‘Because this is my First Life’...An Indian-ish Template with a Korean Setting.
TvN’s Because this is my first life, follows a template well known to us Indians — The girl, Yoon Ji Ho (Jung So Min), comes from a patriarchal family, meaning that when her newlywed brother and sister-in-law are expecting a baby, a son to be put more precisely, she is expected (not asked or told) to move out of the house, even though she was the one who had paid the house’s deposit, and has been paying the rent for years. Her mother (Kim Sun Young) notices this injustice yet doesn’t utter a word. Later in the night, she hands Ji Ho some of her savings and a few words of encouragement. Ji Oh is now homeless and a few more episodes in, she doesn’t have a job too.
Finding a place to stay becomes her number one priority and so she decides to enter a contract marriage with her landlord, Nam Se Hee, an app developer, whose two aims in life is to take care of his cat and to pay off his home loan. He needs the rent, she needs the room and love doesn’t need to fit in such an equation, so they get married, and then slowly and definitely fall in love; also the story of the majority of the Indian population, where marriage is not a product of love, rather a product of necessities and of convenience. Even when Ji Oh confesses to her father-in-law that she is marrying his son for the house, he doesn’t find it odd. People never marry for love, he says. There is always another motive behind that love.
Though this angle has been explored many times in Indian cinema, it is a fresh concept for a Korean drama. All the situations of first meetings, dates are either hurried up or skipped, so that we can concentrate on their newly married life, something that we rarely get to see on TV. The awkwardness of staying together, managing the demands of your in-laws, to meeting your husband’s friends to name a few.
There is a beautiful scene where Ji Oh starts caring like an actual wife to Se Hee. She cooks breakfast for both of them, insists that they eat together and only starts eating after his approval. But then in the evening when he confesses to her that he feels like his private space and routine is being taken away, she backs off, embarrassed and hurt at even trying to get close with him and the next morning she prepares breakfast for only herself and eats in silence.
At the centre, it might be Ji Oh and Se Hee, but the show doesn’t rob the supporting characters of their stories. You have Ji Oh’s two best friends — Yang Ho Rang, who has been in a relationship for seven years, and is now finding it difficult to transform that relationship to a marriage and Woo So Ji, who finds it difficult to open up to a person, hence prefers to sleep around with men than be in a serious relationship. We get a very amazing scene where she scoffs at Ma Sang Goo for showing up at her office and insists that she only showed interest in him was because she wanted to spend a night with him and move on. I found it amusing, that finally, here is a character (a girl that too!), who is so honest about her feelings and intentions.
But we never judge her; we understand her, empathise with her, but never do we get scenes where we would be asked to judge her morality. We instead concentrate on her opening up her insecurities and feelings with Sang Goo and coming out of her shell.
In the same way, we never judge Ho Rang. She isn’t ambitious about her career but rather wants to get married and be a stay at home mother.
Because This is My First Life succeeds in all these stories with enough intensity and humour. It provides with an excellent, well rounded male characters as well as strong female characters whether they stand up to sexual harassment at work, or work hard to impress their in-laws so as to win over their husband’s heart.
