Summary
Romance in the House is built on a bedrock of cliché and can’t decide what kind of show it most wants to be, meaning even its all-star cast have difficulty in giving it much identity.
In most films and TV shows, a family reunion is a cause for some jubilation, but not quite in Romance in the House. The plot of the K-Drama revolves around an estranged husband returning to his wife and kids in the hopes of rekindling the relationship and rebuilding the family, but there’s a pretty major problem – he was supposed to be dead.
There are other problems, too, including the fact that the show isn’t very good and is built on a bedrock of overly familiar cliché that will be all too familiar to fans of romantic K-Dramas and Netflix’s weekly streaming output, which has paddled in these waters many, many times before.
This is not to say that Romance in the House is bad, of course. But its lack of originality coupled with a whiplash-inducing refusal to stick to a tone or even sometimes a genre create many obstacles for its likable core drama, which is essentially that of a middle-aged couple rekindling a romance in parallel to a younger couple taking the first tentative steps in their own love story.
The older couple are Geum Ae-yeon (Kim Ji-soo) and Byun Moo-jin (Ji Jin-hee). His consistent financial irresponsibility led to their eventual divorce and estrangement, and his activities in the years since – for at least one of which he was believed to be dead – are left as a deliberate point of mystery to be gradually unraveled throughout the season.
Either way, he was up to something. He returns to purchase the apartment complex that his ex-wife and children live in with extensive funds that he has acquired from somewhere unknown, and there’s an immediate suggestion that he might have murdered the former landlord. Moo-jin claims to be entirely above board and only interested in winning his family back over, but what else is he hiding?
The younger couple is Moo-jin’s daughter Mi-rae (Son-Na-eun) and Nam Tae-pyeong (Choi Min-ho), a national-level taekwondo practitioner who now works security at the store where Mi-rae and Ae-yeon work. Mi-rae is old enough to recall some of her father’s idiocy and deeply resent his return, but her brother, Hyun-jae (Yoon San-ha), is more easily swayed but consistently neglected by the plot.
Romance in the House has no idea what kind of show it wants to be. It indulges in slapstick comedy and silliness often but also flirts with the idea of being a serious family drama and potentially sinister mystery. As things progress the romantic elements do take center stage, and various morally-acceptable reasons for the confusion are presented to soften the blow, but the hodgepodge of styles and tones remains a real barrier to entry.
The cast is good, at least. Both couples have chemistry and for all the issues with the implementation of the funny and less-serious stuff, the comedic timing is largely there. The younger characters are played by K-pop idols – Min-ho from the boy band SHINee and Na-eun from the girl group APINK – which has done a lot of heavy lifting in the marketing, but their presence does not, unfortunately, a good drama make.
At just twelve episodes rather than the usual 16, Romance in the House benefits slightly from a truncated run that doesn’t leave a ridiculous amount of room for go-nowhere subplots or meandering. But its lack of identity beyond the all-star cast gives it very little staying power, and the overabundance of tropes would perhaps be more agreeable if it just stuck to a few instead of constantly competing with itself to include as many as possible.
There’s a decent rom-com here and many will like it, but few will remember it in the long-term, which seems a shame.
