Love to Hate You is about a strong-willed attorney (Kim Ok Bin) who doesn’t like to lose to men that begins working for a popular actor (Yoo Two) who doesn’t trust women. Their distrust for each other soon starts to develop into feelings.
Kim Ok Bin plays Yeo Mi Ran. She is a talented attorney who has dealt with a lot of discrimination as a woman. This results in her distrusting men. She’s strong, independent, and a good fighter, so she uses her skills to rise above.
Yoo Teo is Nam Kang Go. He is a popular actor known for his romantic roles, but in reality, he has some serious issues with women. These issues cause him problems in his work and social life.
Then we have Won Joon (Kim Ji Hoon) who is the manager and close friend of Kang Ho. Finally, there is Na Eun (Go Won Hee) who is the roommate and best friend of Mi Ran.
Love to Hate You was a mixed drama for me. It’s a romantic comedy that deals with relationships as well as issues like discrimination between the sexes. It’s mostly light-hearted but does sprinkle in some more serious and thoughtful moments.
This is a series that really took some warming up to though. The first few episodes were kind of slow, and I just wasn’t feeling the overall tone.
I also didn’t really like any of the characters. That includes our main couple. Both Mi Ran and Kang Ho have a lot of dislike for the opposite sex. We do eventually explore these reasons, but in the beginning, they both just came off kind of unlikable.
We do see that Mi Ran has dealt with a lot of discrimination for being a woman and encounters a lot of double standards in her work and social life. This causes her to have a sort of vendetta against men, and she won’t hesitate to stand up for what’s right when she has the chance.
This is what eventually causes her to set her sights on Kang Ho when she learns this popular actor’s feelings towards women. He becomes her target as she plots to take him down.
But Kang Ho’s situation is actually a bit complicated. (SPOILER: It turns out his feelings towards women stems from a horrible relationship experience which resulted in him having a panic disorder that causes severe reactions when coming in contact with women. END OF SPOILER)
It takes about half of the series, which is 10 episodes, to really get our couple interacting a lot and to see the relationship take shape. But even then, it still didn’t really feel developed. We don’t find out about Kang Ho’s issues until around this time, and it’s not explored very deeply.
It’s also pretty late before we go a bit more in depth with Mi Ran. This all made the key relationship developments that happened late in the drama not have a lot of impact. It all felt very quick and mechanical.
Now, as a whole, I enjoyed the second half of the series a lot more. The characters became more appealing as their quirkiness really shined through. Everyone interacting more also helped a lot.
The show also touched upon some important issues like the discrimination Mi Ran faced as well as the issues Kang Ho was dealing with. There are some very nice couple moments between Kang Ho and Mi Ran too.
There’s also a couple of pretty nice friendships involving both the guys, Kang Ho and Won Joon, as well as the girls, Mi Ran and Na Eun. All of the friends were very supportive of each other. There’s also a side romance that added a little extra interest to the show.
So, in the end, Love to Hate You was a decent watch. The slow start, slightly unlikable characters, and lack of relationship development made the first half pretty average. But the improvements in the second half made the show much more enjoyable. I do wish it would have been more even throughout, but it was a cute watch overall.
My Rating: 6/10
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