Picture this. Garfield, everyone's favourite lazy comic strip orange cat, has just finished eating an entire tray of lasagna without interruptions from Odie or Jon. He's now a satisfied and happy fat cat. Can you see it? If you're wondering why I started this post in such a weird way it's because that was literally my mood upon finishing Love Alarm 2. I've mentioned countless times about how I went into the drama with zero expectations after the lousy first season and how episode 1 has already given me a bit of hope, but let me tell you this feels like a totally different drama from its predecessor for all the best possible reasons. Let's dive in.
SERIES RETROSPECT AND REVIEW (SPOILER ALERT)
In my initial thoughts post, I gave a super abridged version of the previous season and I probably didn't do it justice, having missed out on lots of plot points. I hope I got the gist across there because a good number of events in the second season happen because of the previous one, obviously. If you want to take away anything in this introductory paragraph, it's this. Jo-jo is the artist behind famous social media art page The Ringing World and even after so many years is still traumatised by her parents' death, Duk-gu was implied to have killed himself at the end of season 1 and Gul-mi has some form of connection to him. Understood all that? Good because again I over-simplified things for the sake of this post.
There's a couple of plot lines in season 2 spanning a shorter 6 episodes (compared to the first season's 8), with the most important once again being the love triangle between Jo-jo, Hye-young and Sun-oh. As we know, the first two are currently in a relationship while Sun-oh's in a relationship with Yuk-jo. Hye-young continues to ring Jo-jo's Love Alarm while she can't ring his due to her Shield, whereas Yuk-jo rings Sun-oh's Alarm even though he doesn't ring hers. Continuing from season 1, Jo-jo is still on her journey to find out her true feelings and now she wants to deactivate her Shield to find out who she really loves. In her search for Duk-gu, the only person who can help her, she goes to Love Alarm 2.0 founder Brian Cheon, thinking that they're one and the same person. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case and as the series progresses, we find out that Brian is actually Duk-gu's older brother and is only the face of Love Alarm, with Duk-gu being the founding developer behind the entire concept of the app.
Duk-gu is also revealed to be alive and is instead more or less trapped by Brian after a disagreement they had 4 years ago about the future of Love Alarm. As we know, Love Alarm 2.0 lets users see a list of people who will love them, a function that Brian included but Duk-gu disagrees, believing that this function would result in people only actively pursuing relationships with those on their list, limiting the possibility of finding love elsewhere. Duk-gu believes that even if people don't initially ring each other's Alarms, they can still learn to fall in love and eventually ring their Alarms.
Anyway, the existence of the Shield is a mystery to everyone except for Jo-jo and Duk-gu, with the latter supposedly having taken this secret to the grave. Sun-oh is still extremely bitter about Jo-jo suddenly breaking up with him and no longer ringing his Alarm, indicating that she doesn't love him. It was way too sudden for him and he just can't believe that that would happen. After he finds out about the Shield by chance, Sun-oh attempts to win Jo-jo back, thinking that she's still in love with him, with the Shield being the only thing preventing her from revealing her true feelings. He even goes so far as to make a scene in her university lecture theatre by approaching her there. Kind of a dick move but I'll elaborate on that later. This creates an even bigger rift between him and Hye-young, with the former best friends even getting into a brawl in front of Jo-jo's apartment. They both accuse the other of being self-centered and not caring about Jo-jo's feelings, Hye-young thinking that Sun-oh is deliberately giving her a hard time because she broke up with him while Sun-oh thinks that Hye-young just wants Jo-jo to himself without knowing the truth behind her heart. Sun-oh also breaks up with Yuk-jo, with the latter realising that she doesn't want to bind him to her when he doesn't truly love her.
Later on in the drama, Duk-gu sends Jo-jo a "Spear" which will allow her to breach her Shield and ring the Love Alarm of a chosen person. Naturally, she decides to uses it on Hye-young's and he's overjoyed, thinking that she finally loves him, with the ringing Alarm proof of that fact. Unfortunately, the Spear is an unauthorised code and after sending it to Jo-jo, Duk-gu manages to escape from his room. When Brian gets wind of it, he confronts Jo-jo, asking her where Duk-gu is, as well as again chiding her for having both the Spear and the Shield, wanting to break the system. Hye-young overhears this entire exchange and feels totally betrayed, thinking that Jo-jo's feelings for him weren't true and that he's been played for a fool by both her and Sun-oh. Our once happy couple now has a divide between them, with Hye-young thinking Jo-jo's feelings for him were insincere.
This directly brings us to the next sub-plot line, what the drama refers to as the "Love Alarm killer". As I mentioned at the start, Jo-jo runs The Ringing World, a page where she uploads cryptic art about her struggles with survivor's guilt (after she's the only one to survive her family's suicide attempt) and how Love Alarm has made her life tough. However, many people misconstrue her posts, thinking that she's some kind of false prophet of sorts, with some even going so far as to think she predicted the 23-person mass suicide in season 1. One such fanatic is Jang In-su, who was part of that mass suicide but somehow survived and now he believes that Jo-jo's captions are some form of crazed instruction to commit crimes, specifically murder. In-su chooses his victims by ringing their Love Alarms, giving him the nickname "Love Alarm killer". He has an unhealthy obsession with Jo-jo, even going so far as to meet her and in a twisted way ask her for more inspiration for his murders. In-su's eventually arrested, with Jo-jo being called down to the police station for questioning. In the end, she defends The Ringing World's intentions, explaining that she was never making any predictions but instead writing about her life problems and the issues that Love Alarm has given her. As I mentioned up top, Jo-jo's still traumatised by her parents' death and constantly blames herself.
The story is about to come to an end, with Jo-jo finally coming clean with Sun-oh and confirming that while she constantly regrets installing the Shield, she believes that it's helped her come to terms with her own feelings and understand that she truly loves Hye-young, without needing Love Alarm to confirm that fact for her. Sun-oh has finally found closure and lets her go, with the pair reaching a common understanding and parting ways. Jo-jo then goes back to her hometown in Jeju and registers for a marathon, her final stop to understanding herself. During the run itself, Jo-jo has an epiphany and finally comes to terms with her heavy and tormented past, letting go of all her guilt and self-hatred. At the finish line, Hye-young's right there waiting for her and the two finally make amends, going back to the happy couple they were once were.
Most importantly, under the overarching plot lines, there lies the story of Duk-gu, who was revealed to have created Love Alarm after having a crush on Gul-mi. Yes, Gul-mi is indeed the muse of Love Alarm, even if she's unaware of that fact. As I mentioned earlier, the Cheon brothers have a disagreement on how Love Alarm 2.0 is run, with Duk-gu advising Brian to get rid of the update and revert back to the original app. It's apt that since he's the one who technically started the entire story by developing Love Alarm, Duk-gu's also the one who wraps it up, relinquishing the company to Brian. He then goes onto meet Gul-mi, who's completely shocked to find out that he's the true developer as well as her mysterious benefactor. Considering how much she hated him in high school, it's funny to see how she's now somewhat warming up to him by saying she doesn't hate him as much as she did. Of course, Duk-gu calls her bluff by revealing that he's created a lie detector app, which picked up what she just said as a lie. Prior to the end of the drama, he also created Love Alarm Go, which allows users to see the location of those who will love them, albeit keeping their identities unknown.
Our drama ends very peacefully, with Duk-gu giving his final gift to Jo-jo, her Love Alarm log, which will accurately show all the times that she rang someone's Alarm after installing the Shield. While she and Hye-young try to boot it up in his apartment, it fails and while initially disappointed, the couple ultimately decide that it doesn't matter because what's important now is that they're in love with each other, regardless of whether they ring each other's Alarms or not. After they leave the apartment, the log finally works and it's revealed that Jo-jo's feelings for Hye-young are sincere, with her having rung his Alarm many many times. They finally get their long-deserved happy ending.
As for Sun-oh, his love story isn't over either. After their breakup, Yuk-jo goes overseas for work and returns after a month, deciding that if she still doesn't have a place in Sun-oh's heart by then, she'll finally give up on him. As it turns out, every day since she left the country, Sun-oh has shown up at her apartment door to see if she's back and finally, they meet again. Yuk-jo continues to ring his alarm but he still doesn't ring hers. That's ok though because Sun-oh finally realises that he does have feelings for her and will continue to try his best until he finally properly falls in love with her.
I can't stress just how happy watching Love Alarm 2 made me. In all honesty, I truly expected the worst and I'm glad to say that this drama has undoubtedly redeemed itself. I actually cared for the characters this time. The first season combined way too many characters with bad editing to give me a mess of a final product, resulting in me really not caring much at all for our leads but this time, we're getting proper development. We're seeing more of Jo-jo's struggle with guilt and self-loathing, we're seeing how Hye-young comes to terms with himself as a person and we're finally seeing them get together properly and learning to love each other regardless of Love Alarm. They're a pure, understanding couple and I truly enjoyed watching them on screen and while they weren't that strong in season 1, I daresay they've made their way into my favourite K-drama couples list. Kim So-hyun and Jung Ga-ram play their roles wonderfully and their chemistry is palpable.
In my initial thoughts post, I mentioned that Sun-oh really turned me off in the previous season because of his behaviour and actions, which is why I thought season 2 redeemed him as a character. Sure, there were a couple of scenes where he reverted back to his selfish ways and engaged in toxic behaviour but after a while, you realise that in truth, he was just trying to find closure for himself. After he comes to terms with the fact that Jo-jo no longer loves him, and he accepts that she and Hye-young are meant for each other, he becomes a far better person. I especially liked that he and Yuk-jo are heavily implied to have (or at least will eventually have) their happy ending.
As for Gul-mi, she hasn't really changed from her selfish ways. Yes, she does show some development later on in the series, even expressing care and concern for Jo-jo, who she's only expressed hatred of, but generally speaking she's still quite stuck-up and materialistic. After finding out Duk-gu created Love Alarm because of her, she changes gears real quick and goes from completely hating him to only sort of disliking him, a clear example of her ego and materialism. At the end of the series, after Duk-gu makes known that she's indeed the "muse of Love Alarm", her online shopping mall and streaming service gains a massive increase in popularity, making her very happy.
While I mentioned in my previous post that Love Alarm deliberately left the male lead role ambiguous by giving us equal amounts of Sun-oh and Hye-young, I feel like the general consensus is that Sun-oh takes top honours with Hye-young playing second fiddle. This then means that this might be one of the few dramas out there and possibly the only drama I've seen where the second male lead ends with the girl and I'm so happy about this. Not because it's the second male lead but because they truly deserve each other and are just unproblematic together. Some people might clamour for a third season and while that could definitely happen, I don't really want it. Sure there're some plot points that have yet to be wrapped up, such as the aforementioned story of Duk-gu and Gul-mi as well as whether Sun-oh's family truly becomes happy, but I felt that with the end of this drama, we've covered the important points, with all our leads finding their happiness and closure on a tumultuous part of their lives.
Few people would readily admit they're wrong or made a mistake about something. It could be seen as weakness or an embarrassment but personally, I'm very happy that Love Alarm 2 has completely proven me wrong. Maybe it'll be renewed for a future season but as of right now, I think that they've ended the drama on a high note. As someone who ranks the previous season as my least favourite drama, this second season is good enough as it is. I don't need more content that could potentially spoil the good thing they have here. At the end of the day, both seasons of Love Alarm are a social commentary on how social media has negatively impacted our lives and that's why the ending of the second season is such a cathartic moment for me as a viewer because it shows that it doesn't matter to Jo-jo and Hye-young whether their Love Alarms ring because after going through all their trials and tribulations, they've emerged stronger as a couple, knowing that they truly love each other, and maybe that's what everyone needs in their life. Thanks for reading.
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