[REVIEW] MBC TV series "Hate to Lose" - 1st Episode

MBC TV series "Hate to Lose" (tentative title) [MBC]

MBC TV series "Hate to Lose" (tentative title) - Wednesday/Thursday 9:55 p.m.
They kissed even before they introduced themselves to each other and married a month later. This nonsensical story of their romance could have filled up two episodes of the drama but was instead told by the characters reminiscing on it for about five minutes. And that was because "Hate to Love" (tentative title), about a lawyer couple getting a divorce, has to show the story of married life which "has the strange skill of turning one's appeals into flaws." So how is it that these two who loved each other so much that they got married in a month, decided to get divorced? Throughout the first episode, "Hate to Lose" planted the requisites for the couple's conflicts and established Eun-jae (Choi Ji-woo) and Hyung-woo's (Yoon Sang-hyun) characters by shifting between scenes of them before and after their marriage and their workplace and house.

The fact that Eun-jae is a haughty woman at the workplace yet turns out to be clumsy and careless and the fact that Hyung-woo does not have a good financial sense yet is an attentive husband at home, was shown effectively by switching between the two at home and the workplace. Yoon, with a lot of experience playing comical characters and Choi, who unabashedly pulled off a scene where she pretends to be drunk and slaps Hyung-woo in the face, showed chemistry which was quite splendid too. The difference in their values, proven by Eun-jae trying to get paid for her work even from her mother-in-law and Hyung-woo defending a poor old man in exchange for just three potatoes, was enough to convince viewers of it becoming a long-term reason for conflict. Hence, the fact that their office will not be a place for just their romance but reach further and become a 'place of conflict,' hints to "Hate to Lose" as becoming a drama that will differentiate itself from previous romance-in-the-workplace type dramas.

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