Scandal Love (2026)

Scandalously Bad

Arguably, the first K-GL to make it to a mainstream platform, this came out of the woodwork!

And how did it fare compared to K-BL's first popular offering of Where Your Eyes Linger in 2020, which gradually led to a K-BL wave and even real irl representation on the screen in the form of the reality dating show His Man, which has run for multiple seasons?

*grimaces*

Yeah, unfortunately, I believe the K-GL wave is going to be set back because of this trash.

I went in with hope. And again, with this being a milestone drama, I tried to give it grace.

They did try.

But did they really?

Because much as I wish I could say there are redeeming aspects to Scandal Love, I can't think of anything positive to say other than the two FLs had a couple of legitimately good moments together and it was an effort to produce/put out a mainstream K-GL.

I even find myself questioning whether this was "subtle" product placement, given how on-the-nose the writing was and how many times the two girl groups in this universe were name-dropped, and promotion/marketing was treated like character growth.

The sound design was poor, AI/stock footage shots were very obviously AI/stock footage, the dancing was laughably bad, the music sounded like it was royalty-free, and never have I ever seen actors/characters SO uncomfortable existing on the screen! Their faces were always twisted in pain/they looked like they were cringing with every line, begging the ground to swallow them whole.

Seemingly, no one wanted to be here except Mr. Creepy Ceo (who, I might add, switched from supportive mentor to voyer villain on a dime), funnily enough. Which go-figure it was the dude licking his lips, trying to mog the camera, eyeing the FLs/their potential romance like a steak he couldn't wait to devour, because this shit felt like cheap porn without plot except there was no porn AND no plot!

And to top all this off, of course, there were constant character inconsistencies from episode to episode and even scene to scene! One moment, one of the FLs is sad, and the other is bitter, and the next one's supportive and adoring, and the other is cold and distant, and then both are suddenly super duper happy and optimistic and besties and/or in love, with NOTHING in between to justify the sudden shift. You're just supposed to go along with the drama's mood swings, I guess! The only theory I can come up with for this nonsense is that the editor fell asleep in the middle of editing, and their vindictive black cat took over the keyboard!

Don't even get me started on the plot because tell me how they managed to drag such a lame, bare-bones story about a K-Pop girl group who gains a new member out of nowhere, has millions of followers, and is also about to be forced to disband, across ten episodes with an average runtime of 40 minutes each? That's not a compliment!

Low budget, few actors/sets, and not much time to rehearse/shoot can be understandable reasons as to why a piece of media doesn't live up to expectations.

But this is just inexcusable!

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