6 reasons why Love Next Door did not live up to the hype for me!

Love Next Door starring Jung Hae-In and Jung So-Min was one K-drama we were all excited about but as the story unfolded, my opinion completely changed. Here’s why!

Something in the Rain starring Jung Hae-In was one of my first K-dramas, followed by One Spring Night, again starring the stunning actor! The year after that, I saw him in Snowdrop and wept when he died in the end and of course, all of us know how powerful he looks in D.P. My point of bringing up his whole filmography is that where there’s Jung Hae-In, you’ll always find me following him around because there is no such thing as a bad Jung Hae-In drama! After a break of two years, I was so excited to see him in a rom-com, little did I know that I would barely get to see any rom or com in Love Next Door.

While Jung Hae-In’s performance still is the reason why I finished the drama, sometimes no matter how good the actor is or how star studded the cast is, you cannot save a story that lacks the quintessential K-drama magic. Love Next Door started off rather strong with the typical enemies-to-lovers or childhood friends-to-lovers trope we always fall for but as the show progressed further, it just became a long series of me waiting for the romance to finally begin! After every episode I thought the next episode will be ‘the one’ and before I knew it we were heading towards the end already!

Also Read: 8 K-drama couples where she fell first but he fell harder!

Here’s why the story underperformed, IMO!

The main characters are always suffering

While it’s important to show ups and downs in a character’s life, Love Next Door has only focused on the downs for the most part of the show. Majority of us watch K-dramas to feel-good, to get that escape from reality and it becomes difficult to feel that magic when the main characters are always going through some issue or the other. Sometimes it’s a severe health problem, an accident or just relationship dynamics complicated for no reason at all which made that show feel slow and rather dragged!

The second leads’ love story was way better than the first leads’

Sometimes the second leads are part of a love triangle with the first leads or they have a separate love story of their own. I was happy to see that Love Next Door gave its second leads a story of their own, skipping the done and dusted love triangle trope. Having said that, it also says a lot about the K-drama when the second leads fully steal the show. Mo-Eum and Kang Dan-Ho’s love story will make you blush and his backstory will melt your heart. They deserve a 16 episode spin-off of their own; For most of this show, they were the reason why I still kept going on.

Way too long episodes, even for a K-drama!

Every episode was one hour thirty minutes long and it’s not like we have never had K-drama episodes that are this long. But the difference here is that if you want to show an episode that long, you have to make every scene worth it, every scene should be engaging in a way where we don’t feel the length of the episode at all. But because the screenplay fell short, a lot of the episodes were difficult to get through with my short attention span.

The romance started rather late!

This circles back to my first point. Because the story was so fixated on the main character’s problems, it took forever for the romance to actually start, which is the reason why all of us were here in the first place! Most of us don’t even have the time to date today and hence we love vicariously through the main characters’ love story, but if the makers refrain from giving us that, of course it is going to be a disappointment!

Unnecessary arcs that could have easily been cut out 

It’s not just the main characters who have some or the other problem in their lives, it’s the supporting characters as well. As if Seok-Ryu’s cancer and Seong-Ho’s accident wasn’t enough, the makers made Seong Ho’s mom go through short term memory loss as well. Apart from this, a lot of the scenes between the parents could have been shortened and focused more on the main leads’ arcs. A lot of those scenes did not even have anything to add to the story in the longer run.

The OST is easily forgettable

One of the main highlights of a K-drama is the OST. A lot of the time it has helped elevate an average story as well. But none of the original sound tracks in Love Next Door make it to our playlists simply because the songs don’t feel like something unique or something we’d instantly connect to!

Have you watched the show yet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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