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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Choi Soo-young, Gong Myung
Latest Nielsen rating: 2.7 per cent
At one point in Second Shot at Love, Han Geum-joo (played by Girl’s Generation K-pop star Choi Soo-young) reveals her habit of drinking soju secreted inside a bottle of toner at her vanity table to hide her drinking habit from her imperious mother, Kim Gwang-ok (Kim Sung-ryoung, A Virtuous Business).
In the same confessional sequence, her father, Han Jung-soo (Kim Sang-ho, Sweet Home), and sister Han Hyun-woo (Jo Yoon-hee, The Escape of the Seven) also reveal their hiding places – bourbon in a cistern, beer cans in a doghouse.


Hiding bottles of booze from family members is a pretty clear sign of serious alcoholism. This seems to fit with the apparent theme of the show, which is about a young woman trying to kick her drinking habit and get her life back on track.
At least that is what it purports to be, but time and time again the narrative undermines efforts to shine a light on South Korea’s drinking problem, no more so than in the drinking contest near the end of episode eight.
By this point, Geum-joo has been sober for some time and has resumed work as an automotive engineer for the Hitech Corporation in the big city following her retreat to the countryside when she broke off her engagement several months earlier.
This comes after a shorter trip she took to Seoul, where she joined former colleagues for one of their habitual work dinners. She bravely and repeatedly turned down alcohol from the insistent Chief Kim (Jeon Jin-oh, Unmasked), who later drunkenly accosted her outside.

This forced series co-lead and love interest, doctor Seo Ui-joon (Gong Myung, Way Back Love), who was conveniently – or creepily, you decide – parked outside, to intervene.
Once Geum-joo is back at work, Chief Kim pretends that their late-night confrontation is water under the bridge and welcomes her back with open arms.
But when Geum-joo lands her long-sought-after promotion, he seizes his chance and accuses her of assault, threatening to thwart her rise up the ladder.
Geum-joo confronts her sneaky boss at a restaurant and solves her problem the only way that K-dramas have taught us that hard-working women can – by drinking him under the table.

So much for sobriety – even if it’s only a temporary slip, it does highlight Korea’s toxic association of alcohol tolerance with career success.
It’s hard for K-dramas to get away from clichés, and Second Shot at Love is unapologetic about its embrace of them – look no further than Ui-joon’s Bochun Health Centre colleague Baek Hye-mi (Bae Hae-sun, Happiness), who, wink wink, nudge nudge, belongs to an anti-romcom cliché club.
In the right hands, clichés can be a lot of fun. The problems start when writers take the easy way out and allow the comforting familiarity of clichés to win out over characters and themes.
It would have been more meaningful and impactful if Second Shot at Love had found a way to subvert the drinking competition stereotype rather than default to it.

One might argue that this is a lighthearted show rather than a hard-hitting drama about alcoholism in the vein of Lost Weekend or Leaving Las Vegas; Geum-joo’s drinking problem could be seen as a MacGuffin, an amusing pretext to bring her back to the countryside and into the orbit of Ui-joon.
The deeper we get into the story, the more the booze acts as a distraction. But if we accept that, then we also have to accept that the show is purely disingenuous – using social ills to sucker us into yet another tale of rural romance.
The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle; if so, this creates a disconnect between narrative, theme and intentions. The show means well, but it also needs to push certain buttons in a certain order to justify its existence. Good intentions, after all, do not equal ratings.
Whether or not the show is thematically coherent, at least Geum-joo has a proper storyline with motivations, obstacles and resolutions. The same cannot quite be said of Ui-joon, who, despite Gong’s signature charm, struggles to exist as a character.

The show has been hinting at his dark storyline all along, with flashes of his soju-filled fridge, violent ex-patients and a very bad father, but the odds of these morsels coalescing into a satisfying whole are dropping with each passing episode.
Four episodes remain, but aside from Ui-joon confronting his father, there doesn’t seem to be much left for the show to do. Poor Geum-joo may have to hop off the wagon again just to find something to do.
Second Shot at Love is streaming on Viu.


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A young professional overcomes a drinking problem – or does she? And should we care? K-drama is a cocktail of social themes and romance


A young professional overcomes a drinking problem – or does she? And should we care? K-drama is a cocktail of social themes and romance.


K-drama Second Shot at Love midseason recap: uneasy mix of social themes and romcom tropes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A young professional overcomes a drinking problem – or does she? And should we care? K-drama is a cocktail of social themes and romance

A young professional overcomes a drinking problem – or does she? And should we care? K-drama is a cocktail of social themes and romance