Love Like a Kdrama Episodes 10 and 11 Review: Sweet Moments Bubble Up With Another Love Triangle Chaos

Love Like a Kdrama Episodes 10 and 11 Review: The penultimate episodes of the Japanese-Korean reality series (韓国ドラマな恋がしたい) on Netflix keep up with the love triangle scenario, with the focus now Nozomi Bando, Kim Won-shik and Honoka Kitahara. The romance reality TV series stars a total of eight contestants – four Japanese actresses and four Korean actors. In addition to the aforementioned trio, the others are Ayano Kudo and Rio Yamashita, and K-pop group Supernova member Song Ji-hyuk, model/rookie actors Lee Tae-gyun and Kim Dong-kyu.

Additionally, the cast also includes Yuko Fueki aka Yumin steps as the host, with studio members, Haruna Kondo, Aa-Chan, Shusuke Fukutoku, Hayato Komori (GENERATIONS), and Maria Tani, offering live commentary. Directed by Yoshiaki Suzuki, the series consists of 12 episodes, and has been produced under the banner of TV Man Union. Episodes 10 and 11 were released on Netflix on December 19, 2023, each having a runtime of 45-47 minutes.

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Love Like a Kdrama Netflix Review for Episodes 10 and 11 Contains Spoilers

Love Like a Kdrama Plot

A group of eight male and female actors is enlisted to live together as they all pair up for auditions to star in mini romance K-dramas. As four Japanese actresses arrive in Seoul to manifest their acting dreams, they have to overcome the language barrier as they join Korean crews for filming, and also Korean male partners, with whom they also have a chance to engage in real romance off-screen.

While some of these actors stay focussed on their aspirations to take flight as budding actors, others are also simultaneously caught in the love network. Some develop genuine bonds with their partners, while others vie for a place beside the ones they admire as someone else comes closer to their crushes.

Love Like a Kdrama Episodes 10 and 11 Review

Love Like a Kdrama Episode 10 and 11 Recap

As the contestants gear up for the final audition of the series, the girls are in a fix. Ayano and Rio settle with their partner choices – Tae-gyun and Dong-kyu – quite soon. However, Nozomi and Honoka end up picking Won-shik. While this opens the door to a long and hearty talk between the two that eventually pushes Rio and Ayano to tears as well, they’re still not able to come down to a resolution. Ultimately, Won-shik is brought in and each of the two girls is given a brief moment of time to talk things out with him, leaving the ball in his court.

Honoka gradually comes to own her feelings for him, but isn’t able to put them into words. Nozomi feels that she needs to spends some time working with Won-shik to finally find a place for him in her heart. Although Won-shik perceives this to Nozomi’s way of moving on from Dong-kyu, he still gives into his feelings and ends up picking her in the end.

Love Like a Kdrama Episode 11 is fully spent shooting for the last drama episode, for which Nozomi and Won-shik bag the roles. Their fictional characters are situated in the hospital setting as love blossoms between them. Nozomi takes this as a big opportunity to open herself up to Won-shik as she finally starts accepting his soft side and feelings for her. She starts feeling at ease in his company too, while Won-shik makes the most of this time to get to know her as well, awaiting the inevitable kiss scene that could change a lot of things between them.

Love Like a Kdrama Episode 10 and 11 Review

On the top of it all, the love triangle situation moves from being centred around Rio, Dong-kyu and Nozomi, to it making things tense for Honoka, Won-shik and Nozomi. The penultimate episodes work a great deal in favour of emotionally building up the case for Honoka’s developing feelings for Won-shik. At one point, she even goes to the great lengths of labelling it all as love too. It’s evident that the timing between her and Won-shik has always been off. And in that sense, their offscreen dynamic has come across as that of a typical K-drama pair that consistently fail to get together until the last moment.

The 11th episode’s kiss between Won-shik and Nozomi has fed into the same picture of a plot twist awaiting to shock the audiences in the final episode. While Nozomi feels closer to him than ever before, Won-shik physically removed himself once the shot is done. Prior to it all, he’d been fully supporting Nozomi and shared her company behind-the-scenes as well.

He does claim to have feelings for her, but with Honoka having spilled her thoughts hours before the shoot, could this result in him having second thoughts about it all? After all, Won-shik has had a chance to let loose with both Honoka and Nozomi now. It seems as if even beyond the audition choice, the ball has again fallen back into his court as far as the real thing is also concerned.

Regardless of whichever way he swings, it can’t just be ignored how Love Like a Kdrama hasn’t particularly given the viewers enough fodder to root for either of the couples even upto this point in the series. It’s a known and affirmed fact that reality show give in to some scripted basics, but that bit of the series is nowhere doing any wonders for the audiences to have enough reasons to back either of their ships.

It’s quite likely that many viewers may be rooting for Won-shik to end up with Honoka ultimately because they also made for the one of the first four couples to have been paired together. Audiences particularly tend to hang on to such details in such dating show situations. However, neither of these contestants – Kim Won-shik and Honoka Kitahara – have emotionally closed the gap between each other. They only seem to be closing in on each other only because that’s what the show’s format calls for.

A similar case of situational demand is being extracted out of Won-shik’s pairing with Nozomi. It’s understandable that she’d focussed all her emotions and energy on Dong-kyu before this, which makes it harder for to quickly let go of those memories and give into Won-shik’s confession. Nevertheless, that hindrance has now shrouded her true feelings.

The act of her choosing Won-shik will undoubtedly push one to ask if she merely picked him as her partner as he was the only feasible option to go along with after Dong-kyu. Does she actually feel moved by Won-shik’s confession? We will never know that. So again, this pair too falls a prey to there mere straightforward design of contestants being pulled into a love triangle like so to feel something. It all comes across as forced, but still the people involved in this situation are evidently working hard to make the audiences believe in the make-believe act too.

Except these three contestants, Ji-hyuk is fully pushed to the back and has barely served any purpose ever since he was pushed out of the equation with Rio. On the other hand, Rio and Dong-kyu, and Ayano and Tae-gyun’s double date and other sweet moments make room for some cuteness apart form the mess created in the mainframe. Since these four have settled into their pairs now without any obstacles in their way, they’re obviously accorded with lesser screen time, but even with that less focus on them, they’re able to make the most of what they have and give way to endearing moments that win you over.

Love Like a Kdrama Reality Show: Final Thoughts

The anticipated season finale is expected to be a dreaded event for sure, especially since there’s the big possibility of Won-shik going back to his feelings for Honoka. Nozomi has consistently stayed up as one of the main players in the series. Despite her abilities to pull the camera to focus on her due to her emotional magnet, she’s merely been one of these off-screen protagonists owing to the constant love triangle problem, regardless of who it may have struck up with.

So, the attention has drastically shifted away from these contestants’ acting chops to the mere picture of how they fit into the dating scene. It’s but natural for such reality shows to ultimately fall down to the same ideas, but it’s disappointing to see these artists being to reduced to the one thing, while the other side of it is completely done away with.

Love Like a K-drama is now streaming on Netflix.

Also read: Read Our Other Love Like a Kdrama Reviews