(Contains spoilers) Jung Hae-in and Jung So-min starrer 'Love Next Door' on Netflix starts out all guns blazing, but then quickly lost steam with the addition of old lovers, old illness (the big C), and old issues - mostly between the parents of the lead couple. Perhaps the ambition of the show was too great to be contained in one series. For, the Korean romance drama 'Love Next Door' which begins as a show about two childhood friends (Jung Hae-in as Choi Seung-ho and Jung So-min as Bae Seok-ryoo) falling in love with each other, then becomes a show about a girl who overcomes stomach cancer and leaves her job and fiancé in the US to return home and find her true vocation.
Perhaps the show makers were trying too hard to evoke memories of Jung Hae-in in 'Something in the Rain'. (Sadly, they are only able to evoke echoes of the nervous Joon-hee who didn't know what to do with his hands when his girlfriend got hurt in a road accident in that series.) Some of the scoring sounds a bit like the hugely successful music of 'Something in the Rain / Pretty Noona Who Buys Me Food', too. But 'Love Next Door' starts to come off the rails as early as episodes 3 and 4 when the two leads' exes make an appearance.
Seo Ji-hye as Jang Tae-Hui, Seung-ho's passionate ex-girlfriend, and Han Joon-woo as Seok-ryoo's former fiancé Han Joon-woo are mostly wasted in these bit parts. Their main role in the series seems to be to precipitate the lead couple's feelings for each other, and to give us a tiny glimpse into their past lives - presumably to show that they have/had lives outside of this relationship, too. Noble as this may seem, it's a shallow attempt to create fuller lives and only serves to distract from the actual loves next door.
Why loves, plural? Because the show also trains a light on the stories and aspirations of the lead couples' parents, their friends and a second lead couple - Jeong Mo-eum (Kim Ji-eun) and Kang Dan-ho (Yoon Ji-on). Of course, it is not uncommon in Korean romances to have two parallel love stories. Think 'Business Proposal', 'Nevertheless' or even 'Reply 1988'. The dual love stories are at once foils for each other as well as reinforcement. As if to underline that whatever their trajectory may be, at least on TV/OTT/big screen, love stories will find their way to a happy ending. In 'Love Next Door', Mo-eum and Dan-ho are given a fun story of attraction, admiration and a few small hurdles - but this too devolves and eventually ends in cringey proposals with cringier props - don't miss the strange white shirt with Yoon Ji-on's likeness embroidered on one shoulder and a massive heart on another.
The series returns to its original path briefly between episodes 10 and 12, with Bae Seok-ryoo proclaiming that even "comic books are no fun when Choisseung isn't around" and marking the couple's awkward transition from being lifelong friends to lovers with believable nervousness. But it's mostly undone with prolonged (and somewhat confusing) detours, unwieldly sequences and a postponed wedding in the finale which aired on October 6, 2024.
In Choi Seung-ho, Jung Hae-in almost gave us another boy next door to love
In 'Something in the Rain', Jung Hae-in played the dependable younger man Seo Joon-hee. In 'Snowdrop', he was the North Korean secret agent that Young-roo (Kim Jisoo of Blackpink) fell in love with. In 'One Spring Night', he played the quiet chemist and single father Yoo Ji-hoo whom Lee Jung-in (Han Ji-min) could not resist. In 'Tune in for Love', he played a troubled youth who finds love over the radio... Jung Hae-in has played the romantic lead in nearly half of the 25 Korean dramas and movies he's acted in so far. His latest, 'Love Next Door' sees him playing Choi Seung-ho, a swimmer turned architect who has secretly been in love with his neighbour and best friend Bae Seok-ryoo (Jung So-min) for decades.
If Jung Hae-in is turning into a hit romantic lead at a time when even the rom-com space is littered with misses ('Romance in the House', which started a week before 'Love Next Door', is a case in point), it seems to be on the back of picking mostly good scripts, with a clear purpose, story and characterisation. To be fair, as with 'Something in the Rain' (2018), in 'Love Next Door' Jung Hae-in's character has a backstory. We also see him in the larger context of his home, and at work. His relationship with Seok-ryoo, too, is etched out and layered till we see why they are made for each other.
Where the show loses the plot, is in overcomplicating the lead story with the addition of too many elements and people. To make things worse, the show doesn't actually engage with any of these complications for more than a few minutes. Take the moms, for example. At one point in the show, Seung-ho's mom fears she has dementia... she doesn't. She's stressed. This breakdown hastens a resolution of tensions at their home - all within the space of an episode where other things are also happening! Or Mo-eum's family unit. We only ever see her with her mother Do Jae-sook (Kim Geum-soon), even in flashbacks. But suddenly in one sequence, there's reference to Mo-eum's sisters! It's too confusing to keep track of how many people and how many backstories could be important here.
Love Next Door plot
Early in the show, Seok-ryoo had returned to South Korea from the US. Faced with workplace harassment and a fiancé who couldn't come to terms with her depression, she'd quit her job and broken her engagement. Seung-ho, a young but feted architect, was struggling to stick to his morals and still keep his business afloat. Seung-ho and Seok-ryoo had history, and they found themselves reverting to old - sometimes childish - behaviours when they met again (those who loved 'Something in the Rain' might see some resonance here).
There's another love story in 'Love Next Door': Seung-ho and Seok-ryoo's childhood friend Jeong Mo-eum (Kim Ji-eun) falls for a new neighbour - reporter and single dad, Kang Dan-ho (Yoon Ji-on). Dan-ho and Mo-eum's skirmishes over silly things like lollipops in their favourite flavour (durian fruit), their gradually growing admiration and love for each other could have been rom-com gold even within a series that becomes more complicated by the minute, but this too disintegrates into cringe in the finale episode.
One more crucial detail: The three friends - Seung-ho, Seok-ryoo and Mo-eum - have another thing in common. Their moms are highschool friends who have somehow lived in the same neighbourhood for decades. At the end, though, it remains unclear if this was supposed to have a bearing beyond introducing these key characters to each other as children. Having said that, this detail was important enough to give the show its pre-production working title of 'Mom's Friend's Son' - yes, it's quite a mouthful.
Love Next Door director and writer
'Love Next Door' director Yoo Je-won had previously made dramas like Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha (2021) and Crash Course in Romance (2023). Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is the story of a former stockbroker who returns to his coastal town deflated and without explanation, till a city dentist is forced to move into town and a romance blooms. Crash Course is about a celebrated math tutor who falls in love with a former athlete turned food-business owner. In 'Love Next Door', Yoo Je-won again gave us a glimpse into the lives of high-achievers and the pressures on Asian kids to outperform everyone else. The emphasis here, though, was on what comes after one has peaked - how you reimagine and rebuild your life. In episode 3, for example, Seung-ho and Seok-ryoo have a heart-to-heart about whether they would go back to their original jobs and lives if they had the chance - they both conclude they wouldn't.
Writer Shin Ha-eun had worked with director Yoo Je-won before, on 'Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha'. In 'Love Next Door', she seems to have tried to give us a new take on an old trope - kids who grow up together and later realize that they want to be more than friends.
Love Next Door performances
Shin Ha-eun's writing for this series felt effortless initially, even as she built backstories for each character. We understood Seok-ryoo's ambition and craziness, Seung-ho's attraction to her, and Mo-eum and Dan-ho's compulsion to do good. That is, until it became too much. Plot points kept getting added: shops closing, a trip to Antarctica, a postponed wedding, a renewal of wedding vows, free repairs of a poor woman's home, turning down a business investment, and then there's Seok-ryoo's brother's story of becoming more responsible and coming to terms with the fact that not everyone can be special... it goes on.
The women here have more interesting trajectories. Jung So-min is excellent as the brilliant but jobless 33-year-old engaging with what she wants to do in life for the time ever. Kim Ji-eun as Jung Mo-eum is given enough to chew on as a loyal friend, devoted paramedic and a woman who knows what she likes - whether it's in flavoured drinks or in men. There's a whole host of older women in the show, too: Park Ji-young, Jang Young-nam and Kim Geum-soon are great as the moms and highschool friends. Their lives and desires come through in tiny relatable details like Seok-ryoo finding a drawer-full of unused cosmetics she sent her mom from the US over the years. But as with most things in this show, it compounds and grows till it's all lost in too many details.
Love Next Door trailer
If you're not already a Korean drama viewer or fan of romantic comedies, this is probably not the show that will turn you into an avid follower of either. Watch this trailer for a snapshot:
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