Love in Contract (Review)
(월수금화목토; aired from September 21 to November 10, 2022; 16 episodes)
Love in Contract is a heartwarming romcom which slipped a little under the radar in the second half of 2022. Its premise is somewhat quirky: Choi Sang-eun (Park Min-young) works as a so-called “single life helper,” in this case a person who acts as a wife of someone who needs a partner for events like funerals, reunions, family gatherings, etc. The English title of this romantic comedy might be little ambiguous: she is not offering “love” (whatever can be understood by that), but only a companionship. Apparently, this is the service available in South Korea, where you can hire what amounts to an actor or actress to serve as your friend, fiancé, wife, or whatever, usually for a day or something. Korea is increasingly a society of singles, however, the societal norms require Koreans to have a significant other, so to save face they often resort to hiring a person to act as one.
Choi Sang-eun (Park Min-young) during the series is involved in one long-term “marriage” contract with her top client, Jung Ji-ho (Go Kyung-pyo), an initially a mysterious man she knows little about. However, when Ji-ho’s neighbor, famous television star Kang Hae-jin (Kim Jae-young) is in a dire need of a “wife” (to avoid being forced into arranged marriage by his family), Sang-eun agrees to work for him too. The situation gets more complicated when Sang-eun and Ji-ho are starting to develop feelings for each other.
As usual in K-Dramas, all characters have multiple secrets in this show. Choi Sang-eun has a complicated past, not only has she had 12 divorces with her former clients, her upbringing and childhood are connected to secrets of Ina Group chaebol. During the series, those secrets and her past will endanger her life and people close to her. Ji-ho had a troubled relationship with his former wife, Jung Ji-eun (in that role Lee Joo-bin, a popular supporting actress recently starring in Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area and Love to Hate You on Netflix), a feisty lawyer (who, as usual, wants to win her former husband back). Kang Hae-jin, on the other hand, is secretly the youngest son of Kangjin Corp, the chaebol which has multiple secrets of his own. Slowly, the show reveals all those secrets to the viewers (some of them are revealed in epilogues after the end of a few episodes).
Most of the drama is centered around relationship between Choi Sang-eun and Jung Ji-ho. Park Min-young portrays Sang-eun as a very cheerful person, despite her troubled past, with lots of charm and grace. Thanks to her personality, Sang-eun is often able to bring people together, and in the end, she gathers a circle of friends ready to help her. Ji-ho has an essentially opposite personality, he is introvert, difficult with people, reluctant to make new friends. Thanks to Sang-eun he is slowly changing and finds acceptance among his friends and coworkers.
The show doesn’t really have a secondary romance arc, which is unusual for Korean romcoms. While there is a usual love triangle (Sang-eun, Ji-ho, and Hae-jin), the show instead focuses on several other relationships between characters. One of the most important is the relationship between Sang-eun and Yoo Mi-ho (Jin Kyung) her former nanny and guardian (with secrets of her own). Sang-eun blames her for difficult childhood, and her troubled past, but they begin to reconcile in time.
In general, while Love in Contract is not a terribly original romcom, it is heartwarming, lighthearted, and has a lot of charm. The show is funny and entertaining and doesn’t trouble viewers much with dark conspiracies as usual K-Dramas do, which is actually refreshing. Nevertheless, it doesn’t totally escape from the usual tropes of the genre.
Love in Contract on Wikipedia and MyDramaList
