Thanks, @dramaddictally. And farewell, Suckers.

Farewell to a show that managed to become more boring than a ‘reality’ show that was always more boring than reality.

Farewell to Ji-yeon, the *drippiest* SFL of the year. If tears weren’t as salty as I am about this drama, we could hire that chick to end our drought. It was only right for her to leave the scene with a stalker who kicked off their relationship by reinforcing her delusions about who is responsible for her emotional state. This will go well.

Farewell to the ugliest FL wardrobe of 2022. The absurd, unflattering fashions won’t even take a year to look outdated but they fit the epitaph for this show: “what were they thinking?”

Farewell to the guy with the knife. I feel your pain, man. We ALL got conned.

I am grading exams so desperately need a brake so than you @dramaddictally for your weecap. You certainly channeled my waning interest and frustration at the unrealised potential if this drama. To wit:

1. The main leads increasingly became less interesting, tolerable and enjoyable. If you have to have a romance, at least, have the nous to see how another pair is sparkling like mad and give them more than a perfunctory closure.
2. There was so much repetition and revisiting the same well for the main couple that if that had been paired down and properly edited, they could have properly enhanced Jiwan and Jun/John’s closeness and could have explored other facets of her personality.
3. Re Jiwan, what I loved in her tough negotiation with the charlatan, was that her kittenish voice become deeper and she demonstrated her toughness which she clearly had been conditioned by gendered expectations to hide. It would have been so delightful and refreshing if that aspect had been acknowledged even if humorously.
4. Given the heteronormative framework of the show, it was important that as many of the contestants to pair up and plan to marry as possible so it wasn’t surprising and was predictable that the constantly weeping Jiyeon had to meet a man who would reaffirm her worth. That was unfortunate though as it reiterated its message that women cannot be happy without a romantic partner.
5. The charlatan’s redemption was not earned and was bizarre.
6. I regretted the hours that I spent on this and will be more ruthless in future.

The final episodes of LOVE IS FOR SUCKERS more or less tied up the loose ends sufficiently. What a shame that we did not get something more.

Perhaps my disappointment with the way the show played out reflects my expectations going in. Did the suckers referenced in the title actually refer to the audience?

I am utterly mystified. This show fell far short as a friends to lovers romcom. How did this happen? We had Lee Dahee and Choi Siwan cast as the leads. The writer gave us the wonderful PEGASUS MARKET. This one should have been a hit.

Maybe you are right, and it was the show within the show which de-railed what would have been a very fun story. With the addition of all the half-baked stories of the cast of the reality show the plot simply got muddled. There were too many cross currents. You could say that the show tripped over the show within a show.

This show could have been so much more. Once again, we see that it is the shows that could have been great but fall far short of the mark which disappoint us the most.

LiFS is a collosal disappointment. Not because it was mediocre or there isn't any worse mediocre show this year, but because it had all the good ingredients to make a good watch - a lead cast we like, an interesting supporting cast, good plotline, and a central storyline that could move the plot forward through 16 episodes. How it became this messy and leaving a sour taste on my buds has me asking what I was watching for the past 3 weeks cause I know the first 5 weeks were just on point with the right conflicts and all. I enjoyed things better when In-woo was a conflict than when he became non-existent to the story.

I don't know what LiFS was trying to be but it definitely didn't land at all.

I hope to see Choi Siwon and Lee Dahee in something better next time.

Ji-wan and John for the win!

That's about it.

I feel robbed! I wanted to witness Chef and Ji Wan's wedding rather than that boring walk.

Chef and Ji Wan's story was what kept me watching till the end after the allegedly lead couple got so depressing. At least the show could've shown us more Chef and JiWan. I would watch a spinoff of their extended love story.

I figured out why YeoReum's awful stylist dressed her that way. It was to show us that she is not okay in the head. That would be the only explanation that would make sense how horrible she was dressed.

Chae Ri is so complex and hopefully she finds her own happiness. I hope she learn how to fix it and hopefully start working on herself and her interpersonal relationships.

I am happy that HyeJin and DaeSik is pregnant. I wish them all the happiness.

I wanted to regret watching this show but since I got to meet Chef and JiWan I do not totally hate it. They saved the show for me. I am glad the show is over.

Thank goodness it’s over! Takes a shot of tequila.

Congratulations fellow suckers! We made it to the end.

Making a note in case we have a future caregiver of “Best non-OTP” Jae Hoon and Yoo Reum.
They were so much fun as friends and neighbors. And then it was like dead fishes.
They were mouthing dialogues and I was just staring at them. I felt nothing and pretty sure the actors felt nothing.

On the brighter side - the drama is over and I never have to see Ji-Hyeon cry again. Was it just me or did she look like she was going to start crying when that guy asked her out on a date?

Also, Chef John needs his own drama. The dude was really handsome and grew on me towards the last few episodes.

The show was so slow burn that the leads got together by the time nothing of their chemistry remained, their bond was strained to the breaking point and they got together because one party was too sad that the other was leaving them in every way (yeah. I would argue that Jae Hoon has been a shitty friend to Yeo Rum a big chunk of the show).

Tbh, I didn't mind the reality show aspect. The show could have worked with that and Yeo Rum could have fallen in love with Jae Hoon during the making of the show. Again, why did Yeo Rum have to be in love with him for ages and realise it only now? "The realisation" part is always the most boring part of the kdramas, and here it was prolonged for 12 episodes.

I would have appreciated if the show at least went with the wrong timing theme and allowed Jae Hoon to be with Jiyeon. Obviously, the leads would get together but it would be more Love Rosie and less of whatever the show was.

It's a shame that the scenes with Ji-wan and John were so short, but they were satisfying. They were the only reason why I stayed until the end. And they are also the reason why I don't regret investing time in this drama.

@dramaddictally thanks for the weecap.

‘ Should we take a moment of silence for the terrible death of such a bright idea?’ 👈Yes, we need to do just that.

I stuck with this despite the change, from a feel good rom com with a couple I loved and wanted to watch work through the challenges that occur when friends become lovers. The toxic show within a show was so powerful it contaminated the main show. The main couple changed and became part of the support cast. Sweet Sangwoo disappeared; it felt like the actor had another commitment so went off set and they weren’t sure if he would be available again so even though they had left a way to reintegrate him they decided to cut and paste some random scenes in when he returned rather than blending them in smoothly. After the funny scene leading to the matchmaking of Sangwoo with Jaehoon’s sister it was nice to see they will probably becomes in laws.

The wrap up was literally like going through a tickbox exercise to make sure everyone had their conclusion.
It was great to see Jiyeon had moved on enough to help JH and YR keep their business contained but did ANYONE care that she had a new love option?

So happy the infertility issue was shown to have a happy conclusion but as the risk of miscarriage is quite high, I would have preferred to see heavily pregnant belly or better yet the baby/babies.

Confused about the logic of showing us the staff reuniting on the set for a wedding but then not showing it. I still don’t believe there would have been a wedding episode on that show, yes they met there but they did not have lots of happy memories associated with the setting so why would they want to associate their special day with lots of camera crew and fake outs.

The cast get together meal where Joon announces the engagement had the whole cast there but I don’t believe they would have invited app man. He had thrown Jiwan in front of a man with a knife, made her agree to go out with him so he could promote his app and had disclosed her sexual abuse on air. His absence would have been a given and accepted by all the other cast without question.

PD Kang finally admitted she was using her programmes to work out her issues when it would be much easier for EVERYONE if she just went to therapy. If work can pay for YR to spend 6 months in France for some random reason, then why not suggest therapy for PD Kang? It was interesting to see PD Kang in Uni isolated and jealous of YR but we missed how she transitioned into the confident yet emotionally shut down person she presents as today. YR’s golden child upbringing was emphasised in such an unusual way for her age just for the PD Kang storyline but it didn’t make sense when they had shown it in more appropriate ways throughout the drama anyway.

All in all a drama that had so much potential but left the audience confused and disappointed.

I didn’t hate this drama but….

It would have been so much better if it had actually delivered on its promise of being a comedy and having a friends-to-lovers romance instead of starting that way and weirdly diverging into trying to make some kind of commentary on reality shows but failing and not really showing me the lead couple growing closer at all. There’s so much you can do with the hesitation of turning friends into lovers and they just completely killed most of it. Even their friends didn’t care at the end 😅

I loved Chef John’s growth though; and I really liked whenever Yeo Reom, Jae Hoon and restaurant friends were all together in that their interactions actually felt like friends.

Honestly, this show left me disappointed in general. As usual, I feel the writer lost his/her ideas halfway through and couldn't pick up. I didnt feel love for the characters, plot was a disaster, lots of unnecesary repeated scenes, in order to fill up the time...
What a waste!
I mean, not that the setting could have given us much anyways, but hey... at least they could have developed the secondary characters better.
But anyway... thanks God it finished. I wont rewatch.
Am not angry, but i feel it was a waste.

I can say matter-of-factly that this ending did not make me happy. … With the amount of repetition in these last four episodes, we had a lot of time to spare for the things we were promised but never came back to. How about all those awesome themes the show introduced early on about late-30s love? What about a sense of humor? Remember when this drama was funny?

Thank you for summing up how I feel about this show so succinctly, @dramaddictally.

I should have dropped it, but instead, I kept thinking it might return to its initial promising glory, and tried to understand the deeper meanings that were never there.

If I could describe my dissatisfaction, I think my main gripe with this show was that the characters, in the end, did not feel real or 3-dimensional in any way. Not all shows can give us that, but it felt like that’s what they were promising at the start, and so I feel cheated. Everyone felt flat to me, and each main character had one or two modes of being, and approximately one major charter flaw. That was it.

I admire you for being able to draw out themes and underlying meanings, @dramaddictally. The show wasn’t devoid of moments of insight, but it had overpromised, big time. There’s something to be said about the agreement between a show and its audience in the set-up process, and I learned through this show that if you overpromise and under-deliver, you end up with a dissatisfied audience who will be much less forgiving.

I'm skimming through the comments and it seems I will not go back to this drama.

I think the writer forgot to follow the synopsis. I thought the story would be the FL realizing her own feelings for her best friend during her TV show. But the FL dated Chief Jang, then her ex and her best friend confessed just after she broke up. There was already too much happening between the characters before the show started and then they acted pitifully during the whole show... Niether of them was really interesting.

PD Kang was so much more interesting and fun to watch. I loved her style too. She was so direct! It was refreshing.

Ji-Wan and Chief Jang were so cute. I'm sad they didn't develop them more because it would have been more fun to watch. At least, Chief Jang had a great character arc.

Oh man, I have so many thoughts. It's probably easier for me to put them into bullet form rather than attempt to organize them. The problem is, I can't completely write off this drama. There is a lot I loved about it (and it gave me one of my favorite romances ever, one that was refreshing and imo even groundbreaking). Which makes its flaws and poor execution all the more frustrating.
- I think that there were like two dramas within the same one: Yeo-reum and Jae-hoon, and then the reality show stuff. The first one was good until the engagement with the ex, which HONESTLY felt like a jump the shark moment to me. I think that they should have found another reason for Jae-hoon to be cast at the last minute. They didn't need the ex thing AT ALL.
- The Yeo-reum and Jae-hoon drama, which I had found engaging, fell apart during the reality show. I agree with others who said that it was a mistake for Jae-hoon to fall so quickly. It would have been better for them to fall in love slowly, over time, as the show progressed (like John and Ji-wan, actually).
- Ji-yeon was unnecessary. Jae-hoon's on a reality dating show! Have fun with it! Have him go on multiple dates with multiple women. Have Yeo-reum watch and become jealous! Actually, have them ALL date multiple people. The pairing up right away was boring both for the drama and the show-within-a-show. Who would have watched Kingdom of Love 2 and felt invested? Not me.
- I agree that, as the Kingdom of Love storyline progressed and the Yeo-reum/Jae-hoon storyline fell apart, the former became more compelling only because it gave us the actual romance and character development in the show: John and Ji-wan.
- From about ep 9 onward, they become the most compelling storyline and give us the romance we were missing from the leads. But the show seems to disagree, so we have to sit through more Yeo-reum and Jae-hoon doing the same thing over and over and over.
- Apart from their romance, the character development of John and Ji-wan in itself was great. He became a better, more authentic person, and she went from telling other people's stories to being the leading lady in her own. She actually was the one who saved the day for everyone.
- The more I think about it, the more I want to know about THEIR story. Especially Ji-wan. How was it for her telling romance stories and living in fictional worlds rather than experiencing it in her own life? What happened to make her go from being a shut-in to appearing on a reality show? How did her mom react to her disclosure of sexual abuse on TV? Did her experiences on KoL and personal growth impact her future storytelling? What was it like for John, who is relatively famous, to date and eventually marry someone that no one would have expected? How did it go with Ji-wan (I assume) pursuing a physical relationship given her trauma history?
- I do love that John went from literally throwing over Ji-wan for Tae-mi to figuratively throwing over Tae-mi for...

Happy that the true stars of the show (the chef & Webtoon writer) had a happy ending. It would have been satisfying to watch their wedding instead of the closing shots of the leads or atleast a kiss. I guess viewers like me who stuck till the final episodes should really be rewarded with something like that. Another character that actually grew on me with the passing episodes was Chae ri. I kind of liked her arc and how her journey to healing and self-discovery was shown as “under progress”. She was consistent throughout the show, that even at her poorest behaviour I cheered for her. I felt the FL never grew much as a character throughout the show esp in term of her profession. Apart from her complaining to JH about how much she sucks in the job, what else has she done all throughout? Then the 6 months break was yet another unrealistic part. What kind of company pays of their employee’s travel so that he/she can learn French and how exactly it helps in her professional growth? The makers had a good theme to show, but they chose to make the show so much predictable and gradually boring. I even FF the scenes of leads in the final episodes. The final episodes had so much filler yet the wedding tease at the ep 1 was never quiet resolved. Or did it?? I FF a lot so I am sure if I missed it. The chicken feet scene was very weird, I mean was that an effort to gross them into apologising? The ending again was so half-baked, I mean the bipolar contestant is suddenly fine, Tae-mi is eating with everyone, and even after all these mishaps, the love kingdom 2 cast wants to continue friendship with JunHo? And finally that reunion episode. JY lies to protect ML, Ji-wan lies about her relation with Jun ho. Why has women lying in public to protect men’s reputation considered as something good?
And finally the biggest flaw of the show: FL’s outfits.
From those ridiculous boots, to that final white flower on her collar with black ankle socks everything she wore in the show looked extra tacky.
Also looking forward to Siwon in the upcoming drama “Drink now, work later 2”. Hopefully that will me make me forgive him for selecting this half-baked script.

@dramaddictally thanks for the recap which captures all of the issues with show and thanks everyone for the comments, all of which are on target. I can honestly say that this is first show where I was muttering expletives at a happy ending that showed a couple romantically musing on the nature of love while walking and laughing through falling leaves.

My irritation at the main relationship is definitely too extreme, but let me just point out that Yeo Reum, despite her late protestations of love, was unhappy most of the time she was with Jae-Hoon, even after they slept together, except in few flashbacks where they were engaged in friend hi-jinks. Come to think of, Ji-yeon was also miserable with Jae-Hoon. Just as fans ship couples who have great chemistry, I’m wondering if Choi-Si Won was a real jerk on the set. (Not really, but you never know—might have to get on line and start a rumor, since we know from this show that Netizen rumors are the mainspring of human action.)

Yeo reum’s exposure of Jae-Hoon's trauma on national t.v. without consulting him was in my opinion, a major sin. It needed, like all the issues with reality dating shows, a serious explanation/expiation. It was glossed over, because apparently exposing it on national t.v. was just the solution Jae Hoon needed!

Jae Hoon then went back to exhausting and long hours work that would require enormous sacrifice on the part of any partner. He did it without any consulting of the woman he loved. And everyone was happy for him being so self- centered. But speaking of self--centered, so was Yeo Reum. Meanwhile, at the end, she flew off to Paris, with no explanation, at the very time it would have been appropriate for some intimate time together with Jae Hoon. Of course he would be working 18 hours a day and wouldn’t have had time to see anyone anyway. So this relationship didn't matter to either of them.

As for the reality show, I have 3 possible theories about the writers and producing team on this show

Least likely: they all worked on a reality dating show, had a wonderful experience, with a few dramatic glitches, but met their spouses or partners there.

Next likely: they are having difficulties in their relationships, and they are all fantasizing about the possibilities of being on a show where forced relationships come true.

Most likely: They want to write or produce a reality dating show in the future, and they’re hoping that if they generated this loving tribute to a reality dating show they will be hired for one in the future.

I liked a Fanletter, Please just fine, but it was pretty slight, both in length and theme. I think I've started and mostly dropped all other romances that I missed when they were live this fall. So what next--May I Help You?
As @reply1988 well knows, I have other watching responsibilities I have to fulfill, which I'm really looking forward to. But any suggestions on new shows that show romance...

I'm sure the writers intended JJ and JW to be a diversion for viewers while the main couple were enduring their manufactured tribulations but they soared to the greatest heights. In John Jang they provided a character we loved to hate, who gradually grew and changed. When faced with a genuine warmhearted human he realised that feelings are more important than looks and that he wanted real, not fake.

This doesn't say much for the vacuous YR he dumped at the start, because he had no such realisation with her and this was the problem with almost every character. Even Jae-hoon with his sob story regressed from neurosurgeon to plastic surgeon to apathy.They were all quite at home living in a fantasy where manufactured standards rule responses, while this was Ji-wan's first foray into such an environment. If John/Joon was the only one that could see her shining, that's sad.

She was such a sympathetic character from the start and clearly saw something more in JJ than just his looks, so the pair of them inevitably connected like magnets. Ji-wan was like a gardener raising a tricky hothouse flower and John/Joon bloomed under her care. This storyline might have been mere pedestrian fodder in the hands of other actors, so kudos to them both for bringing these characters alive. Every scene with these two was a gem and I'm so pleased we got not only the confession from JJ, but also the wedding announcement. As for the bonus toast:

"Ji-wan, you make me go crazy."

Let that be the epitaph for this show, rather than the endless and clumsy saccharine ending.

Proof that chemistry needs to come from the writing as well. JH and YR were great in the beginning and in the flashbacks. 2022 JH and YR felt like a couple who should break up and are just lying to themselves now. The pontificating about happy endings was just wtf... I really think the writer just gave up. I could feel her fall out of love with the drama she was writing and with her main characters and was just trying to get it done because the thing was airing.

Well, everything has been already said and much better, than I ever could.
For me the best thing about this drama is the love story of Ji-wan & John, which we needed more of. And that after only seeing Choi Si-won in one other drama years ago (Oh! My Lady), which I didn't love and where he didn't leave a lasting impression for, this drama might me seek out other dramas of his. So I ended up bingig Work Later, Drink Now and loved it. It was weird, but very good. So I am looking forward to season so. So long suckers.

Thanks for the recap! I have to say, episode 15 was great. It's too bad that the single moment of a woman demonstrating her love for another woman by aggressively eating spicy chicken feet at women needed so much setting up. It was a scene that passed the Bechdel Test in every way. Fourteen episodes of explanation of why the two leads were true friends and why they were somehow still single and available to get together < fourteen episodes setting up Yeo Reum's love of chicken feet and f-ed up relationship with Chae Ri.

Thank you for the great recaps @dramaddictally. I don't have anything to add to what has already been said.

I dropped this show early on, so thank you for the recap. I am wondering did they explain why FL and ML were not together to begin with?

One more rant about unexplained scenes/dropped cliffhangers: did they ever explain what happened when there was a knock on the door of each guy (other than the one Chae-ri slept with)?

Ugh. Soundtrack #1 was way better and only 4 eps. Even though I know some don't "like" it. it dealt with the ML stuck in the friend zone much better (even though it's a lousy trope) than LiFS did.

My God. SiWon just gets better looking with age. When this 'comedy' started getting too soapy, I hung in there just to see his handsome self. As for real romance, their married pals and the webtoonist/chef pairing were more adorable.