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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Hogu's Love" Episode 6

The good news is that we find out Do-hee's motivation for keeping the baby. The bad news is that her motivation is horrifically naive and idealistic magical thinking. The worst news is that "Hogu's Love" is expecting us to think that Do-hee has somehow made a noble choice. Do-hee opens up about her reasons to the one character most likely to call her out on being selfish and short-sighted- and he fails to do so. To the contrary, this man agrees to help Do-hee when only a few scenes prior he'd been wailing in agony because Do-hee really, truly has managed to make a huge mess of everything for more people than she could possibly know.

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I wouldn't mind this so much if the development at least furthered Do-hee's character. But it doesn't. It only makes Do-hee that much more incomprehensible. How does a woman go from dedicating seven hours a day to intense physical training for the sake of worldwide glory to wanting to live a "noble" life based on advice from a homeless pickpocket? From a social perspective this plot point makes me especially angry. In a real life context, people like this frequently end up abusing their children because actual babies are more interested in pooping than validating parents with low self-esteem.

In all fairness "Hogu's Love" doesn't spend that much time on Do-hee. Which is another reason why this plot point is so infuriating. Most of the jokes here are perfectly well-written but I can't focus on the humorous nature of the date between Kang-cheol and Ho-kyeong when life-shattering decisions are hanging in the background. Especially when Do-hee's situation itself is mostly treated like a joke.

In a very short time "Hogu's Love" has managed to almost completely invalidate all of its prior strengths. The drama has gone from being a tragicomic character study on the social lives of young people to a zany sitcom where we're supposed to sit pat and relieved because at the end of the day everything's going to work itself out somehow. The flashbacks have stopped being about character psychosis and just turned into being weird for the sake of being weird.

And where's Hogu in all of this? Just...tacitly accepting the overall fate of the situation, apparently. The episode starts out with Hogu looking rather bewildered at the recent turn of events, and that's where I am right now. I feel like I owe an apology to anyone who started watching "Hogu's Love" based on the strong recommendations from my earlier reviews. This drama has quickly turned into a fantastic mess, and I dread the next episode.

Review by William Schwartz

"Hogu's Love" is directed by Pyo Min-soo, written by Yoon Nan-joong and features Park Soon-chun, UEE, Choi Wooshik, Lim Seulong, Lee Soo-kyung-I, Jung Won-joong and many more.

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