Summary
Love Next Door swats aside another potential issue, leaving the core relationship to shoulder all of the drama. But is it strong – or interesting – enough to do so for another four episodes?
Love Next Door is such a capable and largely straightforward romantic K-Drama that it often feels like speculation over what it might become is more effectively dramatic than anything that’s actually happening in it. Episode 12 is a good example of that after the previous episode strongly implied that there was another tragedy still to come.
I guess not. But it’s a worthwhile question to ask otherwise the pacing is a bit off. This is a sixteen-episode season, but the main couple being together and getting along swimmingly four episodes removed from the finale doesn’t track. But if it isn’t the cancer, and it isn’t Seung-hyo’s mother that trips things up, then what might it be?
A question for another day perhaps.
In the meantime, Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo are together, more or less, but Seok-ryu wants to keep their relationship quiet. She downplays it to his colleagues and hasn’t mentioned anything to her parents. Most people would understandably consider this to be a bit alarming, but with Seok-ryu I think it’s pretty understandable.
These two have, after all, been in a relationship of a kind since they were kids. They’re incredibly close and comfortable with one another. There’s an underlying fear that shifting the boundaries of that relationship might alter its foundations; by acknowledging the new contour, it might become something that neither of them wants, and the dynamic they had before wouldn’t be retrievable.
That’s quite a grandiose way of putting it, I suppose, but you get the idea. And you kind of see how this can manifest in the B-plot with Mo-eum and Dan-oh. Things are closer than ever there, and both are playing happy families with Yeon-du on a camping trip, but Dan-oh takes Mo-eum’s desire to advance the relationship as something alarming. What are the implications for Yeon-du if it doesn’t work out? Can Dan-oh deal with another loss? Isn’t Mo-eum going away soon?
Too much too soon can be as detrimental to a relationship as too little happening at all. While I still strongly suspect that both couples will end up as precisely that, this is a pleasingly human and complex way of looking at relationships that does keep resisting the typical tendency to put made-for-TV romance above reality.
But the show’s dramatic feints are getting a bit tiring. Love Next Door Episode 12 handwaves away any concerns about Seung-hyo’s mother with such a blasé attitude that any time the previous episode spent hinting at it feels wasted. She’s fine, health-wise, and that colleague her husband’s jealous of is gay. It’s all a bit too neat and tidy to me, and the happy ending – even though it isn’t technically an ending yet, but I can’t see this area altering much – feels a little… dare I say it, smug?
That does leave the focus to resettle on Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo’s relationship, though, which I suppose is what we want. And Seok-ryu finds herself getting jealous of a very normal and platonic interaction Seung-hyo has with Tae-hui. Jealousy over exes is normal, of course, but in a romantic relationship, not a friendship. It’s another example of how the new dynamic between Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo is difficult for each of them to navigate.
I do hope they get to grips with it soon, though, as I can see myself getting a bit sick of it all. I couldn’t imagine myself saying that even a couple of episodes ago, but now there’s no will-they-won’t-they angle, and we’ve skirted over a couple of potential health issues, there has to be something beyond “they’re a couple now” to sustain four whole episodes.
I guess we’ll see.
