Recap Korean Drama "Love Is for Suckers (2022)" Episode 5-6

As we surmised, the woman from New York who only appeared in the blink of a frame last week has come with upsetting news. She’s pregnant and In-woo is the father. Yeo-reum learns this ten minutes before the wedding ceremony and confronts In-woo immediately. He only found out a few days ago himself and was “too shocked” to tell her. He planned to tell her after the wedding. Yeo-reum exclaims that he should have told her as soon as he found out — and the echo of three years ago is all around her. Here he goes again, withholding life-altering information.

Yeo-reum refuses to marry him. He tries to change her mind, saying that their parents are there, and everything is already in motion — they can figure it all out afterward. (I am hating him with every thread of my being. Not because of the pregnancy, but because he’s so manipulative.) Yeo-reum says no, not even to save face. She can’t trust him and she won’t go through with it.

She walks out of the wedding hall in her dress and Jae-hoon follows her to the street, putting his coat around her, and getting his car to drive her away from it all. He’s such a good friend, he doesn’t ask any questions except, “Where should we go?” She only wants to disappear, and so, he thinks of a place he knows out by the beach, where one of his former patients owns a lodge. It seems that Jae-hoon went to stay there himself after his father passed away, not letting anyone know where he was for three months.

At the beach, Yeo-reum gets support from both Jae-hoon and the lodge owner, who tells Yeo-reum about the hardships in her own life — including the aneurism that Jae-hoon saved her from back when he was still practicing as a neurosurgeon. We learn in this episode that after his father’s death, he quit the hospital and retreated into a depressed state, confining himself inside, not wanting to see daylight or other people. It’s Yeo-reum who helps him come back to life by asking him to move into the apartment above hers, checking on him every day, sharing food with him, and trying to make him smile. She’s the one who opens the blinds and becomes a literal life saver.

Now the tables have turned and Jae-hoon knows how she feels when she asks, “Can someone be this humiliated and still go on living like nothing happened?” He tries to lower the pressure, saying she didn’t do anything wrong. But Yeo-reum blames herself for rushing the wedding and believing that she knew In-woo. Jae-hoon sticks up for her: “You trusted someone who treated you with sincerity. Don’t blame yourself for the sincerity you saw in him.”

Yeo-reum remains in a state of shock and Jae-hoon goes on caring for her, getting her to eat the way she did for him two years earlier. When she goes into their rented room and finds him sleeping against the wall in his suit, the look on her face says she’s seeing him, maybe for the first time, as a man.

The next day, Jae-hoon tells Yeo-reum they should go home. He hid for too long after his tragedy and couldn’t ever get back to his old life. She’s braver than him and he doesn’t want her to make the same mistake. Yeo-reum agrees, she doesn’t want to dwell on it. And frankly neither do I, because we’ve got to talk about work. Last week, so much happened that I had to cut the parts about Kingdom of Love. The short story is that Yeo-reum is now working under Chae-ri on the show’s second season and she’s brought her whole staff with her. Her task is to rein in Chae-ri while helping to make this season a success.

The shoot is scheduled to start the day after the wedding (so, today) and Yeo-reum jumps into her work. When she turns her phone back on, she finds out that one cast member didn’t show up — the plastic surgeon. Hmm, know any plastic surgeons that can replace him in three hours? Well, Chae-ri does. She was once Jae-hoon’s patient (when she got hit in the face as payback for airing a cast member naked and fighting). When Chae-ri saw Jae-hoon again at Yeo-reum’s wedding, she already had him in mind for the show. She tells Yeo-reum to bring him in as a replacement or her entire team is fired.

Yeo-reum goes to ask Jae-hoon for this favor and finds him with a busted lip. He’s just gotten into a fist fight with In-woo outside his house (very realistically carried out, I might add. In-woo’s face bruises and swells immediately and in the exact spot it should after a punch). In-woo wanted to talk to Yeo-reum, but Jae-hoon told him he needed to know when to quit. Yeo-reum ignores this and goes on with her mission to ask Jae-hoon to be on her reality show. She says she needs him and he agrees easily.

Kingdom of Love is set up like this. Ten people, five women and five men, will be living in a house together for a month. The point is for couples to pair off and find love, and they’ll be filmed and recorded everywhere as they do, including in their bedrooms. As Jae-hoon says on arrival, “I thought this was Kingdom of Love, not Kingdom of Perverts” (touché). Among the other participants are Yeo-reum’s ex-fling, Chef John Jang, and — as a surprise to everybody involved — Ji-yeon.

Chae-ri, talented at building drama, wants to make Ji-yeon the star of the cast. On their first night in the house, she tells Ji-yeon to trip and fall (making it look like an accident). Ji-yeon falls into the pool, in nothing but a long slip, and after a moment of hesitation, Jae-hoon dives in to put his jacket around her so she can get out. It’s exactly the kind of footage Chae-ri is looking for, knowing things are about to get interesting. (As vicious as Chae-ri can be, I find her intensely likeable.)

After the first day of shooting is finished, Jae-hoon and Yeo-reum meet up to talk alone. He wants her to know the reason he’s on the show is for her. She says she hopes he can find a relationship out of it since he hasn’t seriously dated in so long. Then, in the most understated confession in the history of confessions, he says he’s sorry he didn’t hold her back from marrying In-woo — “It’s not like I have to get into a couple from a dating show, right?” Wait, hold on. What? Yeo-reum is just as confused as the rest of us. It’s so slight, she thinks she’s misunderstanding. He clarifies, but she’s understood correctly. He won’t approach her right now, since she needs time to get over what she’s been through, but he wanted her to know. He just wants to be there for her. If she needs a friend, he’ll be it. If she needs a man, he’ll be it. (My. God. Understated and highly effective.)

In the first week, In-woo shows up at the filming location wanting to apologize to Yeo-reum and ask if there’s still a chance. She shuts him down. If he had told her beforehand, she would have considered it, but he wasn’t honest. She wanted to marry him because he was a part of the happiest time of her life, but it’s over now, there’s no going back. She’s strong and brave, and then cries her heart out as soon as she’s alone. For his part, In-woo seems truly wrecked by the whole thing too.

Later, Yeo-reum tells Jae-hoon she needs a friend right now, not a man. And he proceeds with the craziness of reality TV for her. At Ji-yeon’s request, he meets off-camera to discuss the show. Ji-yeon asks him to choose her as his partner. She understands he likes Yeo-reum, but she doesn’t want to be embarrassed on TV as someone no one wants. If his choice will be meaningless anyway, he should pick her. So, when it comes down to it, he does. However, Ji-yeon already made it known during her introduction to the cast that she and Jae-hoon were seeing each other before and he turned her down. She also says she will keep pursuing him.

Chae-ri and even Yeo-reum love the drama of Ji-yeon’s confession. But it seems to make Yeo-reum antsy when she sees Jae-hoon actually pick Ji-yeon during filming. It gets a little more uncomfortable when Chae-ri tells Yeo-reum she will have to film their kiss scene (which we won’t see until next week).

I continue to love everything about this drama. For one, it’s acted so well. Siwon continues to amaze me. I’ve always liked his ability to play extremes. He can go goofy (more so than many actors would even dare to try) and then pull it right back in and play serious and mature. In this role, he’s a natural no matter what it’s calling for and I find him so believable.

Lee Da-hee is breaking my heart in just about every scene, and this week, every time she interacted with her mom I was in straight-up tears. When her mom cries after the wedding, I got nervous about exactly which part might be upsetting her. So, when she talks to Yeo-reum on the phone and apologizes for rushing her into the wedding — feeling like a burden on her — and we see how understanding and worried she is, I fell apart just as much as the two characters did.

After the breakneck pace of last week, I was glad to see Episode 6 slow down some. I’m a little worried, though, about how interesting the reality show aspect will be, since I’m not sure I can care about any of the new characters. Also, we already know where Jae-hoon’s heart lies — I have no worries about him suddenly falling for Ji-yeon along the way. It’s Yeo-reum that has to decide to move on with Jae-hoon (or not). Is there enough real tension here? Will the reality show manufacture some drama — as reality shows do? I’m so hooked on Love is for Suckers, I’m curious to see how Kingdom of Love will surprise me.