Lovestruck In The City – A Refreshing Take On A Modern-Day Love Story

The formula for a romantic drama, if you were to boil it down to the basics, is simple: two people meet, one loses the other, they come together again (or not).

Lovestruck In The City is no different, with a plot that centres around a couple who met one summer. The show takes on the format of a mockumentary (I googled, and got this), but I hesitate to label it as such because the term itself seems to suggest that the show is a parody or satire, which it is not.

What it is, is a romantic comedy that is told in a style completely different from your usual Korean drama, or any drama that I've watched for that matter. And that's what makes it a breath of fresh air.

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The show starts with the cast of characters awkwardly introducing themselves to the camera—and by extension, the viewers—as they partake in an "interview", answering questions about love. Their answers are then neatly interspersed with drama scenes that we're more used to, as their stories are told.

Ji Chang-wook and Kim Ji-won brought their A game to this. Their interaction, especially in the restaurant scene that I've embedded below, will make your heart leap and ache as you root for them to find their way back to each other. I've never found either of them particularly compelling—I watched Suspicious Partner, Descendants Of The Sun and The Heirs—but I fell for both of them here. Especially JCW, who showed that he could carry off both comedic and sorrowful scenes exceptionally.

The love story of all the three couples were also extraordinarily ordinary, which allowed the writing to focus on their personal and emotional growth.

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While I gush about how much I loved this show, it is not without its flaws. The relationship of its 2 other couples could have been fleshed out more, instead of just being there to move the plot of the main couple forward. But at 16 30-minute episodes (I'm discounting Episode 17 because that was fan service for a character who wasn't even one of the six leads of this show), I would say that the storytelling is tight enough.

Verdict

Here's what I texted to my friends (edited for English), who asked me to rate the show.

Lovestruck In The City: 8.5/10

Minus 1 point because the 2 other couples' love stories were not drawn out properly. Minus 0.5 points for the redundant last episode.

Other than that, Ji Chang-wook was 98/100 (minus 2 points because he broke out of character in one of the scenes and I could literally see him laughing) and Kim Ji-won was 💯 (I’ve seen her on Descendants Of The Sun and The Heirs so far, and she made no deep impression on me. But she was great on this show and it made me want to watch Fight For My Way. But I don’t think I can bear seeing her with another guy so soon because I thought she was very compatible with JCW and I also like Park Seo-joon).

Here comes the fan-girling and fan fiction...

This is the scene that will hit you in the gut.

And as usual, this is my way of processing my feels.