This far in I'm honestly a little surprised at how much I don't like most of the characters in "Drinking Alone". To write that I dislike them is probably a little harsh, but all the same, I can't come up with any good reason for Jeong-seok and Han-na to be together. Shoot, I can't think of any good reason for Jeong-seok to be together with anyone. Does he seriously need to obsess about quality every waking moment? That was never a charming personality trait in the first place, and now it's just plain annoying.

But Han-na has similar issues. While Jeong-seok is being a bit of a jerk in giving Han-na the cold shoulder, at least he's being professional. Dating anyone in an office environment is a bad idea, but Han-na's relative social rank compared to him is low enough to easily qualify as sexual harassment. Han-na, by contrast, continuously fails the most basic functions of her job. The borderline celebrity nature of the work is probably the only reason Han-na hasn't just been fired.

Even Jin-i is showing herself to be an increasingly static character. The extent to which Jin-i is desperate to escape her job, even if it involves falling on the mercy of a boyfriend who really doesn't seem all that into her, is legitimately fairly worrying, and Han-na is enabling a lot of this behavior by refusing to comment on it while still accompanying Jin-i for drinks. Friends do need to communicate with each other after all.

And curiously enough it's this saving grace that allows me to not hate Gi-beom this episode even as he's the most explicit jerk. Because at least Gi-beom is capable of communicating his feelings, however negative or misdirected they may be. Unfortunately this episode suffers in general from having very little focus on the students. Which is part of the point- Gi-beom is annoyed because he has no idea what's going on with Myeong and Chae-yeon and they're not telling him.

All the same the teachers really fail to pick up the slack. The closest we get to profundity is Jin-woong's reasonably sad storyline, although even that is awkwardly disconnected when taken in concert with Han-na's actions. Jin-woong is focused on work is his main fault. While there is a definite overriding sense in "Drinking Alone" that work is not and should not be everything, so far the drama has not really foreshadowed any plausible alternatives.

Source:HanCinema