With Eyes East

Episodes 1-5

Another K-drama, another shock — to me and my imagination so constrained by the conventions of story. In countless instances before, I’ve shrieked, “You can’t do that!” upon narrative shortcuts like coincidence or melodrama. Here, Love is for Suckers plays out for four episodes and only begins on the fifth — and it’s brilliant. Clued in by a flash-forward cold open, we know that this will be about a romance between the producer of a Bachelor-style reality show and one of the contestants. But before that reality show even begins filming, we watch entire relationships come together and fall apart. Jobs are lost. There are medical emergencies. We learn about pasts enough for people from those pasts to reemerge. It may just be table-setting, but it feels like an entire show — with the commensurate emotional weight.

It leaves me in a strange place, where the prospect of payoffs is so scintillating with such a latticework of setup, but the delayed realization of the premise also feels like a pivot. It would be like if we were enjoying a New York-based buddy cop movie for half an hour and then they hear that the perp has turned up in Jurassic Park. Like, okay, that sounds good, too, but… warn me next time? And Love is for Suckers did, in the very beginning. It just then took the longest detour, at the only possible moment it could have.

In this case, our male and female leads, Park Jae-hoon and Goo Yeo-reum, were gradually moving toward one another, sorting out the red herrings and triangles, well within reach of cathartic resolution. And suddenly, a new complication — the reality show, of which we were forewarned. Instead of getting together with Yeo-reum, Jae-hoon will now participate in this “Kingdom of Love” show, and wouldn’t you know it, the final female contestant introduced is that sweet girl he dumped not days ago! As a side note, I worried that that character would be bitter, because I really liked how nice she was. I fucking love when The Other Woman is nice; see: Search: WWW, Doona!. It’s so heartbreaking.

And The Other Guy, too! What a rollercoaster! Yes, he’s jealous and he messes up a lot (and he’s a stick-in-the-mud compared to Jae-hoon), but I always understand why he does what he does. For reference, there’s so much setup in the first four episodes that this Other Guy shows up in Yeo-reum’s life and then another woman shows up in his life!

It took me more than a year to finally sit down and watch this show, and I know that because I wrote about it in 2022. It was the new Lee Da-hee K-drama, and it really feels like someone watched Search: WWW and said, “Let’s do one with her as the main character.” While not as lush, Love is for Suckers shares visual touchstones and musical accents, and Da-hee’s character isn’t as violent — and when subordinated in a professional environment, doesn’t become a yeodongsaeng — but she’s just as silly, and very entertaining. All those anxieties I didn’t have about her leading a K-drama have been swept away like the last remnants of the Old Republic. I mean, she’s fantastic. She’s the reason I’m watching.

But holy shit, dude, this guy is hot as hell.

I didn’t really know who Choi Si-won was before Love is for Suckers (I know, I’m an idiot), but the scantest research tells me he was a member of Super Junior, which I only know as a contemporary of SNSD and because if you like hallyu, you’ve seen Heechul before. I wouldn’t have guessed Si-won was an idol because he’s so natural as an actor. Here, he’s nailing all the genre hallmarks, especially the sad smile. Oh, the sad smile! Jae-hoon expresses himself as a goofball, not so much as a defense mechanism but because nothing really matters. Something happened in his life to darken him, but he’s still compassionate inside. And what a change of pace. Usually, these male leads are the asshole with the heart of gold, but this time, he’s kind from the beginning.

Perhaps that’s because this is a romance between adults, with special attention paid to their age — over 35! — but it could also be that they’re not meeting for the first time when the story begins. They have a lot of backstory together, and that’s parceled out in flashback glimpses throughout, to compelling effect. It isn’t narratively linear but purposeful; we get a sense for how something works and then a flashback will contradict it — a subversion of expectations for the sake of discovery.

After the flash-forward cold open, we’re introduced to Yeo-reum and Jae-hoon’s surface-level dynamic, that they live basically together — he’s upstairs, she’s downstairs in a two-unit building — and she’s kind of needy. She’s texting him about bringing home Soju and chicken feet, and isn’t even there to receive it because a date shows up. A one-sided relationship? Well, as time goes on, we see more of their friendship, and it feels lived-in because it moves effortlessly from annoyance to amusement to being heartfelt and back. They’ve shared all of these emotions before.

In the beginning of the fourth episode, we see the aftermath of that fateful something which befell Jae-hoon (I’m guessing he killed a patient as a neurosurgeon, and that’s why he’s a half-hearted cosmetic surgeon now). He shut himself inside and let his hair grow out (can’t have a K-drama without silly wigs). Yeo-reum bangs on his door and tries, over a period of time, to convince him to move into the unit above her. After all, their weird friends live nearby! Finally, he relents, and she proceeds to gradually rejuvenate him – get him outside, do things together. And in a brief flash, the hint of a smile shows on his face.

If it initially appears that he’s “in the friend zone,” running around doing errands, it’s probably because he feels like he owes her his life. Not that I think one would need to be particularly persuaded to want to run around doing errands for Lee Da-hee, but the thought did occur to my objective brain. And I know, especially lately, I’ve taken a hard stance against flashbacks, but only in the context of action movies. K-dramas, like anime shows and western television, tend to have a varied pace, and so breaking the forward momentum doesn’t really feel like a break.

When I was younger, I used to wonder about why some stories were told non-chronologically. Sure, I’d understood formalistic exercises like Memento (or that episode of Seinfeld), but what’s behind that decision? Beloved, which we read in high school, was a good example, going back and forth in time and in and out of character headspace. I was actually bothered because suddenly, a story told from beginning to end seemed like the arbitrary, thoughtless choice. Nonlinear storytelling puts the control in the hands of the author, as they decide when to make reveals, when to do anything.

Well, in the years since, I have read and seen great works of art told in a linear fashion and consequently, have failed to resolve the issue. So I’ll just say that so far, Love is for Suckers is another demonstration of the author’s power, and one quite a bit less stressful than Beloved. For God’s sake. I may have glanced at some reviews on Viki, so I’m anticipating it’ll peter out toward the end, but so rarely have I witnessed a K-drama which knew how to end. The best you can hope for is they just stop all of a sudden. We’ll see.

For coverage of episodes 6-12, continue on to Part II