Drinking Solo

I took the first weekend of my holidays as an excuse to binge Drinking Solo, a show I didn't watch when it was first airing because it didn't seem to match my taste. Boy, was I wrong. Drinking Solo, a spin-off of the Let's Eat series, is a fantastic drama. It's perfect if you want something low-key, realistic slice-of-life show.

Drinking Solo is set in the competitive battlefield of Noryangjin, famously populated by students studying for civil service exams. There, Jin Jung-seok has made his name as a top professor. He's good at his job, so he's naturally quite wealthy. His personality is his one fatal flaw - he's commonly known amongst his co-workers as 'High Quality Trash', since he considers everyone a lower quality than him. This means he immediately takes a disliking to his co-workers; sexy marriage-obsessed Hwang Jin-yi, playful impersonator Min Jin-woong, but especially Park Hana, who is new to Noryangjin and eager to please. Meanwhile, Jung-seok's unemployed younger brother Gong-myung arrives at Noryangjin, and with his best friends Doo-young and Ki-bum, faces many trials - love, friendship, heartbreak, money and procrastination. 

I'm a big fan of ensemble casts when they're done right, because managing to create a fully lovable community and share the focus between every character equally is no easy feat. It's very rare that I watch something for every character involved, but Drinking Solo sported a group of massively interesting characters, and each of them was explored with depth and care. They could have happily written off Jin-woong as comic relief, but instead they chose to give him just as much personality as everyone else. The only common theme between all these characters was loneliness. I honestly expected there to be a lot more drinking than there was, or for the characters to share a love and extensive knowledge of alcohols, because that would have made the series more reminiscent of Let's Eat (which I only watched one episode of). Rather, Drinking Solo focused more on how drinking alone is a comfort to the lonely and miserable, and how sometimes it's the only thing that can take your mind off a bad day, no matter how or where you do it. 

  You often find in drama that a gloss is put on every day situations, but it feels like Drinking Solo was drawn from life. Take the trio of Noryangjin Idiots, for example, they feel so real because they fight and hurt each other and then make up like nothing ever happened. The friendship between Hana and Jin-yi feels very realistic too, it's obvious that they are very important to each other, but it often feels like Jin-yi takes far more than she gives in their relationship. Right from the relationships that remind me of my own, down to the hilarious little parodies and callbacks to other shows, I feel like these characters could be transplanted into the real world and no-one would bat an eye. I take back all the times I've said other dramas had realistic characters until now!

  Regarding the actors, I think they all did a good job - even Key, who owned his peculiar character despite being new to acting. Ha Suk-jin frustrates me a little, but only because he always chooses the same asshole characters. Whether it's here, or in 1% of Anything, or in ongoing Radiant Office. I feel the little differences in his performances, but I honestly wish he'd branch out to something new. Regardless of that, though, his character was undoubtedly the highlight of the show and his development was so gratifying.
  I'm completely new to Park Ha-sun, but I loved her and I hope she sticks to comedy in the future, since I think a less capable actress would have made a desperate and self-deprecating character like Hana hard to watch. I'm just grateful that the cast possessed good comedic timing and the capacity to handle more emotional scenes.

I think this is a good pick-me-up show - I loved almost everything about it, and I recommend it to anyone having a really horrible week. It's bound to cheer you up. Drinking Solo is the comfort food (or should I say comfort drink) I didn't realise I needed.