Why Netflix Softened “Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness” — No Spoilers
Have you ever lost confidence in your own worth? Felt the gap between who you think you are and who you actually are — and not known what to do with it? Wanted comfort — and a drama that stays with you long after it ends.
Then watch this one.
This is the kind of drama that makes you hate people a little less.
It deals with heavy material and somehow remains compulsively watchable. Push through the difficult first two episodes, and you’ll find yourself completely absorbed before you notice it happening.
We Are All Trying Here. The Korean title is far more direct: 모두가 자신의 무가치함과 싸우고 있다 — Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness. The gap between the two titles is wide. The Korean title is a diagnosis. The English title is a reassurance. Knowing that difference changes how you watch the drama.
The Problem Is Episodes 1 and 2
You have to get through them. Especially if you struggle with characters who make everything harder for everyone around them.
The protagonist, Hwang Dong-man, is the kind of person you instinctively want to push away. Self-absorbed, oblivious to the effect he has on others, and thoroughly unglamorous. Episodes 1 and 2 lean hard into that discomfort.
That discomfort is intentional.
By episode 3, the writer’s hand becomes visible. The shape of what this drama is actually trying to say comes into focus. The discomfort shifts into something else entirely.
The Writer: Park Hae-young
If you’ve seen My Mister or My Liberation Notes, you already have a sense of what’s coming. Park Hae-young has never once adapted existing source material in her entire career. Every script is original.
Her narratives are built around redemption — not the triumphant kind. This is not Itaewon Class, where the protagonist grinds their way to the top through sheer will. Park Hae-young’s characters don’t win. They endure, and slowly find their way back to breathing. That distinction is everything when it comes to how you watch this drama.
This drama never chases a satisfying revenge or a moment of genuine remorse from anyone who caused harm. That might be the most realistic thing about it.
Four years of silence. The subject she chose to break it with: worthlessness.
The Cast
Koo Kyo-hwan plays Hwang Dong-man — a man twenty years into trying to become a film director, still waiting. Known internationally from D.P. and Parasyte: The Grey, this is his first leading role in a television drama. The unglamorous quality he inhabits here is so convincing it feels less like acting than documentation. It’s impossible not to admire.
Ko Yoon-jung is, honestly, too beautiful for this drama. The moment she appears on screen, something in you asks: what is someone who looks like that doing in a place like this? Her acting answers that question before it fully forms. The immersion is immediate.
Oh Jung-se, Park Hae-jun, Bae Jong-ok. These are actors Korean audiences trust without question. Each one operates at a different register — light, heavy, cold. They are exactly the kind of cast a writer like Park Hae-young attracts. And they raise every scene they’re in.
What This Drama Is Actually About
Worthlessness. Your value is something only you can determine — that’s true. But it’s only when you become someone of value to another person that you can fully feel what that value means. This drama keeps returning to that idea. It is, in the end, a story about redemption and solidarity.
Hwang Dong-man’s wound is simple. Every member of the film industry group of eight friends he started with has debuted. Every one of them moved forward. He alone has stayed in the same place for twenty years. Everyone who started alongside him went somewhere. He is still here. This drama looks directly at that feeling and does not look away.
One of Korean drama’s great strengths is its ability to make unglamorous lives look beautiful. Poverty, shabby circumstances, the grinding texture of failure — rendered here with the quiet dignity of an artist’s life. A protagonist who is not impressive. A person trying to prove their own worth from a place with no visible floor. It may not be exactly our lives — but isn’t some part of it?
Was Twelve Episodes Enough
The only real flaw in this drama is that it’s too short. Anyone who has watched it will agree. This was at minimum a sixteen-episode story.
And yet — within twelve episodes, Park Hae-young said what she came to say. The ending may not feel satisfying in the conventional sense. That is a choice, not a failure. Reality rarely wraps cleanly either.
Basic Info
- Title: We Are All Trying Here (모두가 자신의 무가치함과 싸우고 있다)
- Streaming: Netflix
- Episodes: 12 (complete)
- Writer: Park Hae-young (My Mister, My Liberation Notes)
- Director: Cha Young-hoon
- Cast: Koo Kyo-hwan, Ko Yoon-jung, Oh Jung-se, Park Hae-jun, Kang Mal-geum, Bae Jong-ok
If You’ve Seen Park Hae-young’s Other Work
My Mister → The closest in tone and weight. If that one stayed with you, this one will go deeper.
My Liberation Notes → Quieter and more interior. Watch this after.
Oh Hae-young Again → The lightest of the three. A good entry point if you’re new to Park Hae-young.
Watch We Are All Trying Here first.
Watched it already? The ending goes deeper than it looks.
We Are All Trying Here: Dong-man’s Ending — What the Weather Means
We Are All Trying Here: Eun-a’s Ending — What Her Smile Means
If you’ve already watched this one — which scene made you stop the longest? Leave a comment. I’ll cover it in the next post.
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