Motel California
- Leah Largaespada
- Mar 2
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 5
6/10 is my rating. This is a 2025 South Korean coming of age romance with 12, ~ 70 minute episodes. Based on a novel Home, Bitter Home by Shim Yoon-seo.
First, I provide a unique synopsis then review. I provide the synopsis because I find, when I’m looking for a show to watch, some of the synopses do not describe the series very well. So, unique synopsis is intended to provide another perspective. If you aren’t interested in the synopsis scroll down, the review is labeled.
Synopsis
Ji Kang-hee (Lee Se-young) grew up in a motel and was an outcast among her peers. Her best friend and first love, Cheon Yeon-soo (Na In-woo) was already in good with her father, Ji Chun-pil (Choi Min-soo) who counted on him to bridge the gap with his daughter who resented him for the way she was brought up. Kang-hee leaves her town and he love to strike out on her own to get an education and improve her life. Twelve years later she returns to find her friend, Chun-pil has changed in physical appearance and is now a very busy and much loved local veterinarian.
Review
I stopped watching this after episode three. Other reviewers that said the FL character was annoying. At first I was like I don’t thinks so. She is just defensive because she has a lot of emotional baggage. But then as I watched it, I realize they were right. She was extremely annoying in that she so hung up on things that happened to her in the past that she was really unkind to other people. Maybe it gets better later on. But for the portion of it that I watched I wouldn’t recommend it unless you like really deeply, dramatic plots, and really flawed characters.
Spoilers
I could tell it was gonna be another one where I would have a hard time understanding why the main guy was so hung up on her. I was not seeing anything so spectacular about her character. I mean she did protect him a bit from bullying when he was young and they were really good friends; even friends with benefits at one point, but she grew up to be such an angry person. She was emotionally hurtful to him to drive him away. So it just felt abusive his time with her. I don’t know, but it was just a very dark and heavy kind of set up and I wasn’t really down for something that emotionally heavy so my impression is only of the first few episodes. I’ve watched enough dramas now that I don’t like to waste my time on those that are not good enough to draw me in early. I found that those that have a slow start rarely get better from that point. I also feel like they waited too long to let us know why she had so many problems with her father and growing up in the motel. It did show her being bullied as a kid about being raised in a motel, but that alone did not seem like enough to make her like she was as an adult. I might’ve continued watching it if I could understand more anoit why she had so many emotional problems. But, I may not have agreed with her reasons then I still would not have liked it. But I feel by episode three we should’ve known why she was running around with such a huge chip on her shoulder
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