Disjointed, Clunky, and Confused

Disclaimer: This review reflects my personal views. I did not like the first episode and wrote a review accordingly. If you enjoyed the show, that's great! but this review will likely not be for you.

Let's start off by saying that yes, I had some expectations for this show, coming off Lee Jong Won's spectacular Knight Flower and Kim Se Young's fantastic Business Proposal. Going by the show's description, a standard, feel-good rom-com does not seem to be too tall an order, and that was what I was looking for.

It does not deliver.

The show doesn't seem to know where it's going. It starts off immediately with a fight sequence that features a caricature villain being reprimanded by our female lead, Chae Yong Ju, and immediately it feels disorienting. Yong Ju is spitting brewery adjacent facts -- I personally do not care -- and her whole conduct and getup looks more compatible with some military personnel somehow being stuck with managing a state-run brewery than anything else. The whole scene is infused with forced comedic undertones and establishes next to nothing about our main cast besides the physical capability of Yong Ju.

In general, the direction is all over the place. There are attempts at self-awareness with over-the-top gestures and breaking the fourth wall, much like A Business Proposal, but most are jarring and unfunny. Visual effects and sound effects that feel vaguely tongue-in-cheek are planted in a haphazard fashion. There is no clear storyline, or rather, there is no flow to the cinematography, and the story is disjointed as a result, with no sense of direction. Characters are cardboard cutouts with no personality beyond a single descriptive (eg. "happy-go-lucky" new employee, "girlboss" executive) or unestablished like the main characters. No, having a randomly inserted sad past does not equate good characterization. I genuinely have no idea what the male lead, Min Ju, is like. He's playful one moment, brooding the next. His introduction is one of the most egregiously constructed, unbalanced scenes I have ever watched. Happy-go-lucky Chan Hwi greets Min Ju with excessive happy-go-lucky, and Chan Hwi first stands still like a statue, wrapped in brewery equipment-armor, looking standoffish and weary. It seems like we're off to a solid start in the portrayal of an outwardly aloof male lead, possibly socially awkward, who knows? It's a direction, at least. But literal seconds later, there is a head-scratching, BL-evoking sequence of slow-mo, sounds effects (actual heart beat sound effects, no less!), and visual effects, and suddenly, the male lead accepts Chan Hwi and employs him. The dialogue that follows is nondescript and responsive to Chan Hwi's quirkiness. We're left with a quirky employee and his employer the main character -- *as defined by "his employer"* , as if a main character with a quirky best friend wasn't bad enough.

In short, this was as disastrous as a first episode can be. Nothing was achieved outside of the bare bones groundwork of the main leads and secondary characters' professions, and perhaps an off-putting illustration of Min Ju's "mindreading" capabilities that feels misplaced in a show that was not touted as supernatural/fantasy. There is no clear story. There are tonnes of unwitty dialogues and uninteresting monologues on brewing. I am not sure if I will find the capacity to watch a second episode, and I am sorely disappointed that this is my follow-up to two of my recent favourites.

Update: So I'm seeing that Brewing Love shared the same director as A Business Proposal? That makes a lot of sense, with the over-the-top comedy and cheeky special effects. It's a shame that the same approach hasn't quite translated to onscreen coherence, let alone emulate the same brilliance.

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