Summary
Love Next Door has some pacing problems here and there, but when it works it really works, and the core romance remains a real highlight.
There are criticisms that apply to Love Next Door that are as true of Episodes 5 & 6 as they have been of the previous outings, but they continue not to matter. Up and down pacing? Who cares. A sometimes slightly meandering plot? No problem. The core is just so strong that any minor niggles are easy to forgive.
As I explained in my review of the show, there’s an odd intangible quality to Love Next Door. It might not work all of the time, but it does so often enough that it’s difficult to disengage from. And when it works, it really works.
After the shenanigans of the previous episode, Seung-hyo and Seok-ryu are left to ponder their own evolving feelings for one another. And in classic K-Drama fashion, the dynamic is complicated by the arrival of – all together now – Seung-hyo’s gorgeous ex, Jang Tae-hee.
In a show like this, it almost feels pointless leaning on a trope like this, since it only works when there isn’t a lot of surety in the core relationship, and if nothing else, Seung-hyo and Seok-ryu have been genuine the whole time. But there’s even some satisfaction in that. Tae-hee arrives like the ghost of K-Drama past and is swatted away in due course by the sheer force of Love Next Door’s authenticity.
Tae-hee also performs a vital plot function, since it gives Seok-ryu a good opportunity to fuss over traditional Korean food and Seung-hyo a variety of reasons to realize he’s very much in love with Seok-ryu; the flirtation includes a funny half-naked scuffle that’s a little silly but more effectively charming than something like Romance in the House, which tries to contrive similar scenes all the time to less potent effect.
But Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo remain on different wavelengths for now. While he tries to batten down his feelings as he has been accustomed to doing all of his life (which inadvertently causes a bit of a wedge between them), Seok-ryu has realized that she loves to cook and that pursuing a certification is the fated next step of her formerly directionless life.
This careful pacing in the relationship-building doesn’t apply to the subplots. For instance, Seung-hyo and Seok-ryu’s mother come to believe that her dad is having an affair, but it turns out he’s in legal trouble with a couple of YouTubers. Luckily Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo are both on the case for an elaborate sting operation, and Dan-ho wants to write up something about these new scammers hitting local businesses by faking various problems for attention.
About Dan-ho, anyway. He’s a great outlet for Seung-hyo, who needs it, since his inability to deal with his feelings for Seok-ryu is causing him to make things very weird between them. Of course, Seok-ryu picks up on this herself, and she eventually gets rightly frustrated with his behavior and his efforts to freeze her out. But Love Next Door Episode 6 makes the annoying but understandable decision to leave this conversation unresolved, with Seok-ryu unsure about what Seung-hyo meant when he claimed she was making him lose his mind – as obvious as it may be for the audience.
The love story continues in Episode 7, where Seung-hyo finally says how he feels.
