"Bubble Gum" Episode 12 recap

It's back to the characters in adult form for this episode of "Bubble Gum", and with that comes my general sense of ambivalence about the drama. Fortunately, we do get one very important fact established- what exactly is Seon-yeong's problem in regard to Ri-hwan getting together with Haeng-ah? Her reasons actually kind of make sense, and yet at the same time they're so horribly cynical that it's easy to see how this is a woman who once committed suicide.
There's times I really dislike "Bubble Gum" for having such an aggressively melodramatic and misanthropic tone, but what makes the drama really hard to parse is that this obviously is not the larger intent of the story. Contrast Haeng-ah's sense of optimistic idealism with Seon-yeong's cynicism, and Haeng-ah's arguments carry much greater weight. Admittedly, a fairly large part of this is due to the fact that a lot of the obstacles to the Ri-hwan / Haeng-ah pairing are horribly contrived. Even so.
The consistently powerful visuals also do a lot to downplay the weaknesses in "Bubble Gum". I just really love the way this drama is shot and edited. By the end the production team has taken even simple gimmicks like half-and-half pictures and given them emotional weight and power simply because they're such a good representation of how Ri-hwan and Haeng-ah have been living half of the same life. Coming right on the end of the flashback episode the implications are pretty hard to ignore.
For all this, the weaknesses yet remain. I-seul is in the very awkward position of being a compelling character who in the context of the story simply doesn't have anything to do. I think her character probably could have been cut from the drama completely without actually meaningfully changing the story in anyway. All I-seul has ever done was just establish that Ri-hwan is an attractive guy who could probably have his pick of girlfriends if he would just put some effort into it.
Seok-joon is probably the bigger narrative problem, though, because the guy really is just an ex-boyfriend. I don't even mean that insultingly. It didn't work out, and there's no especially compelling reason to try again. I-seul and Seok-joon are both symptomatic of a larger problem in "Bubble Gum"- how most of the secondary characters are here less because they're important and more because they offer opportunities for the drama to kill time.
Review by William Schwartz

"Bubble Gum" is directed by Kim Byeong-soo, written by Lee Mi-na-I and features Lee Dong-wook, Jeong Ryeo-won, Lee Jong-hyuk, Park Hee-bon, Bae Jong-ok, Lee Seung-joon and more.
Added episode 12 for the Korean drama "Bubble Gum"

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