After he leaves the news desk, Woo-joo ropes Ki-baek into appearing in her new dating show, which, after a string of disappointments, she needs to succeed to avoid getting the boot herself.
Also joining the dating show as a contestant is popular entertainer Kim Jung-heon (Joo Jong-hyuk), who used to date Woo-joo and still has eyes for her. He also went to school with Ki-baek.
Since Ki-baek is also beginning to develop feelings for Woo-joo, a love triangle arises, which is further complicated by two things.
First is the appearance of surprise contestant Min Cho-hui (Han Dong-hee), who, remarkably, was the first love of all four male contestants on the show, including Ki-baek and Jung-heon.
The second is that after one of the female contestants runs away in the middle of the night, the production is in need of a new contestant and that duty falls to Woo-joo.
By this stage of the story the career aspirations of the various characters have completely fallen by the wayside as the show slips fully into romantic comedy.
Also downplayed, confusingly, is the show’s fantastical conceit, which has been difficult to understand from the outset and very poorly deployed throughout the narrative.
Ki-baek is unable to lie, but only at certain times. His condition subsides from time to time, which seems to have something to do with the presence of Woo-joo. It comes back whenever he sneezes but the high jinks that ensue are curiously underwhelming.
His position as a contestant in a reality dating show who is unable to lie appears to be fertile ground for various comedic scenarios, but all we get are a few frank comments popping up in group discussions.
His unwanted power is most clearly on display when he is telling people off, like a couple of ruffians who badger Jung-heon for an autograph and continue to hound him. Ki-baek’s fantastical ability thus highlights his righteousness, but this is a fantasy comedy, so where is all the humour?
Among the first group, there is Lee Ha-young (Lee Bom Sori), Woo-joo’s formerly bumbling intern who returns as a confident and scheming rival writer. Once the love triangle takes over during the filming of the dating show, she retreats to the background.
Then there is Ki-baek and Jung-heon’s first love Cho-hui, who is also revealed to be a scheming character. Though the nature of their relationship as teenagers is never made clear, she wants Ki-baek and threatens characters to get her way, including the contestant who suddenly leaves the show and Ki-baek himself.
Yet, once filming is completed, she more or less disappears from the story.
On the other hand, we have Woo-joo’s hairdresser mother, On Bok-ja (Baek Joo-hee), who is dating a rich man whose mother disapproves of her. She also occasionally welcomes even more peripheral characters in her salon chair, such as a woman who keeps coming back for long treatments to escape domestic abuse.
Ki-baek has his parents – who in classic K-drama fashion are Woo-joo’s downstairs landlords – and a pair of wastrel brothers.
One of them, gym rat Song Un-baek (Hwang Sung-bin), visits the reality TV set, where he meets Woo-joo’s co-writer Chae Yeon (Kim Sae-byeok) and decides to stick around as a staff member. After filming is completed, Yeon signs up for private lessons at his gym.
Beyond these already substantive problems, this romantic comedy has also been suffering from a crucial problem – a lack of chemistry between its leads.
If we are not supposed to care about Ki-baek and Woo-joo’s career ambitions and if we are supposed to ignore the spotty logic of the fantastical conceit that binds them together, at the very least we should be rooting for them to be together. But frankly speaking, it is hard to care.
Frankly Speaking is streaming on Netflix.