Review of Love to Hate You /연애대전

Love to Hate You was one of those drama I just happen to stumble upon and end up watching. I think I ran into this one because of how it kept appearing on my Netflix For You tab, and then I saw the two leads were Kim Ok-vin and Teo Yoo.

I’m a big fan of Kim Ok-vin because of how she appeared in The Villainess awhile ago, and I thought she nailed that role despite the funkier decisions the director ended up making with the camera angles and shots throughout the movie.

Teo Yoo has also been on my radar lately because of how he’s going to appear in the A24 movie Past Lives; I am definitely a sucker for a lot of the work that A24 ends up putting out in the last couple of years.

Anyways, I ended up watching this pretty quickly over the course of a week because of how it’s only ten episodes.

When I was watching it, all ten episodes were up, so I could marathon it over the course of a week whenever I wasn’t dying at school over homework and essays to write. All in all, I think this was an okay drama, but it kept me entertained enough to watch it all the way through.

I will say in advance, though, that have to love successful female characters, but I want these dynamics reversed.

Onwards with the review!

A female lawyer ends up falling in love with her client, a famous actor who appears in dramas.

We open Love to Hate You with a crash course on our female lead: Yeo Mi-ran likes to go out on the streets and essentially become a vigilante against the men who do wrong against other women. Paired with some killer instincts and taekwondo moves, she’s basically a menace that no one knows exists because of how she doesn’t reveal her identity while doing these actions.

By the day, however, she’s a lawyer who can’t find a job. Part of the problem there is because she is a woman, but she has just moved out of her parent’s house, so she needs to find an income quickly or her—and her roommate—are going to suffer from her financial situation.

She ends up meeting the actor Nam Kang-ho by accident at first. When picking a kid up at a hotel, she hears Kang-ho complaining about his female co-star, who he tries to talk to about her behavior and she decides she wants to spread malicious rumors about him in the process.

Mi-ran misinterprets his rant against the co-star, who actually does have some attitude problems that she can’t leave behind on the set—aka, she has a crush on Kang-ho despite him not wanting to date her. His problem is he can’t get near women at all, which leaves him in a sticky situation as a drama actor. Mi-ran decides revenge against him because of how she thinks he uses women.

When a top actress demands her representative law firm hire a woman, because they simply do not hire women (big red flag here), Mi-ran ends up getting hired at the firm because she is the only woman to show up during the interview process, despite her interview being absolutely terrible.

As it turns out, it’s also Kang-ho’s law firm, and trips him while in the hallway. Thus begins a complicated dance where he begins to think she’s a fan slash stalker of his, and she ends up having to do her job while gaining his support for her to keep her job.

The remainder of the drama is spent showing how these two end up gradually falling in love. Conflicts are sprinkled here and there, but this originally follows the hate to love trope that we often see in romance dramas.

By the halfway point, these two are pretty much not denying that they’re in love with each other, but external conflicts are able to throw a wrench in their plans.

There are fans, Mi-ran’s job because she definitely is overstepping a professional boundary here, his manager, his co-star that has a crush on him, and so many other variables going on throughout this drama.

Overall Thoughts

I think I’m really tired of seeing a trope where women who are successful end up losing their careers because of the men they choose to date or invite into their lives.

Mi-ran is a powerful woman at the beginning of the series who is capable of fighting, and she even beats up Kang-ho at one point because of how she thinks he’s a womanizer.

The writers try to bring that thread back in when she ends up becoming a stunt double for his female lead co-star, but I think we really begin to lose the independence Mi-ran enjoyed at the beginning of the series.

There’s also this implication that she’s kind of incomplete without a man because of it, which I don’t really agree with for obvious reasons. I think it’s an entertaining drama, and it’s great these two learned to overcome their issues with each other, but I wanted a lot more from it at the end of the day.

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