A woman attempting to reboot her life returns to Korea and becomes entangled with her childhood friend – with whom she shares a complicated history.
Bae Seok-ryu was living the dream as a successful product manager at a global company in the US. To her family and friends’ surprise, she suddenly quits her job, cancels her engagement with her fiancé and returns to her hometown in Korea. Upon her return, she had to deal with her mother’s wrath for impulsively giving up her dream life – as well as her feelings as she reunites with her childhood best friend, Choi Seung-ho.
One of the highly talked about Netflix series of 2024, “Love Next Door” is a feel-good romantic k-drama about family, love and friendship. I have watched this series not only because Jung Hae-in is one of my favorite actors, but also because I got intrigued with the show’s premise. I also used to work for a multinational tech company before I returned home to fulfill my dream of being self-employed.
GOOD BACKSTORY
I cried a lot in the first few episodes. It seemed like all the buried emotions before leaving my old job rose from their grave. Leaving a job is not easy. But what’s actually harder is failing the expectations of people when they think that a dream job equates to a dream life.
Bae Seok-ryu is her mother’s pride and joy. Her mom would go around the neighborhood bragging about her successful daughter. So imagine her mother’s reaction upon learning that Seok-ryu left everything behind in the US to be unemployed.
GREAT CAST
The drama showed the contrast between two types of parents – one that is present for their children but lacked money and one that’s well-off and can provide but distant. Veteran actors Park Ji-young, Jo Han-chul, Jang Young-nam and Lee Seung-joon portrayed this so well as Seok-ryu and Seung-ho’s parents. Their emotional scenes really hit deep.
The other supporting casts also added vitality to the show with their entertaining dynamic.
Seeing a star-studded cast in one show, one would expect a masterpiece, but despite all that, although the drama started off in good footing, it didn’t last until the end.
Started great but lost its depth along the way
I really felt a strong connection to this drama in the beginning, probably because I can relate to its story, but once that part of the story is over, I feel like it kind of lost its depth.
Seok-ryu’s illness backstory was good, but it was like they decided to cut it short and add some filler scenes instead – like the episode on the parent’s reaction when they found out about Seok-ryu and Seung-ho’s relationship.
As the story progresses, the focus went to Seok-ryu and Seung-ho’s romance. However, it became hard to feel the story or the romance at this point because the lead actors lacked chemistry in my opinion. The second leads even had better chemistry than them. To be honest, the first time I saw them together in the trailers, it looked like they were siblings instead of lovers.
I even read a comment somewhere that comedy may not be Jung Hae-in’s strong suit. I strongly disagree because I’ve seen him in “While You Were Sleeping” and he was really funny and charming there. But in this drama, it kind of look like they were just “acting” without feeling it.
I can’t really pinpoint what’s wrong here. Maybe direction? I know it’s not really the acting since both are good actors. But as a viewer, I just didn’t feel that “connection” or “tension”. It was very different compared to Jung Hae-In’s other onscreen partners.
It also didn’t help that the actor cast as the love rival can’t really compete with the main lead. I mean, no offense to Han Joon-woo, but we’re talking about Jung Hae-In here. It’s hard to root for the rival when it looks like there’s no competition. Some dramas have stood out to me, like “Start Up” and “While You Were Sleeping”, because you can really feel the second lead syndrome. That is not the case here. His character’s story was good though, and I kind of understood how tiring it must have felt to take care of a sick loved one.
Underwhelming ending
This is yet another drama that “tried” to be different by deviating from usual romance k-drama endings, however, it just felt lacking and unsatisfying. I do get the simple ending; even so, it didn’t have that much lingering impact that would leave you thinking about it for days. Also, Seung-ho’s parents remarrying felt unnecessary.
CONCLUSION
I expected Love Next Door to be one of the best k-dramas, however, it wasn’t able to sustain being a feel-good, heartfelt drama towards the end as it did in the beginning.
RATING: 7/10
What do you think about this drama? Let me know in the comments!
