Love Alarm 2 (Initial Thoughts)

I watch dramas for a variety of good reasons. Maybe I like what the cast have done in the past. Sometimes it's because the premise interests me. Like most dudes out there, I might also just think that the female lead is gorgeous. But the only reason I am watching Love Alarm 2 is because I hated the first season so much that I simply refuse to believe that season 2 could be worse. I did my review of Love Alarm before this blog came into existence but safe be it to say it was by far the most incohesive and absolutely unwatchable K-drama I've ever seen, and man, I've watched The School Nurse Files. With Kim So-hyun (Radio Romance, The Tale of Nokdu) reprising her role as female lead KIM JO-JO, joined by Jung Ga-ram (Standby, The Poet and the Boy) and Song Kang (When the Devil Calls Your Name, Sweet Home) returning as male leads LEE HYE-YOUNG and HWANG SUN-OH respectively, I'm going into this season with low expectations. Thankfully, episode 1 is already infinitely better than the crap that was its predecessor. 

INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)

Love Alarm was the first Korean series to be picked up by Netflix, opening the floodgates to the insane amount of K-dramas and other K-content we have on the streaming service now. Based on the webtoon of the same name by Chon Kye-young, the first season was met with praise for the way it handled touchy themes and gave viewers a commentary on how social media negatively impacts our society. That's all fine and dandy, but I cannot believe that people can like this drama after seeing how absolutely terrible it was. I've watched many dramas over the past few years and nothing has come close to how choppy the editing was in Love Alarm. I genuinely couldn't make heads or tails of the story and I was just completely taken out of everything. It also didn't help that one of the male leads was generally a terrible person in my eyes. I've made my hatred of the first season well known to those around me and after it left a sour taste in my mouth, I waited patiently for the arrival of season 2, if only because I wanted this drama to redeem itself. 

The premise of the drama is as such. "Love Alarm" is a mobile application that when downloaded sends a notification when there's someone within a 10-meter radius with romantic feelings for the app's user, referred to in the drama as "ringing someone's Love Alarm" (I have no clue how this works scientifically). The app is a smash hit and is downloaded all over South Korea, becoming extremely popular in female lead Jo-jo's high school. Unfortunately, this app has a lot of negative impacts in society, whether it's students getting bullied after being inadvertently "outed" by the app or even resulting in mass suicides of people who never got their Love Alarm rung. The general populace has gotten so caught up in the app, with Jo-jo and our male leads Hye-young and Sun-oh getting dragged in as well. 

I'm going to give a massive over-simplification of season 1's events but essentially we have a classic K-drama love triangle, with Jo-jo and Sun-oh ringing each other's Love Alarms while Hye-young's feelings for our heroine are unrequited. As a result of a series of events that I'm not going to explain, Jo-jo ends up activating a "Shield" for her Love Alarm, which prevents her from ringing anyone else's Alarms while still being able to have her own Alarm rang. By the end of the series (after a 4-year time-skip from their high school days), Jo-jo's faced with the dilemma of whether she should pick Hye-young or Sun-oh, with neither knowing her true feelings because of the Shield. At the same time, an upgraded version of the app is put out, Love Alarm 2.0, complete with a new feature that allows people to see people that they'll end up liking. Again, I have no possible scientific explanation for this. 

That is my super abridged version of Love Alarm and season 2 picks up right where we left off, with Love Alarm 2.0 now being a hit among the South Korean populace. Jo-jo is now in a relationship with Hye-young, who continues to ring her Alarm even though the Shield prevents her from ringing his. Sun-oh on the other hand is now in a relationship with another woman, Lee Yuk-jo (played by Kim Si-eun), who loves him even though he doesn't ring her Alarm. Of course, he still has feelings for Jo-jo even though he has seemingly given her up and accepts that she loves Hye-young, choosing to try his best in his new relationship. As is with the first season, our leads' love triangle will definitely be the crux of the story, with Jo-jo's true feelings still unknown because of the Shield. The episode ends with Jo-jo wanting to find Duk-gu in order to deactivate the Shield and she heads to her high school to find his student records. We get a mini-cliffhanger when lo and behold, she chances upon Sun-oh, who's sitting in the school's sick bay and the pair make eye contact. Sparks that were long hidden are now flying again. 

Apart from our leads, another important sub-plot will revolve around Park Gul-mi (played by Go Min-si), Jo-jo's selfish cousin. Despite being the more popular student in high school, she couldn't get Sun-oh to ring her Alarm and thus became extremely jealous of Jo-jo, who had caught Sun-oh's fancy. Instead, Gul-mi's Alarm is rung by Cheon Duk-gu, an unattractive and awkward male student, causing her to develop a strong hatred for him. Duk-gu is also the person who developed the Shield and introduced it to Jo-jo, with him being the only person who can deactivate it. In the present day, Gul-mi continues to treat Jo-jo terribly and even brings up her parents' death, a sore spot for Jo-jo. Much like in the past, Gul-mi is still obsessed with Love Alarm and holds it in high importance, becoming completely smitten with Love Alarm 2.0's developer Brian Cheon, after seeing how handsome he was on TV. She even goes out of her way to find him at his office, breaking through a security line to meet him face-to-face. Strangely, Brian seems to take special interest in Gul-mi and it's heavily implied that (cue shock and horror) Brian is actually Duk-gu, albeit looking completely different. As of episode 1, it's quite hard to pin down the truth in that aspect but if it's true, it would be quite interesting to see the dynamic between Gul-mi and Duk-gu in the present day especially since their roles are reversed somewhat, with the once-popular Gul-mi's streaming career going nowhere while the former loner Duk-gu is now a successful app developer. We shall see. 

I've skimmed over a lot of information in my summary of this season thus far but safe be it to say, episode 1 alone is already much much MUCH better than the entirety of season 1. For starters, I actually felt like I was getting a proper story. The editing wasn't choppy, I could follow what was going on and generally the pacing was just better. Did it feel like a fairly typical romcom? Yes but that's ok. I like Hye-young and Jo-jo, and I feel like they have far more chemistry together than she did with Sun-oh. Sun-oh was another reason why I didn't like Love Alarm and it all boiled down to his personality. He did nothing to prove to me as a viewer that he should've gotten the girl and in all honesty, he was quite creepy in getting to know her. I mean who decides to kiss a girl that they've literally just met that same day? What a weird male lead and it really took me out of the drama as well. 

It makes me slightly happier to say that Sun-oh's marginally more likeable within the first episode of season 2. Even though he's clearly not over Jo-jo and is still questioning why he no longer rings her Alarm, at least he's giving his best to his new girlfriend Yuk-jo. I daresay that in the very little screen time we had this couple, they were actually pretty cute together and matched each other well. Bottom line is he no longer seems like a creep. That said, even though Sun-oh seems to be less of a weirdo this season, I still think that Hye-young and Jo-jo are the best couple. In all the teasers and promotional material for this season as well as throughout the entirety of season 1, the screenwriters have deliberately misled us on so many occasions, refusing to decide on whether the male lead is Sun-oh or Hye-young. That's totally fine because that just means there's an even higher chance for the better couple to sail by the end of season 2. 

Love Alarm 2 has been in the works for a very long time and was even stuck in development for a while due to COVID-19 and other reasons. I went into the first episode with the lowest expectations possible and thankfully not only were they met but surpassed by a pretty wide margin, I'm impressed so far. No one wants a series to fail or be bad, especially if there're cast members that I like (in this case it's Kim So-hyun), so I truly and sincerely hope this drama continues to be as good if not better from here on out.