Love is for Suckers: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

Love is for Suckers: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by Dramaddictally

Our reality show is over, and so is our drama. With a focus on our female leads in the final episodes, we wrap up a long-standing rivalry and open up some honest communication. Between blackmail and confessions, our Kingdom of Love cast is keeping busy even after the last episode airs — although our webtoon artist and chef don’t get nearly enough attention.

 
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP

Should we take a moment of silence for the terrible death of such a bright idea? Love is for Suckers is over and I feel like a sucker for defending this drama long after it lost its spark. The last two episodes tie up all the threads, nice and neat, with only one real surprise — we never circle back to the drama’s opening scene, which we’ve all been waiting for.

We start with a flashback to when Yeo-reum and Chae-ri were college students in the same major. Chae-ri is a quiet loner who watches the effervescent Yeo-reum with jealous eyes. Yeo-reum is pampered by her parents and doesn’t seem to have a care in the world, always trying to befriend Chae-ri. From the beginning, we’re establishing the core subject of the final episodes, which is the relationship between these two women.

In the present, both women read the news about the on-set affair between a cast member and a producer. The article says that the producer picked men she liked and then played around with them. Chae-ri looks truly offended, knowing how hard she works on her shows — and that work is all that matters to her. Yeo-reum (who wrongly thinks the news is about her) appears to take it less personally.

Yeo-reum shares the problem with Jae-hoon, crying and saying she’ll take all the responsibility for it. Jae-hoon says, no, he’ll take the responsibility. The music tells us this is supposed to be a high-emotion scene but it’s missing the mark. Rather than give us a reason to root for these two, the show has always treated them as end game and just assumed we’d buy it.

Another article appears online stating that Jae-hoon and Yeo-reum are living together, along with the photos of them entering their house together. When Yeo-reum’s boss questions her about it, Chae-ri walks into the office and says she’s the one who told Yeo-reum to bring Jae-hoon on the show. Yeo-reum has that shocked look on her face that’s become her staple response to pretty much everything that happens, and the boss’s question about her relationship with Jae-hoon gets dropped.

Chae-ri reveals to Yeo-reum that the guilty cast member is the fraudster who’s been pretending to like Ji-wan. She then reveals that the news scandal is about her — she slept with the cast member who owns a gym. Yeo-reum gets gossipy and starts asking about how it happened. Chae-ri deflects and just says she’ll take care of it. She’s being blackmailed with the photos of her entering the guy’s room but she doesn’t care — the best solution is to just release the photos. That way, Yeo-reum and Jae-hoon are covered. Chae-ri will take the blame.

Yeo-reum’s not comfortable with the idea of getting off blameless while Chae-ri takes the heat. But, she does understand that it’s an easy solution to her own problem. Unsure of what to do, she wants to talk it over with Jae-hoon. Before she can get to him, though, Ji-wan asks for a meeting and Yeo-reum goes to see her.

Turns out that Ji-wan is quite the blackmailer herself. She met with the fraudster dude after the show ended and told him to erase the photos he was holding of the PD and to give her the copies. If not, she would go public with the fact that he used her and purposefully talked on camera about her history of sexual abuse. Also, she’d talk about his role in the knife incident.

Ji-wan did this thinking that the photos were of Yeo-reum and Jae-hoon. She wanted to protect Yeo-reum after Yeo-reum had tried to protect her by not releasing her traumatic story. Once Ji-wan sees the photos are of Chae-ri, she takes the copies on a USB stick to Yeo-reum. She tells Yeo-reum to use them as she sees fit. And finally, things get a little interesting around here!

When Yeo-reum meets with Jae-hoon to discuss their options, she says she can protect him with the photos of Chae-ri, but she doesn’t really want to. Jae-hoon agrees. He doesn’t want to hide their relationship. After his story about his father was exposed to the world, his wound healed. In fact, he’s decided to go back to the neurosurgery department at the hospital. So, he doesn’t want to hide this either.

Yeo-reum finds Chae-ri drinking alone, clearly upset about the circumstances. Yeo-reum sits with her and orders two more soju glasses — one for Yeo-reum and one to dump the USB stick into. With the photos destroyed (and Yeo-reum ostensibly taking the fall as the naughty PD), it’s Chae-ri’s turn to be shocked.

Chae-ri asks Yeo-reum why the world is so beautiful for her. Yeo-reum gives a long answer about having trust, saying you can’t control people’s hearts. She says they’re creating a reality program, so they should just let things flow naturally. Chae-ri responds, “reality is a filthy thing, anyway.” This conversation appears to hold the thesis statement of the show. Yeo-reum is saying you can’t control reality, and Chae-ri is trying to force her view of reality onto everyone else. It’s the polarity between these two world views that the drama chooses to conclude with.

While still at the bar, we finally get our crazy lady moment from Yeo-reum. All this time I thought her outburst would be against Chae-ri, but instead it’s in defense of Chae-ri. When three women start calling Chae-ri names (loud enough for her to hear, but not to her face), Yeo-reum tells them to apologize. They squawk, until Yeo-reum eats a plate of chicken feet, one after another, backing them into a corner while spitting bones on the floor. They apologize and leave, thinking she’s as crazy as Chae-ri.

Yeo-reum, still trying to befriend Chae-ri after all these years, asks why she’s so mean to her. Chae-ri responds honestly: because Yeo-reum has everything. Then she yells that it’s the reason she hopes every show Yeo-reum makes fails — because it’s only fair! Finally realizing that Chae-ri has been jealous of her all this time, Yeo-reum is at ease in their final scenes together.

For the broadcast of the final episode of Kingdom of Love, the whole cast reunites for a live special of behind the scenes talk. This is where Ji-wan and Chef John run into each other (and the drama hits its high mark).

Waiting for the special to begin, John tells Ji-wan he missed everyone after leaving the show (because he still can’t bring himself to say he missed her). She says the same and asks how dating is going in the real world. Just then, we hear “oppa” and he turns to join his date. (Uh-uh, why is that weather girl calling him oppa? Are they really dating?)

The first on-air question Yeo-reum asks the cast is how all the couples are doing after the show. Chef John tries to squirm out of the question (annoying his date). Ji-wan says she and the conman decided to date for only one month and we see a flashback to when Ji-wan was threatening him for the photos. He agrees to give them to her if she will say she’s too scared to date long-term, and so he’s “being considerate of her.” Actually, this scene and all the blackmail stuff is played as farce, and I can’t help but think how much funnier this drama would have remained had it allowed a farcical tone throughout.

To wrap up the Ji-yeon saga, she is the one who defends Jae-hoon and Yeo-reum on the live special. The question of their scandal is raised and, without prompting, Ji-yeon explains that they were friends from before and live as upstairs/downstairs neighbors. She also says she was the person Jae-hoon kissed in the first episode (which apparently was never resolved for the viewers, and I totally forgot about). After the special, there is a bunch more wasted time on Jae-hoon and Ji-yeon apologizing and thanking each other.

Back to Ji-wan and John. In an earlier scene, we had heard Ji-wan say to Yeo-reum that she was grateful to Kingdom of Love because she liked someone for the first time and also had her heart broken for the first time. When the live show is over, Chef John picks up Ji-wan at the bus stop and drives her home. In front of her house, he asks if — after her month with the other guy — she would try dating him. “I like you. I like you a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” Ji-wan is literally crying, she’s so stunned. John walks over to her and hugs her — looking sooo happy.

The drama ends after a six-month time skip when everyone is great and on the road to happiness and recovery. Yeo-reum has taken six months off from her job (after being talked out of resigning), because she lost confidence and felt like she could never make a hit show like Chae-ri. Jae-hoon is back at the hospital. Sang-woo is advertising chicken training new employees and dating Jae-hoon’s sister. And Chae-ri is working on a new reality show about dysfunctional families (hoping to resolve her own inner wounds).

The Kingdom of Love cast meets at Ji-wan’s family’s restaurant where she and Chef John announce their engagement. It seems there are no hard feelings between any of the cast members — Ji-yeon has met a new man, and the guy who shoved Ji-wan in front of a knife to save himself? Ah, water under the bridge. We end with an extended scene of Jae-hoon and Yeo-reum walking through some trees on a sunny day pontificating about the meaning of a happy ending. They decide that life is a series of happy endings, which are just moments when you are happy.

I can say matter-of-factly that this ending did not make me happy. Where was our Kingdom of Love 2 revival? Why don’t I get to see Ji-wan and John tie the knot? 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?

Oddly, the drama took its turn for the worse when the reality show was introduced (which wasn’t until Episode 6), even though Kingdom of Love was supposed to be its framing device. I’m not sure we needed the show within the show concept. Yeo-reum and Chae-ri work on reality shows, and the first few episodes were able to spoof these types of shows simply by allowing us to see our PDs on the job. Having them at work (without us being trapped on a set) seems like a sufficient means to explore all the themes this drama introduced. Because in the end, the one thing that we “needed” to be on set for (the evolution of Yeo-reum’s and Jae-hoon’s relationship) didn’t turn out as intended. They were much more interesting as neighbors.

 
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Love is for Suckers: Episodes 15-16 (Final)
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily