The Penultimate Break-Up
Episode 5 of Love Alarm Season 2 begins with Hye-Yeong surprised that his alarm has finally rang. He admits to Jojo that this is a nice feeling, as he throws his arms around her and hugs the girl tightly. It’s a breakthrough moment for the couple, as both Jojo and Hye-Yeong start to open up to one another. He even offers to pick her up after school too. While Jojo deliberates over her journal entries, Brian Chon learns that an unauthorized code was installed on Jojo’s phone that evening. This is, of course, in relation to the Spear that she initiated with Jojo. This leads Brian to begin investigating, eventually coming face to face with Hye-Yeong. He holds his arm sympathetically and leaves the building. When he does, Brian heads to the shadowy apartment where a bed and a heart monitor happen to be. Brian loses his temper and slams the flowerpot on the floor, wondering quite what Duk-Goo is up to. This now confirms what many of us have suspected for a while; Duk-Goo is still alive. Meanwhile, Sun-O continues to reel over what happened in the previous episode. He visits his Mother, who scoffs at the whole notion of the Love Alarm concept and confirms that his Father is the one who’s been cheating on her all this time. This is why she’s been unable to ring his love alarm. Yuk-Jo heads off to meet Jojo, admitting that she’s seen the viral video and knows Sun-O will never get over her. Yuk-Jo feels defeated, unable to compete with his feelings. Well, both Sun-O and Hye-Yeong show up next, with the former realizing that Jojo’s love alarm has gone off. She claims to have done this by her own free will. The camera then weirdly shifts off to a long-distance shot as the two go their separate ways after finally saying their piece. Unfortunately this has ramifications for Yuk-Jo, who has her contract cancelled in the wake of Sun-O’s true feelings coming out. Meanwhile, Hye-Yeong buys Jojo a bicycle bell. Of course, this is a funny little inside joke toward her ringing his love alarm. Anyway, this all comes crashing down when Brian shows up and confronts Jojo about the spear. Specifically, he figures out what the spear does and believes that she’s in collusion with Duk-Goo. He demands to know where he is but Jojo claims she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When this fails, he tells her to be honest and lays out everything that’s happened up to this point. Jojo has a lot to think about, especially when she heads home later that day. Gul-Mi, who has previously manipulated her way onto the Hot Person list, comes home squealing. She also casually mentions how she’s just seen Hye-Yeong outside. It turns out Hye-Yeong heard everything Brian had to say and now knows the truth. This brings him to Sun-O, where he asks about the shield and spear. This exposes Jojo’s lies, as the two guys talk about what’s happened thus far. In the wake of this, Jojo heads outside and finds Hye-Yeong waiting at the top of the hill. They both ring each other’s love alarm of course, as Hye-Yeong admits that he heard everything with Brian. As they talk about their feelings, Hye-Yeong walks away, defeated. As he gets on a bus and leaves, Jojo is left watching him leave.
The Episode Review
As we finish the penultimate episode of Love Alarm season 2, there’s absolutely nothing here to justify the two year wait between seasons. Everything is just sort of “ok” but nothing really stands out above this middling sense of mediocrity. The colours, visuals and editing throughout have been a bit all over the place, with this episode really showing some pretty poor camera angles for key conversations. We’ve got a pretty hefty 70 minute finale up next though so we’ll have to wait and see whether this one concludes correctly or not. So far the story has felt very half-baked and underwhelming, despite a relatively good start, with a lot of these subplots being kept at arm’s length in favour of the painfully obvious love triangle. It’s now almost a certainty that this will end with Hye-Yeong and Jojo together, but now it’s a case of putting all the pieces together to build up to that point. Unless there’s a big twist to come of course, then there doesn’t appear to be anything here that really stands out. Fans that have waited for 2 years will undoubtedly find themselves a bit disappointed with this.
