After months and months of waiting on my part, It's Okay to Not Be Okay finally premiered and, frankly, knocked my socks off. It's a very pretty drama, but the true beauty lies in the dark whimsy sprinkled all throughout, showing the world of mental illness in all its glory. If the drama keeps it up, we could be in for something real special.
EPISODE 1: "The boy who fed on nightmares"
We start with a beautiful stop-motion animation, about a young girl who lived all by herself in a castle. One day, she decided to go into town to find herself a friend. She offered the others what she thought were nice gifts, but they were horrified to see she held two dead birds.
"They called her a monster who brings along the shadow of death," the narrator says. The girl was angry with every living thing and wandered off to a lake, where she reeled in fish and stomped them to death. On her third try, she reeled in a young boy, unexpectedly saving him from drowning.
Since then, the dark shadow stopped following the girl and the boy followed instead. Later, the girl asked if he would always stay by her side, and he replied that of course he would. But then she turned to him and ripped a butterfly apart. "Even after you see this?" she asked, her eyes glowing menacingly.
Scared, the boy ran away, the hook that connected him to the girl detaching. That's when the shadow returned and whispered that no one could ever stay by her side because she was a monster. We transition to a real life castle, to the real life girl (Seo Ye-ji), who replies, "Yes, Mother."
Modern-day Korea. In a university, a man is overwhelmed by the sounds of the heavy machinery around him and has an episode. No one gets hurt, but the professor tells the man's guardian that they can't keep risking others' safety and that the man should be in a special needs school.
The guardian, and younger brother, MOON KANG-TAE (Kim Soo-hyun) listens with an exhausted expression, eventually looking up to see his autistic brother MOON SANG-TAE (Oh Jung-se) watching him through the window. "He's angry," Sang-tae notes to himself.
As Kang-tae cleans out Sang-tae's locker, it does appear that he's angry. Sang-tae braces himself, but Kang-tae merely kneels down and smiles, asking if he's hungry. The brothers leave the school, with Sang-tae offering to pay for dinner since he's the hyung. Aww, they're so sweet.
The next day, we meet famed children's author GO MOON-YOUNG (again, Seo Ye-ji) as she's eating in a restaurant alone. A mother and daughter approach her, the little girl saying she's a huge fan. Though Moon-young seems uninterested, she agrees to give her an autograph.
The girl calls Moon-young a princess because she's pretty, and Moon-young pauses before asking if they'd like a photo as well. While the mom stands back to take their picture, Moon-young brings the girl in close and quietly says, "You're not my fan, are you? In all my fairy tales, the witch is always the one that's pretty."
With a devious smile, Moon-young says that if the girl wants to be pretty, she should tell her mom that she wants to grow up to be a pretty witch. The girl starts crying and jumps off Moon-young's lap, the mom chasing after her.
Moon-young's editor and boss LEE SANG-IN (Kim Joo-hun) saunters in, telling her to stop by the beauty salon. He whines that she can't do a reading at the children's ward with all-black attire — she looks like something out of The Addams Family.
Moon-young shuts him up by running her knife along her plate, like nails on a chalkboard. She tells him that she likes this restaurant not because of the food but because of the knives. She cuts the tip of her finger and, amazed with the knife's sharpness, puts it in her purse.
