Doona Review: Suzy, Yang Se-jong’s Angsty Chemistry Works Out a Melodramatic Romance, but Other Elements Float on the Surface

Making her return as the K-pop star of our hearts, Bae Suzy steps in as the titular character of the coming-of-age romance series alongside Yang Se-jong as the male lead Lee Won-jun, an engineering student. The 9-part South Korean series has been directed by Lee Jung-hyo of Crash Landing On You fame and is based on Min Songa’s webtoon The Girl Downstairs (이두나).

Created by Song Kyung-hee, the K-drama has been developed by Studio Dragon. The series has 9 episodes, each with a runtime of 40-45 minutes.

-Mild Spoilers-

Doona Review

Lee Won-jun moves away for the first time on his journey to make something of his life as an engineering student. His naive, soft and loving self meets the exact opposite impatient personality in a former K-pop idol, who’s now his chain-smoking downstairs neighbour. Things take a confusing turn for him as Lee Doona’s intentions aren’t clear to him at first. He can’t make out if she vehemently detests him, likes him or wants something more from him. They get off on the wrong note, with Doona presuming him to be a stalker, but as things soften between them, the rest is all history.

The new Korean series begins with a haunting vision of Doona drowning, reflecting her broken psyche and inner emotional self drowning in a slump. At the same time, anxiety and depression cloud her well-being as a K-pop idol. Moving on from this, the series opens with bright colours and refreshing visuals that instantly mesmerise you, but the story, on the other hand, gets off to a slow start.

Over the nine episodes, we get a slight peek into the machine-like production of artists in the K-pop industry and how some of its wheels manipulate the creative individuals who initially get into the work with a different outlook altogether. The series also briefly portrays how easily the general public’s hate-spouting dialogues get to the people hiding behind their creative masks and how their certain personas are raised on a pedestal with zero regard for the actual individual and their innate human nature. 

Doona‘s episodes take a more conversation-driven approach, so if you can’t handle slow-moving narratives, this one is not for you because it won’t offer a dazzling look into the K-pop world. Rather, it departs from it for good reason and adopts the lens of the slice-of-life genre. While some may enjoy this calm and composed direction, only a few may want to stick around for the slow-paced episodes to pass over and make way for the finale. 

With love triangles and whatnot introduced into the mix, the series attempts to illustrate that the leading duo’s relationship is not so much about romance itself but about growing up and moving on from their past choices, and that brings the slow-burn aspect alive. The second lead syndrome is flipped over, and some other characters are introduced to lighten up the mood, but unfortunately, they don’t add much to the story itself and aren’t compelling enough for us to pay attention to them; they’re simply used as a token to change the pace and brighten the tone.

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The casting choices for the show were perfect. With Suzy’s hold over the public owing to her former Miss A title, she pulls off her bit as Lee Doona’s character, shrouded in mystery, effortlessly, and the moments when she feels claustrophobic in her own house with her exacerbated anxiety, that fear is palpable, just as much as her chemistry with Yang Se Jong. This initially blossomed as a snappy dynamic with their interactions dripping with banter-filled moments but eventually veers off behind heavy melodrama.

The melodramatic love track does assume an overbearing face after a point because things seem to be going in circles. While that reflects Doona’s life in a way, it doesn’t empower her character in the end, at least not the way one would’ve expected or wanted. 

There’s definitely a lesson in there about letting go of relationships that drag you down, and that you can love someone to the moon and back, but that doesn’t always mean that it’ll save them from themselves or their habits or even their fatal flaws, that’s something they have to deal with on their own. At its core, the series is largely meant to be about this relationship between the protagonists, so if you’re expecting the Doona Kdrama to incorporate any big-time critique of the K-pop industry, then put those ideas aside beforehand, even if the last few episodes delve into that matter, they don’t do so wholeheartedly. 

The soft melody of the OST works in favour of the show’s tone and themes. Unlike the usual K-dramatic habits, this one doesn’t rely as much on subplots and underlying storylines; it primarily concerns its two leads. Although that takes off the burden and eases us into the watching experience, it equally makes the platter heavy with the same over-sentimental drama between them that accentuates the turbulence of their relationship.

Yet regardless of the erratic lives of these characters, the cinematography of the series is beautiful and refreshing as it takes a detour from reflecting the characters’ inner conflict through a darker lens as is often done otherwise. The summer-like freshness of the cinematography makes the show visually light on the eyes.

Even if there’s a tinge of bittersweetness to the ending, it does eventually play out realistically by pushing the pedal harder towards a healing process and finding oneself. However, this could’ve been brought onscreen with more profundity.

Final Thoughts

Once you get into the episodes, it’s easy to finish the series. Still, despite its slice-of-life-like aspects, it doesn’t necessarily bring forth a satisfying cathartic closure, and that’s not because of how the series ends, but because the runtime ends up getting entangled in falling back into the romance track. The angst works because of the actors playing these characters, but the writing ends up making the love track everything instead of letting it flow as a part of their journey onto something more emotionally empowering.

” There are times you don’t even realise you’ve been hurt. And as soon as you become aware of it and finally notice it, it hurts.” this dialogue from the series somehow best sums up Doona’s experience, and I wish more time and attention were accorded to this theme, especially with Suzy helming the role, it could’ve made for a heart-piercing storyline. However, the writing only partially feeds into the dark side of things worth diving into, considering how the series begins with the visuals of drowning and losing sight of oneself.

All episodes of Doona are streaming on Netflix.

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