Hello to kdrama world from a huge Indian fan. I was waiting for Netflix’s Love Alarm season 2 like crazy and finally it is released. The heart gripping melodramatic love triangle between Kim Jo Jo (Kim So Hyun), Hwang Sun Oh (Song Kang) and Lee Hye Yeong (Jung Ga Ram) finally reached its conclusion.
Before I tell what my thoughts are, let me just recap for the unversed what the story of Love Alarm is all about.
SEASON 1 RECAP. SKIP TO NEXT SECTION IF YOU SO NOT WANT TO READ ALL THIS!
Love Alarm Season 2 gives us the closure about who Kim Jo Jo chooses – Hwang Sun Oh or Lee Hye Yeong. Their love triangle began in Season 1 when all three of them were in High School. Kim Jo Jo was Hye Yeong’s crush, but his hesitancy to approach her or tell her about his feelings resulted in him being constrained to looking at her from afar.
So much so that Jo Jo never really noticed Hye Yeong much when in high school.
Amidst this, Hye Yeong’s brother/best friend/ the son of his mother’s employers, Hwang Sun Oh returns from the United States. He starts attending the same school as Hye Yeong and Jo Jo. While trying to find out what his best friend has been up to all this time, he sees Jo Jo for the first time.
Time stops when Kim Jo Jo and Hwang Sun Oh look at each other. What follows is Sun Oh asking Hye Yeong whether he likes Jo Jo, and Hye Yeong lying about his feelings again.
But of course, Sun Oh’s character is somewhat impossibly perceptive of others’ true feelings or intentions and he knows Hye Yeong is lying. Despite this, Sun Oh and Jo Jo kiss each other, a purely lust filled moment.
Their feelings towards each other becomes serious thereafter and they also ring each other’s love alarm – the app at the heart of the entire story and complication.
In Season 1, Jo Jo and Sun Oh are very much in love with each other, but after an accident and Jo Jo’s own past life bearing down on her, she breaks up with Sun Oh with the help of a love alarm shield. The developer of the app is another student from the school who sympathizes with Jo Jo and gives her the only shield in the world.
Sun Oh throughout Season 1 (and season 2) is unable to get over Jo Jo, even after 4 years. He also has a girlfriend (Yuk Jo) after the said 4 years.
Season 1 is also about Lee Hye Yeong, after 4 years of growing up, mushing up the courage to let Jo Jo know about his presence and feelings. He starts courting her. Season 1 ends with Sun Oh confronting Hye Yeong about his courtship with Jo Jo and the latter two’s deepening relationship.
We were left with the cliffhanger in season 1 for nearly two years, still confused about who Kim Jo Jo loves – Hwang Sun Oh or Lee Hye Yeong. Sun Oh and Hye Yeong both still ring Jo Jo’s love alarm. Sun Oh cannot ring his girlfriend Yuk Jo’s love alarm. Season 2 has answered that.
SPOILERS! FINALLY GETTING TO MY THOUGHTS ON SEASON 2
And I am heartbroken with the ending. So much so that, I can’t bring myself to listen to my season 1 favorite song Blooming Story from the series. But nonetheless, I am listening to it as I write this and it is heartbreaking all over again. So this is my rant – not criticizing the director’s choice to shape the story, just my thoughts.
The series is based on a Webtoon of the same name. I have not read the webtoon, but I knew that Jo Jo chooses Hye Yeong in it. For the Netflix series, like many other viewers I was hoping the end would be different. That Jo Jo chooses Sun Oh, but she doesn’t. Hye Yeong wins Jo Jo’s heart.
Now, I have all good things to say about the writers and the director of the series. They kept me hooked to the storyline like crazy, even for the last two episodes after Jo Jo makes her choice – Hye Yeong, since I am team Sun Oh.
STORYLINE IS UNPREDICTABLE – NO FIRST AND SECOND MALE LEADS
The good thing is the storyline is not predictable, unlike other Korean drama love triangles, where the first and the second male leads are obvious or more specifically, it is obvious who is going to end up with whom. Love Alarm keeps you guessing.
In fact, in Love Alarm, there is really no concept of the first and second male lead. It doesn’t seem like a flimsy set up of a love triangle just for the sake of bringing more drama into the love lives of the characters. From season 1, I was rooting for Sun Oh, because the boy did love Jo Jo sincerely, even in season 2 he’s in love with her sincerely till the end.
And that’s exactly why it is heartbreaking – because Sun Oh ends up heartbroken, though he mends his relationship with Yuk Jo, it is not the same as what Jo Jo and he shared. Jo Jo and Sun Oh’s relationship was dream-like, full of love. Even Jo Jo was evidently in love with Sun Oh.
But it is obvious in Season 2 that Jo Jo has grown out of the love she and Sun Oh had shared. That she’s ready to let it all go.
If the love alarm app was not in the picture, Jo Jo would have eventually broken up with Sun Oh and even if Hye Yeong had courted her after, Sun Oh and Jo would have ended up together. Or perhaps I am wrong, Jo Jo could have chosen Hye Yeong too, it is impossible to say.
But in the alternate reality where Love Alarm exists, Jo Jo and Hye Yeong’s relationship is what would have practically happened. It is a given, because the problem of the love alarm shield is tangible and a result of Jo Jo’s feelings for Sun Oh. The entire time as Jo Jo struggles to get rid of her shield, she keeps falling for Hye Yeong and getting over Sun Oh.
Without love alarm, it would have been more confusing for Jo Jo, as she wouldn’t really have had a tangible goal of getting rid of the shield. She might never have spent so much time with Hye Yeong as she would somewhat be clear that she loves Sun Oh (hope readers get what I’m trying to say here!).
THE REALITY OF LOVE ALARM STORY
But, even in the alternate world, when we are watching a film or series, we expect to escape reality and go into a dream world where anything is possible. Most Kdramas stick to providing its viewers the dream. But not Love Alarm, and that’s why you cannot hate the writers and director for it either.
Jo Jo’s choice and the story arc is convincing. But that doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking. Sun Oh, played by Song Kang, never really smiles his carefree and beautiful smile again in season 2. He is persistent that Jo Jo loves him, but he’s forced to see for himself – with his instincts – that Jo Jo loves someone else after a point of time, without love alarm.
His agonized face makes it all the harder to get over the ending. Jo Jo and Hye Yeong end up happy together. Jo Jo gets over her past life. Sun Oh too makes some recovery. He’s in self-destructive mode throughout season 2, not focusing on his career.
WE SEE JO JO IN LOVE WITH BOTH – SUN OH AND HYE YEONG
What makes it harder to accept Jo Jo choosing Hye Yeong is in the first season we saw the love bloom between Jo Jo and Sun Oh and how happy both were. Usually, in other dramas, if the girl had an ex-boyfriend and is recovering from a break up, that past relationship is never the focus and we see her only with the new guy.
However, Love Alarm shows the beautiful love story between Sun Oh and Jo Jo and breaks it up into pieces and hands it over to Hye Yeong. Hye Yeong would have been perceived as the second lead in usual dramas. If I had never seen Jo Jo’s relationship with Sun Oh and the series had started off with her courtship with Hye Yeong, perhaps I would have been Team Hye Yeong.
HOPING FOR JO JO TO CHOOSE SUN OH
Jo Jo chooses Hye Yeong, by using a ‘spear’ to ring his love alarm, a tool which allows her to choose whose alarm she wants to ring. There are two more episodes after this choice, where team Sun Oh viewers feel perhaps there is a slimmer of hope Jo Jo will choose her former lover. But again that doesn’t happen.
Towards the first half of the series itself, it becomes all too obvious that Jo Jo will choose Hye Yeong and there is no way the story can wind itself with Jo Jo choosing Sun Oh, unless the writers and director want to wound up a crappy writing. And all the while it is heart wrenching for Team Sun Oh viewers as all hopes extinguish and there’s no going back.
It is clear that Jo Jo is over Sun Oh when in one episode she asks him to look into her eyes and tell her who she loves because she’s confused. She says that everytime he interfered in hers and Hye Yeong’s relationship, all she could think and worry about was Hye Yeong. And Sun Oh is left speechless because – he sees out of his own perceptiveness that – Jo Jo loves Hye Yeong.
In fact, (I know it is too late to make this observation now), in season 2 trailer, there was a strong hint that Jo Jo and Hye Yeong end up together. Perhaps team Hye Yeongs figured out the ending before the episodes released, but being Team Sun Oh, I was in denial.
I refused to believe what I could see and interpret clear as day. In one of the trailer shots of season 2, Jo Jo is sitting next to Hye Yeong in a white shirt, both smiling. In this one (the only) shot in the trailer, Jo Jo has straighter and short hair compared to all the other shots where she has wavy and long hair.
Since, hair is unlikely to grow back in the middle of the series, it was obvious that it was part of ending scenes, which did not include Sun Oh. It is still hard to accept that Jo Jo chose Hye Yeong.
FROM HEARTTHROB TO HEARTBROKEN HWANG SUN OH
More or less, Sun Oh’s character is really depressing and of a wasted person. He is not able to focus on his career and not able to keep up with his relationship with Yuk Jo, hurting her even more. His only saving grace is his family’s enormous wealth and his good looks, which is how he still gets attention from people around him and keeps driving his kickass Mercedes jeep looking all cool.
Take the two things away from Sun Oh, then he won’t really be a character anyone would ever even look back at. His moping character would have been excusable if he was a high schooler, like in the first half of season 1, but not really as an adult.
But I was still rooting for him, because one – he had the above two things, and two – out of Hye Yeong and Sun Oh, the latter would have a harder time getting over Jo Jo, possibly never.
If Jo Jo had chosen Sun Oh, it would have been perfect. Sun Oh would have effortlessly pulled his life back on track, smiled that glorious smile. Jo Jo would have a partner who shared the pains of troubled childhood. Both having grown up beyond being high-schoolers, they really wouldn’t have had any trouble keeping the relationship either.
Jo Jo let go of Sun Oh back in season 1 because, as she symbolizes in season 2, it was too heavy to carry him along. The reference is made to when as a child, Jo Jo running away from her burning house, left her teddy in the fields after carrying it halfway, because it was too heavy.
Jo Jo, carrying the pains of her childhood, saw it heavy to carry along a clingy and needy Sun Oh, who suffered from abandonment issues. As high schoolers, Jo Jo perhaps had no choice but to let go, because she was not equipped to deal with it then. But as grown ups, both have enough emotional strength to not let their past become a burden.
But alas, that doesn’t happen. One cannot say Jo Jo has to choose Sun Oh just because the break up had been and will be harder for him due to his abandonment issues. She is not obligated to fixing the man. Most women characters are often expected to fix the man.
It is not a happy ending for Sun Oh. He does pull his life back somewhat, puts effort into his work, goes back to Yuk Jo. But he is unable to ring Yuk Jo’s love alarm, and we don’t really see him ever getting over Jo Jo.
In a way it is good the directors did not show Sun Oh magically getting over Jo Jo and being all smiley again, because it would have been artificial.
LEE HYE YEONG
As for Hye Yeong, he would definitely have held better if Jo Jo had not chosen him, better than Sun Oh. That’s the logic often used in many other love triangles, for the heroine to choose the lover who would have the worst time if not chosen. But not Love Alarm.
Hye Yeong-kind of characters are typically doomed not to be chosen, even though they give all their heart and soul into loving a person. He’s the ‘nice’ character, who is also sort of easy-go-lucky, and hence can get back on his feet faster after a break up.
He’s hard-working and a self-made man. That’s why he will remain strong and is expected to hold together himself better. It is not fair that such characters are often the second male leads, and Love Alarm rewards the character for all these virtues.
THE BURDEN OF ONLY ONE PERSON RINGING THE LOVE ALARM OF THEIR PARTNER IN A RELATIONSHIP
Secondly, the burden of only one person ringing their partner’s love alarm is also referenced in Sun Oh’s parents. Sun Oh’s father is having an affair with another woman even when he rings his wife’s (Sun Oh’s mother) love alarm. Sun Oh’s mother is never able to ring her husband’s love alarm, which sort of becomes a thorn now that the app exists.
Not that the duo did not have problems earlier expressing their feelings towards each other – but with love alarm it becomes more clearer and hopeless.
So we really do not know how happy Yuk Jo and Sun Oh ever will be. But Sun Oh’s character unlike Hye Yeong or even Yuk Jo’s character is receiving love.
THE HARDEST SCENE IN LOVE ALARM SEASON 2
The most heart wrenching scene, the most difficult one to watch for Team Sun Ohs, is in the last episode, where Jo Jo tells Sun Oh Goodbye (ah my heart hurts as I write this) while taking a stroll with him on the same road where they walked together as high-schoolers, laughing.
Sun Oh and Jo Jo both look at the road together and remember the memories – like belonging to a different life time altogether. Then as Jo Jo leaves and Sun Oh looks on with his agonized face, he sees the laughing high-school Jo Jo.
As for the other characters – Sun Oh’s mom, Jo Jo’s cousin and her aunt – all of them have a positive character growth. Jo Jo’s cousin and aunt warm up towards her in the end and in fact the cousin even defends Jo Jo, while the aunt gets out of her miserable life. On the other hand, Sun Oh’s mom tries to understand her son better.
Netflix has responded in a blog whether there will be a season 3 for Love Alarm, and it is still undecided and they are gauging the response to season 2. However, it is unlikely that if a season 3 is released, it will focus on the love triangle again, as that story has reached its end and makes no sense to go back to Jo Jo being confused about Sun Oh and Hye Yeong.
In fact, if there is ever a season 3, it is likely to bring in new characters rather than stick to the old leading ones.
Tell me what you think of Love Alarm season 2 and whether you share the same pains that I do or if you are Team Hye Yeong.
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