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No Gain, No Love korean drama review
Completed
No Gain, No Love
2 people found this review helpful
by Beatrice
16 days ago
12 of 12 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 7.0
Story 8.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 6.0
This review may contain spoilers

The leads got shortchanged

Shin Min Ah absolutely shines as Son Hae Yeong who in the hands of another actor would probably be a very misunderstood character. I love her range from being organically cute without any over acting like in the scene she's munching away on the kimbap with her chair pushed back out view in the car and does her little moo to breaking my heart when she confronts the pain that her parents caused her. Genuine foster parents are very important, but I saw this advice for people considering fostering that it's not a good fit if their children can't handle it well and Hae Yeong who was just a child needed stable homelife that her parents never gave to her. They put their own needs to be saints above their daughter. It also hurt her every time someone who became family would leave her. All she wanted was a stable homelife and to be loved in return, she doesn't even hate the foster kids. She loves the sisters that came back and stayed fiercely. Sadly the show also put the happiness of all the side characters above Hae Yeong.

I loath all the side pairings which also has the worst characters Gyu Hyun and U Jae, both of whom are scumbags who abused Hae Yeong in a professional setting, with Gyu Hyun the creep who both spammed Ja Yeon with hate comments as well as making his secretary do it, demoting Hae Yeong out of spite because she's married to his father's extramarital child and U Jae who dumped her to marry up, creepily stalked her after he's married, and stole her work and keeps failing upward. It's so much worse that the show chickens out and makes it that Gyu Hyun didn't write the worst hate comment, they don't even let his character growth count for anything. He also never rectified what he did to Hae Yeong. He should have given her all the money she wanted for her start-up as compensation. The lip service to the polyamory storyline ends in the most heteronormative way with Hee Sung marrying the one guy and having the child instead of getting an abortion and being the independent person she wanted to be.

I did enjoy Hae Yeong and Ji Uk's romance. He knew who she was, but truly got to know here as they gradually built up their rapport through their interactions at the mini-mart and supporting her schemes. I also like how their first meeting made sense because it's her house that he was staying at and was trying to walk by to avoid her while she was contemplating smoking for the first time and he just so happened to have a lighter which foreshadowed their future as co-schemers turned lovers. He actually looked better with his longer hair, it frames his face very nicely. Ji Uk's story was also swallowed up by the annoying side characters. I would rather see his friendship and brotherly/fatherly relationship develop with that guy that was formerly the Bok family secretary and settle his angst with his birthmother. Hae Yeong and Ji Uk deserved their fantasy ending being happy in love, snuggling with their cat Baby and her with a successful business venture instead of ending on a kiss after reuniting post a long separation.
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