Summary
Episode 10 of Love Next Door veers away from the tragic path it was heading toward, delivering mature turns in its core relationships.
Don’t worry, folks – it was a false alarm. Love Next Door really did look like it was going down a deeply traumatic path, but Episode 10 backs out real quick. I imagine the fans of the show who felt blindsided by the cancer twist will be pretty happy about this, and I think if nothing else, the health scare has allowed for an even deeper understanding of the characters and, to be fair, some quite mature and touching moments.
Episode 10 has a couple of these, and I’m appreciative that it keeps subverting the expectations of an easy romantic drama to instead be a bit deeper, more complex, and more human.
As you’ll no doubt recall, Episode 9 ended with news of Seok-ryu’s cancer getting out, which she had kept from her entire family during the time. Since we’ve had nothing but Soek-ryu’s perspective on this thus far – she understandably didn’t want to cause anyone unnecessary pain, but never stopped to think how this might affect her and her loved ones – it’s nice to get some of her parents’ perspective.
A problem shared is a problem halved, or so the saying goes, but Seok-ryu’s decision to hide her plight means that her parents and brother have to deal with the news in real-time, which they all do in their own ways.
Mo-eum’s retroactive grief leads her to Dan-ho, who can relate because of the guilt he feels over his wife’s death, which he inadvertently worked through. This is a nice way to weave the second couple’s romance into the primary couple’s drama, which is the kind of understated little storytelling flourish that Love Next Door probably doesn’t get enough credit for.
Seung-hyo has his own share of guilt too – perhaps more than anyone else, since he actually visited Seok-ryu while she had cancer and was so petty about her relationship with Hyeon-jun that he never even noticed. He screened her calls, ignored what were obvious cries for help, and left her feeling even more alone than she thought she was.
This is quite crucial, since to Seok-ryu, Seung-hyo represented an outlet that she could have used. He wasn’t her parents, or her brother; he was someone she thought she could trust to be there for her who she would have been inclined to share the news with. His selfishness denied her that opportunity.
The downside of all this openness and understanding is that it pushes Hyeon-jun out. As we’ve established already, Hyeon-jun isn’t a bad guy, and the breakdown of his relationship with Seok-ryu wasn’t exactly how it was made out to be. He loved Seok-ryu, but he let her down; she loved him, but couldn’t move past how she felt when he wasn’t there in the way she needed him to be. The tragedy is that their connection was authentic and their breakup was avoidable.
In a mature move, at the end of Love Next Door Episode 10, Seung-hyo takes Seok-ryu to the airport so she can say farewell to Hyeon-jun properly. He wasn’t there for her when she needed him before, so he makes sure he is now, protecting her dignity while she grieves this part of her life that is about to leave her forever. It isn’t about Seung-hyo getting his love rival out of the way, but about a man being there for the woman he loves in the way that she needs him to be.
And as amicably as things might have ended between Seok-ryu and Hyeon-jun, he is gone now, and that chapter of Seok-ryu’s life has ended. So, it does kind of free up Seung-hyo to pursue his own romantic feelings for her. And since she isn’t going to die of cancer any time soon, that happy ending we were originally hoping for once again seems quite likely.
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