Twelve Nights follows the romance of two people (Shin Hyun Soo and Han Seung Yeon) who meet each other during three separate trips over the course of eight years and spend twelve nights together.
Han Seung Yeon plays Han Yoo Kyung. She’s an aspiring photographer who visits Seoul after a recent break-up. She also lacks a little confidence. But meeting Hyun Oh gives her a little boost and really makes her start to think about her life.
Shin Hyun Soo is Cha Hyun Oh. He abruptly quit his job in Japan and came to Seoul. He dreams of being a dancer, but he has had a few roadblocks along the way. He immediately is captivated by Yoo Kyung when he first meets her and wants to get to know her.
Twelve Nights is very much a romance drama. No grand plots here. Just a man and a woman falling in love. And sort of trying to be together, but not really succeeding very well. Their personal and career journeys are also focused on since they play a part in their relationship.
The drama is broken into three distinct story arcs that involve the three meetings of our couple. The first is in 2010 when they first meet. This is a very romantic period as they start to get to know each other and process their feelings. The second is when they meet again in 2015 and reconnect. The third and final arc is in 2018.
I liked the concept of the drama with focusing on their story that spanned eight years. It was a unique romance that took on the question of whether their relationship was fated or just coincidence. They also had quite a few struggles to overcome in order to actually pursue their relationship. It was an intriguing idea.
There are also a few other stories of people they are connected with. The main one of these that I was interested in was that of Baek Man (Jang Hyun Sung) and his son. It was a simple story line, but I found it interesting and thoughtful.
Now some of the negatives. I wasn’t too into most of the other stories in the drama. Some involved recurring characters connected to the main couple while others involved characters only there for a short a time. I just found these people mostly uninteresting.
Our main couple of Hyun Oh and Yoo Kyung also aren’t exactly the most interesting of characters. Their personalities are a bit bland, and they are about as average as you can get. You might say that adds to the “normalcy” of the story, but it also makes them dull sometimes.
And their communication between each other is terrible. I know the idea of the drama was for them to have to repeatedly reconnect, but talk about a time where some simple exchanging of information, phone calls, or emails would have made a huge difference. Too much waiting around for “something” to happen. At least they were somewhat engaging as a couple, so that helped the situation some.
This is the kind of drama that moseys along in a leisurely sort of way. It takes its time when telling all of the characters’ stories. Shots frequently just linger on them or the scenery. And there’s just a lot of normal conversations with little actual plot. This made it feel boring at times. The whole story from the main couple to the side stories definitely could have been tightened up because it really felt like they were needlessly drawn out.
One other particularly annoying thing was that this drama uses an excessive amount of flashbacks. We all know kdramas love flashbacks, and I don’t usually have problems with them, but Twelve Nights goes over the top. Pretty early on, the drama starts using flashbacks frequently, and that includes using the exact same flashbacks repeatedly throughout the drama. It was just a bit much.
Again, Twelve Nights had a good premise, but its execution was lacking. It had some very thoughtful moments and a relationship that felt very romantic at times, but the drawn out story with little plot progression just really slowed things down. The drama was just plain draggy. It’s an okay enough watch though if you want something really simple and aren’t expecting much.
My Rating: 5.5/10
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