You Can’t Trust Pretty Boys
Going into Love With Flaws completely blind was the best decision I made. Utterly bizarre and boasting some wacky, creatively visual segments, this comedic romance gets off to a pretty good start here with some genuine laugh out loud moments. While there is some lowbrow humour regarding Kang-Woo’s stomach problems and some over-acting in places, Love With Flaws is utterly mesmerizing and difficult to take your eyes off. We begin with Seo Yeon walking up a flight of stairs while a trio of women watch her struggling, lamenting her living with their man. As they begin hitting her we find out she hasn’t stolen their boyfriends – she’s actually their sister. Returning home, she laments her brothers and snaps photos of them until she finds out who was unfaithful – it turns out they all were. Through a slickly edited and funky series of graphics, we see Seo Yeon shunned in favour of her brothers, before cutting to present day and the start of our drama. Seo Yeon is a P.E. teacher at school and runs into trouble with the Vice Principal early on. Soon after, she berates her brother for putting on a strip show, prompting her to punish him before going after one of the teachers who was there filming the whole time. Sitting down for dinner with her boyfriend Jung Tae, she immediately dislikes his new face and to make matters worse, he’s actually brought her to a really romantic spot with the intention of breaking up with her. It’s harsh and enough for her to go full-on montage mode as she drinks herself into oblivion in a bar. After trying to get the attention of the boys there and failing, she soon learns that she’s actually in a gay bar. Drunk, Seo-Yeon heads off and berates her luck before keeping a photo of the new Jung-Tae on her phone – a reminder that handsome men are not to be trusted. Heading out to clean up the sick on the floor she left earlier in her drunken stupor, she runs into Kang-Woo and accidentally knocks him down, right into the wet sick. The next day, Seo Yeon runs into trouble with the Vice President again after an issue involving his flower. After Mr Lee. rats her out, she berates another pretty guy proving to be untrustworthy. From here, we learn more about Kang-Woo and see that he has rich parents. It also turns out that Lee Min-Hyeok and Kang-Woo are actually brothers. While they talk, Seo-Yeon arrives trying to find Joo-Hee. Getting nowhere, she decides to head home after rejecting Min-Hyeok’s advances. As we soon learn, Kang-Woo used to be bullied back in school and takes his fitness seriously now after losing weight. It turns out he was bullied for a bowel issue, and that comes back to haunt him in the present too, when he experiences some bathroom problems. As the episode closes out, Kang-Woo arrives at a restaurant and manages to bring the attention of everyone to him…except Seo Yeon who seems completely un-phased by his arrival. As it turns out, she happens to be the girl responsible for his mental instability all those years ago and his digestive problems come back again, the episode closes out. As an opening episode, Love With Flaws certainly has its moments but of course certainly has its flaws too. While I’m not a massive fan of bathroom humour, its inclusion here will tailor to some people while the over-acting and expository-heavy dialogue may be enough to put some people off this too. Having said that though, Love With Flaws is funny when it needs to be and features some really well worked jokes in here too. It’s still very early days of course but right now, Love With Flaws looks to be a very interesting Korean drama over the weeks and quite what direction this one is likely to take going forward remains to be seen. You can catch Love With Flaws on Viki. If you don’t have it already, feel free to click this link and sign up to access this and many other Korean dramas.
