No Gain No Love: Final Thoughts

No Gain No Love: Final Thoughts

No Gain No Love is a great example of "vibes over everything" but I'm really going to miss this morsel of a drama come next Monday. Despite its many flaws, it was fun and touching--the perfect pick-me-up to start your week.

Would recommend if you enjoy dramas that:

Are committed to being deeply deeply unserious

And yet at the drop of a hat can become heartfelt about difficult topics in a refreshingly unfussy way

Have women characters who feel modern and real, and who get to be unapologetic about what they want despite what society might think

Talk frankly about sex and relationships

Don't rely on the main couple for the emotional beats of the story and instead explore the many types of love between friends, family, and everything in-between.

And if you're looking for something complex, meticulously plotted, and, you know, not borderline insane? Maybe save it for a rainy day. Like Hae-yeong’s box from the attic.

One of my fave Cdrama production teams so I'll need to check Be Your Knight out! (Although I do miss the dreamy visuals of Director Zeng Qingjie.)

To @renewedmotionforjudgment's point about maximizing the creative potential of the short drama format, I think something A Familiar Stranger also does well is it picks a theme and unpacks it not only in the writing but in the visual storytelling. It's a very layered but efficient approach to communicating the show's main ideas.

I talk about this a little in my visual analysis here, but it's incredibly striking how Director Zeng uses camera close-ups, parallelism, fourth wall breaks, and other techniques to illustrate the theme of trusting our intuition versus what we see on the surface. The visual storytelling gives insight into things like the ML's character (e.g., all those direct stares into the camera) and the sister's relationship with the prince (e.g., the difference in intimacy with how the sex scenes between the two couples are shot) without needing to spend time on exposition. We can feel (and therefore know) all this through our eyes instead.

was just telling @renewedmotionforjudgment I'm 2 episodes into Be Your Knight and I love this short drama production team (Familiar Stranger, Provoke, Hard to Find, Butterflied Lover). They GET IT.

Republican drama?

Dark, wet streets! Grimy alley ways! Close-up on high heels stepping out of a glossy black car.

Waking up tied to a chair. Flipping coins to decide your fate. Secret twins. Snow falling over the slow-mo princess carry of a woman he knocked out.

Suits suits suits! Fighting a gang of men with a bat. Mysterious gangsters. Burning a secret file in a room lit by candles.

Pose as my fake husband or one of us will DIE

Did you kill the real one? ... ominious vague flashback so the viewer is unsure

This is exactly what I want. 100% dream logic.

NORTH AND SOUTH (2004) | Episode 4

THE JUDGE FROM HELL  지옥에서 온 판사 episode 02, dir. Park Jin Pyo (2024)

Dude, she wouldn't even move in with you. How do you expect her to quit her job so she can move out of the country with you?

Something in the Rain is one of those rare dramas where it's a bit too true to life with its maladjusted characters operating purely on trauma responses and the refusal to communicate. The realism is almost triggering lol