Family By Choice review: A heartwarming mix of rom-com and slice of life makes this drama the perfect comfort watch

Family By Choice is a story about an unconventional family who grew to love each other despite the curveballs life threw at them!

Family By Choice review: Over the years, we’ve seen quite a lot of K-dramas based on unconventional families. Some of them hit so close to home because as much as we’d love for our parents to be our mentors in this journey called life, they come with their own set of baggage and trauma, and tend to subconsciously dump that on us. While K-dramas are known to create this magical world for us, they’re also pretty good at reflecting what’s happening in society. Most Asian families are far from being perfect or ideal, and K-dramas portray that with a lot of authenticity. It shows us how layered and complex a human mind can be and it’s not as easy as it seems to just get over our struggles.

Stemming from the same thought comes Kim Seung-Ho’s Family By Choice. It revolves around Kim San Ha (Hwang In Youp), Yoon Ju-Won (Jung Chae-Yeon) and Kang Hae-Joon (Bae Hyeon Seong). The three of them grew up together even though they aren’t biologically related. They were raised by Yoon Ju Won’s dad, Jong Jae (Choi Won Young) and Kim San Ha’s dad, Kim Dae-Uk (Choi Moo-Sung). Both fathers have traumatic pasts of their own to deal with but work past it and put their best foot forward to raise their children. Where are their mothers, you might ask? Well, this is a show that makes it clear from the beginning that sometimes mother doesn’t know best! Yoon Ju Won’s mother passed away when she was extremely young so she barely has any memory of her. Kim San Ha’s mother was grieving the loss of her child who passed away at the age 4 by drowning. She slid into depression and often blamed little San-Ha for his sister’s death. After a point, she was so sick of even looking at her own son that she just took off. Then there’s Kang Hae Joon’s mother who abandoned him and left him with Yoon Ju-Won’s dad after meeting him just once! Since then, Jong-Jae took him in and raised him like his own child, giving him the same love that he gave his daughter. Here’s how some really unfortunate circumstances put together a family of choice, a beautiful family who decided to give each other the love that they were lacking otherwise. 

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While it was tough for me to see eye to eye with any of the reasons that the mothers gave to be so mean towards their children on this show, I still liked the fact that the makers decided to portray how taxing it is to be a mom in the first place. It shows us how a mother’s mental health directly affects a child’s life and why mothers need to prioritise themselves first. It also portrays how when one of the parents is not in the right state of mind to give their hundred percent to parenthood, the other one has to overcompensate so the child doesn’t feel their absence. Family By Choice touches upon all of this and more! 

During the course of the show there are many highs and lows that the characters face. San-Ha is in love with Ju-Won but has to shift to Seoul to take care of his mother. Since Hae-Joon is the only one who isn’t biologically related to any of the dads, he feels the need to pay them back for the life he got. There’s Park-Dal (Seo Ji-Hye), Ju-Won’s school bestie who has been in love with Hae-Joon since donkey’s years. And then there are the dads who always want the kids to be happy whilst dealing with the moms randomly coming back into their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I know it sounds like the characters only have problems on this show, but it is actually comforting to see how they stand up for each other and overcome every obstacle in their path. 

The child actors who play the younger versions of the three main characters give performances you won’t forget. They aced emotionally heavy scenes which most adult actors also can’t always get right. Coming to the older versions of the character, I am thrilled to see Hwang In-Yeop as the lead in a rom-com ever since we all fell bad for him in True Beauty. This is what he was always meant to do. Jung Chae-Yeon as the older Ju-Won matches the same energy as the younger version of herself. Bae Hyeon-Seoung, for a first time actor, plays his role with conviction but throughout the sixteen episodes, I could not stop thinking about how much he resembles Park Bo-Gum. All the characters have a rural region dialect or as they say 'satoori' in Korean. The series is based out of a small town and all of this does add to giving the show a more cozy vibe that we usually don't see in big production K-dramas.

The romance in the show starts a bit late but is as dreamy as it can get in a K-drama. We were anxiously waiting for San-Ha to finally confess his love to Ju-Won and the angst between them is insane. You don’t want them to stop with all the physical affection they show each other. It has us all kicking our feet in the air I’m sure! I just wish when it came to Hae-Joon, they did not leave it to the last episode for him to start dating Dal. I wanted to see more of their love story as well. So if the makers are reading this, I need a spin off show on the two ASAP! 

Family By Choice is about finding familial love in the strangest ways and in the most unconventional manner. It’s about generational trauma, about how difficult it is to make a living in the modern day world. But it’s also about forgiveness, about learning to see things from a different lens and how it’s all about coming back after a long day of work to the one who feels like home. It shatters the taboo that comes with re-marrying and normalizes finding happiness much later in life. It beautifully centers this unconventional family and how they created a safe space for each other even though they had been deprived of that security all their lives. Watching all of them go through life together feels like a warm hug on a winter night and hence this show will be on my ‘comfort shows to re-watch’ list!

Family By Choice is currently streaming on RakutenViki!

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