Love in Contract (2022)

So many stories badly blended...

I love romances.
I even try to endure the absurd length of this show, the boring pace and shallow characters.
So… here I go…

STORY – the premise could lead to a great story… Lots of stories badly condensed in a show. Maybe some could be developed or not even included… Maybe there will be a time without movie actors or singers… Really try hard to like the idea of that couple or even imagining 5 years of silent dinner…
Most of the characters are envolved in a masochist relationship, fighting to see who suffers more to protect others…

ACTING
Choi Sang Eun (Park Min Young) – I like her shows. I think this one is one of the worst I saw from her, specially because of the story and her character…
Jung Ji Ho (Go Kyung Pyo) – lacking any social skills became a judge. His love for Sang-Eun is sweet, he even showed power and competence taking care of her…With him I learn that in Korea a broken arm leads to spending days in the Hospital…
His team was good entertainment…
Kim Jae Young (Kang Hae Jin) – of course, the actor. Very likable. A little naïve with his feelings and actions that put all in risk. His team was ok.
Lee Joo Bin (Jung Ji Eun) – a good alpinist, climbing the ladder of the rich and powerful… thought that her end would be different.
Jin Kyung (Yoo Mi Ho) – Badass woman. Mixed feelings about her. Deserves most of the interest in the drama for me. Could her story be more explored…

MUSIC – I do not follow much k-pop and that kind of music. Some are great, but in this show, I cannot remember any…

REWATCH VALUE – maybe one or two scenes, but I doubt. In every aspect in a show, I can recall better shows than this.

OVERALL – sometimes I had to watch in 1,5x because it was a little boring, especially the boomerang story in the second half. I enjoyed enough not to think that I completely wasted my time.

Read More

Park Min Young is picking some stinkers lately… SMH. This was such a snooze.

I love Park Min Young and have enjoyed several of her dramas, but lately, she is really picking some stinkers. It started with Forecasting Love & Weather, and continues here.

The ML is such a snore, and I was not feeling the chemistry between the 2 leads. The second ML was better, but of course, she doesn’t choose him because he actually seems to have a pulse.

The story was a little rough, the “professional bride for hire” angle had potential, but the execution fell a little short. The family dynamics were a train wreck leaving carnage all over this show. The ML judge character’s office life was so cringy at times I had secondhand embarrassment.

Honestly, the best parts about this show are the gay roommate and the second male lead. I can’t count the number of times I fell asleep while watching this show, and in the end, I had to fast forward through 80% of the last 5 eps just to finish it.

Read More

One time watchable

I personally LOVE park min young... She's the reason why I'm watching this kdrama to the end in the first place. Casting is the only thing justified in this drama. Everything else is.... meh.
FL and ML shines throughout the episodes. One thing I loved in this is that communication between the people are not dramatic. Everyone speaks their mind to the other person. The method of conveying the thoughts of characters are straight forward, thus decreasing the unnecessary dramatic scenes. It is waay too rare to see in kdramas.
ML/FL, second leads and even supporting actors are way too good for the characters given.
Production quality is ?. That is not at all compromised here.
Story, OST, script, director, editing are all only mid.

Read More

Not worth it

Started watching the drama because of a tiktok i saw abt the first scenes where she was eating with a client's have highschool friends and she said she studied in Cornell, thought it was funny and decided to start watching it.
The first half of the drama was amazing, absolutely love it, mostly the part where she gets hurt by that one motorcycle guy and Haejin saves her. But then as Jiho starts demonstrating his feeling for her it kept getting worse, personally i was hoping Sangeun would choose Haejin, they had way more chemistry and Jiho and her. Then when Sangeun and Haejin finally kissed i thought this was it and she would finally fall in love with him, but it only showed her that she wanted to be with jiho. Jiho and Sangeun had no chemistry at all, every scene with them was so underwhelming i almost wanted to skip every single one of them.
Now onto Sangeun's best friend, i appreciate the LGBTQ+ representation but i think it's the worst representation i've seen, we got the first scenes of him with a guy and then he just went telling everyone he was gay, until the ep i saw (10) he never really had a love story or something, besides they also showed how he fought with his family, but i don't think his story was deepen enough.
The story behind every character was very much null, they would tell you this and that but wouldn't be specific about it.
After all the drama gets very boring after the 8-9 episode, since you can just start predicting what's gonna happen.

Read More

Good

It's nice, you can give it a try. Story is kinda new and interesting, you may feel bored at start but you will start liking with the flow! I am still confused with the ML but we'll get to know by the future episodes! As always pmy❤️ is great..............................................
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️?‍♂️?‍♂️?‍♂️?‍♂️?‍♂️

Read More

Had me feeling many things—and not in a good way

Was initially interested in this one because I expected a fun and very light-hearted romcom where I'd be laughing and falling in love over and over (and I did get it for about 8 episodes???). Instead, I got a plot-heavy drama with a deus ex machina to solve all their problems in the end, some plot device established early then was forgotten for many episodes then somehow just came back again to add more drama, and not to mention a selfish second male lead whom I blame for quite a lot of the problems that happened in the show (though I do end up forgiving him in the end).

At one point, I considered just skipping to the end because everyone and everything was just so frustrating to watch. I didn't sign up for this. Not to mention how the ending—for the leads and the side characters—wasn't as satisfying as it could've been for quite a lot of reasons (for me).

All in all, it was good but I'm not sure if it's one I'd recommend nor one I'd rewatch so soon. The actors were amazing though! I love them all.

Read More

Done!

Finally finally finally finished this!
I was actually following this story while it was airing, but I had to go offline for a while.
I know the last 5 episodes felt quite rushed, but I am happy to watch the episodes where I resumed better than I expected.
I was actually bracing my self for the worst of Jung Ji Eun (Ji Ho's ex-wife), but her character quite floated well.
As for Hae Jin, from the most annoying 2ML to the Saint of all Saints. Lol. I know I hated the character so much, but they gave him a super anti-climactic ending.
Same with Gwang Nam's. Gosh he did not deserve that ending. My very kind boy Gwang Nam.
On Madam Yoo's, it was quite expected, but at least it still gave me a little, tiny, bit of surprise there. Well the revelation on Sang Eun's part was for convenience, I guess.

Anyway, I didn't really expect this to be over the top drama, I just like this kind to pass time, or to entertain, cause I admit, the main leads' chemistry was second to none!

Read More

Should've focused more on the main couple

This was a really average series. Some things were the worst while others were good. The things is, these good things were very little and not enough to forgive all the negative points in narrative. As I usually write my reviews, I will tell my favorite and least favorite parts.

Things I liked:

- The main couple, that is jiho and sangeun, they have great chemistry, I loved every scene with them.
- Jiho is so cute, he's my favorite character, no doubt. I just love him!!!

Things I didn't like:

- The actor haejin is so annoying. The writers tried to create a love triangle to make the audience discuss who she should end up with, but it's clear who is her love interest. And bc of that, haejin keeps forcing situations with sangeun. It's so embarassing and annoying really. Honestly, it's so unnecessary that the series tries to build sangeun's story with him when we know, from the beginning, that she's gonna really end up with jiho.
- Where's the development of jiho's background story? I kept waiting for when they were going to talk about his story whith his family and why he is so closed and antisocial. I think it would be really good to see more about his past with his family. This could actually be a way for him overcoming his social problems since I thought he developed them bc of some childhood trauma.
- That scene of her bff with his family and telling them he was gay was too rushed and undeveloped. Did his parents accept his sexuality? It was not clear, and that's so sad bc I really wanted his story to be told.
- And that leads me to the main problem of the show: it should have developed and talked more about these characters' stories and families instead of wasting time on that eena group plot which was going round in circles at some point. There was a moment, close to the ending, when her nanny and the eena group guy were talking for like the hundredth time of marrying her to haejin. It was so tiring. And while the series was going in circles with this plot, it could have been showing jiho's backstory or her gay friend's problems with his family or whatever.
- And why she left him in the end? It didn't made sense to me. I didn't understand if it was because she was embarassed of him (for some reason which I can't quite grasp) or because he was trying to do smth wrong for her wellbeing and she wanted to prevent him. Either way, I don't think these were reasons for doing that to him.

To conclude, it was not the worst show I've ever watched but it was way way far from being the best. It had a lot of problems regarding narrative, but the couple was good and if they had focused more on them maybe it would've been a better experience.

Read More

Love it !

God I love it ! The actors are one point! (maybe I'm biased because it's Park Min Young ?) I fell in love with Kim Jae Young. It's the first timr that I saw a drama with him in it and damn I'm not disapointed at all! I'll definitly watch more dramas with him in the cast !

I understand why some people don't enjoy this drama, some elements in the story are at first not logical or meh! But everything finaly make sense in the last 3 episodes.

In my opinion it's a really good drama with awesome caracters, good music, and some plot twist that I enjoy! Can't wait for the final !

Read More

Hae Jin and Sang Eun story would have been intresting and might have saved the show

Okay!! I am not just saying this because of having the so called ''Second lead syndrome'' butt hell the story of the main leads was soo boring. The chemistry was Bleh!!!, the acting was Bleh!!, the story itself was Bleh!!.

I truly believe that the story of the second lead 'Hae Jin' and ' Sang Eun' could have been interesting. Since there was not much in the story of the series itself If they have explored the typical K-drama troupes between the second lead portraying a celebrity and Sang Eun as a disguised con contract bride (or whatever she was), with their constant bickering and past connections, exploring their difficult family history, becoming friends and having with some celebrity dating issues. This type of storyline could have been more interesting than what they gave us. I believe when there is not much to the story, things like this might have made the viewers engaged.

Also, I was really happy that they introduced the concept of LGBTQ+ in the series, but would have loved more if they explored the characters and their life more ....... not just keeping them as just a side character. At least, am happy that they didn't just make a queer person just a funny character, a villain, or just killed them .....like they usually do in mainstream K-drama.

Read More

for me the only good parts were these:
jiho's personality. it's so rare to have a shy ml in dramaland. tho they did treat him like a freak, it's like the dude didn't like what "insa" people liked, but was he a psycho? no..
he just didn't like attention, or crowds, or fake social behavior to please other people. he was not "traumitized". sure he had a bad past but not every "social slowness" is a faulty personality
and yes, by now you've guessed it right, it's personal xD I'm shy, socially awkward, and slow with the fun hangs, but I'm not an idiot with a rock head.
as a kid I did say no alot, and in uni I changed it to a "hmm yeah". because I didn't really wanna do it but I also didn't not want to do it

here, especially with the drinking, or the wedding preps at the end, jiho didn't "like it", maybe he is stuck in my no phase but sangeun wasn't really considerate, she wasn't pushing him out of his shell she kept dragging him out then kinda making fun of him, "teaching" him he should "be like other people"..
so I personally didn't think they matched. like again the wedding prep, he was ready to put himself through the struggle cuz she said she wanted a big wedding, and she didn't listen when he said he didn't want it big. then she goes and says she was doing it for him


anyway, atleast with jiho his shyness and lack of social personalty didn't come with low self esteem, doubt, self consciousness and ready to escape
no drama can survive that way so all of those traits went to saguen ;D
I'm glad he always said he'll never misunderstand her and he'll wait for her pov before making a judgment, that's 1000000 lvl male lead behavior~ also he was never shy or reluctant in showing intimacy which is another +A move

gwangnamah was a sweeite, it's nice to have male characters without ulterior or obsessive behavior towards the fl, most fl "brother zoned" end up with a secret 10 year crush
he was a good person, had his own life, worries and dreams, he could easily get a spinoff where he finds happiness, love and acceptance

another point I liked was the past childhood connection, and the ones that did have them ended in divorce or one sided crush which heavily highlights how a person is different from what one projects on them

I did however dislike the 5 year "eating mate" with 0 attempts at conversation and honestly the whole drama was flat with zero substance, I'd have tbh preferred them preparing for a wedding, looking more at "what people do to please others who think one should do that" while trying to navigate happiness and marriage. I also wanted a scene with a baby to show he's not afraid to show affection and she also adored her baby and stuff life that

anyway, I only started it for a mom watch, and stayed for her + jiho and tbh the last like 40mins were my favorite part of this drama xD

Read More