Forecasting Love and Weather – Full Review
Welcome to Forecasting Love and Weather – Full Review. A group of employees at the Korean Meteorological Administration do their best to navigate and predict the storms of their personal and professional lives. If you haven’t watched this drama yet, I recommend checking out my unspoiled review here.
Forecasting Love and Weather
♥ Aired: Feb 12 – Apr 3, 2022
♥# of Episodes: 16
♥Where to Watch: Netflix
♥Genre: Romantic Drama
♥Starring: Park Min Young and Song Kang
The Story
After being dumped by her fiancee, weeks before the wedding, Jin Ha Kyung isn’t interested in romance. And since her cheating ex-fiancee, Han Ki Joon, is also a co-worker, she has vowed to never date a guy from work again. But when Lee Shi Woo, a handsome new weather forecaster, shows up at her office, she is tempted to break her own promise. In a crazy twist of fate, Jin Ha Kyung’s ex is now married to the woman Lee Shi Woo was living with. And all four of them are working together for the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA). Life is bound to get stormy, both personally and professionally.
The Leads
Park Min Young as Jin Ha Kyung
Jin Ha Kyung is a director for the KMA. She learned the hard way that office romances are messy and work breakups are even messier. Now she has a firm rule against dating co-workers. But when a handsome, new weather forecaster is transferred to her team, she is tempted to break her own rule. But even if they can get over the present hurdle of working together, their past exes and future relationship goals present even bigger problems. Now she will have to decide if she can overlook all of that to follow her heart.
Jin Ha Kyung is a cold perfectionist who has always put her job above her relationships. Ultimately that is what led to her breakup with Han Ki Joon. She prefers a moderate relationship that doesn’t cause any inbalance in her perfectly organized life. Usually, Park Min Young does well in this type of role, but I think the writing in this one really let her down. Ha Kyung as a character, lacked any real character depth or romantic chemistry with her co-star. There just wasn’t enough exploration of her character to make me feel like I knew or understood her.
Song Kang as Lee Shi Woo
Lee Shi Woo has a natural intuition when it comes to understanding weather that finally gets him transferred to the main headquarters of the KMA. He quickly falls for his new supervisor, but she isn’t interested in dating someone she works with. But he will do his best to change her mind and win her heart. And lucky for him, the demands of the job often push them together. But a difficult relationship with his father threatens to tear them apart almost before they have begun.
Lee Shi Woo carries the scars of losing his mother at a young age and having a father who was more interested in gambling than raising his son as a single parent Because his father still shows up for a handout on a regular basis, Shi Woo has decided he can never saddle someone he loves with the burden of his family, so he has no interest in marriage. Unlike, Ha Kyung, Shi Woo has a bit more character development, but his interactions are spread too thin between all the other characters to get the depth and chemistry needed. In my opinion, Song Kang’s acting isn’t responsible for that. He just didn’t have enough to work with.
Supporting Characters
Yoon Park as Han Ki Joon
Han Ki Joon works as a spokesperson for the KMA. He and Ha Kyung dated for 10 years before he cheated on her and married Yoo Jin. But marriage is much more difficult than he had expected. He struggles to learn what it means to be a good husband and how to best support Yoo Jin both at home and at work.
Yura as Chae Yoo Jin
Chae Yoo Jin was living with Shi Woo, but when she found out he wasn’t interested in marriage, she ended their relationship. Now she is married to Ki Joon. She fell in love with Ki Joon’s strong sense of maturity and his ability to take care of her. But once they are actually married, she finds him to be much more immature than she thought. Frustrated with her unmet expectations, she delays registering the marriage, until she can be sure she wants to stay married.
Lee Sung Wook as Eom Dong Han
Eom Dong Han is a senior forecaster who has worked at the KMA for years and actually trained Ha Kyung when she was a trainee. He has travelled to various weather stations for his job, which caused him to live away from his wife and daughter. Now, he is finally back in Seoul, but he finds he no longer has a place in his own family.
Things I Liked
♥ Weather Team
One of the best relationship developments in this drama is not romantic, but the family feeling that develops between the members of Chief Forecasting Team 2. In the beginning, Ha Kyung had to do everything herself and Dong Han refused to step in and cover for her being late. But by the end, they had gelled into a team who could trust and rely on each other. And Oh Myung Joo was sweet as the “mother ” of the group, always working to keep things running smooth and offer a bit of advice when needed.
♥ Eum Dong Han
Eum Dong Han and his marriage may have had the strongest character development in the whole drama. We see him grow and change as a character in ways that make sense and give interesting insight. In his marriage, we have a clear understanding of how he and his wife came to the place they are in and how each one feels about it. It is a realistic picture of a relationship formed by years of life choices and the bittersweet question, “have we come too far to fix it”.
♥ Bae Su Ja
Kim Mi Kyung was great in the role of Ha Kyung’s mother, Bae Su Ja. Of course, Kim Mi Kyung and Park Min Young have a long history of working together, often playing mother and daughter, so I always love their scenes together. There is obviously plenty of real affection between the two. But also as a character, I really appreciated the way Bae Su Ja talked and listened to Shi Woo. Eventually she was able to put her own dreams of marrying her daughter to a successful, financially stable mate aside and see that she and Shi Woo were truly happy together. And that was the most important thing in a “good” marriage.
Things I Didn’t Like
Weather Emergencies
I found the concept of a drama about weather prediction interesting, but I feel like having a weather “emergency” for every episode was overkill. Every weather condition required a lot of background information to bring viewers up to speed on the concept, which tended to drag down the tempo. I think they could have covered a couple of the more interesting weather stories and devoted the rest of that time to the characters that are supposed to be the focus of the show.
Seok Ho and Tae Kyung
For me, Seok Ho and Tae Kyung together had way too many cringey moments. It made it hard for me to watch them. The concept of them as a couple was cute, but I didn’t need to watch them akwardly grope around. I would have liked them together if they had just played it down a little more, but as it was, I couldn’t feel any chemistry.
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Broken Engagement
For someone who had dated a guy for 10 years, it seemed like Ha Kyung got over the broken engagement too quickly. Especially when you consider that she had no clue that anything was wrong or that he was seeing someone else. I think it’s great that she and Ki Joon got to the place where they could be friends, but it seemed too fast and easy. And honestly, she let Ki Joon off the hook much sooner than she should have.
The Ending
“Forecasting Love and Weather” gives us a series of happy endings. Shi Woo asks his father to get treatment for his cancer and try to be a father to him, and the two begin taking steps to heal their relationship. Seok Ho publishes Tae Kyung’s book and says he will publish all her books from now on. He also tells her he will wait until his title changes from boyfriend to husband. Dong Han and his wife talk and decide to stay together and try being a real family. And Soo In decides to stay on Team 2 and not transfer to a new department. The team predicts the first snow and Ha Kyung and Shi Woo run to find each other at the Seoul Observatory as the first snow falls around them. They realize being together is the most important thing and they share a kiss. The final scene shows Shi Woo’s father and Ha Kyung’s mother meeting in a restaurant, for what we can assume is a family introduction as a step toward an engagement. But when Shi Woo and Ha Kyung peek in to see the awkward mood of the room, they run away hand in hand, laughing as they go.
Should I Watch
“Forecasting Love and Weather” is a slow-paced romantic drama. Rather than the light romantic comedy I expected, it actually focuses on the more realistic, serious side of love and marriage. I really wanted to love this one more than I did. Although it has an amazing cast, the story itself lacks any real character depth or romantic chemistry. While I found the subject of weather and meteorology unique and interesting, and loved the way they related weather phenomenon to relationships, the theme often overshadowed the characters themselves. I give “Forecasting Love and Weather” an 7 out of 10 ramen.
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