Our Sticky Love Review: Ha Young Makes the Fake Relationship Fun

Go Eun-sae wakes up in a hospital without knowing her name. Her fingertips are badly injured, so the hospital cannot use her fingerprints to find out who she is. Nobody has come to explain her past. Then Jang Tae-ha arrives in a tracksuit from his boxing gym and tells her they have been dating for two years. She takes one look at him and has doubts. She cannot remember her life, but she is sure this man does not look like her type.

That reaction makes Our Sticky Love much more fun than its violent opening suggests. Ha Young plays a woman who wants answers and still has strong opinions about clothes, money and men. Jung Hae-in plays the supposed boyfriend who has to answer her questions while keeping her alive. We liked spending time with them. We were less convinced by how often the series lets his bad explanations settle those questions.

Our Sticky Love is a 12-episode Korean limited series on Netflix in the US, rated TV-MA. The opening includes gang violence and a badly injured woman. Korean audio and English subtitles are available, and you do not need an earlier season to follow the story. Spoilers for the final episodes are marked below.

Eun-sae / Ji-won is the woman who has lost her memory. Tae-ha is the boxer pretending to be her boyfriend. Sang-gil is his gang boss. Yeon-hong is the grandmother Tae-ha lives with. Gi-jun is Eun-sae’s doctor, and Su-ji is the woman Gi-jun dates.

Eun-sae does not believe her supposed boyfriend

Tae-ha tells Eun-sae that they live in Gujin-gun, a village where people make taffy, a chewy sweet. He says she works in his grandmother's shop. Eun-sae looks at his clothes and the home he offers her and struggles to imagine choosing that life. She is also facing a practical problem: without an identity or someone to take her in, she cannot simply leave the hospital and go home. Tae-ha offers somewhere to stay before she has enough information to trust him.

The first episode tells us what he is hiding. Her real name is Go Ji-won. She is a prosecutor, a government lawyer who takes criminal cases to court. She is investigating corruption, including the connection between a mayor and Baek Sang-gil's business. Sang-gil has her beaten and tells Tae-ha to kill her. Tae-ha recognizes her from his past, saves her and pretends she died. His story about dating her is supposed to keep her hidden. It also puts him in control of what she knows about herself.

Explaining that early helps. We do not have to spend half the series guessing whether Tae-ha is dangerous or why he took her to the village. We can watch him try to protect someone who is already picking apart his story. Ha Young is especially funny when Eun-sae objects to the life he describes. Her memory loss has not made her suddenly grateful for everything he does. She still notices when his answers do not make sense.

Near the end of the first episode, Eun-sae kisses him to test whether they have the connection he claims. She has so little evidence about her own life that even a kiss becomes part of her attempt to find an answer. Tae-ha's awkwardness is amusing, but the situation is also unfair to her: she is trying to confirm a relationship that he invented. The series would be more convincing if that unfairness troubled the couple more often.

In the second episode, Eun-sae wants to know whether she can trust him. Tae-ha tries to comfort her and tells her how he feels. Jung Hae-in makes the confession easy to like: Tae-ha is no longer just pretending to care for her so she will stay hidden. But he tells her he loves her without explaining which parts of their life together he made up. We enjoyed the romantic scene while still wanting him to answer her questions.

The trouble comes when a new doubt is followed by another explanation that she accepts. A woman who quickly notices the gaps in his account should keep asking about them. The opening gives Eun-sae a sharp mind, then sometimes asks us to accept that she stops using it so the couple can go on dates. The romance is enjoyable; the reasons she keeps believing him are less convincing.

The village is funny until the rumours go on too long

Gujin-gun gives the couple a life away from Sang-gil. Tae-ha can teach boxing, Eun-sae has people to talk to, and the grandmother's taffy business makes the place feel like somewhere people actually work. The series spends time on the house, the yard and the neighbours instead of treating the village as somewhere to hide between fights. It is pleasant to watch Eun-sae find a place among people she would once have looked down on.

In episode six, the village women hear Tae-ha talking about taking in a stray dog because he feels sorry for it. They think he means Eun-sae. They warn her that he is only looking after her out of pity and does not want to marry her. Eun-sae wants to believe they are wrong, but Tae-ha's behaviour starts to make her doubt him. She needs to know whether he wants her there or just feels responsible for her. That is a much more upsetting question than the women realise when they pass on the gossip.

Another misunderstanding makes it worse. A drunk Eun-sae tells Tae-ha that she knows everything, meaning she now believes in his feelings for her. He thinks she has recovered her memory and discovered his lies. Instead of asking what she means, he starts keeping his distance. We understood why he was afraid she would leave him, but watching both of them worry without asking one direct question became frustrating. The episode spends too long on a problem a conversation could settle.

Eun-sae then decides to leave rather than keep feeling that Tae-ha has to look after her. When she disappears in episode seven, the neighbours search for her. Their interest in the couple now has a clear purpose: they are worried about a missing woman. Tae-ha is surrounded by people looking for the person he brought into their lives. The group scenes are more involving when they are trying to find her than when they are passing around another rumour.

An Gi-jun, Eun-sae's doctor, also arrives at Tae-ha's door at night with questions about her past. He has a reason to ask about her condition and what happened before the hospital. His presence should make it harder for Tae-ha to keep avoiding the truth. Gi-jun has his own romantic problems with Min Su-ji: he copies Tae-ha's gift of socks and a small music player, expecting her to like it too. She is not impressed. We liked that awkward failure because copying another man's present does not tell Gi-jun what Su-ji wants. But the series gives them little time to understand each other afterwards. Their later romance feels less convincing than this early argument.

Sang-gil is a bigger problem. He orders a woman killed in the opening, so every comfortable day in Gujin-gun should depend on him continuing to believe she is dead. When he finally learns what Tae-ha has done, the need to get Eun-sae away gives the story some urgency again. Until then, the long stretches of village comedy make his threat feel too easy to forget. Heo Sung-tae can make the boss intimidating, but the series does not give him enough to do through the middle episodes.

Recovering her memory should change more

Spoilers for the final episodes follow. Eun-sae gets her memories back and returns to pursuing Sang-gil. She can recover the evidence she collected and act as a prosecutor again. This is a welcome change. She is no longer limited to trying to understand a life someone else described to her; she has work she knows how to do and a man she wants brought to justice.

Episode ten also gives the relationship a problem that has nothing to do with remembering a kiss. Eun-sae is busy with the case, and Tae-ha wonders whether she has room for him in her life. The village let them spend nearly every day together. Her job does not. The couple has to deal with her actual responsibilities, and we wanted more time with that adjustment.

Instead, Sang-gil returns to the village for another confrontation, and the final episodes reveal that he is Tae-ha's father. This connects the villain to Tae-ha's family as well as his criminal past. But the revelation arrives so late that there is little time to explore what it would mean for Tae-ha to know. The show adds an explanation for Sang-gil when the couple and the case already need their own endings. The last two episodes would have benefited from fewer new revelations and more time dealing with the truth already uncovered.

There is a satisfying idea in Eun-sae choosing Tae-ha after recovering her memory: she can finally decide with knowledge of her own life. We still wanted the series to give more attention to the lie that brought them together. Tae-ha saved her from Sang-gil. He also let her believe that she had spent two years in a relationship that never happened. Her decision to stay with him is more interesting than another chase, because it involves something he cannot decide for her.

Pixel Twelve Score: 7/10 — Good. Ha Young's reactions to the supposed boyfriend and Jung Hae-in's hesitant attempts to become the partner she thinks she has kept us interested in the couple. We also liked seeing Eun-sae return to her job instead of waiting for Tae-ha to handle Sang-gil. Those parts make this worth watching for a romantic comedy. The repeated excuses about her identity, the long village rumours and the extra confrontation at the end keep us from recommending it as strongly for its crime story.

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