Our childhood-friends-to-lovers tale is here, and Love Next Door comes banging in its first week with all the romance tropes you ever wanted, a messy and wonderfully relatable heroine, and a leading man that I’ll surely be dreaming about tonight.
EPISODES 1-2
My biggest fear going into Love Next Door was that it would lean too far into being charming and come off as a little forced (*waves at Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha*). Well, the first episode did struggle with that a bit, but happily the drama seems to find its footing by the end of Episode 2, and there’s enough pathos to dilute any feelings of the script being overwritten (well, it still might be, but we’ll see how that goes).
We open our drama not with our hero or our heroine, but with their mothers — in fact a whole crew of farting, bragging, hiking ajummas — and ngl this was not my favorite. But, the mothers play a central role in this drama, and how they relate to each other, and to their children, is part of the meat of the story we’ll dig into later. In the meantime, this introduction shows us how our main two moms are in a brag war over their kids: the daughter who works at a huge company in the U.S. — and no big deal, here are her wedding invites — and the son who’s a successful architect and general beacon of goodness (and hotness, but we’ll get to that later).
When we finally meet our heroine BAE SEOK-RYU (Jung So-min), she’s turned up back in Seoul unannounced. From the way she’s sitting on her suitcase with her chunky-heeled shoes, and the way she nightmares her way back home on the plane, we can tell this wild child has a story to tell, and that coming home is a bit… complicated.
Seok-ryu’s bestie — spunky paramedic JUNG MO-EUM (Kim Ji-eun in her most natural role yet) — comes to pick her up, but what becomes quickly apparent is that no one knows she’s back. And Seok-ryu literally spends the day ducking her family in the neighborhood — whether that’s hiding from her little brother BAE DONG-JIN (Lee Seung-hyub) behind a table, or literally under an empty box to hide from her parents.
That empty box just so happens to be in front of the newly-built office of architect CHOI SEUNG-HYO (Jung Hae-in). Pre-box hiding, Seok-ryu is checking out the new building when she comes face to face with Seung-hyo. The balloons she was holding drop from her grip and fly away as the two have a re-meet-cute. Seriously, it’s like time stops for a beat, and it’s the drama’s first (wonderful, glorious) hint that there’s something between these characters. But just as soon as we get to slurp that wonderful moment up, it disappears. Seok-ryu is at his throat, and as we see them interact — with the help of some childhood flashbacks, too — we see that our wild child has always mishandled him.
The contrast between these two characters is what makes it so much fun. They could never actually clash, like in an opposites-attract story, because they understand each other too much and know each other too well — but still, there’s a fun mess between them that the drama (rightly) leans on heavily.
Seung-hyo, for instance, seems like a steady man who’s deeply passionate about what he does, but also not pompous about his success. When we first meet him, he’s late for an award ceremony because he’s having a meaningful conversation about life and death with a funeral director (yay, Lee Bong-ryun cameo!), talking about a memorial space he’ll be designing. Similarly, at the award ceremony, he runs on and off the stage, not really thinking of himself at all, and barely noticing that the actress Roh Yoon-seo (cameoing as herself, hah!) keeps smiling at him.
If Seung-hyo is composed, secure, and keeps a lid on his struggles (after all, he is the perfect “mom’s friend’s son” of our drama’s Korean title), Seok-ryu is the exact opposite. Girl is basically a haphazard, heart-on-sleeve mess — and you can’t help but love her. This role was practically written for Jung So-min, who’s so great at balancing a wacky character with moments that make you see right inside of her and want to squeeze her. And that’s how I pretty much felt about Seok-ryu as we spend our first episode and a half following her and her emotional mayhem around.
At first, she avoids her family until she can’t put it off anymore. Padding herself up to protect herself from her mother’s incoming rage, Seok-ryu stands in front of her front door and asks Seung-hyo to stay with her — she’s joking but also desperate. Seung-hyo won’t do it until she answers what going on that she’s so afraid to face her mom, and when she finally shouts that she called off her wedding, who has walked up behind them but Mom (Park Ji-young), Dad (Jo Han-chul), and Seung-hyo’s mom (Jang Young-nam). Oh and his dad (Lee Seung-joon). And Seok-ryu’s brother Dong-jin. Basically everyone.
What unfolds is a crazy scene involving all of these characters, but primarily Seok-ryu trying to avoid getting hit by her mother and letting Seung-hyo take as many of the punches as possible. This is the first big ensemble scene of the drama, but there are other scenes that follow (like a later breakfast scene) where there are so many characters talking and moving and throwing jabs that it’s actually impressive to watch. It’s the same with this Seok-ryu and mom meetup, except I genuinely dislike the constant portrayal of K-drama moms as hardasses that will beat you up and care more about how your life sounds to her friends than the actual wellbeing of her children.
Well, the drama rides this trope for quite a while, because imagine Mom’s horror when she hears that in addition to calling off her wedding, Seok-ryu has also quit her job. Lest we forget, Seok-ryu is the amazingly successful daughter with a job in the U.S. at a famous company and a wedding in a month. But not anymore.
Seok-ryu leads everyone to believe that she it because she was bored at work, and called off her marriage because she cheated on her fiancé (cue more mom fury), but Seok-ryu is so flippant that it’s clear (at least to us) that she’s actually broken. Still, the drama makes us follow her and her lies around for the entire first episode and a half until we see in little flashes that the opposite is true. She was laid off from her job and humiliated. And she was the one who caught her fiancé cheating on her (at a trashy American pool party, naturally). In short, Seok-ryu came home for no other reason than that she’s hit rock bottom and has no place else to go.
Eventually, the fighting and silent treatment between Mom and Seok-ryu reaches a climax, and their honest fight finally breaks the tension between them. I loved the drama for doing this, and for breaking the stereotypes a bit by showing us Mom’s insecurity around her friends in a way that’s full of pathos. We might not agree with the pressure she’s put on her daughter, but we see that it’s out of embarrassment and compensation for her own “mediocre” life — and Seok-ryu, when she snaps, points this out to her mom.
Most of the pressure Seok-ryu puts herself under — and has been crushed under — is her mom’s expectations. When Mom realizes this, she finally sympathizes with her daughter, and instead of ignoring her and trying to ship her back to the U.S., has Seung-hyo redo her room and makes her special food. I’m sure we have more ground to cover between these women, but I love the start we’ve taken here, and it will be interesting to see how Mom reacts when she learns the truth of why her daughter is home. *Braces self*
Seok-ryu and her relationship with her mom is central, but so is her relationship with Seung-hyo. Because their families are so close, and all their friends are intertwined, and they’re all in the same neighborhood, they run into each other all the time. And the more I watched their dynamic and banter, the more I enjoyed it. It’s not exactly out of Trope Park yet, but our actors bring a sincerity to their performances that adds layers where layers are needed.
At first, Seok-ryu’s roughness towards Seung-hyo is really off putting, but the more we see into her — and their past — the more it’s clear she’s holding onto her role as crazy rough-housing girl because she doesn’t know how else to be around him. The script has a nice way of showing us two opposing points: that these two are comfortable and over-familiar around each other — and that there’s also an underlying tension of shallowly-buried attraction between then that glimmers every now and then. It’s super fun to watch this play out, the actors portray it brilliantly, and I hope the drama rides this wave for all its worth.
Two great scenes exemplify this: the rain scene where Seok-ryu is upset over her fight with her mom and Seung-hyo sits on the jungle gym with her and an umbrella, and the ending scene of Episode 2, where we see the two staring at each other from across their bedroom windows, their geographical closeness taking on all kinds of new meaning.
Because Seok-ryu is a complicated heroine whose perfectionism toward herself keeps her crazy walls up, it’s going to be an interesting journey between these two. While she’s all chaotic neutral (maybe chaotic good?), Seung-hyo is lawful good — he helps a halmeoni with her garbage collection, always turns up when Seok-ryu needs him, and shoulders his responsibility with maturity.
But like Seok-ryu, he’s got layers too, and we see that underneath his calm and sensible exterior (and his antagonized little boy persona), he’s actually deeply fond of Seok-ryu. We see hidden moments or tiny glimmers of this when he smiles over her return to Seoul when he’s alone, or his non-reaction-reaction to her canceled wedding, or the care he took to redecorate her childhood bedroom.
With all the tropes you ever wanted (or didn’t), and the echoes of dramas past (Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha + Welcome to Samdal-ri + Doctor Slump), I think the test for Love Next Door will be if it can do something different, have its own voice, and charm us in a way that’s distinct. At the end of the day, a romance drama is going to be as good as the compellingness between the OTP, and if the first week is any indication, we are in good shape here, because the drama really seems to enjoy the complexity of their interactions as much as I do.