Love to Hate You (Review)
Love to Hate You is a romcom which attempts to invert gender roles. Its premise is that the woman who hates men (Kim Ok-vin as Yeo Mi-ran) starts the relationship with a man who doesn’t trust women (Teo Yoo as Nam Kang-ho). While the show doesn’t go all the way with inverting the relationship between main leads, it still delivers as an entertaining and funny series.
Main character of the show, Mi-ran (Kim Ok-vin) works as a lawyer, but her main shtick is that she surprisingly often changes her boyfriends. When we meet her, she is cheating on her current boyfriend (and later her co-worker, Jeon Shin-hwan as Lee Jin-seo), and her boyfriend is cheating on her. She even dates men she knows are unfaithful to women in a sort of revenge, to be unfaithful to them. Such a portrayal of a woman is very surprising in a K-Drama, which mostly represent rather conservative values of the Korean society, and this is anything but conservative. The creators of the show clearly intended to invert the gender roles in the show, as Mi-ran is portrayed as an independent woman, and at least partially feminist, nevertheless towards the end the show settles in the beaten path of a typical romcom.
Kim Ok-vin is also well known as an actress trained in martial arts (particularly known from her movie The Villainess; most recently she is staring both seasons of Arthdal Chronicles as cunning Tae Al-ha), and she has a plenty of occasions to show her prowess in that area in Love to Hate You. Fighting scenes are often comedic and add a unique flavor to the show.
The main male lead, Nam Kang-ho (Teo Yoo), is a celebrity and well-known actor in the show. Mi-ran gets employed by his law firm and thus she meets him. In addition to serving as his lawyer, Mi-ran is employed by Kang-ho as a trainer in martial arts, since Kang-ho is impressed with her street fighting skills. Kang-ho is deeply distrustful towards women, since his previous girlfriend, actress Oh Se-na (Lee Joo-bin; recently starring in another Netflix’s show, Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area), cheated on him in the past (and, as usual in K-Dramas, she seeks his forgiveness now, so we can have a usual triangle). Much of the show is about Kang-ho and Mi-ran overcoming many obstacles preventing them from being together: first, the mutual distrust, then, many outside factors, including public opinion (since Kang-ho is a celebrity).
There is a romantic relationship between second leads: Do Won-jun (Kim Ji-hoon, also known from Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area), Kang-ho’s friend and manager, and Shin Na-eun (Go Won-hee), Mi-ran’s friend. However, the show devotes considerably less attention to them than to the main leads (perhaps because the whole series is just 10 episodes long). This romance is much more traditional, although it has its ups and downs as in a typical romantic arc.
As I mentioned, the beginning of the show is particularly original, exciting, and funny, as it tries to subvert the stereotypical tropes of the genre. Towards the end both leads take the typical romcom roles: the main male lead acts as an honorable protector of his woman, and the main female lead as a woman who is ready to sacrifice herself for the good of her male partner. While this change in the tone of the show is somewhat disappointing, the show remains to be pretty entertaining and offers a satisfying finale.
In the end, Love to Hate You is one of the better romcoms this season, also particularly easy to digest since it has only 10 episodes. With it, Netflix continues its good streak with several excellent original K-Dramas, beginning with The Glory and now with Queenmaker. Hopefully, they’ll keep that quality of entertainment for the entire year.
Love to Hate You on Wikipedia and MyDramaList
