Our Blues · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 9 April 2022
S1E1 Episode 1
THE MOMENT The Jeju fish market establishing sequence - a burst of physical, working-class life that signals the drama's distance from standard K-drama settings.
The opener introduces several story threads simultaneously, establishing the Jeju marketplace world and its dense web of longstanding relationships. Rather than prioritising a single lead, it places all its ensemble characters on equal footing from the first scene.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
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Our Blues Season 1 Episode 1 aired April 9, 2022 on tvN as the premiere of a 20-episode anthology that peaked at 14.597% nationwide cable viewership, placing it among the highest-rated dramas in Korean cable history. IMDb audiences scored the series 8.6; Rotten Tomatoes placed it at 85 percent. Writer Noh Hee-kyung's return to television after Live (2018) and Kim Woo-bin's first television appearance after a six-year health hiatus both contributed to the premiere's scale of expectation. The opener establishes the show's structural commitment from the first scene: rather than a single lead or central couple, it drops the audience into a Jeju Island fish market where multiple character orbits intersect with the density of a place where everyone has longstanding history with everyone else. The physical, working-class specificity of the Jeju setting announces a drama with different geography than most tvN productions.