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No Gain, No Love korean drama review
Completed
No Gain, No Love
16 people found this review helpful
by Kbeauty
Oct 14, 2024
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed 7
Overall 4.5
Story 4.5
Acting/Cast 5.0
Music 5.0
Rewatch Value 1.0

Hard to Express my Disappointment with This Cringe Fest.

Since discovering Kdramas I had loved Shin Min ah, her beauty is so natural and gorgeous and her comedic touch in kdramas has been well established from my Girlfriend is Gumiho to Hometwon Cha Cha. Here paired up with a younger and extremely handsome ML the anticipation was high.

Unfortunately what we got was a mish mash of a drama with totally uneven characters, development, character arcs and a script writer who seemed to think that focusing on sexual themes, lifestyles, and engaging in the odd time subtle but mainly the most stupid and crass sexual innuendo was the height of literary achievement.

The flashback scenes of the FL buying a gazillion condoms while shouting around the supermarket that her sex partner better do it more than twice tonight or admonishing some guy for his weak performance in bed were so cringe inducing and pathetic I was actually flabbergasted. I couldn't decide if this was aimed at 14yr olds or idiots or 14yr old idiots or people who hadn't had sex in 14yrs or people who never had sex.

And then the dildos ooh look our sexually liberated FL (okay we get it jesus we get it she has sex) has sex toys and masturbates, a univeral and generally private human activity but here glorified and held up as if ownership of them elevated her to a place of enlightenment and Liberation that sets her apart from the rest of us mere mortals. It reminded me of the innuendo filled British comedy of the 70s and 80s where anything sex related drew gasps and guffaws from the scandalised but knowing audience. The amount of cringey "oh my God I laughed so hard when I saw those dildos" comments I've read is oh whatever 🙄.

Then the more "serious" themes of views on marraige, family infidelity, polyamorous relationships and pregnancy. Again it was like the makers, in their desperate attempt to be edgy modern and join the dreaded race to the bottom of shittiness epitomised by shallow, amoral, sexualised characters in western TV, they just threw in a whole lot of ideas and developed none of them in any meaningful way. The supportive relationship between the three foster siblings was heartwarming but it was overshadowed by the unresolved and unfinished exploration of the nature of the FLs relationship with her mother vs everyone else's. The inherent unfairness of this seemed to be left to the FL right to the end.

The older foster sister having unprotected sex with multiple partners and not knowing or bothering to find out definitively who the real father of her child was, inadvertently highlighted some of the potential pitfalls of polygamy though the writer just seemed to be inserting it for "look at how edgy my script is". It really did not portray a meaningful rmessage apart from her BF being a selfish so and so. Like at least practise safe sex FFS. Again it seemed having the concept in the drama was more important than how it was actually dealt with.

The cheating ex faciltted by the FL the whole way through and the cheating dad of the CEO were just shittiness personified. The fact we are repeatedly shown and reminded that the FL is a morally fair and kind at heart person makes this worse as she loses all credibility here by blatantly betraying her exes wife who was generally kind to and supportive of her. And of course asshole ex gets a pass, ah well we might have that female character, along with the cheated on 2ML wife, portrayed as regressively as an early noughties Kdrama melo but we did have condoms and dildos and a polyamorous couple so it's okay we're edgy.

The infamous second couple were more typical of your Kdrama rom com cute couple but totally distracted from the main couple especialky toward the end, and his initial online attacks were pretty awful along with his weird mamas boy life but at least that plot line didn't seem to take itself too seriously.

Finally the .most irritating take I've repeatedly seen is how the FL is so cool unapologetic and iconic. I just can't get over how crass immature and painfully obviously trying to be cool this script is. It's like the member of your social group who because they're never actually getting any they never stop going on about sex in OTT ways to over compensate. it was pretty cringe tbh.

I don't want to get into the whole westernisation of Kdramas by the Streaming services but if this is anything to go by get ready for a serious decline.

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