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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "It's Okay, That's Love" Episode 1

To the uninitiated viewer, the initial events of "It's Okay, That's Love" will probably come off as pretty scatalogical. We get a prison, a giant massive party, what looks like the set for some kind of commercial, a hospital, and finally, a television variety show, all of this before the drama's even had much of a chance to explain what's actually going on. It's not literally a commercial, by the way. That was just an assumption I made based on how sexily that particular scene was shot.

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But then, really, the entire drama's pretty clearly intended to be sexy. "It's Okay, That's Love" is about the hot steamy world of being a mental health services professional. That's not a sentence I ever expected to write. The entire idea just sounds so bizarrely absurd. Yet I can think of no other interpretation under which the background of this drama makes any sense. Everybody here is just so cool.

Yes, that's right, cool. Not silly, not weird, cool. That's the first of many problems with this drama that prove worrisome. As ridiculous as the premise sounds, everyone is playing the idea totally straight. People are asking for autographs at the end of the taping. Or was it live? But who runs live broadcasts of variety shows about boring professional stuff in the middle of the night? Or taped ones for that matter?

Technical problems like this might be more forgivable if there was any reason to like either of the leads, yet the drama's insufficient in that department as well. Jae-yeol (played by Zo In-sung) is smart and bossy. Hae-soo (played by Kong Hyo-jin)...is also smart and bossy. Truthfully, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a difference between their characters aside from the fact that we see Jae-yeol has a bit more showmanship. Even their mentally challenged family members just give these two the same proximate flavor.

Worse than that, though, there's almost no chemistry that I can see. They have an uninspiring encounter at the TV show, and circumstance forces them together for a car chase. Yes, that's right, in addition to everything else mental health service professionals apparently have to engage in car chases, like they were cops or something. I don't know what the train of logic for this drama is supposed to be. All I know so far is that I really don't like anything about it, and the best I can hope for is that the next episode doesn't manage to be worse than this one.

Review by William Schwartz

"It's Okay, That's Love" is directed by Kim Kyoo-tae, written by Noh Hee-kyeong and features Zo In-sung, Kong Hyo-jin, Sung Dong-il and Lee Kwang-soo.

 

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