Ho Goo’s Love aired from February to March but I couldn’t watch it then. So I thought now was the perfect time to catch up the show (as I’m only watching one show) and after 4 episodes, it’s total love for this tvN drama. It has this amazing balance of two things which was as different for a narrative as days and nights. At one side, the drama has this cute, comics like quality where certain things get exaggerated by adding fantasy elements or graphical depiction. On the other side, there is a groundedness in the treatment with characters that feel real. An indie like feel, which is contrasting to the zippiness travelling throughout. Take Ho Goo’s family, for instance. Dad, mom, his sister and himself, everyone feels so natural and relatable. I’m already loving each one of them and their personalities and importance in our hero’s life. Dad is so warm and adorable, mom is bold and direct but cute, and his siter Ho Kyung, wow. She keeps herself tiptop in the outside world, but as soon as she comes home, there is a total transformation as she turns into this girl who wears only tracksuits with no attention to her appearance. She keeps on giving life lessons to Ho Goo, which may or may not be right but are practical. I love that she knows how innocent her brother is and wants him to date a girl sweeter than him — how sweet is that! Coming onto our hero, Ho Goo. He is a very innocent, kind-hearted person and kudos to the show for not showing pity on him, but actually acknowledging the fact that there are people like that and they are wonderful. Choi Woo Shik is perfectly cast and looks ADORABLE. It’s not like he is a fool, it’s just his nature to trust and help others and not being an extrovert. We can see that he is capable of showing his strong emotions when he releases his anger after keeping everything inside for so long. Our heroine Do Hee is a swimming champion who was also high school classmate of Ho Goo. We still know not much about her but I can see the drama peeling  layers of her life and personality one by one. From what I’ve seen so far, I really like her a lot. She is brave, confident — deciding to give birth to a child all on her own, and she is one of those people who sees the goodness in Ho Goo. She is not that mean, popular girl who simply ignores everyone. She actually understands that he is a good guy. It was satisfying that she remembered about them meeting on the Christmas day, and returned those comics. Clearly, she doesn’t like to show that she cares but she actually does. That hospital scene was so beautiful; I can’t explain it in words.

There is a very beautifully handled direction in the show and the pace is unhurried, letting the moments and emotions simply flow from one point to another. Talking about second lead Kang Chul, I love how he is so weak in social skills and social life but wants to post his pictures on social media and is always eager to check how many likes he got. Ha. A perfect specimen of today’s generation, who are super active on social media and internet but when it comes to their personal lives, they are as much lonely and love to be alone. I’m so looking forward to the interaction he is going to have with his exact opposite Ho Kyung . Just imagine the opposite personalities they have — his home and himself are so neat and tidy while her actions have ‘eww’ written across the board when it comes to hygiene.  Last but not least, I love how tvN dramas portray friendships. Here also, the trio of friends including Ho Goo are so much fun and endearing, especially his friend named Kim Tae Hee (yes, and there is this funny sequence where the whole class becomes excited on hearing that new transfer student is Kim Tae Hee only to find out that he is a guy..LOL). The drama is punctuated with lots of funny scenes that can even become slapstick but then the overall tone remains very subtle. The show oozes heartfelt vibe. On an additional note, I loved how the drama gave nods to Misaeng, first with a cameo by Cheif Oh (Lee Sung Min), buying Misaeng comics with his famous line ‘bewilder me’ and later the friends/ colleagues talking about taking Jordan as the set-up for next new comics. Yay for some meta element!

All in all, Ho Goo’s Love is as sweet as whispered breeze of the evening. Can’t wait to walk along with it.