Twenty Five Twenty One review: Though hilarious and endearing, this K-drama stumbles because of inconsistent ending

Language: Korean

Soon after Twenty Five Twenty One started airing, eagle-eyed viewers noticed Netflix had changed the K-drama’s description from “romantic comedy” to “melodrama”. It should have been categorised under “suspense”. For 16 episodes, while presenting a charming coming-of-age story about five friends, writer Kwon Do-eun kept viewers on tenterhooks by setting up questions like an expert mystery writer. How did that photograph show up in one character’s room? Why did she seem disturbed when she heard her ex-boyfriend’s name? Was that a baby’s gurgle in the background? Is it normal for mothers and daughters to coordinate colonoscopies? Also, who the hell is Kim Min-chae’s dad?

Kim Min-chae (Choi Myung-bin) is the daughter of one-time fencing champion, Na Hee-do. In the present day, we see an older Hee-do (Kim So-hyun) pottering around doing carpentry while Min-chae discovers the diaries her mother kept between the ages of 18 and 21. Through the diaries, Min-chae learns how Hee-do became one of Korea’s fencing stars while the audience gets to time travel to 1998. We see a rivalry develop between young Hee-do (Kim Tae-ri) and another champion fencer, Ko Yu-rim (Bona). Along the way, Hee-do makes friends with Seung-wan (Lee Joo-myung), the class topper; and Ji-woong (Choi Hyun-wook), who is the school heartthrob and has a crush on Yu-rim. Their gang expands to include Yi-jin (Nam Joo-hyuk), who is older than the others and has fallen on hard times after his father’s company went bankrupt. While Hee-do and her friends navigate the good and the bad of growing up, we get some nostalgia — the fashion! Cellphones without caller id! — a crash course in fencing, and a love letter to working mothers.

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Twenty Five Twenty One’s star is the young Hee-do, brought to incandescent life by Kim Tae-ri. Hilarious, endearing and heartbreaking in equal parts, Tae-ri captures the nervous energy and emotional turmoil of young adulthood perfectly.

For 14.5 episodes, Twenty Five Twenty One verges on perfection as it balances multiple storylines and builds anticipation for what the future holds. Kwon is at the top of her writing game, particularly while writing Hee-do and Yu-rim’s relationship. Hee-do and Yi-jin, who becomes a journalist, may be the official lead pair, but the real love story is between the two fencers. Through them, Kwon takes the enemies-to-lovers trope for a spin and uses it to show a love that feels more significant than conventional romance.

Which is why when halfway into episode 15, the writing in Twenty Five Twenty One takes a turn for the worse, the heartbreak is real, for the audience as much as on-screen characters.

The downward slide begins with the terror attack of 9/11 being used to pull at heartstrings and add to Yi-jin’s stature — as though reporting within Korea wasn’t enough to establish him either as a hero or as a ‘serious’ journalist. (Never mind how illogical it is for a network to send a city reporter from Seoul to New York, to cover the aftermath of 9/11.) Nam Joo-hyuk is delightful as the cub reporter, but he’s unconvincing as a troubled journalist who turns to addiction while battling trauma. The clumsy writing doesn’t help.

Ultimately, Twenty Five Twenty One’s ending has more loose ends than a fringe dress and it doesn’t resolve most of the mysteries that were set up initially. Instead, it stumbles towards an ending that feels disjoint and inconsistent.

For instance, Hee-do has an uncharacteristic meltdown after a break-up, which suggests that the relationship was important to her. Yet in no time, she’s married and also had a child. Twenty Five Twenty One lavished attention on the challenges faced by working mothers in its early episodes, but there isn’t even one moment in which we see Hee-do thinking about what her pregnancy means for her career. It’s frustrating to be left with crumbs of half-baked information about not just Hee-do, but also characters like Seung-wan, who is criminally shortchanged by the script, and Yu-rim, who from being the second lead is reduced to a prop that exists to make Hee-do and Ji-woong look cool.

There’s enough brilliance, particularly from Kim Tae-ri, in Twenty Five Twenty One to merit a watch, but the absence of detailing and realism in the final chapters is jarring. Rarely can a show claim to be a masterclass in writing as well as an education in how not to write a scene. Twenty Five Twenty One can claim that dubious merit for itself.

Twenty Five Twenty One is streaming on Netflix

Deepanjana Pal is an author and a journalist.

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