Here at the end of Love Next Door, I’m revisiting a question from early on. These Reports frequently reference back to the small clutch of K-dramas I’ve seen, and a few get more attention than others: Twenty-Five Twenty-One, of course, while I almost never mention Madam Antoine, despite really liking it. Both Doona! and Love is for Suckers come up because they had obvious or interesting flaws to measure against. Now I’m wondering how often I’ll cite Love Next Door in the future, because it bears almost no distinguishing hallmarks. I think it’s a great show, ultimately, but it’s the K-drama you’d get from the K-drama wishing well. Appealing leads? Check. Beautiful setting? Check. Cozy atmosphere? Romance? Happy ending? Check, check, check. Then you’re standing there, looking at your cup of vanilla ice cream, full of grave self-doubt. … More K-Drama Report: Love Next Door, Part III

Love Next Door kicks off its second half by hitting the Big Red Button. In my experience, a good K-drama will take its time to develop the characters and their conflicts, nurturing these story fundamentals like a gentle gardener, while other K-dramas will decide at some point to lob a grenade in there and blow up all the flowers. Someone will die, or end up in the hospital, or get hit by a fucking car, or a bus. Love is for Suckers kept introducing extreme situations for the characters to suddenly deal with as the climax to existing, unrelated issues. In retrospect, was this a commentary on the sensationalism of reality TV? In Love Next Door, we know that something happened in Seok-ryu’s past; she took a year off from work and broke things off with her fiancé, and perhaps these two things are related. During a taste test of her cooking attended by both Seung-hyo and ex-fiancé Song Hyeon-jun, she collapses, clutching her stomach, and elects for Hyeon-jun to take her to the hospital. … More K-Drama Report: Love Next Door, Part II

“You can never go home again,” according to so many movies and TV shows. Within its first half at least, the K-drama Love Next Door asks the other, rarer question: “But what if you could?” Our heroine is Bae Seok-ryu, a Korean who’s been living and working in the U.S. for the last ten years, homebound after leaving her big tech job and even a fiancé. Her mother Na Mi-sook has a habit of bragging to her friends about Seok-ryu’s grand successes overseas, if only to match her frenemy Seo Hye-sook’s equally aggressive bragging about her son Choi Seung-hyo, an award-winning architect and co-CEO of a new firm. This is the world waiting for our heroine when she lands in Korea, and it’s a world of hurt – literally. Finally breaking the news to her mother, Seok-ryu is beaten, though she expected nothing less. … More K-Drama Report: Love Next Door (2024)