No Gain No Love takes us on a journey of marriage — which we quickly learn is more than a lifetime commitment born out of love. When our leading lady realizes the wedding aisle is her pathway to career advancement and financial benefits, she sets out to find a groom that ticks all the boxes for her contract wedding of the century.
EPISODES 1-2
Right off the bat, we’re introduced to our heroine, career woman SOHN HAE-YOUNG (Shin Mina), who hates suffering losses — from her mother’s love and attention she feels she lost to her foster siblings, to the time and energy she invested in her freeloading and sexually unsatisfying ex-boyfriends. Hae-young is a stickler for fairness who calculates everything based on gains and losses, and whenever the scales tip to loss, the offending party is shown the door.
On the other hand, we have our hero, KIM JI-WOOK (Kim Young-dae), a convenience store part-timer with a strong sense of justice. Aesthetics wise, the drama has set out to uglify him with nerd glasses and extra inches in his hair, and career wise, the man is not at all interested in getting a corporate job. According to Ji-wook, he is “doing something nobody knows about.” Perhaps, he’s a whistleblower living in hiding. Or an undercover detective. Or a secret member of the Avengers. I mean, the possibilities are endless.
Our hero and heroine have already met before the start of our story, so we don’t get a meet-cute. But who needs a meet-cute when the drama informs us that theirs was a hate at first sight. Delicious! According to Hae-young, Ji-wook hates her without a reason. But since hating her is his loss, Hae-young claims that her continuous patronage of the convenience store is to give him a good reason to hate her. Suuure, Jan, we all need a good excuse to execute the enemies to lovers trope.
Speaking of tropes, it would seem that our drama has decided on the sensible approach of creating two separate love lines instead of a needless love triangle. How fortunate for us. Championing the secondary arc is webnovel writer NAM JA-YEON (Han Ji-Hyun) who’s also Hae-young’s foster sister and housemate. Ja-yeon doesn’t have much experience in dating. But who needs experience to write smutty romance stories, right? Her readers might call her out on the unrealistic scenarios in her novel, but at least she’s got an avid fan whose positive comments outweigh the negatives for her.
As it turns out, Ja-yeon’s biggest fan is the mother of the other champion of our secondary love story, BOK GYU-HYUN (Lee Sang-yi). Gyu-hyun’s mom wears the pants at home, and I loved her the second I saw her blushing at spicy chapters in the novel. She’s just like me for real. The only difference is that Mom is a chaebol wife and I am not. *Sighs in broke* Towards the end of the week, Mom invests in the adaptation of Ja-yeon’s novel into an audio drama, and their first meeting was all shades of cute fangirling. I honestly can’t wait for more interactions between these two.
The Bok family owns Ggulbi Education — which is the company where Hae-young works. But being first place in employment desirability and brand reputation in the industry is not important to Chairman Bok because the company is second place revenue-wise. Chairman Bok berates CEO Gyu-hyun as an “incompetent pretender who can never be the best,” and he gives his son an ultimatum: pull the company up to number one in sales within a year, or get married. You know, since dialing 1-800-ARRANGED-MARRIAGE is the one-stop solution to uplifting businesses, threatening children, and basically everything else in dramaland. Tsk.
Back to losses and gains, Ggulbi provides more benefits for married employees than singles — ranging from wedding support, extra vacation days, child support, salary raises, promotion and so on. *Dusts CV and then remembers that I’m single* Naturally, Hae-young finds this practice unfair, and to pile on her annoyance, her two-timing ex, AHN WOO-JAE (Go Wook) says he will only pay back the congratulatory money she spent at his wedding at her own wedding. Of course, he has to annoyingly add that he doubts she will ever get married since she’s so calculating. Tsk.
As part of Operation Become Number One, Gyu-hyun launches an in-house contest at Ggulbi. The winner will be on the line for a fast-track promotion, and be put on the TF team — directly supervised by Gyu-hyun — to implement the winning idea. Since this is a shot at promotion without the hassle of marriage, Hae-young indicates her interest in the contest. But she soon learns that her chances at winning are slim because the company does not recruit single women for teams under the CEO’s direct supervision. Okay, what in the relationship status discrimination is even going on in this company?
According to the rumors, the anti-single women rule was established under Madam Fangirl’s orders because Chairman Fork (Chairman Bok) cheated on her in the past. The rule now applies to mama’s boy, Fork-gyu (Bok Gyu-hyun) — who in addition is only allowed to have male secretaries. Sigh. Not innocent single ladies having to suffer for the chairman’s indiscretion. This is not very demure of Madam Fangirl.
Hae-young applies for the contest anyway, but her proposal is 90% identical to Woo-jae’s. Like it’s not enough to plagiarize an idea she shared with him while they dated, Woo-jae pleads with Hae-young to withdraw her proposal — since she “won’t get selected for being single” — and when pleading doesn’t work, he threatens to paint her as the bitter ex who stole “his” idea. The nerve of him! This is the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back, and Hae-young announces that she is getting married in a month. It’s clear that no one marries for love these days, but is Hae-young’s groom even aware that he has proposed and they are getting married? Heck, does he even exist? Lol.
Are your bosses’ “vigorous crotch” and “insecure ass” standing in the way of your promotion? Or is your ex threatening to cause a scandal after stealing your idea? You may be entitled to
compensationa contract marriage. Contact our drama’s male lead today to book a groom.
Unfortunately, Mr. Male Lead is not aware the drama has pimped him out, so when Hae-young asks him to be her groom, she gets a resounding no! I mean, what was she expecting? Lol.
As to why Hae-young chose Ji-wook as a potential groom, he fits into her preference for an “average looking and forgettable face.” *Snorts in Kim Young-dae* He also doesn’t have a proper job, so no one in her corporate world knows him enough to poke holes into their love story and marriage. And as to why Ji-wook turned down the offer, in the six (!) years since he has been a part-timer at the store, he has been witness to Hae-young’s frustrated outbursts at her exes, and he finds her off-putting.
Still groomless, Hae-young forges ahead with her fake wedding plans. Getting congratulatory money and a promotion aside, Hae-young wants to get married before her mom — who is currently in a nursing home — completely gives in to dementia. Ji-wook overhears this conversation — because the male lead always has to be in the vicinity to overhear coincidental conversations. Next thing you know, he is pulling a swoon-worthy move under an umbrella and asking if Hae-young’s heart is racing. Yes No, it is not.
As the week comes to an end, Ji-wook agrees to be Hae-young’s fake groom. Cue: their dress fitting and his transformation from a nerdy part-timer to a stud in a tux. Oh my! Somebody call 911, there has been a violation of the contract. What part of “average looking and forgettable” does this groom not understand?! Okay, the bride and groom haven’t signed a contract yet, but that’s not the point. The point is, this fake wedding has veered off its course already, and they haven’t even walked down the aisle! Hehe.
No Gain No Love might be a trope fest, but it is off to a good start. The drama seems a little self aware of its nature, and I chuckled whenever Ja-yeon brought up the ongoing romance clichés and tropes. At first glance, Hae-young comes off as cold and calculating, but the drama gives plenty of room for us to see that there’s more to her. For instance, she broke up with Woo-jae after he drunkenly brought up the subject of getting someone else to look after her mom. But it wasn’t necessarily because she was pissed off at his thoughtlessness, she just didn’t want to burden him.
Hae-young would rather select a hideous wedding dress and have everyone’s eyes on her — because the more the wedding guests focus on her, the less they focus on the groom and what he looks like. That way, her very single groom can avoid the “married man” tag in public. Alas, Hae-young’s plan is dead on arrival because Mr. Groom is a stunner. But it is the thought that counts, and her thoughtfulness makes Ji-wook to see her in a new light.
It’s not everyday we see foster family representation in dramas, so I found this angle interesting. Hae-young’s resentment for her foster siblings has waned over the years, but it still manages to slip out in conversation. This may or may not cause a rift between them as we go on, but the drama points out that despite what Hae-young says, she does consider them as family. She might have kept Mom’s condition away from her other sister, CHA HEE-SUNG (Joo Min-kyung), but she put Hee-sung down as a second emergency contact at the nursing home because “You’re also mom’s daughter.” It’s action over words when it comes to Hae-young and her sisters, and I think her sisters will be key to helping her reconnect and mend her relationship with Mom.
As for Ji-wook, I’m a little bored with the recent trend of male leads with secret backstories and mysterious motivations, so I don’t really care about why he’s living in goshiwon or why he has remained as a part-timer for six years. But from the little we know of his backstory, it makes sense as to why he’s empathetic towards Hae-young. He can relate to having a parent in a nursing home because his terminally ill grandmother also passed away in a nursing home. It is alluded that Grandma’s health issue was caused by smoking, as such Ji-wook is not a fan of cigarettes — neither does he want to marry a girl who smokes. But after overhearing Woo-jae bring up her mom’s caretaking, he offered Hae-young a stick because he knows she smokes. And he sat beside her in the silence even though he doesn’t like the smell of cigarettes. Life is full of ironies, right?
Ji-wook’s one condition to be a fake groom is for Hae-young to foster his beloved stray cat for a week. The foster system Hae-young never liked growing up has come to bite her in the ass. But things we do for love, right? Okay, she doesn’t love Ji-wook yet. But look how flustered she was at the wedding dress shop and under the umbrella! By the way, the umbrella thingy was Ji-wook’s test to see if Hae-young was allergic to cat hair because he’s always around cats. I mean, the guy could just have asked, but how else will we know we’re watching a K-drama? Pfft.