Staff

Screenwriter	Kim Hye Young (Her Private Life)
Director	Kim Jung Shik (Work Later, Drink Now, Strong Girl Namsoon…)
Actors	Shin Min Ah, Kim Young Dae, Lee Sang Yi, Han Ji Hyun, Lee Yoo Jin, Go Wook, Jeon Hye Won…

Characters

A main couple overshadowed by too many subplots

We loosely follow 4 different couples (and 2 slight love-triangles among them) in this kdrama. And among these characters, each has their own struggle and subplots that will or will not get their resolution in the ending. For a 12 episode format, this seems incredibly disproportionate. As a result, I felt like the main couple and our main character Son Hae Yeong were a little bit neglected and their stories rushed. There is a clear favoritism in the last episodes for another couple, who happens to have their own spin-off mini serie Spice up Our Love that was released just 2 days after No Gain No Love finished airing. While I understand that they had to do a little promotion for it, I think that it made the ending felt out of place.

Even if there was a lot going on, I’m glad that No Gain No Love didn’t focus too much on the heavy subjects like the murderer’s father who just got out of prison, the foster care system… There are some important topics brought up (like maternity, gender inequality, relationship with a sick parent) that makes the kdrama more serious, but there were always at the background.

Lost women in a modern world

The 3 sisters have complicated love stories (to say the least) that got me kind of lost at times…

Cha Hui Seong is in an open relationship and suddenly gets pregnant and doesn’t know who the father is. Her “main” companion (if we can call him that?) wants to keep the baby, but is scared to eventually discover that he’s not the biological father. While his fear seems understandable to me, Cha Hui Seong gets mad at him and decides to break up their 12-year relationship. While it was her responsibility to not have taken her contraception, the blame was put on her boyfriend. They tried to make him seems nice again by showing us a scene where he’s wearing a fake pregnancy belly to understand how Cha Hui Seong must feel during this time. But it came out as a desperate attempt to win her back when he didn’t do anything wrong in the first place.

Nam Ja Yeon is a web novel author who writes steamy stories. When Bok Gyu Hyun discovers by accident that his mother is reading her stuff, his disgust turns him into a hater of Nam Ja Yeon works where he ends up leaving dozens of searing comments. Nam Ja Yeon ends up traumatized by this wave of hatred and files a complaint against him. But after meeting each other and hearing his apology, she starts to see him in another light.

While I think that it was really immature of Bok Gyu Hyun to leave these hate comments, I interpreted it as a way for him to evacuate the loathing that he had, not for Nam Ja Yeon, but for himself. For me, it seems like he actually enjoyed these stories (to the point where he remembers the lines and what happens in certain chapters). But it’s never addressed in the kdrama, which felt like a missed opportunity to create a natural bond between the two. He’s also deeply apologetic and shameful about his actions, which for me supports the idea that he never wanted to hurt her. All of this makes the romance between them abnormal, especially since Nam Ja Yeon had just met her high school crush after all those years. Both their stories weren’t done right! And the back and forth between them was really annoying and made Nam Ja Yeon look like a fickle person with no emotional intelligence.

Also a side-note, but why did the actress made so many pouty and childish expressions… ?

And lastly, with Son Hae Yeong… Well, to be honest, it’s been a month since I’ve watched the show and even then I was really unsure of what I felt for the main couple. The premise of their forced relationship was fun but it got boring really quickly when there was no chemistry to support it. They have two distinct personalities, Son Hae Yeong being really pragmatic, cynical and frank, while Kim Ji Uk is just… nice? There is also an imbalance of life experience given their age difference, which made them look more like they were in a sister-brother relationship than a romantic one!

The female characters are a weird mix, both being mature and at ease with heavy or taboo subjects, but also acting immature especially in how they handle conflict or responsibility.

Son Hae Yeong ended up not gaining much

The whole fake marriage with Kim Ji Uk started as a way for her to climb the ladder and be taken seriously in a company (a society?) where single women gets stuck in lower-entry jobs. Rather than challenge these norms, that also affects other women and fellow coworkers, she decides to just play by the rules. While the romcom is funnier thanks to this fake relationship, the lighthearted tone was quick to end when the agreement with Kim Ji Uk stopped and her ex-boyfriend got promoted (by episode 4/5). I understand that this kdrama isn’t a critic of society, but if so why did they make the funny part of the story not last longer?

In the end, Son Hae Yeong gets overshadowed by her cheating ex-boyfriend, who rise through the ranks by stealing her ideas and by simply being a man. In the end, she even left the company to start her own start-up, and ends up being in a more precarious position than ever before. While this was a display of how mysogynist society is and could have been used as a critic, the show ends there, abruptly. She even has to resort to asking Bok Gyu Hyun, her ex-boss, to fund her start-up project. What a girl boss move!

I think that the screenwriter really wants to tackle some modern issues since Her Private Life also dealt with them. But just like in her previous work, it ends up being muddled to such an extent that we don’t understand what point was supposed to be made. It’s perfectly fine to just provide a classic romcom that just aims to be fun to watch, and I watched No Gain, No Love with this expectation — but unfortunately, it ended up falling short. With this ending for Son Hae Yeong, I left the show with a sour taste.