Both the characters created a great impact on me. Especially the great affection they shared really mesmerized me. Park Bo-gum is perfect for the role and his expressions .. omg no words to explain.

I just finished this show this morning, and as per my custom, I dropped by to see what your thoughts on it were. I was admittedly surprised that this made the drop list, although after reading your summary I completely understand why. I think many dramas I’ve seen have fallen into the broken-genre category where RomCom plot points are awkwardly mixed with reality, and it does ruin the immersion and suspension of disbelief required to happily navigate a narrative. I appreciate your observations and keen points, and really can’t refute any of them. I think I’m somewhat protected because I don’t know how a real relationship would pan out in a corporate environment, and I know very little about the nuances of Korean life and business practices. Armed with blissful ignorance, it takes a lot for my incredulity to gain traction–particularly if I don’t want it to. I waded through about five false starts before finding “Encounter”, so I was amply motivated to find something I could tolerate. I can’t deny that the lead actress was a draw, and that my mild desperation may have kept me rooting for it longer than I would have under normal circumstances.

However, I will say that this show wasn’t difficult for me to watch, nor did it break for me. It took until the last twenty seconds of the final episode for me to ultimately decide that I liked it, and another twenty minutes or so in the shower afterwards (just before the hot water ran out) to work out why. And here’s what I came up with.

As is befitting a plot that puts a lot of initial focus on photography, the most apt analogy I can make is that this show has a very shallow depth of field. There is really only one thing in focus: perfect love. The company, the setting, the side characters, and even the main characters themselves are largely out of focus; they are merely there to give the love depth, width, contrast, and definition. This incredibly simplified approach is reminiscent of a particular kind of story that seeks to illustrate a concept, quality, moral, or lesson: the fairy tale. (And that is the most usage I have ever given a colon in a single paragraph.)

When you really think about fairy tales, they are incredibly simplistic. There’s a castle, a king, an queen and princess, but the parents have almost no personality, the castle seems tranquil despite the fact that it should be awash with political jousting and posturing, and the princess herself has only a few attributes to her name. She’s kind, pure of heart, and wants to meet her one true love. The prince has even less character than she does, often doing little more than show up. This is a broad, generic example of course, but you get my point. Fairy tales, designed mostly for children, distill a narrative down to its very essence, giving just enough detail to flesh out the world and carry the through-line to a happy ending.

I can’t say with certainty that the folks behind this show intended to make it a fairy tale, but the visuals marking the start of an episode do skew in that direction. Most of the title cards and animations I’ve seen are cute, fun, creative little jaunts that have some relevance to the show, but “Encounter” did something more. Each simple, animated vignette–very reminiscent of the stylized illustrations found in older literature and fairy tale compilations–foreshadowed what was going to happen in the episode in the most general sense. The man and woman would pass each other by, missing when they wanted to meet. A beast, was going to stalk the woman as she moved towards her heart’s desire.

I don’t know what it is about the illustrations, but their simplicity and style managed to communicate so much with so little and set the tone for the show. Very quickly I realized I wasn’t watching a slice of life or romantic comedy. I was watching a poem about love. Unlike other dramas, neither character stumbles or misses a beat until the obligatory crisis near the end. Jin Hyuk’s pursuit is pure, persistent, patient and perfectly timed. When he asks for something, it’s when Soo Hyun is ready to give it. When she is uncomfortable, he recedes but is not daunted or discouraged. Soo Hyun relinquishes to the pursuit when she realizes what her heart wants, pausing only to acknowledge a hurdle before jumping over it. Time and again adversity rears its head, and yet the two continue to become more intimate, more open, more honest, and more intertwined with each other.

The dialogue very rarely goes beyond their feelings, and how much they long to be with one another. In fact, the one time they actually talk about something other than love or food, they realize they are very different. They don’t enjoy doing the same things, they don’t have the same aspirations. I was hoping the show would tap into those differences and work through them, but they seem to exist simply to say, “We’re not a perfect match, but we’re still perfect for each other”.

In short, their relationship is what love can be when we don’t get in the way. It wasn’t perfectly smooth, but it didn’t have the real human setbacks, stalls, feints, facades, pride, and fears that beset most couples and threaten to derail intimacy. The reality is that love is always changing its expression, and it’s impossible to be what the other person or relationship itself needs all the time. This is the dynamic that most dramas focus on, and it provides the ebb and flow of a show and the growth of its characters.

Such is not the case with the main characters in this show. Soo Hyun and Jin Hyuk are representatives, demonstrating how beautifully love can be discovered, celebrated, embraced and expressed at different times and through different circumstances without hindrance. Their journey is surreal, even for a drama–which is saying a lot.

Everything became clear when I stopped to think, “What the heck are they gonna talk about once they’re married? Is he just gonna keep smiling and saying how much he loves her? Is she going to just express how much she likes being around him?” In most dramas, the characters are figuring out love amidst their daily lives. When the show is over, you have an idea of what things will be like afterwards, and there’s a long trail behind them to show how far they’d come to reach their happy ending.

But “Encounter” was about just that. The encounter. There was no substance beyond the love. Nothing else mattered. The characters and story had no more depth than the animations that heralded the start of each episode, but for me they didn’t need to. While I don’t think it’s a story written for children, it is very childlike in its approach. Even the orchestral tracks have a fantastic, distant vibe that makes me feel like I’m watching a classic tale retold rather than a contemporary piece of drama.

I said I didn’t realize I ultimately like the show until the final seconds. Prior to that, I was kinda feeling robbed. Instead of an amazing final scene that tied into the first episode or visuals that gave a moment of catharsis, the show ended with a montage showing peaks of intimacy underscored by the leads reciting a poem that had been introduced earlier. It was then that I realized it was love’s journey through those events that I connected with, not the characters themselves.

I’ll admit, nothing I’ve said really makes an argument for this being a good show. Quite the opposite in fact. While there is tension, there’s not really a lot of conflict. Most of the characters get along and become likable in their own way. There are antagonists, but they don’t really have much bite. And to say that I don’t really care too much about the leads at the end of it all seems to be more of a scathing indictment than praise. But think of classic fairy tales. Sometimes the characters don’t even have proper names, and the ones that do have little to distinguish themselves other than their physical appearance and the situation they are put in. It’s the adventure and promise of love’s realization that carries you through the story.

It’s not often you come across a show that is driven by a theme more than by characters. Historically I’ve never much cared for stories that don’t have compelling people to follow, and in general I think it’s a dicey way to craft a story. Most of the reviews here can attest to that! 🙂 But there was a great deal of resonance when I heard that music and those poetic words, and saw images of an infallible love manifesting itself in two people’s lives. It would have been a perfect fit to see, “And they lived happily ever after” at the end. Not as an empty tagline to put a superficial bow on the whole story, but to say that what was truth and love before is now, and forever will be. It will never be as beautiful and pure this side of Heaven, but it does exist and it does move through, between and for us just as powerfully and fully without condition or end.

It’s a moving illustration and a welcome promise for those of us hoping and longing for such an encounter.

I’m sorry to be always so late in my long run in the dramaland but I have just finished watching Boyfriend. I’m a little late with my observations, right?
I agree with you that setting a love story between a trainee and his CEO creates unresolvable and perhaps bad-resolved ethical issues throughout the drama. These questions are treated in a superficial way, but I am very sorry that you have finished your watching at episode 10 because the more difficult the relationship between the two becomes,more the acting qualities of Park Bo Gum emerge t (and yes also for me he is the reason why I watched this drama to the end).
At one point he steals the scene so much from Song Hye Kyo that plays in a monotonous and still manner showing all her limits.
SO I decided to see this narrative as the journey of transformation of a young man who has known love up until then in an abstracted and dreamy way and on books and novel in a man who accepts the agony that love often entails with courage without becoming cynical nor ridiculously sentimental, accepting to travel through suffering and excitement together. In this, PBG it is extraordinary because he makes the smallest emotional nuances so precisely, authentic and moving that sometimes I wonder where he finds all those expressive possibilities. He’s also so young …

Well, I endured the whole drama. Just stubborn I guess. I had my doubts about this ‘working’ in the first place. The age difference of our leads, the friendships involved among the actors, etc. which resulted for me as NO chemistry between our leads. But writernim seriously had some issues with the story line. Like you say, Fangirl, the whole story’s premise was totally messed up. I had a difficult time accepting Jin Hyuk as a believable character. Sorry to say, this character was just a bit on the ‘too sweet to be true’ side. Only in the last two episodes did some grit come out of this character and he became somewhat believable. SHK’s character.. was so one dimensional. Even after she realized she had to stop living for others, I found her character without a great deal of interesting aspects. Let’s not even mention the mother’s of our lead characters…really, seriously!?! And I to found the secondary characters so much more interesting and entertaining than the lead characters. I’m not knocking acting skills of PBG or SHK…I’m having issues with the script. Lavish and beautiful, but the script….really smelled, really, really, smelled! Would it have worked better if he’d for true been a fruit seller? Oh and btw, did they have to film with the filters that made everyone one but Driver Nam look like they had the skin of a three year old?

I was traumatised by Something in the Rain (wasted 16 hrs of my life on that show, go figure). Decided to give Encounter a chance for bogum. Dropped it after Ep 2 though. After reading your review, I know I made the right decision. Won’t be touching any more noona romances with a ten foot pole. 🙂

Encounter/Boyfriend is memorable since it is the first and only drama series (in any language, genre) that my husband is watching with me. He was never into any series let alone k-dramas (he only watches news, documentaries). What got him hooked initially was Song Hye Kyo (and I, of course am a Park Bogum fan). I was into the second episode and he caught a glimpse of what I am watching. He asked me to replay the first episode and now, he is even more impatient waiting for the next episode. As a newbie to any drama, he loves the show much more than I. In fact I planned to wait for the drama to be completed (after watching episode 2), wait for reviews before going any further. But my husband keeps asking me if the next episode is already available, so I end up watching each episode with him as soon as it is available in my country! Not gonna lie, I am sticking to this drama solely for the love of PBG! I hope he gets much better projects next time that taps his range as an actor.

I haven’t officially dropped but have stalled after the very filler filled episode 9. I like romance dramas of all types so I was fine with the slow moving vibe of this one. I actually appreciated some twists on the tropes: the mom-in-law who actually wants her daughter-in-law back, the mom who doesn’t even fake caring about her daughter, the neighborhood friend who has the hots for the lead guy but accepts he’s not into her, the exhusband who does a bit of actual solid noble idiocy and lets her go. But then episode 9 happened where NOTHING happened. Besides the ex-husband inexplicably asking her to consider coming back to him, no further movement of the story occurred. I mean they broke up for a day until someone caved. Oy

I am waiting until the drama finishes before making a decision to continue. I am not liking what I am hearing about where the story is going but even before I was never super invested. This is such an on-the-surface romance without real depth but acting like there is real depth. It’s a mix of a melo and a fairy tale and I was good giving it a go but at a certain point I wondered if a better drama would have been with her and the ex-husband.

So some of what hasn’t worked for me is as follows: the work situation where, as someone noted above, he could have worked elsewhere with or without her help. They don’t have real conversations. I find the male lead to be almost too perfect and at the same time, I feel like I don’t know him. He’s the super sweet guy, a good son, a good worker but I don’t feel we’ve gotten in to who he is as a man. That’s not on PBG but, again, they don’t have real conversations. Unrealistic relationship development – so he’s being shipped to the other hotel and they have a date and what do they do, they got to a movie. Not just any move but a movie about Van Gogh so, you know, it was super important to see in a theater. Geesh. They don’t spend the time talking or canoodling like most couples. Whatever.

So I’m thinking I might not be going back because I find myself getting irked writing this and I haven’t started on the whole business aspect of it being her hotel but apparently not etc. This might be a Temperature of Love for me which I dropped around the same point and went and watched the last 15 minutes because I was curious how it wrapped up. We’ll see.

In the meantime, the minute Minglan is available to you, jump in. It seems like every other C-drama with conniving women in the early episodes but it has humor and realistic character development where we get to know everyone involved in MingLan’s life so it doesn’t just involve the love story by any means. It’s going to be in my top 10 and maybe even top 5 list if it keeps up like this (I’ve seen through 39).