[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Lover" Episode 1

What is the difference between a married couple living together and a couple just living together? On a basic level it's just psychological. A married couple has already firmly decided that annoying personal habits are just part of a package. A non-married couple still isn't sure on that question. And so we get the basic premise of "The Lover"- it's a romantic comedy about a bunch of people living together, who annoy each other. Frequently in rather gross ways.

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First, let's take a look at Do-si (played by Oh Jung-se). Most of his screentime her is spent annoying his girlfriend in an endless negotiation for sex. And to the credit of writer Kim Min-seok-II, the perspective is fairly balanced. Do-si's girlfriend Doo-ri (played by Ryu Hyun-kyung) isn't portrayed as unfun so much as legitimately annoyed because random groping really is super obnoxious. Do-si's comeuppance is all too appropriate- as it turns out no, guys are not down for fondling at any random moment.

Next up is Jin-nyeo (played by Choi Yeo-jin), an immature woman in her early thirties with a boy toy by the name of Yeong-joon (played by Jung Joon-young). It took me a moment to adjust to the idea of Choi Yeo-jin playing an immature girly woman with a pink bow in her air. But once that was over with I could appreciate the silliness inherent in a relationship that can't reasonably be seen as a precedessor to marriage.

The comedy takes a surprisingly wide gamut. While jokes about sex and swearing tend to predominate, a lot is also made of just daily life. Joon-jae (played by Lee Jae-joon) and Takuya (played by Terada Takuya) are, as far as know, just normal heterosexual roommates. Their presence appears to be a control group, intended to tell us which conflicts in the home are a result of battle-of-the-sexes relationship dynamics and which are just about having a person do weird stuff in your living area.

The episode as a whole is a pretty good one, with lots of funny jokes. The design so far is really more of a sketch comedy with recurring characters than it is a real drama- even so, I found a lot of the material fairly thought-provoking. "The Lover" kinds of reads like a manual on "what to expect when you're planning on living in the same apartment as a person you're not related to by blood". So far the primer is a convincing as well as an amusing one, and I'm already curious as to what we're counting down to.

Review by William Schwartz

"The Lover" is directed by Kim Tae-eun-III, written by Kim Min-seok-II and features Oh Jung-se, Ryu Hyun-kyung, Jung Joon-young, Choi Yeo-jin, Park Jong-hwan, Ha Eun-seol, Terada Takuya and Lee Jae-joon.

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