Drama

Clean With A Passion For Now (KDrama Review & Summary)

Clean With Passion For Now promotional poster

• Genre: Romance, Comedy, OCD, Mysophobia
• Release Date: 26 November 2018
• Origin: South Korean; Based on a webtoon by Aengo
• Kdrama: 16 Episodes

Cast:

• Kim Yoo-Jung as Gil Oh Sol
• Yoon Kyun Sang as Jang Seol Kyul
• Song Jae Rim as Mr Choi

Quick Precis:

A young beautiful slob meets a clean-freak CEO. They rubbed together into a romance 🙂

Episode 1

This first episode is a pretty good start, lots of laughs, lots of sweet romance, gorgeous young men and an outstandingly beautiful female lead.

Kim Yoo Jung delivers a solid performance despite having been away for a couple of years in the Kdramas.

She is growing more beautiful and still has that radiance and charisma that is scene-stealing (A very young Yoo Jung was the one who made an impression with me in Dongyi).

Oh Sol has graduated from university but is unable to find a gainful employment despite countless applications.  Instead, she makes ends meet by doing part-time jobs, which does not require good hygiene and fashionable attires, she is sloppy and wears clothes which seen better days.

She is desperate to find a permanent job and was continuously reviewing so she can take the civil service exam.  Once she gets that elusive job, she promised herself that she will confess to her sanbae she had had a crush since she started university.  For three years all she thought about was to be with Do Jin.  Just thinking of him makes her happy and kilig to the bones.  She was so cute.

The male lead is at least 10 years older than Yoo Joong but then again the story calls for it as the character is already established in the business world, having started his own business with his own drive, perseverance, and ambition.

Seol Kyul owns a cleaning company, which mainly employs sexy good looking young men as cleaners.  Seol Kyul knows the cleaning business inside and out because he suffers from mysophobia.

Due to his fear of germs and contamination, he also suffers from OCD, which makes him washed his hands again and again and showers for at least an hour each day.

His backstory was when he was about 7 years old, he went into a playground where he saw a girl having fun playing in the sandpit.  He asked the girl if he could play with her but when the girl turned around to face him she was cleaning her nose and flicked the most enormous bogie straight into his gaping screaming mouth.  :}

He might have been a rather neglected child, being a chaebol whose parents are busy with business and socialising. He grew up under the care of a kind housekeeper She eventually ended up in the hospital.  She gave him a present to remember her by.

The gift was a robotic vacuum cleaner, which he named after the housekeeper. ‘Geum Je’.  This appliance became a companion to him.  He tells it all of his thoughts.

He was not averse to going on a blind dates, in fact, he was looking forward to it but it turned out that the girl does not clean her ears, which frightened the life out of him.

His ‘mother’ turned up at his house.  She was annoyed with what happened because she set up the blind date herself.  Unfortunately, she left the door widely opened so  Geum Je roll out of the door, into the lift, out in the street and ended near a pile of rubbish.

It so happened that Oh Sol was passing by and picked up the robotic vacuum cleaner, this was caught in CCTV.

There is so much happening in the first episode, there was also a new lodger for the rooftop at Oh Sol house.

And she finally found out that she was more in love with love that with Do JIn, who badly let her down.

I love this drama.  I shall reevaluate everything to do with public transport.  LOL

Episode 2

Today’s episode is a contrast of yesterday’s rather comedic first offering.

This is more dramatic.  It mainly tackles unemployment.  It seems it is quite hard to get an office job in South Korea.  You made to jump hoops and then it may still come to nothing as what Oh Sol had experienced evidenced by a tub of 97 pens and pencils representing her hopes, dreams and job applications, all turned down.

Her father who was a street cleaner was suddenly made redundant for no apparent reason.

There were also two employees of the Clean With a Passion agency who were almost let go from their job because of their involvement in a brawl.

This episode also shows more of the backstory of Seol Kyul.  His mother was a single parent, who was also an absent parent most of the time.  His nanny.housekeeper became his stand-in mother who soothed him every time his over disciplinarian grandfather used the cane on him for being dirty or unkempt.

The grandfather then later said that he can’t understand why Seol Kyul has germaphobia and despite being sent to America for treatment, he was not cured.

Mr Choi’s role in the drama is still not too clear.  He’s just a rooftop lodger who seemed to entertain women quite a lot.

Towards the end, Oh Sol is shown as having gotten herself employed at last at …Clean with a Passion for Now.

Can’t wait for the next episode.