Review of Twinkling Watermelon / 반짝이는 워터멜론

When this show first came out, everyone was so hype for it around me. I kept hearing all of my friends talking about it, and then when I opened up my social media accounts, there were people posting about it. I could not escape the show, and then suddenly I became hype to watch it myself.

I owned the standard Viki account at the time, which is how I ended up not watching this in the months when it first came out. Ironic, but because we could only have one screen at a time, I didn’t end up watching this because someone else I was sharing the account with was stuck on episode four.

Then I realized that it was my friend’s friend, who thought it was hers, and she logged off permanently. It took my several months after this to finally gain my hype back and watch every episode of Twinkling Watermelon.

And I will admit, it took me longer than some other dramas to watch this.

Let’s get into the review!

The son of a CODA family finds himself in the past, where he meets his father before his accident.

Our main character in this show is Eun-gyeol, who lives and goes to school in the present day. He had such good grades, but then when he realizes his passion for music and guitar, he goes out at night to perform. He keeps this a secret from his family, but it can only go so far.

His father inevitably finds out, and he is very angry about this scenario. Eun-gyeol leaves home and finds a shop to sell his beloved guitar, given to him by his deceased mentor and teacher, but this isn’t a normal shop.

Turns out it’s a weird portal to the past, and when he steps outside, he finds himself in 1995.

With no money suitable for the period or an idea on how to get back home, Eun-gyeol makes the decision to befriend the younger version of his father. He also gets to meet his great-grandmother, who is father greatly loved before she passed away.

Another person comes to the past as well: On Eun-yoo, the granddaughter of the man who taught Eun-gyeol to play guitar. Her father is getting a new marriage, and she certainly is not happy about it.

She comes to the past by accident, like Eun-gyeol did, but she wants to change her fate by allowing her mother to marry her first love.

As Eun-gyeol looks to change his father’s future, preventing the accident that made him deaf, these two are going to see how their actions will create a ripple effect in the future.

And somewhere along the way, they’re going to change things, there’s a lot of romance and love triangles they’re going to get themselves caught up in. The writing gets a little bit wonky here sometimes, but then it always manages to work out in the end.

Overall Thoughts

I think this is a cute show, especially when Eun-gyeol joins the band Watermelon Sugar with his father. I thinkt hat the writing does indeed lean more towards tropes, like many other Korean dramas, but it was refreshing to see the CODA representation on-screen.

I’m glad I ended up watching this in the end. But did I love the show? Not really. The cast is talented for being quite a few new fresh faces in the Korean drama scene, but I didn’t connect with this story.

I think it’s something that’s been done before, which is why I wasn’t super invested in this. It was a cute story though overall!

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