.

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Quite simply, it's excellent.
Thanks Dramaddictally for the recaps, episode 4 is also my favourite.

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I’m just finishing this drama now, a bit after the fact.

I’ve been struggling with it, frankly, finding that it…doesn’t hold my attention. It’s not that I don’t “like” (or want to “subscribe” to :)) it. I think that it is because I find it to be like an empty vessel of meaning, waiting for the viewer to fill it up. And, right now, I’m pretty empty.

However (하지만), what a reward I have received for persisting in the discomfort of sitting alone with a drama that won’t tell me about itself! These comments from my fellow Beanies.

You all have offered up your “meanings” in such fantastic, differing detail! What a panoply of ideas and suggestions and inklings about how to be human…

I should give back too, as I can. I found the lonely, rudderless, desperation of the writer in episode one particularly painful to experience, and connected it deeply with the artist and her friends in episode two as well as the filmmaker in episode three. If I didn’t know better, and I probably don’t, I might even say that a certain conservative elder from episode four might also be simply using their “know-better” stance to cover up this same pain.

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