Episode Guide
Episodes 1 & 2 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 3 &4 -| Review Score – 2.5/5 Episodes 5 & 6 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 7 & 8 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episodes 9 & 10 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episodes 11 & 12 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 13 & 14 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 15 & 16 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episodes 17 & 18 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 19 & 20 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 21 & 22 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episodes 23 & 24 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episodes 25 & 26 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 27 & 28 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episodes 29 & 30 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episodes 31 & 32 -| Review Score – 3/5 Love With Flaws is a Korean drama with a serious identity problem. Beginning with a big dose of toilet humour before settling down somewhat, Love With Flaws quickly switches over to dark drama while introducing a whole host of sub-plots interwoven around the main romantic plot that unfortunately overshadows the will they/won’t they angle that dominates large parts of this drama. While the show does well to bring things together at the end, Love With Flaws is at its strongest when it embraces its funny situational humour but the middle chunk of this drama feels sadly lacking in that department. The story predominantly revolves around Kang-Woo and Seo-Yeon. The former finds himself with some serious digestive issues thanks to past school trauma involving Seo-Yeon while they were at school. Early on, a lot of this plays out with a big dollop of slapstick, with Kang-Woo’s friend Hyun-Woo and Seo-Yeon’s best friend Mi-Kyung acting as supporting players while this occurs. As the show progresses however, this story soon evolves into a much more organic love triangle involving Seo-Yeon’s colleague Min-Hyeok. All of this progresses through to the suitably predictable finale. Along the way Love With Flaws peppers in a whole host of sub-plots for its supporting players to try and add some depth to this one. Each of Seo-Yeon’s three brothers are given their own love angles, there’s another mysterious character called Jang-Mi that spends most of her time snapping photos and reserved for background busy-work, while Dr Lee, who features the best comedic lines, has a late sub-plot of his own. While the intention is there to add some depth to this one with its various different storylines, unfortunately it actually has an adverse effect and makes the sub-plots feel frustratingly half-baked and in serious need of more screen-time. It also makes the central love triangle feel a little bland and vanilla compared to these too. Most of the drama utilizes a lot of vibrant, bright colours and early on there’s some really nice split shots and slow-motion scenes that add to the variety in this one. The jokes are usually accompanied by a quirky sound effect or extreme close-up reaction, while the situational comedy that dominates much of the first-half to this one works well to add another layer to the comedy. Where Love With Flaws isn’t so strong however, is when it ditches this and sidelines the romance to dive into Seo-Yeon’s dark past. It feels tonally jarring and offsets the pacing too, especially as these few weeks of darkness are quickly abandoned in favour of the status quo again. Watching from week to week, Love With Flaws has swung like a pendulum between strong and weak set of episodes, with some of the later drama struggling to hit the same rhythm and heights achieved early on. The central plot line suffers from feeling far too formulaic, with a distinct lack of chemistry between the leads, while the sub-plots are in desperate need of screen-time to flesh them out further. Unfortunately Love With Flaws is far more flaw than love, with a myriad of issues that’s hard to ignore. It does have some enjoyable moments and some of the humour is genuinely laugh out loud material, especially midway through the show, but beyond that there just isn’t a whole lot else worth getting excited about here.
