Review of Boyfriend on Demand / 월간남친

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

Here and there I am finding the motivation to get things done though, especially when it comes to watching shows when I’m interested in. I started hearing the buzz for Boyfriend on Demand leading up to its release, and one day I looked at my Netflix and saw it came out.

So what did I do? Binge watch it throughout the course of a single week. I haven’t done that in a long time, so it was kind of refreshing in the moment.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much.

A webtoon producer finds herself escaping to virtual reality for her love life, but her true romance is before her eyes.

Our main character in this drama is Seo Mi-rae, who, at the start of the drama, is getting over the trauma of a breakup with her boyfriend. It also hurts her in the early episodes when she sees that he has a new girl and is on the path to marriage with his new girlfriend, which pains her on so many different levels.

But in her professional life Mi-rae is working as a webtoon producer. She’s aiming to get higher prestige and clout at her company by working hard and networking with the higher ups, but there’s one person in her way: Park Kyeong-nam.

He’s the male lead and a bit of a loner compared to her. Mi-rae’s other coworker has a crush on him and gets swiftly rejected, adding to his loner and stoic personality, and he also is gunning for the same kind of validation Mi-rae is seeking at work.

That puts these two at odds with each other professionally, especially when they keep ending up in the same meetings. What ends up happening is they work on the same project, but their relationship takes a turn after episode six in the series.

Before then, Mi-rae finds escapism in a virtual reality dating simulation. When she goes home from work she enters the simulation and finds herself in dream situations with men. Her first scenario is with a rich chaebol, but when she finds out there’s a limit you can spend in the simulation, it frustrates her after she meets her one true love: Eun-ho.

This storyline is incredibly interesting to me because Mi-rae keeps blurring the lines between reality and simulation, which is what snowballs in the later episodes of the drama. It reminds me of AI and how people become reliant on it. Without the right technology in their life, they become more lost and unable to see the boundaries between the real world (or, in this case, critical thinking) and the tech.

I could go on and on about artificial intelligence and its pros and cons (one being the environmental impact), but let’s cut it off there for now. This is a fairly cute drama, but it does take its time to find its footing.

Overall Thoughts

To expand on the notion that this drama taking its time, I found the first six episodes to become slowly more redundant. While I love Seo Kang-joon and could watch an entire cliche drama with his character, I thought that Mi-rae’s escapism was honestly kind of sad to watch on-screen.

As technology develops more, how many people are going to go into the simulation like this one and try to escape the real world? What happens when you give up on reality as you see it and decide to live in the alternate world of constructs and fiction?

I think Mi-rae has a moment of realization like this halfway through the drama, which helps the show come to a better pace overall in the second half, but I found myself thinking really hard while watching this one. It’s cute, but it’s also really sad how lonely people could actually utilize this V.R. to escape loneliness and the reality of their lives.

I say watch this drama if it interests you. I enjoyed watching it, but I don’t know if I’ll return to it in the near future.

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