136
268
25
3
5
6
12
5
7
7
4
10
5
2
8
46
4
5
4
2
1
4
5
5
2
8
30
40
13
26
This review may contain spoilers
Spooky In Love, Corporate In Meetings
OK SO I'm gonna keep this brief because I genuinely do not have the words to describe what this drama did to me, but I'm gonna try anyway.
IDK IF THEY PUT SOMETHING IN THE KDRAMA WATER OR WHAT BUT THIS SHOW HAD THE ABSOLUTE AUDACITY TO GIVE ME A GHOST-SEEING HEIRESS SOLVING MURDERS WITH A STUBBORN PROSECUTOR, COMPLETE WITH FUN GHOST MECHANICS, AND A genuinely interesting supernatural mythology… and then spend half the runtime making me watch people argue about corporate share percentages and board meetings. I ONLY HAVE TWO EYES AND TWELVE EPISODES!!
First things first, the premise is good. Ghost-seeing heiress, persistent prosecutor, accidental supernatural entanglement, murder cases solved through dead people's testimony. This should have been an easy home run. A layup. A gimme. And honestly, the show starts STRONG. Episode one gave me Yeo-ri finding a dead body in the woods, immediately getting into a physical altercation with Gang-uk because they each think the other is the murderer, and then casually chatting with the dead man's spirit afterwards. I was ON MY FEET. Then episode three gave us the fake relationship setup and I was fully gone. No thoughts. Head empty. Only these two!!
I LOVED the chemistry between Yeo-ri and Gang-uk, and I want to be very clear that these two actors are working HARD to sell a romance that the script keeps interrupting with increasingly unrelated nonsense. The glove rule!! The accidental kiss!! The fake dating turning devastatingly real!! Gang-uk lying about still seeing ghosts just so Yeo-ri would keep talking to him and immediately getting caught because she tests him on the spot!! The arcade and Han River montage where they actually get to spend time together like a normal couple?? THAT was the show I wanted to watch!! Park Eun-bin and Yang Se-jong are carrying this drama across a river of mediocre plotting and frankly deserve hazard pay!!
Unfortunately, the show has a severe case of "what if we also added THIS?" By episode seven, we're simultaneously dealing with the ghost-of-the-week procedural, a corporate succession battle, a 300-year-old Joseon cold case, a fake relationship, a money laundering scheme, a jealous grandmother and her shaman, an overseas business trip, a transfer threat, an art fraud case, corrupt prosecutors, a heart transplant mystery, an imprisoned ex-boyfriend being weaponised by the villain cousin, AND Min-hwan's increasingly obvious secret. THAT IS NOT A DRAMA. THAT IS A CURRICULUM!!
The biggest crime is what happens to the supernatural premise. The ghost-of-the-week format that makes the early episodes so charming basically disappears by the back half, and we're suddenly spending twenty minutes watching people discuss shareholder votes. BOARDROOM SCENES!! In my ghost romance!! Unacceptable!!
And the Joseon cold case with Dowon and Hwagyeongdang?? FASCINATING. Easily one of the most interesting supernatural storylines in the entire show. And what does the drama do with it? Resolves it in approximately two episodes and then basically never mentions it again!! Why introduce a 300-year-old mystery with that much emotional potential if you're going to toss it aside like yesterday's newspaper?!
Min-hwan, meanwhile, is possibly the least surprising villain in the history of television. This man is suspicious from approximately episode two. He takes the necklace from the paramedic at the scene of his brother's death. He bribes shareholders. He manipulates prosecutors. He arranges Gang-uk's transfer. He buys out share transfers behind Yeo-ri's back. He lurks around her with the energy of someone who has definitely committed several crimes and is currently considering committing several more. The red flags weren't flags. They were a full parade. And somehow the show spends SIX EPISODES pretending he might be a genuine romantic rival before revealing his true nature in episode eleven. I was not shocked. I was waiting for everyone else to catch up!!
The heart transplant connection, however, is brilliant. Gang-uk has Ji-hwan's heart. Ji-hwan is Yeo-ri's dead friend whose death caused her to see ghosts. Min-hwan let Ji-hwan drown and has spent twelve years carrying that guilt into increasingly unhinged behaviour. THAT is the emotional spine of the drama. Grief, guilt, love, death, and the strange connection between the living and the dead are all right there. And the show somehow decides to cram most of it into the final stretch alongside approximately four other climaxes happening simultaneously!!
The Ji-hwan spirit realm sequence is genuinely beautiful, though, and I will give the show that completely. Yeo-ri surrounded by all the ghosts she helped over the years, Ji-hwan sending her back to the living world while he gets on the boat, and Gang-uk simultaneously learning that Ji-hwan was his donor?? I WAS SOBBING. That scene is the drama at its absolute best. Which honestly makes the rest of the plotting even more frustrating because you can SEE how good this could have been if the writers had trusted the central premise and simply removed half the unnecessary machinery surrounding it.
And then we have the third-act breakup, which is the most pointless obstacle this show constructs in a drama full of pointless obstacles. Yeo-ri calls off the engagement because Gang-uk hid his heart surgery and because his grandmother scared her. Emotionally, I actually understand why she's upset!! But the execution is so rushed that it feels like the writers needed something to happen in episode ten, threw in a breakup, and then immediately remembered they had to reunite them. Less than two episodes later, it's basically over and neither character has meaningfully changed. That isn't storytelling. That's stalling. And I noticed EVERY SECOND OF IT!!
Gye-hee and her children as antagonists are so cartoonishly evil that they accidentally become comedy. Ha-ri coordinating with her imprisoned murderer boyfriend to destroy her own cousin is the kind of plotting that makes me tilt my head like a confused dog. These people don't have coherent motivations so much as a permanent instruction from the writers saying "be an obstacle for Yeo-ri." By the finale, when they're skulking around prison corridors and embarrassing themselves, I felt absolutely nothing. They were cardboard villains wearing designer clothes!!
The finale does have some delicious moments, though. Min-hwan getting exposed at Ji-hwan's own memorial service that he organised himself?? DELICIOUS. Gang-uk showing up with the police right after Yeo-ri plays the damning video?? Extremely satisfying. Yeo-ri becoming Chairwoman and then walking outside Siena Hall holding Gang-uk's hand without gloves for the first time?? Sweet. Earned. I smiled!!
But I cannot let the condition resolution slide because WHAT WAS THAT?! The shaman explicitly says the only way Yeo-ri can stop seeing ghosts is to sacrifice her life. Yeo-ri almost dies. She survives. And then... she stops seeing ghosts. That's it. No explanation. No acknowledgment of the supernatural rules we've spent twelve episodes establishing. No thematic exploration of what losing this ability means for a woman whose entire identity has been shaped by it for twelve years. HELLO??? Did the shaman just make that up??
And that's ultimately why Spooky in Love is so frustrating to me. It's simultaneously too ambitious and too safe. Too ambitious because it throws every possible subplot into twelve episodes and refuses to let any of them breathe. Too safe because after building up all these supposedly dangerous conflicts, it resolves almost everything neatly. Villains go to jail. Couple ends up together. Grandmother apologises. Yeo-ri gets the company. The supernatural condition disappears. Everyone goes home. Nothing that was built up as genuinely dangerous is allowed to have a lasting consequence.
Girl can literally see ghosts but somehow couldn't see the RED FLAGS standing directly in front of her for twelve episodes straight.
Overall, I give Spooky in Love a 6/10. It was carried almost entirely by two compelling leads, fantastic chemistry, and a supernatural premise that deserved so much more than the generic corporate drama it eventually became. There is a genuinely great drama buried somewhere in here. Unfortunately, it is buried underneath shareholder meetings, money laundering, succession battles, unnecessary angst, cartoon villains, and approximately seventeen subplots fighting for oxygen.
I watched all twelve episodes and I would like my hours back. We did not need all of this. We needed the ghosts.
Goodbye!! 👻
IDK IF THEY PUT SOMETHING IN THE KDRAMA WATER OR WHAT BUT THIS SHOW HAD THE ABSOLUTE AUDACITY TO GIVE ME A GHOST-SEEING HEIRESS SOLVING MURDERS WITH A STUBBORN PROSECUTOR, COMPLETE WITH FUN GHOST MECHANICS, AND A genuinely interesting supernatural mythology… and then spend half the runtime making me watch people argue about corporate share percentages and board meetings. I ONLY HAVE TWO EYES AND TWELVE EPISODES!!
First things first, the premise is good. Ghost-seeing heiress, persistent prosecutor, accidental supernatural entanglement, murder cases solved through dead people's testimony. This should have been an easy home run. A layup. A gimme. And honestly, the show starts STRONG. Episode one gave me Yeo-ri finding a dead body in the woods, immediately getting into a physical altercation with Gang-uk because they each think the other is the murderer, and then casually chatting with the dead man's spirit afterwards. I was ON MY FEET. Then episode three gave us the fake relationship setup and I was fully gone. No thoughts. Head empty. Only these two!!
I LOVED the chemistry between Yeo-ri and Gang-uk, and I want to be very clear that these two actors are working HARD to sell a romance that the script keeps interrupting with increasingly unrelated nonsense. The glove rule!! The accidental kiss!! The fake dating turning devastatingly real!! Gang-uk lying about still seeing ghosts just so Yeo-ri would keep talking to him and immediately getting caught because she tests him on the spot!! The arcade and Han River montage where they actually get to spend time together like a normal couple?? THAT was the show I wanted to watch!! Park Eun-bin and Yang Se-jong are carrying this drama across a river of mediocre plotting and frankly deserve hazard pay!!
Unfortunately, the show has a severe case of "what if we also added THIS?" By episode seven, we're simultaneously dealing with the ghost-of-the-week procedural, a corporate succession battle, a 300-year-old Joseon cold case, a fake relationship, a money laundering scheme, a jealous grandmother and her shaman, an overseas business trip, a transfer threat, an art fraud case, corrupt prosecutors, a heart transplant mystery, an imprisoned ex-boyfriend being weaponised by the villain cousin, AND Min-hwan's increasingly obvious secret. THAT IS NOT A DRAMA. THAT IS A CURRICULUM!!
The biggest crime is what happens to the supernatural premise. The ghost-of-the-week format that makes the early episodes so charming basically disappears by the back half, and we're suddenly spending twenty minutes watching people discuss shareholder votes. BOARDROOM SCENES!! In my ghost romance!! Unacceptable!!
And the Joseon cold case with Dowon and Hwagyeongdang?? FASCINATING. Easily one of the most interesting supernatural storylines in the entire show. And what does the drama do with it? Resolves it in approximately two episodes and then basically never mentions it again!! Why introduce a 300-year-old mystery with that much emotional potential if you're going to toss it aside like yesterday's newspaper?!
Min-hwan, meanwhile, is possibly the least surprising villain in the history of television. This man is suspicious from approximately episode two. He takes the necklace from the paramedic at the scene of his brother's death. He bribes shareholders. He manipulates prosecutors. He arranges Gang-uk's transfer. He buys out share transfers behind Yeo-ri's back. He lurks around her with the energy of someone who has definitely committed several crimes and is currently considering committing several more. The red flags weren't flags. They were a full parade. And somehow the show spends SIX EPISODES pretending he might be a genuine romantic rival before revealing his true nature in episode eleven. I was not shocked. I was waiting for everyone else to catch up!!
The heart transplant connection, however, is brilliant. Gang-uk has Ji-hwan's heart. Ji-hwan is Yeo-ri's dead friend whose death caused her to see ghosts. Min-hwan let Ji-hwan drown and has spent twelve years carrying that guilt into increasingly unhinged behaviour. THAT is the emotional spine of the drama. Grief, guilt, love, death, and the strange connection between the living and the dead are all right there. And the show somehow decides to cram most of it into the final stretch alongside approximately four other climaxes happening simultaneously!!
The Ji-hwan spirit realm sequence is genuinely beautiful, though, and I will give the show that completely. Yeo-ri surrounded by all the ghosts she helped over the years, Ji-hwan sending her back to the living world while he gets on the boat, and Gang-uk simultaneously learning that Ji-hwan was his donor?? I WAS SOBBING. That scene is the drama at its absolute best. Which honestly makes the rest of the plotting even more frustrating because you can SEE how good this could have been if the writers had trusted the central premise and simply removed half the unnecessary machinery surrounding it.
And then we have the third-act breakup, which is the most pointless obstacle this show constructs in a drama full of pointless obstacles. Yeo-ri calls off the engagement because Gang-uk hid his heart surgery and because his grandmother scared her. Emotionally, I actually understand why she's upset!! But the execution is so rushed that it feels like the writers needed something to happen in episode ten, threw in a breakup, and then immediately remembered they had to reunite them. Less than two episodes later, it's basically over and neither character has meaningfully changed. That isn't storytelling. That's stalling. And I noticed EVERY SECOND OF IT!!
Gye-hee and her children as antagonists are so cartoonishly evil that they accidentally become comedy. Ha-ri coordinating with her imprisoned murderer boyfriend to destroy her own cousin is the kind of plotting that makes me tilt my head like a confused dog. These people don't have coherent motivations so much as a permanent instruction from the writers saying "be an obstacle for Yeo-ri." By the finale, when they're skulking around prison corridors and embarrassing themselves, I felt absolutely nothing. They were cardboard villains wearing designer clothes!!
The finale does have some delicious moments, though. Min-hwan getting exposed at Ji-hwan's own memorial service that he organised himself?? DELICIOUS. Gang-uk showing up with the police right after Yeo-ri plays the damning video?? Extremely satisfying. Yeo-ri becoming Chairwoman and then walking outside Siena Hall holding Gang-uk's hand without gloves for the first time?? Sweet. Earned. I smiled!!
But I cannot let the condition resolution slide because WHAT WAS THAT?! The shaman explicitly says the only way Yeo-ri can stop seeing ghosts is to sacrifice her life. Yeo-ri almost dies. She survives. And then... she stops seeing ghosts. That's it. No explanation. No acknowledgment of the supernatural rules we've spent twelve episodes establishing. No thematic exploration of what losing this ability means for a woman whose entire identity has been shaped by it for twelve years. HELLO??? Did the shaman just make that up??
And that's ultimately why Spooky in Love is so frustrating to me. It's simultaneously too ambitious and too safe. Too ambitious because it throws every possible subplot into twelve episodes and refuses to let any of them breathe. Too safe because after building up all these supposedly dangerous conflicts, it resolves almost everything neatly. Villains go to jail. Couple ends up together. Grandmother apologises. Yeo-ri gets the company. The supernatural condition disappears. Everyone goes home. Nothing that was built up as genuinely dangerous is allowed to have a lasting consequence.
Girl can literally see ghosts but somehow couldn't see the RED FLAGS standing directly in front of her for twelve episodes straight.
Overall, I give Spooky in Love a 6/10. It was carried almost entirely by two compelling leads, fantastic chemistry, and a supernatural premise that deserved so much more than the generic corporate drama it eventually became. There is a genuinely great drama buried somewhere in here. Unfortunately, it is buried underneath shareholder meetings, money laundering, succession battles, unnecessary angst, cartoon villains, and approximately seventeen subplots fighting for oxygen.
I watched all twelve episodes and I would like my hours back. We did not need all of this. We needed the ghosts.
Goodbye!! 👻
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