You and Everything Else review: This tale of two friends tries to be a lot of things and yet nothing at the same time!

Starring Kim Go-Eun and Park Ji-Hyun, You and Everything Else is unfortunately about everything else but their friendship!

You and Everything Else review: Packaged as an emotional journey of two best friends and the women being at the forefront, You and Everything Else felt like a K-drama that would linger on my mind way past the credits roll. While it starts off with a strong premise about two girls from two different backgrounds eventually becoming friends, as the story unfolds, it keeps going further away from what Netflix described the plotline to be!

Eun Jung(Kim Go-Eun) is a happy go-lucky girl who is loved and adored by everyone around her. Sang-Yeon(Park Ji-Hyun) is the rich kid in school, who is not only from an influential family but also tops every exam. The two never saw eye to eye in school until Sang-Yeon’s mother found a liking towards Eun-Jung and hence began their journey of friendship where they were tutored together by Sang-Yeon’s elder brother and ended up spending a lot of time together at her house. Sounds like every other best friend story, right? But the truth is that as you go forward, you realize that Sang-Yeon and Eun-Jung were never really best friends to begin with. Ever since they were young, Sang-Yeon has perpetually been jealous of Eun-Jung. Jealous of the way she can get people, including her own family to like her more, jealous of the way men pick her first, jealous of having more friends than her. It was never a friendship, it was a competition that neither them nor we saw coming.

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At a much later point in the story too, the girls are stuck in a love triangle, bickering and spoiling their equation over a guy. If not that, there’s an intense queer sub-plot that tears them apart further than bringing them together. While I’m happy that queer sub-plots are making it to mainstream K-dramas, I also wish there was more to it than just using it as a tool to serve the leads. As I reached the latter half of the story, it had me wondering if the story is trying to portray the dark side of female friendships. That is something that I could have gotten behind and found interesting. But in the midst of trying their hand at everything, the message of this series is lost in translation for me!

Oh also, did I mention the story is set in bits and pieces of flashbacks and the present consists of Sang-Yeon dying of cancer? With all this back and forth, by the time they come to the present, there’s no sympathy I feel for either of them after seeing the sheer emotional abuse Sang-Yeon has built this relationship on. It wasn’t like Son Ye-Jin’s Thirty-Nine where I actually felt empowered watching these women entering their 40s, living life on their own terms and sobbed as I missed my best friend after every episode. With You and Everything Else, it just makes me thank God that this kind of friendship has not touched me yet. Completely beats the point of the show, IMO!

You and Everything Else is currently streaming on Netflix!

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