Netflix’s new South Korean drama You And Everything Else centers on a fraught friendship that stretches over 30 years and reaches a new, wrenching phase when one of the women reveals she is terminally ill and asks her former best friend to help end her life.
The series opens in the present with playwright and screenwriter Ryu Eun-jung (Kim Go-eun) discovering that former friend Cheon Sang-yeon (Park Ji-hyun), now a celebrated film producer and head of Swallow Pictures, has publicly thanked Eun-jung as her biggest influence. Eun-jung, who long ago “cut ties” with Sang-yeon, receives a surprise call from Sang-yeon in which the producer discloses she is dying of cancer and asks Eun-jung to accompany her when she decides it is time to die.
The narrative moves between the present and the past to show how the women’s relationship formed and frayed. Episode one traces their rivalry back to fourth grade in 1992, when Sang-yeon, a high-achieving transfer student whose grandfather is a government minister, becomes class president and disciplines Eun-jung by smacking her hand with a stick. The two spar again the following year when Eun-jung impulsively hurls a dodgeball at Sang-yeon. The flashbacks reveal that Sang-yeon is the daughter of Eun-jung’s favorite teacher, Yoon Hyun-sook (Seo Jung-yeon), and introduce Sang-yeon’s older brother Sang-hak (Moon Woo-jin), who figures as Eun-jung’s first love.
In the present-day storyline Eun-jung’s colleague Choi Kyung (Joo Min-kyung) prods her to write about the old conflict, but Eun-jung has already drafted a different project that revisits their shared history. The show stages the intersection of past hurts and present obligations, as the two women confront class differences — Sang-yeon grew up comfortably while Eun-jung was raised in tighter circumstances — and unresolved feelings that persisted despite periods of estrangement.
Critics note tonal echoes of earlier works about friendship and mortality. Decider reviewer Joel Keller compared elements of You And Everything Else to the 2019 film Paddleton for its focus on friends handling a terminal diagnosis, and also to television dramas such as A Million Little Things in its treatment of long-term relationships tested by crisis. Keller found the first episode emotionally affecting and recommended streaming the series.
The show leans on its ensemble performances to negotiate shifts in time and mood. Kim Go-eun’s Eun-jung is introduced as a guarded, working writer; Park Ji-hyun’s Sang-yeon is positioned as a confident industry figure with a private, urgent need. Reviewers have singled out Seo Jung-yeon as a standout in the role of Yoon Hyun-sook, whose wisdom and empathy help anchor the retrospective scenes.
Creators use the flashbacks not only to dramatize incidents of childhood antagonism but to underline how loyalties and resentments can carry through adulthood. The first episode sets up several complications that the season appears poised to explore: the ethics of honoring a friend’s end-of-life wishes, the consequences of past betrayals, and how differing family backgrounds shape choices in critical moments.
The series contains no explicit sex or nudity in its opening episode and frames its material as a character-driven study rather than a sensationalist treatment of assisted death. The storytelling choice to alternate timelines foregrounds the long view of a relationship that has repeatedly ruptured and reformed, allowing the present crisis to be read in light of decades of shared history.
You And Everything Else is presented as a multi-episode arc that will follow the protagonists as they negotiate Sang-yeon’s final months and the practical and moral questions she raises. Decider’s appraisal concluded with a clear recommendation to stream the series, describing it as an emotionally affecting portrait of friendship that gains new urgency when confronted with mortality.