REVIEW: ‘Our Sticky Love’ Is A Little Stretched Out

Amnesia stories can be a sticky place to set one’s romance, and in the latest Netflix KDrama Our Sticky Love (Ireon yeot gateun sarang), you can see why that trope is a tricky one to play with. The premise lands on shaky footing despite how completely adorable its lead couple is once they start to find their step. However, that’s kind of the point. The plan, so poorly conceived, however noble, was always destined for failure. But no one expected a romance to blossom. If you have the patience to trudge along with its stretched-out story, you may find yourself sticking around to see how things end.

At the center of this sticky romance is prosecutor Go Eun-sae (Ahn Ha-young), who wakes up in a rural hospital not knowing who she is. With no way to identify her, she almost seems doomed to be carted off to a government facility for life. That is, until a scruffy-looking man clad in gym attire comes to pick her up two weeks later, introducing himself as Jang Tae-ha (Jung Hae-in), claiming that he is her boyfriend. Immediately, Eun-sae clocks the lie, but over the first half of Our Sticky Love, she slowly becomes convinced it might be true.

The thing is that it is actually a lie. Eun-sae tries to uncover the corruption between Chairman Baek Sang-gil (Heo Sung-tae) and Mayor Ju Min-jong (Kim Jong-tae), but she is easily discovered. Sang-gil has Eun-sae brutally tortured and tasks Tae-ha, who was actually his underling, to kill her before he is allowed to leave Sang-gil’s gang for good. Instead, Tae-ha fakes her death and whisks her away to his hometown, Gujin, which is also known as a Taffy Village. Now, Tae-ha has to make sure she isn’t found. Oh, and she just happens to be his first love!

The romance in Our Sticky Love is one of the series’ stronger elements.

The hilarity of the situation is set from the jump. Tae-ha’s poor attempts to lie to Eun-sae, who still has her deductive reasoning skills intact post-head injury, spell out the fate of this ill-concocted scheme to try to hide her from the world. What ultimately works in his favor is how little information Eun-sae actually has and how she is forced to take things slow in this sleepy little village, where the biggest source of drama arrives in the form of three ajummas who, while enjoyable in small bursts, take up more screen time than needed.

While not having a wholly memorable plot, the romance that blossoms between Eun-sae and Tae-ha is sweet. Bolstered by the chemistry between Ahn Ha-young and Jung Hae-in, the time taken to develop the two characters is one of the highlights of Our Sticky Love. Helping matters is that Eun-sae’s actual boyfriend is scum, showing early on that their relationship was built on a throne of lies. There’s a lot working towards Eun-sae and Tae-ha succeeding, even as the clock ticks down to see whether or not Eun-sae regains her memories.

Fleshing out the people who occupy Taffy Village is Tae-ha’s grandmother, played by Kim Young-ok, who is always a darn delight. The three ajummas previously mentioned are Na Geum-hyang (Kim Mi-hwa), Paeng Hui-ja (Jang Hye-jin), and Jo Maeng-suk (Cha Chung-hwa), and as previously stated, they are great in small doses, but they take up a lot of screen time that can be spent on others. This comes into view with how little time is spent with the show’s secondary romance between off-again couple An Gi-jun (Lee Jae-won) and Min Su-ji (Yu Ju).

Romantic cinematography frames the couple in a way that inspires flutter kicks.

In fact, the secondary romance, in execution, feels more like an afterthought, given how unbelievable the end result is. Part of this is due to how much animosity is baked into the relationship on Su-ji’s side and how much she pushes Gi-jun away. While it can be argued that just enough was written in to smooth away the roughest of paths to get them to some point of reconciliation, it is a romance that would have benefited from a little more work. 

This mismanagement of time with characters can also be observed in the handling of the baddie of Our Sticky Love, Baek Sang-gil, who doesn’t get much to do for a handful of episodes. Instead, brief glimpses of him are shown to remind the audience of the threat that dangles over Tae-ha’s head. Heo Sung-tae makes great use of his screen time, leaning completely into Sang-gil’s dubious nature. By the time things start to kick off with Sang-gil’s vengeance schemes, it is a refreshing change of pace, yet it also begs the question of whether there could have been a more effective way to engage his character sooner. 

The elements were there in Our Sticky Love to better tie these characters and storylines together, particularly with the link between Tae-ha, Sang-gil, and the Boxing Coach Hong Do-yeop (Jeon Bae-su). Unfortunately, this is a problem that permeates the series. Clocking in at twelve episodes, the series is divided on where it wants to place its focus, juggling various plots and resulting in a rather uneven viewing experience.

The story, unfortunately, lacks balance in how it handles its characters and various plots.

Some sideplots and characters are placed on the back burner, popping in sporadically in a way that seems more random than seamless. And with a natural stopping point at the tenth episode, you can’t help but feel the drag as Mo Ji-hye’s screenplay works to wrap up all the loose ends with the remaining two episodes. The screenplay does so by dropping the biggest of bombs that, again, could have been introduced a little sooner had the story been tighter overall.

What ultimately makes Our Sticky Love worth the watch, if one has the patience and understands that the show’s pacing isn’t designed for the chronic binger, is the cast. Tae-ha’s devotion once coming face to face with his first love is undeniably adorable, and Eun-sae’s quick mind and wit keep everyone around on their toes. Even if the story itself struggles to stand out in a sea of similar fare that has been stronger, Our Sticky Love stays afloat with how much the cast, from its leads through the rest of the ensemble, keeps things going. 

Our Sticky Love is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.