We Are All Trying Here opened with a 2.2% TV rating and the No. 1 spot on Netflix Korea — a contradiction that perfectly mirrors the drama itself. Nothing here is what it appears to be on the surface. The loud, obnoxious guy might be the most honest person in the room. The composed, silent woman might be the one closest to breaking. And a screenplay about a man who controls the weather might actually be a love letter no one knew how to read.
Two episodes in, here’s our full recap and honest review — what worked, what didn’t, and why this drama has already earned the right to demand your patience.
Episode 1 Recap: “Hearing Myself Speak Reminds Me That I Exist”
The drama wastes no time establishing its central wound. We meet Hwang Dong-man (Koo Kyo-hwan), the only member of the prestigious film club “The Eight” (8인회) who hasn’t debuted as a director — after 20 years. His seven peers have become successful directors and producers. He’s still pitching scripts that no one reads.
We’re introduced to the group dynamic at the premiere screening of Park Gyeong-se’s (Oh Jung-se) latest film. This should be a night of celebration. Instead, Dong-man publicly critiques the movie — loudly enough for everyone to hear — and later posts a negative review under his own name. Gyeong-se’s reaction is captured in one of the episode’s most effective sequences: a fantasy where he imagines repeatedly shooting Dong-man. It’s darkly hilarious and immediately establishes the show’s tonal identity — this is a black comedy that earns its laughs through pain.
The episode’s first real crack in Dong-man’s armor comes in a classroom scene. He’s teaching film to students when one asks, “What about you, Mr. Hwang? Are you rich or poor?” He answers with forced bravado: “Me? I’m the definition of poor.” The student follows up: “Then why haven’t you succeeded?” The room goes quiet. Dong-man’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s a small moment, but it’s the first time we see the performance drop.
Meanwhile, Byeon Eun-a (Go Youn-jung) is introduced as a production director at Choi Film, nicknamed “Dokki” (The Axe) for her ruthlessly precise script critiques. She appears composed, professional, untouchable. But we catch glimpses of something else — moments where she stares at nothing, where her face goes blank in a way that suggests she’s not calm but empty.
The episode establishes one crucial detail: on days when Dong-man hasn’t spoken to anyone, he climbs a hill near his neighborhood and screams his own name into the air. “Hwang Dong-man! I’m here!” It’s absurd. It’s embarrassing. And it’s devastating — because it tells us that without making noise, this man genuinely feels like he might stop existing.
The episode ends with Dong-man attempting to confront CEO Choi Dong-hyun (Choi Won-young) at Choi Film after being publicly humiliated. His declaration is bold: he will prove his worth on their stage. Whether he can back it up is another question entirely.
Author’s Take — Episode 1
The ramen scene is the one that will define this episode in retrospect. Dong-man sits alone, trying to open a packet of instant ramen, and something just — breaks. It’s not dramatic. There’s no music swell, no tears. Just a man who can’t get a ramen packet open, and suddenly the weight of 20 years of failure lands on his shoulders all at once. Koo Kyo-hwan plays this with extraordinary restraint — and that’s what makes it hit so hard. A lesser actor would have turned it into a crying scene. Koo lets the frustration sit in his jaw, in his hands, in the three seconds of stillness before he moves again. It’s film-quality acting in a TV drama, and it justifies every bit of hype around his casting.
Oh Jung-se’s fantasy shooting sequence deserves credit too. It could have felt cheap or gratuitous, but director Cha Young-hoon frames it as Gyeong-se’s internal absurdity — a successful man so threatened by a failure that he literally fantasizes about eliminating him. The comedy comes not from the violence but from the pettiness of it. This is Park Hae-young’s specialty: making you laugh at something and then immediately asking why you’re laughing.
One small concern: the episode front-loads Dong-man’s most abrasive behavior without giving the audience enough counterbalance. For the first 30 minutes, he’s genuinely hard to root for — he trashes his friend’s film, dominates every conversation, and makes everything about himself. The writing trusts the audience to stick around for the layers underneath, but in 2026, when viewers have 50 other options on their phone, that’s a gamble. It may explain the 2.2% TV rating: some viewers likely switched off before the emotional payoff arrived.
Episode 2 Recap: “Go Ahead, Build a World Where Only Shining People Shine”
Episode 2 deepens every relationship established in the premiere and delivers the show’s first truly iconic scene.
Eun-a reads Dong-man’s screenplay, titled “I’ll Make the Weather for You” (날씨를 만들어드립니다). Her critique is surgically precise: “Audiences enjoy watching power collide with power. But your protagonist has no power.” It’s a professional assessment, but as the words leave her mouth, we see a flash of her own memory — the last words her ex-boyfriend said before leaving. The parallel is deliberate: Eun-a recognizes that Dong-man’s screenplay lacks exactly what she herself has lost.
She offers him a simple piece of advice: “If you fall in love, you’ll find power. Your writing shows that you’ve never loved anyone.” It’s the kind of feedback that cuts to the bone precisely because it’s true.
The episode’s comedic highlight comes when Dong-man storms into CEO Choi’s office to confront him — then slips on his own rolled-up screenplay and face-plants into the table. It’s slapstick in the middle of an emotional drama, and it works because it captures something painfully real: the moment when you finally work up the courage to stand up for yourself, and your body betrays you. The colleagues laugh. Of course they do. And that laugh reveals more about them than any dialogue could.
The episode’s moral center belongs to two characters. First, Hwang Jin-man (Park Hae-joon), Dong-man’s older brother, who shows up at The Eight’s gathering and delivers the line that silences the room: “Are you saying someone like Dong-man is so great that he’ll ruin you?” It cuts through 20 years of passive-aggressive contempt in a single sentence. Second, Ko Hye-jin (Kang Mal-geum), who tells her husband Gyeong-se to his face: “You’d be worse than Dong-man if you were in his position. You’re this successful and you’re still petty behind his back.”
Eun-a’s moment comes when she watches the colleagues mock Dong-man after his failed confrontation. She speaks up: “Being human yet being inhumane — isn’t that the real incompetence?” The room goes cold. She’s made enemies.
The final scene takes place at the Shinchon-dong railway crossing. Eun-a hands Dong-man her grandmother’s lunchbox. They stand in silence as a train passes. Then Dong-man looks at his wrist. Both of their mood watches — devices that display emotional states through color — are blinking the same color. He says one word: “Cross.” The barriers lift. For the first time in the drama, two people are in sync.
Author’s Take — Episode 2
Episode 2 is a significant step up from the premiere, and the reason is structural. Park Hae-young introduces counterbalance. Where Episode 1 gave us mostly Dong-man’s worst behavior through other people’s eyes, Episode 2 gives us other people’s worst behavior through his eyes — and through Eun-a’s. The perspective shift changes everything.
The screenplay critique scene is the best-written scene in either episode. On the surface, it’s a professional giving notes. Underneath, it’s two people unconsciously diagnosing each other’s deepest problem. Dong-man’s screenplay has no power because he has no love. Eun-a can see this because she lost her power when she lost love. Neither of them fully understands this yet, but the audience does — and that dramatic irony is classic Park Hae-young.
Kang Mal-geum is the episode’s MVP. Her screen time is limited, but her line to Gyeong-se dismantles the entire Group of Eight power structure in ten seconds. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t cry. She just states a fact — you’re more pathetic than the man you mock — and lets it land. This is the kind of supporting performance that elevates an entire drama. She did similar work in The Red Sleeve, but this might be sharper.
The mood watch device could have felt gimmicky. Instead, Cha Young-hoon uses it as visual shorthand for emotional states that the characters can’t articulate. Red means distress. Green means calm. When both watches flash the same color at the railway crossing, it replaces a conversation that would have taken five minutes of dialogue. It’s economical, it’s cinematic, and it gives the drama a visual motif that will almost certainly pay off in later episodes.
One Reddit user noted that Dong-man was watching Billy Elliot — the 1999 film about a boy who chases his dream against all odds. The parallel is intentional. Dong-man’s outburst in CEO Choi’s office, despite the physical failure, mirrors Billy’s iconic street-dancing scene: a moment of defiance that looks foolish to everyone watching but feels like survival to the person doing it. Director Cha appears to be a fan.
Performance Review: Who Stole the Show?
Koo Kyo-hwan as Hwang Dong-man — A+. This is a career-defining role, and he knows it. The brilliance of his performance is in the calibration: Dong-man is simultaneously the most annoying and most sympathetic person in every room. Koo plays the loudness as a survival mechanism, not a personality trait. When Dong-man is alone — screaming his name on a hill, failing to open a ramen packet, watching Billy Elliot in a dark room — the mask comes off, and what’s underneath is not anger but terror. Terror of disappearing. Terror of not mattering. This is Koo’s first lead role in a JTBC network drama after building his reputation through Netflix originals (D.P., Parasyte: The Grey) and a memorable guest turn in Extraordinary Attorney Woo. If there’s any justice, this will be the role that puts his name on the same level for drama audiences as it already is for film audiences.
Go Youn-jung as Byeon Eun-a — B+, with room to grow. Her restraint is effective — she communicates volumes through stillness, through the slight pause before she responds, through the way her eyes track a conversation without participating in it. But two episodes in, Eun-a remains largely observational. We know she’s damaged; we don’t yet know how. The ex-boyfriend revelation is teased but not explored. Reddit user HighbrowPassanger put it well: “I’m not sure whether it was Go Youn-jung’s acting or appearance, but Eun-a felt too much like an outlier in an otherwise realistic set of characters.” This isn’t a flaw — it’s a setup. Park Hae-young’s female leads historically unfold slowly (My Mister’s Lee Ji-an, My Liberation Notes’ Yeom Mi-jeong), and Go Youn-jung has the range to deliver when the script lets her loose. But right now, she’s still in the loading screen.
Oh Jung-se as Park Gyeong-se — A. The challenge of this role is making a successful, outwardly confident man feel genuinely threatened by someone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Oh pulls it off by playing Gyeong-se’s hostility as defensive rather than aggressive. He’s not angry at Dong-man for being a failure — he’s angry because Dong-man’s refusal to give up makes his own success feel less earned. It’s a subtle distinction, and Oh nails it. His fantasy shooting sequence is hilarious, but the real performance is in the quiet moments: the way his face changes when Dong-man’s name comes up, the barely concealed flinch when his wife calls out his insecurity.
Kang Mal-geum as Ko Hye-jin — Scene Stealer. Limited screen time, maximum impact. She is the drama’s truth-teller, the person who says out loud what everyone else processes silently. Her confrontation with Gyeong-se isn’t just a great scene — it’s the scene that reframes the entire Group of Eight dynamic. Before her line, we see the group as victims of Dong-man’s behavior. After it, we see them as willing participants in a 20-year arrangement that kept one person down so everyone else could feel elevated. That’s a complete narrative pivot delivered through a single performance.
Park Hae-joon as Hwang Jin-man — Slow Burner. Jin-man hasn’t had his explosive moment yet, and that feels intentional. He’s a failed poet managing life through alcohol — the quieter, more internalized version of Dong-man’s despair. Park Hae-joon reunites with writer Park Hae-young seven years after My Mister, and the history between actor and writer is palpable. He’s being held in reserve. When his moment comes, it will be devastating.
Writing & Direction: Park Hae-young Does It Again — Almost
What works — the dialogue density. Park Hae-young writes dialogue that functions on multiple levels simultaneously, and We Are All Trying Here may be her most compressed work yet. Take Eun-a’s line: “Being human yet being inhumane — isn’t that the real incompetence?” On the surface, she’s defending Dong-man. One layer down, she’s indicting the Group of Eight’s hypocrisy. Another layer down, she’s describing her own workplace — where her boss and colleagues are “human” in title but treat her competence as a threat. The entire thematic architecture of the drama sits inside one sentence. That’s not good writing. That’s elite writing.
What works — the perspective-switching direction. Cha Young-hoon makes a bold structural choice: the same scene looks and feels different depending on whose point of view the camera adopts. When we see Dong-man through Gyeong-se’s eyes, he looks manic, pathetic, insufferable. When the camera shifts to Dong-man’s own perspective, the same behavior reads as desperate, lonely, and deeply afraid. Reddit user angelamawie caught this: “Notice how when it’s Gyeong-se’s POV, Dong-man looks awful personality-wise. But if it’s Dong-man’s POV, we feel sorry for him.” This is essentially the Rashomon technique applied to a slice-of-life drama — uncommon and highly effective.
What works — symbolism that earns its place. The mood watches could have been a gimmick. Instead, they function as visual shorthand for internal states that Korean drama characters traditionally express through voiceover or music. The railway crossing operates as the drama’s emotional fulcrum — a liminal space where barriers go up and come down, where waiting is mandatory, and where two strangers can stand side by side long enough to realize they’re not strangers at all. Even the weather in Dong-man’s screenplay isn’t about weather — it’s about control, about the fantasy of making someone else’s world better when you can’t fix your own.
What doesn’t quite work — the pacing gamble. Episode 1 asks the audience to endure roughly 30 minutes of Dong-man at his most insufferable before offering any emotional reward. Park Hae-young’s previous dramas made similar demands — My Mister didn’t fully reveal its emotional core until Episode 3 or 4, and My Liberation Notes was deliberately, almost stubbornly slow throughout. But those dramas aired in different competitive landscapes. In April 2026, with Perfect Crown delivering royal romance at 11.1% on the competing channel, asking viewers to sit with discomfort for half an hour is a higher-stakes bet. The 2.2% rating suggests some viewers cashed out early. The Netflix No. 1 ranking suggests those who stayed were converted.
What doesn’t quite work — the Group of Eight’s 20-year logic. The drama asks us to accept that eight people maintained a social group for two decades while one member was consistently excluded, mocked, and tolerated. Why didn’t they cut ties years ago? Why does Dong-man keep showing up? The drama hints at answers — Korean social bonds, the inertia of college friendships, the group’s need for someone to look down on — but hasn’t explicitly addressed the mechanism. Reddit user Lollittaa offered a cultural explanation: “For those who don’t understand Korean culture, it’s sooooo important to stay friends with your college friends. It’s just what happens.” That may be enough for Korean viewers. International audiences may need a scene that makes the arrangement feel more inevitable and less arbitrary.
5 Scenes That Defined Episodes 1-2
1. The Ramen Packet (Episode 1). Dong-man tries to open a ramen packet after the worst day of his life. He can’t. Everything he’s been holding together unravels in a single, silent moment. No dialogue, no soundtrack. Just a man and a ramen packet and 20 years of accumulated failure. Koo Kyo-hwan’s micro-expressions carry the entire scene. This will be the clip that goes viral.
2. The Railway Crossing Sync (Episode 2). Dong-man and Eun-a stand at the Shinchon-dong crossing. A train passes. Their mood watches flash the same color. He says “Cross.” The barriers lift. It’s the drama’s defining visual metaphor — two people who were blocked from moving forward, suddenly allowed to. No grand confession, no orchestral swell. Just a word, a color, and a lifted barrier. This is how Park Hae-young writes romance: not as an event, but as a recognition.
3. The Screenplay Critique (Episode 2). Eun-a tells Dong-man his protagonist lacks power because he’s never been in love. She’s talking about the screenplay. She’s also talking about him. She’s also talking about herself. Three levels of meaning in a single professional note — this is the kind of scene that screenwriting textbooks should teach.
4. Jin-man’s One Line (Episode 2). “Are you saying someone like Dong-man is so great that he’ll ruin you?” Dong-man’s older brother destroys The Eight’s moral high ground in ten seconds. The room goes silent. Not because the line is loud — it’s delivered quietly, almost conversationally — but because it’s irrefutable. If Dong-man is truly as insignificant as they claim, why has his existence consumed them for 20 years?
5. The Student’s Question (Episode 1). “Then why haven’t you succeeded?” A child asks the question that seven adults have been too polite or too cruel to ask directly. It’s the simplest scene in either episode, and it lands the hardest — because Dong-man doesn’t have an answer. He just smiles. The smile is worse than silence.
Verdict: 8.5/10 — Brilliant Foundation, One Eye on the Clock
We Are All Trying Here is, by almost every measure, the best-written Korean drama premiere of 2026 so far. Park Hae-young’s dialogue operates on multiple levels simultaneously. The cast — particularly Koo Kyo-hwan and Kang Mal-geum — delivers performances that feel more like independent cinema than television. The direction finds visual metaphors (mood watches, railway crossings, perspective shifts) that replace exposition with imagery. And the central question — what happens when the world tells you you’re worthless and you’re starting to believe it? — is universal enough to transcend language and culture.
The 8.5 rather than a 9 comes down to a single concern: pacing. The first half of Episode 1 is a high-wire act that asks viewers to tolerate a character at his worst before revealing why he’s worth caring about. In a landscape where Netflix’s “continue watching” algorithm decides your fate in the first ten minutes, that’s a risky proposition. The drama clearly isn’t designed for instant gratification — and that’s philosophically admirable — but it does mean some viewers will bounce before reaching the material that makes this special.
If this follows the Park Hae-young trajectory, Episodes 3-4 will deepen Eun-a’s backstory, give the supporting cast more room, and begin building the emotional momentum that turns good dramas into unforgettable ones. My Mister didn’t become My Mister until Episode 4. We may be watching that same transformation in real time.
For viewers still on the fence: this drama isn’t going to meet you halfway. It’s going to ask you to come to it. But if you do, you’ll find writing and performances that reward every minute of patience. Start on a quiet night. Turn off your phone. Let the ramen scene find you.
Episodes 3-4 air Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26 at 10:40 PM KST on JTBC, with simultaneous streaming on Netflix.