Kevin C. Wong

Crash Course in Romance (2023) [+]

Crash Course in Romance is a South Korean romance drama running 16 hour+ episodes. Nam Haeng-seon (Jeon Do-yeon who played the female lead in Kill Boksoon) is a single mom, well not really, she's a single aunt raising her teen niece Nam Hae-yi (Ron Yoon-seo) after Hae-yi's mom ran off because she couldn't deal with a young kid.

Hae-yi decides she needs to attend a math academy since that's her weakest subject so Haeng-seon gets her enrolled into the best math academy in Seoul with star teacher Choi Chi-yeol (Jung Kyung-ho). But unknowingly Haeng-seon had already tangled with him a couple of times other disastrously so they didn't exactly like each other. For Chi-yeol it becomes harder — he often finds food unappetizing but has found that Haeng-seon's side dish (banchan) restaurant has food he actually likes.

The series is Haeng-seon and Chi-yeol falling in love which brings them both trouble with accusations that he's breaking up her "marriage" or that she's using sex to get her daughter favors at the math academy. Meanwhile Hae-yi gets bullied by one of her classmates while being pursued by another one. And then there's the factor that when he was a young teacher one of his female students committed suicide and people think it was his fault.

Oh I forgot that last one is important because that student's brother is out for revenge which later in the series brings an element of danger to Haeng-seon mostly.

It's rather annoying that other people use their influence to sabotage both Hae-yi's education and Haeng-seon's relationship with Chi-yeol. There is a monkaS moment when Chi-yeol's stalker kills one of his students (I guess he kills her since he goes on to kill others) but it's never mentioned again and it's like her parents didn't care enough to inquire why their daughter never made it back home?

Anyways this is a mostly good series and quite enjoyable.