REVIEW: ‘Love Scout’ Episodes 1-2

Love Scout is already kicking off 2025 with a strong start. In just a couple of episodes,  this workplace romance drama has established its messy girl-boss archetype, the single dad male love interest you can’t help but adore (and something the show leans completely into), and a vindictive competitor sure to do anything in her power to tear down our main female protagonist with all her might. With its characters fully realized from the jump, this series already proves that it’ll be an endearing ride.

Kang Ji-yun (Han Ji-min) is an incredibly successful CEO of Peoplez, a head-hunting company that is facing some stiff competition. From Love Scout‘s opening scene, it’s quickly established how capable Ji-yun is at work. With all of her energy dedicated to her work, however, a lot of things fall through the cracks. Ironically, despite the name of her company, her people skills could use work. She frequently cannot remember the names of her employees, consumes coffee in place of meals, and her desk looks like a tornado hit it.

Within Love Scout Episodes 1-2, it’s clear that Ji-yun is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. She’s incredibly flawed, and her central focus on work and only work is proving to be her undoing. However, Ji-yun continues to push onward in stubborn denial, even after collapsing at the office. The hilarious image of her nursing an iced coffee while receiving an IV drip of fluids notwithstanding, it’s clear that Ji-yun can’t manage her life on her own. This is where Yu Eun-ho (Lee Joon-hyuk) enters the picture. Of course, it can’t all be smooth sailing for him.

Yu Eun-ho is too precious for words

From the start, Eun-ho quickly becomes the character to root for. As an HR manager, his whole purpose focuses on ensuring the smooth flow within the company. He is not one for confrontation and continuously chooses to take the high road, an admirable quality, but one that his superior, Song Young-sik (Song Young-kyu), weaponizes against him in an act of revenge. The reason? Eun-ho took parental leave to take care of his daughter, Yoo Byul (Ki So-yu), therefore jeopardizing a major project he was working on with Young-sik.

His daughter is his priority. This is shown in scenes when he goes to pick up his daughter from the home of Jung Soo-hyun (Kim Yoon-hye), a single mother who nurses a crush on the single father. Little scenes interspersed in Episodes 1 and 2 show how hands-on he is, from taking her to school and cooking side by side with her, and even the camera focusing on her bedroom and how it is decorated, which highlights the father’s care.

Maintaining his status at his job so that he can support his daughter is always at the forefront of his mind. This status is challenged in Love Scout Episode 1, and it puts him in the crosshairs of Ji-yun when she tries to headhunt a disgruntled employee from his company. A clash of wills emerges, and when the employee is poached by a Chinese company, Eun-ho questions Ji-yun’s ethics before scrambling to try to save his colleague from making a mistake. Unfortunately, it turns into a harsh lesson for Eun-ho on how toxic his company is, and how far Young-sik is willing to go to ruin his life.

Love Scout challenges company culture

Just when life seems determined to fall apart for Eun-ho, who by Episode 2 is blacklisted from his industry, Eun-ho’s friend and – conveniently – Ji-yun’s exhausted colleague, Seo Mi-ae (Lee Sang-hee), secures him a job as Ji-yun’s assistant. Love Scout Episode 2 establishes further how great Eun-ho is as an employee, but also how attentive he is in every aspect of his life. It immediately paints from the beginning that Eun-ho is the counterweight to help balance Ji-yun’s life.

Sure, there’s the workplace drama that comes with Ji-yun’s resistance to getting help. That’s something to be expected in this subgenre. However, how writer Kim Ji-eun finesses the tension, with actors Han Ji-min and Lee Joon-hyuk adding further depth to the interactions through their performances, transforms the typical tropes. With the gender reversal of their characters’ positions, with a male assistant and a female CEO, perspectives and expectations shift in a promising direction.

Through Eun-ho’s and Ji-yun’s experiences in Love Scout Episodes 1-2, ideas surrounding work/life balance arise. Ethics over profits, prioritizing family over work, and health over productivity are all essential and familiar debates in the workplace, particularly as more employees worldwide report high levels of dissatisfaction. Both Ji-yun and Eun-ho have experienced hardships in the workplace, with previous company cultures proving toxic and exclusionary over decisions they’ve made. The ramifications of these decisions still follow them by the end of Episode 2.

Enough mystery and intrigue surrounds Ji-yun’s past, particularly with her competitor, that there will be plenty to carry Love Scout forward outside of the romance department. But that’s not all. The focus and meticulous care placed in establishing characters early on, with all their complexities and issues out in the open, delivers what is needed to make Love Scout immediately compelling. And gosh, I can’t wait to see how our characters fare!

Love Scout Episodes 1-2 are streaming on Netflix in select regions and on Viki, and new episodes are released weekly.