Love Next Door Korean Drama Series Review

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 is 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.

This scene stuck to me the most

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.

Bae Seok-ryu coding her unemployed schedule 😆

now THIS is the dream life lol

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 these actors 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.

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 disagree though 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 forcing it.

I can’t really pinpoint what’s wrong here. 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 such as in “Something in the Rain” for example.

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, like “Start Up” and “While You Were Sleeping”, because you can really feel the second lead syndrome with their second leads. That is not the case here.

Apart from the chemistry, some of the scenes in the latter episodes felt like fillers, like those episodes on their parent’s reaction when they found out about their relationship.

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 smiling and thinking about it for days.

Conclusion

I expected Love Next Door to be one of the best k-dramas, however, it fell short on being a feel-good, heartfelt drama towards the end as it did in the beginning.

Rating: 7/10

---

You might also like: