Melo House (2024)

Average drama with an unlikely premise and a dumbfounding conclusion.

This drama had a lot going for it--strong cast, good production values, "romance" in the title--except a script. FL Son Na Eun with her glorious scowl/RBF and mom Kim Jee Soo were the most engaging characters, but they didn't have much to work with.

Most of the other (negative) reviews focus on the absurd premise of a hapless father abandoning his wife and two small children after going bankrupt and leaving them destitute, only to return 10 years (or more?) later with a pile of sketchy money and a not very well thought out plan to win their hearts back. But as bad as that is, it isn't even the worst aspect of the plot, which is the almost stupifying "I don't need no man to make me happy" conclusion. But who could blame them? In the almost complete absence of any redeemable male characters in the whole drama, the two principal female characters decide that they are better off/happy living alone. The icing on the cake comes when the young FL asserts she is happy continuing to live her celibate lifestyle and has absolutely no intention of ever getting married--despite her supposedly wonderful relationship with her nice guy boyfriend. (I wonder if she consulted him about this...) The writer even had the temerity to throw in a reference to South Korea's lowest in the world .78 birth rate in the same scene. And this was a "romance"? Mind blown.

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Like watching paint dry

This series was a chore for me to finish and if it wasn't because of being a completionist and because I had nothing else to watch I would have dropped it a long time ago. It simply never gets better.

The original premise was interesting enough but this kept me entertained for a couple of episodes tops due mostly to the daughter's character. She was very annoying and immature and as the show went on it became a struggle to watch her scenes (and she's more of a main character than any of the others).

The only element in this drama that is interesting enough was the character of the father as a flawed character that has done very questionable things, but it's almost like they didn't want to commit to anything too in-depth for his past story and how he got where he is now and they just made up a very silly backstory that wasn't even funny. I almost would have preferred he simply won the lottery or something.
The relationship of the parents is more interesting but it doesn't develop in a very engaging way, it becomes stagnant at some point and doesn't pass much farther than that (either in a positive or negative way, I mean). I didn't personally like the mother much at all so I wasn't that invested in them even if their relationship was certainly better than the daughter's for having more nuance. Their acting was overall better as well.
Obviously there could be a long debate about if the father should be accepted in the family again and personally I think that realistically no. But as the episodes passed they wanted so hard for the audience to forget what he had done. I could maybe understand the mother forgiving him as she's the masochist/enabler type (you only have to see the son to see this as well), but when it comes to their children I would expect them more likely to go no contact or maximum forgiving but not forgetting and having just a polite relationship but not one of affection or love, especially the daughter.

I would have preferred they didn't have children or they would have been very background characters because they're both very insufferable though. I get they didn't get very good parental education but it's not entertaining to watch.
Mi Rae is just extremely annoying at times and her rivalry and fights with his father got old extremely quickly. It took way too long for the mother to remind her that she's an adult and that it's ultimately her prerogative. On the other hand I think the way her mother handled kicking the daughter out of the house was very rude and wrong on so many levels but they try to sell it to me like it was the best course of action because they decided that it would work.

The son/brother is such a piece of spoiled work and they simply don't solve anything nor they dwell enough in his character, he's just background annoyance and I don't think he brings anything to the plot other than, if anything, proving once more how terrible parents the main characters are. In the end somehow he manages out of the blue and everything is fine, it was so weak and absurd. He is an inconsistent character and him saying that he's always in the dark and no one cares for him but also siding with his father from the beginning are contradictory to me. Even if the mother didn't explicitly tell him at the time the father had gone I'm sure he would have worked it all out eventually on his own when the father never came home, so it doesn't make sense that he doesn't have any resentment towards the father, unless he blamed the mother for it, but c'mon, he wasn't that young when the father left to not have seen anything of what was going on. It's simply bad writing, the end.

The relationship between Mi Rae and Tae Pyeong was so plain and boring. Chemistry where? I didn't see any whatsoever.
Generally speaking I didn't like their acting much either, especially hers. I think Min Ho tried, although I've seen him acting better in other dramas than in this one. I had never seen Son Na Eun in anything before and I don't know her, but her acting was pretty bad, communicated the bare minimum and so many times it was so stiff, especially when she had to convey emotions and especially when it was a romantic scene. It was not enjoyable.
Tae Pyeong as a character was just so stereotypical. Son of a CEO but he doesn't care and tries to do something else but OH LA LA he falls in "love" (if we can call it that because it's left very superficial) with the FL. He would have been more interesting if he had been only a taekwondo teacher. Him being the CEO's son added nothing and was only used for that office drama at the end, and his father being in fact his brother also added nothing to the plot. It's almost like they wanted to add there a cinderella story or something but they didn't commit enough to it so they just kept it as her scoring the jackpot in meeting him.

The neighbours are so annoying as well, why are there so many as background characters and what do they add to the plot? none of them is even that close to the main family, it's pure filler. I didn't care for any of them, not even the hairdresser friend, that becomes extremely background once her connection to the ML is revealed and she's just there for that lackluster relationship with ML's tax accountant.

The general plot is extremely basic other than the father's unknown past, and at the same time I feel like they didn't explain properly many things or they just forgot about them what is an achievement with such a thin plot and that many episodes. Office scenes are generally boring and nothing out of stereotypes happen. The last minute office drama because of their relationship is such a overused trope, I couldn't care less. You can have a linear overused plot if your characters are making up for it, but here the characters just made it so much worse. The last two episodes are fillers as well, once the anticlimactic backstory of the father is revealed they just did scenes here and there trying to close a bit things but nothing in an interesting way, I found myself fast-forwarding bits here and there. It was boring and also quite slow many times, with scenes that added nothing. At some points I had it at 1.5 speed and I couldn't even tell. This is a lot coming from someone that likes both slice of life dramas and mumblecore films and doesn't mind at all the slowness as long as it's meaningful.
Instead of spending so many episodes with the raging of the daughter for the father like a spoiled brat I would have preferred they had moved on from that a lot earlier and we got to see more of the new mother's career as a model for example, it was more entertaining and not something you see as often for a middle aged character.

Product placement is on the face at times, and that one in the last couple of episodes with the freckles removal was one of the worsts sponsorships I've seen in a drama. I know, I know, they hate freckles! But it was so cringe and such a bad taste to me that I can't help it.

I personally can't recommend it.
- Comedy? no, I didn't laugh once.
- Romance? not much and quite dry.
- Complete characters? not at all.
- Likeable characters? If you like plain characters then maybe Tae Pyeong and not much else.
- Interesting plot? no, it doesn't know what it wants to focus in and it's left at very superficial and everything is forgiven because blood and past relationship.
- Melodrama? Not sure, the most melodrama here is the daughter being a childish brat instead of dealing with the problem in a more mature and rational way.

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