Netflix Chocolate Korean Drama

[Cherie Trojak]

Ihonestly feel like this series could be an on-par contender to those death-revival isekai anime series like Re:Zero where the character repeatedly fails before finally getting it right.

So essentially, this drama starts with an emaciated little girl stumbling upon a seaside restaurant. The restaurant is warm, and everyone inside is smiling and laughing quite often. We are made to believe this is a happy place, valued by the local community.

Lee Kang, a delightful young boy who dreams of being a chef, offers the sad looking girl a meal. She eats it happily, and Lee Kang tells her to come back in the afternoon for a special chocolate treat.

Apparently, Moon Cha Young is competing in a pageant, or is intended to be an actress or something of the effect (the explanation given by the drama was very vague in itself) and is not allowed to eat.

What can be presumed to be hours later, both boys are at the local hospital. Kang is unconscious and bloodied, while Joon is fully awake, barely injured, and being doted on by the entire hospital staff.

Cha young decides to lie to Kang and tell him she loves another man, while realizing she loves Kang so much that she needs to immediately quit her job, pack up her life and move to Greece of all places so that she never has to set eyes upon Kang again.

Lee Kang was supposed to hang out with his good buddy Min Seong, but gets manipulated into working a car accident-filled ER shift when his evil uncle already had his working credentials and privileges at the family hospital revoked.

He continually nods off and almost swerves into oncoming traffic multiple times. Cha Young never says anything while this is happening, or offers to drive. She just stars at him when he finally pulls over after almost getting the pair into a car accident multiple times.

A chef with a traumatic event in her past works in a rural hospice where she uses her home-cooked food to comfort the patients in their final days. While working there, she meets the doctor she's secretly loved for many years and the two get to know each other.

Curious about why Kang decided to give up chocolate after his mother died, she asks about her accident. After a few seconds, Kang tells Cha-young that his mother was hit by a car on the way home from buying him chocolates.

After passing a simulator test at a driving school, Hee-na begs Tae-hyun to take her to see her dream car, which she hopes to buy as soon as she gets her license. They visit a dealership and as they sit inside of a sporty coupe, Tae-hyun is unusually quiet.

Hee-na admits that like Tae-hyun, she lived as if she had all the time in the world until she got sick. Hee-na shares another of her goals, after she buys her car she wants to drive to the sea with Tae-hyun.

When Seon-ae expresses her happiness, Director Kwon finally realizes that while he worked long hours, she was painfully lonely. Seon-ae gets Director Kwon to agree to spend a day with her in the spring and in the fall and then drags him into the water where they splash around happily.

Before Kang can leave the hospital, Hye-mi calls and they meet in a quiet hallway. Hye-mi angrily reminds Kang that Geosung became successful because of the sacrifices that she and Grandma made. Hye-mi blames the many all-nighters that she put in for her two miscarriages and her inability to be a proper mother to Joon.

On the hospice grounds, Dae-shik sits on a bench in a daze while Young-shil cries her eyes out in a bathroom. After composing herself, Young-shil returns to Dae-shik but he jumps up to avoid her. When pain forces him to sit down, Young-shil orders Dae-hik to look at her and when he does, he blocks his face with a bowl.

It was a love story between two people who were saved by kindness, linked by kindness and attracted to each other by their own kindness. It was also a story about how love, trickled down through time and rippled out through space, is the true meaning of human life.

They let one influence each other. Kang let a compassionate CY change him back to the warm hearted person he was before his Mum passed away and hence chose his path to give up the Geosung Foundation to protect the hospice. CY learnt the courage from Kang to reinvent herself after losing her senses of taste and smell. They both possess stoic attitudes that help them to evolve through crisis and tragedies.

I think she is also conditioned to present a strong front. She was pretty much orphaned at age 12 and still managed to work her way to having a pretty amazing career and life. And though not detailed in the drama, Cha Young alluded to additional struggles that were worse than the building collapse. She's had 25 years of handling things herself.

Though she loved Kang since she was a child, they're still not in that intimate stage yet (and I don't mean sex), so it could be harder for her to let herself lean on him....which is why i think the drama should have let her drool and snore in that beach scene a few weeks ago. (My bangs are looking awful this week, and I'm jealous at how beautiful Cha Young's bangs always look)

I like your analysis because for me I felt the last scenes tilted affirming her brother's admonition to her about 1st loves never working out...fairytale endings.

Yes her abandonment haunts her throughout her life and even after meeting Kang. She seems to be in an emotional fugue where she's incapable of defending herself due to her feeling of not being worthy because in her mind if she was worthy then her mom would never have abandoned her.

I don't believe she still is at the point of unconditionally loving Kang as opposed to him being her sanctuary and lighthouse because 'she' has yet to 'love herself'. This is why you don't see ever reciprocating his embrace...she's still in a state of PTSD. I feel that was her reason for leaving to Greece. She was trying to break through the ice she was encased in and numbed by all the assaults she silently endured BECAUSE she believed she was in fact 'worthless'. Her 'healing' had nothing to do with her loss of taste and smell. The healing was herself ..finding own self worth again so that once she learns to love herself and who she is, then and only then can she truly love Kang or anyone else which is why she tells him not to wait for her. She wisely was also seeking to determine whether her feeling for Kang a dependency or real love. CY needed to quote Shakespeare " To Thine Own Self Be True".

**Sorry to be so redundant.

@sunset125, have you thought about lending your writing skills and be part of the dramabeans team in case they are hiring?? I have just been silently reading all your comments here but I can't help but be completely floored by all your insights. Fighting! Looking forward to reading more of your comments.

Just like you I love this drama to pieces and simply I adored it more with all the hidden messages you've pointed out. Thank you @teriyaki, and @sailorjumun for all the hard work you put into recapping this drama. Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts and love for Chocolate.

Lovely insights @sunset125! I have no more to add but to agree with you! Overall, this story was one-of-a-KIND (it pays when you are KIND, really! Just look at our characters) I still feel sad on having to let go of this beautiful story though I am certain that all of our characters are living the best of their lives ?

Thank you @teriyaki @sailorjumun for always, always sharing your take on every episodes, it gave me other perspective on how to love even more this story. We hope to meet Lee Kang and Cha Young in the near future in dramaland! ?

Beautiful comments as ever! Love all your comments, and couldn't help but teared up at the end of each comment. The stories in this story are beautiful, and it became even more beautiful with your eloquent way of seeing things, hidden messages in the story. I can't help but have to set time for me to rewatch it in whole again. I love Chocolate so much, and even more so when I have read all insights from you as well as from other Chocolate lovers.

nicely put. as someone who does not watch a lot of dramas (whether asian or american), am glad to have stumbled on this one. and as i followed each episode, i read more on the actors, writer, and director because i was impressed. which led me to comments - some so eloquently put such as yours, some good comments and some not so good. understandable, because just as you said, of which i couldn't agree more, it is not for everybody. it does not make one swoon every other scene, no cliff hangers, and ironic enough, for a drama that dealt with everyone's certainty (death), it has a lot of loose ends. in short, it depicted life. and as such, it allowed me as a viewer, to relate without necessarily having had the same experience(s). with almost each episode, i recognize my own flaws, frailties, and struggles. and my own joys, triumphs, and aspirations, albeit not the same as that of the characters. the almost simplistic, but not really, story lines, and with what seems to be underwhelming, but actually natural depiction of characters, this drama gave a viewer like me enough room to interpret, empathize, and reflect. and as such, the sadness, joy, tears, and catharsis that follows, all became my own. this is a drama i will probably never forget .... and to think that i hardly eat chocolate .... sorry, cannot resist to end on that note :-) :-) :-)

Well done @teriyaki and @Sailorjumun for all your in depth recaps and insightful comments. Kudos to @sunset125 for your elaborate ramblings. All of you did a fantastic job in enlightening and bringing to life the different facets of 'Chocolate'. This Kdrama is definitely one of a kind as it's not one of the run of the mill Kdrama that we usually watched. It's interesting and as at the conclusion of episode 16, these phase aptly sums it up 'The value of one's life is determined by how much love one gives, not by how much love one receives' - Epictetus

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