Review: 'When Life Gives You Tangerines' Broke My Heart In Ways I Didn't Expect

There’s a universal feeling that sinks in after finishing a really good series — a heavy, 'what now?' that lingers in the air. That’s exactly what I’ve been carrying around since I finished When Life Gives You Tangerines. And no matter how many new dramas I scroll through, nothing quite fills the silence this one left behind.

If you haven’t seen the Netflix release, you might wonder why I’m being overly emotional. But to every eldest daughter in a brown household, this wasn’t just a K-drama. It was akin to a mirror — a memory, a heartbreak, a timeline of our mothers, ourselves, and the things we’ve left unsaid. It was sixteen episodes of being seen in ways I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for. A story so precise in its heartbreak and beauty that now, everything else feels hollow.

Plot That Mirrors Reality

When Life Gives You Tangerines is a slice-of-life romance drama spanning five decades in Korea. It follows Ae-sun (played by IU) and Gwan-sik (played by Park Bo-gum) from the quiet shores of 1960s Jeju Island through the political unrest, economic shifts, and domestic heartbreaks that shape their lives. But it isn’t about historical commentary or sweeping changes. Instead, the story unfolds in kitchens, in stolen glances, in shared loneliness, in grief-soaked silences.

 

The tension, the longing, the loss — all of it is deeply human. And the acting? So good, I felt like an intruder watching a real family break and rebuild.

Written by Lim Sang-choon (When the Camellia Blooms) and directed by Kim Won-seok (My Mister, Signal), the series doesn’t manipulate your emotions, but somehow reflects them on screen with simple words. And it does so with a kind of aching tenderness that hits home.

It’s a drama that trusts its audience to feel the spaces between words. The tension, the longing, the loss — all of it is deeply human. And the acting? So good, I felt like an intruder watching a real family break and rebuild.

The Weight Women Carry

Geum-myeong’s line, “My mother’s dream was passed onto me… a dream so heavy, so blazing, it made the sound of wings flapping” — that line split me open. Because we all know it. We’ve all lived it. I don’t see the kitchen as just a room anymore. It’s a place where dreams go to die. A stove that burned my mother’s voice down to ash. Ae-sun, too, is a woman asked to shrink herself repeatedly. Her dreams left to wilt, her fire quietly doused by the everyday burden of being someone else’s anchor.

This drama is a love letter to womanhood, capturing the guilt, the pressure, the expectation to be everything and still invisible. It asks: what if a woman could choose herself?

Ae-sun tries. Sometimes she fails. Sometimes she’s too much. But in her trying, she reminds us we are not alone. And this is where the universality of the story pierces through — especially for Indian women. Because whether it’s Jeju or another city, we know what it means. The invisible labour, the stifled voices, the boxed-in dreams — it all echoes.

This drama may be Korean in language, but its soul speaks the native tongue of women everywhere. The constant compromising, the quiet rage, the ache of wanting more and being told to be less — every scene is a reflection of what we know too intimately. For so many of us, womanhood has felt more like endurance than expression.

A Love Like Theirs

The leading man of the show, Gwan-sik, deserves his own genre. A man so gentle, so consistent — saying he redefines masculinity on screen doesn’t do justice to the feeling he left me with. He doesn’t challenge Ae-sun to be better. He simply makes space for her to be. He listens. He waits. He doesn’t interrupt her chaos — he supports it. And no jumping into the ocean is not event the hardest thing he did for her.

via GIPHY

There’s a scene where Ae-sun, angry and tired, says “I don’t want her to set the table forever. I want her to flip the table over instead.” Gwan-sik, in his usual calm way, says: “Then flip it first. I’ll clean up after you.” That is the love and partnership all of us deserve to feel. That is what it means to not just love someone, but to actively protect their spark.

“I don’t want her to set the table forever. I want her to flip the table over instead.”#WhenLifeGivesYouTangerines #IU #ParkBoGum pic.twitter.com/G3darPkgxM

— imy osh 🧡 (@Sehnveins) April 10, 2025

He doesn’t flinch when she’s angry. He doesn’t withdraw when she’s emotional. He shows up — for her, and their daughter, and the life they quietly build together. He is the definition of a green flag in every frame. As a father, a husband, or a father-in-law, he saw every sacrifice women were making daily around him.

via GIPHY

Where other men might shrink from ’s intensity, Gwan-sik meets it with steadiness. Not to tame her, but to remind her that she is safe. But it also makes you think about what happens to women who don’t have husbands or partners like him in their lives.

Going Through Grief

The portrayal of grief in this drama is not theatrical, with overexposed music bursting in the background. It’s hauntingly silent and real. The way IU and Moon So-ri (older Ae-sun) embody loss feels like watching someone breathe underwater. When someone you love dies, something in you does too. But it’s not just about their absence. It’s about guilt — the things unsaid, the things you didn’t do, or the things you can’t undo.

 

Watching older Geum-myeong revisit her home, her mother, her younger self — it shattered me. Because it reminded me that our parents are just people too. Living their first and only life. Loving us the best way they knew how. And it’s only after they’re gone that we realise their love was never loud. They showed it in the labour — with their hands that worked day and night for us. Their backs that bent. The silence they endured for our education.

Being The Eldest Daughter? It's Often Gut-Punching

Geum-myeong’s outburst — the one about being the eldest, the pillar, the golden child — hit like a gut punch. Because us eldest daughters don’t get to break. We are the holders and the proof that our parents didn’t fail. And when we fall apart, no one knows what to do. Because we were never allowed to. There’s no point noting how much we hate that everybody just expects us to bounce back.

So when her father Gwan-sik yells her name — not as a scolding or a plea, but as a cry — it hurt like nothing else.

Overview

When Life Gives You Tangerines is honest in a way that’s rare. There are no villains here, just people: trying, hurting, loving, and losing. It doesn’t sell you fantasy; it reflects your reality. This drama showed me that life will break you, test you, and take things away — but it will also give you reasons to stay.

That love isn’t just about being together; it’s about choosing each other every single day. That real family are the ones who stay, even in your ugliest moments. That sacrifice isn’t romantic — but sometimes, it’s all we have to offer. And that we are all carrying the dreams and scars of the women who came before us.

 

So when life gives you tangerines? Watch this drama. Call your mother. And let yourself grieve what never got a name.

Read more: Fiction Over Reality: Why K-Drama Men Have Our Hearts