The Undateables—A whip-smart enemies-to-lovers rom-com about a love skeptic and a matchmaker who won’t quit
Introduction
I hit play expecting fluff—and then found myself unexpectedly seen by a drama that understands how modern love can feel like spreadsheets masquerading as feelings. Have you ever stared down your own “rules” and realized they’ve been protecting you from the very thing you want? That’s Kang Hoon-nam’s starting line, a love theorist who treats dating like design. And then there’s Yoo Jung-eum, a former elite diver-turned-matchmaker who won’t let life’s bruises define her capacity to care. Their first sparks are combative, their banter addictive, and their quiet moments sneak up on you like a confession you didn’t plan to make. In a city where optimizing credit card rewards or comparing car insurance quotes sometimes feels easier than saying “I like you,” this story dares its characters—and us—to choose connection anyway.
Overview
Title: The Undateables (훈남정음).
Year: 2018.
Genre: Romantic comedy.
Main Cast: Namkoong Min, Hwang Jung-eum, Choi Tae-joon, Oh Yoon-ah, Lee Joo-yeon, Jung Moon-sung.
Episodes: 32.
Runtime: 35 minutes per episode.
Streaming Platform: Viki (United States).
Overall Story
Kang Hoon-nam runs a sleek art-toy gallery and writes incisive dating columns, the kind that make you nod and worry at the same time. He knows how attraction is packaged, how signals are misread, how timing is everything—and he keeps his own heart out of the equation like a proud minimalist. Yoo Jung-eum is his foil: a national-team diver whose career ended too soon, a daughter who cheers up her dad’s modest home, and a matchmaker who still believes people can grow into love even if they’ve been rejected by it. Their first brush isn’t meet-cute, it’s a memory: five years ago at an airport where Jung-eum chased a man who didn’t choose her, and Hoon-nam quietly witnessed the cost of going “all in.” When they collide again years later, it’s over a client and a misunderstanding that launches a rivalry—one that sounds like bickering but feels like sparks neither is ready to name. Anyone who’s ever judged someone on first contact and then had to unlearn that judgment will recognize the delicious discomfort of their early scenes. Their story begins not with a grand gesture but with stubbornness, professional pride, and the risk of being wrong in public.
Jung-eum’s world is built on hustle and hope. She chases sign-ups for her agency, persuades “undateables” to take one more chance, and coaches them through awkward silences as if they’re dives she can spot and correct midair. She’s coached in life by Coach Yang, the national-team taskmaster who once demanded perfect entries into the water and now demands Jung-eum fight for her second career just as fiercely. At home, her father’s warm optimism offsets the Seoul grind, and her best friend Choi Joon-soo—the kind doctor who rents a room in their house—becomes her compass even while hiding his long-held feelings. The show uses Jung-eum’s cases to sketch the city: blind-date culture, office hierarchies, and the subtle pressure to pair off before you’re “left behind.” Have you ever told yourself you were “too busy” for love when what you really felt was “too scared”? Jung-eum’s smile says yes, and her clients’ progress becomes her proof that courage is contagious.
Hoon-nam counters with slide decks and social experiments—half gentleman, half anthropologist. He believes dating is a skill set: profile curation, situational awareness, and an elegant exit. He’s wickedly observant, the kind of man who reads subtext faster than most people read texts. But his rules have a history, and the more we learn about his complicated family—an influential father, a polished stepmother, expectations arranged like a gallery installation—the more we understand why he refuses to let emotions rearrange his life. He steps into Jung-eum’s agency at first to prove a point, to turn theory into a controlled test. Then the “test” starts to feel like a refuge he didn’t anticipate.
Their professional detente becomes a partnership when their friends start pairing off: Hoon-nam’s cousin Yook Ryong tumbles into something surprisingly tender with Coach Yang, and the ripple effect forces the leads to sit in rooms they’d normally avoid. It’s not subtle; that’s the delight. The drama throws them into joint coaching sessions, emergency pep talks, and post-date autopsies where laughter breaks the tension and glances linger too long. The cases are ordinary on paper—a shy civil servant, a stuntman who masks fear with bravado, a woman navigating face-blindness—but the show stitches them with empathy rather than pity. And in each small victory, Hoon-nam discovers a part of romance his algorithms never measured: awe. Have you ever been the last person to realize you’re the one being changed?
Enter Lee Su-ji, a returnee from Australia with a storied past and a very clear plan: marry Hoon-nam. Her arrival is glitter and pressure, a reminder that in certain Seoul circles love is a negotiation between family influence and personal desire. A housing shuffle follows—one of those classic rom-com contrivances that works because it magnifies every unspoken feeling in a small space. Suddenly, routine nights turn into charged domestic moments: shared umbrellas, late bowls of ramyeon, and the slow comfort of someone else’s footsteps on familiar floors. Joon-soo’s quiet heartbreak hums underneath; he’s the friend we’ve all leaned on, the one who chooses kindness even when it costs. The quartet’s lives knot together until avoidance is no longer possible.
The show’s mid-game hinges on a cruelly simple device: a bet tied to Hoon-nam’s ironclad theories. It’s not cartoonish villainy; it’s self-protection dressed up as intellectual bravado, and when Jung-eum learns about it, the floor drops. Breakups in K-dramas can be operatic; this one is quiet and punishing, the kind where pride battles longing and pride wins—for a while. Hoon-nam, the man who can predict most reactions, now finds himself standing in the rain without a blueprint, learning that remorse has no shortcuts. Jung-eum, who’s coached countless clients through rejection, has to practice her own scripts in the mirror and still feels unready when the elevator doors open. Have you ever loved someone’s potential and then realized you need their apology first? The drama sits with that ache.
After the fracture, the series breathes. We return to the cases, not as detours but as healing—watching once-closed hearts risk new routines. Hoon-nam’s gallery becomes more than a backdrop; his Wizard of Oz collection—especially a Tin Man missing a heart—turns into a quiet metaphor the show handles with gentle restraint. Jung-eum’s father remains the soul of the house, offering noodles and perspective, because sometimes love is a warm meal when you can’t swallow anything else. Coach Yang’s tough love softens into mentorship, proof that the people who pushed us hardest can also hold us best. And through it all, Seoul looks less like a battlefield and more like a map: neighborhoods that remember you, bridges that test you, and coffee shops where apologies feel possible.
Family baggage finally stops being subtext. Hoon-nam’s public-facing father and polished stepmother want influence without vulnerability; he’s spent years making sure they can’t hurt him by staying just out of reach. Jung-eum recognizes the loneliness behind his elegance because she’s lived with her own: a life plan rewritten after an injury, a young woman measuring her worth without a medal to prove it. Their late-night conversations shift from sparring to confession, and in that honesty they begin to design a relationship neither of them has tried before—one that makes room for fear without letting fear drive. The series respects the slow work of trust; it lets them fail, recalibrate, and try again.
As the end approaches, Su-ji chooses herself, not competition; Joon-soo chooses friendship over possession; and the supporting couples model the thousand ordinary decisions that make a future. The grand gestures land because the small ones have been painstakingly earned. Hoon-nam learns to speak without hedging; Jung-eum lets herself be held without apology. Their love stops looking like a debate and starts sounding like a promise. If you’ve ever wondered whether two adults with scars can build something sturdy, the finale answers with a smile that feels like sunrise.
And when the credits finally roll, you realize the drama didn’t ask you to believe in fate so much as to believe in effort—the anti-swipe, anti-ghosting kind of effort that shows up, apologizes, and keeps choosing. Watching them, I felt braver about my own heart. Isn’t that why we press play?
Highlight Moments
Episode 1 Their “not-a-meet-cute” is a professional collision over a potential client, with an airport memory flickering beneath the surface. He’s all clean lines and clinical language; she’s righteous energy in sneakers. The misunderstanding is delicious because both are competent and both are slightly wrong. The scene sets the thesis: what if your persona at work is the armor that’s keeping you single? It’s snappy, funny, and quietly tender in the seconds after the argument when each of them turns back and pretends not to.
Episode 5 Hoon-nam “signs up” with Jung-eum’s agency to road-test his theories, and their first coaching session is basically flirtation with bullet points. He brings a presentation; she brings lived experience; sparks fly. Watching them co-create a dating roadmap is like seeing two languages find a common grammar. The case they tackle—a couple who keeps missing each other’s timing—mirrors their own dysfunction in miniature. It’s the first time “we” slips into their vocabulary without either of them noticing.
Episode 9 Lee Su-ji’s return flips the table. Her easy intimacy with Hoon-nam rattles Jung-eum, not just from jealousy but from the fear that she’s about to be sidelined by someone with all the “right” credentials. The show resists caricature: Su-ji is vibrant, funny, and sincerely convinced she and Hoon-nam belong together. This complicates everything, including the living arrangements that nudge our leads into accidental domesticity. Every shared hallway becomes a confession neither can voice.
Episode 12 Cohabitation chaos hits peak K-romcom. Dad cooks too much. Joon-soo’s smile is a shield. Hoon-nam and Jung-eum keep losing and finding their boundaries over laundry, late-night tea, and rainstorms that feel like fate’s sprinkler system. What could feel contrived instead deepens their wordless intimacy: two toothbrushes in a cup, a jacket draped over a sleeping shoulder, a text unsent. The domestic quiet is where their walls start to crack.
Episode 20 The bet detonates. It doesn’t matter who started it or why; what matters is the way it rewrites every earlier touch and glance in Jung-eum’s mind. She walks away not because she loves him less but because she loves herself enough to demand something better. Hoon-nam, master of clean exits, doesn’t try to lawyer his way out. He owns his mistake, stands in the rain, and waits—forgiveness on Seoul time. The breakup hurts because it’s real, and so is the growth that follows.
Episode 32 The finale brings an earned confession, stripped of theory. The Wizard of Oz motif completes—Tin Man’s heart found, but really it’s Hoon-nam’s—and their friends surround them like a community chosen on purpose. No last-minute villainy, just adults making brave choices. The kiss lands like punctuation at the end of a well-written sentence. You exhale, then grin, already a little nostalgic for their bickering and the city that shaped them.
Memorable Lines
“Sincerity? No, dating is about skill. It’s like a business that starts when each other’s qualifications match up.” – Kang Hoon-nam He says this early on, and it’s less arrogance than armor. The line turns romance into a market, letting him keep score without risking loss. It also telegraphs his arc: a man who measures everything will learn to measure nothing when the right person stands in front of him. Hearing it, Jung-eum knows exactly which wall she has to climb.
“I’m the type of person who’ll definitely have revenge!” – Yoo Jung-eum She blurts this while trailing Hoon-nam, all righteous chaos and comic flair. It’s her way of saying she won’t be toyed with, not by a smooth talker or by fate. Underneath the bravado is a woman terrified of repeating her airport heartbreak. The line marks her refusal to be a passive character in her own story.
“Be honest. You’ve never gone all in on love, have you?” – Yoo Jung-eum Her challenge pierces his theories, making the debate suddenly personal. It reframes the entire show from “Who’s right about dating?” to “Who’s brave enough to risk it?” In that moment, Jung-eum stops seeing Hoon-nam as a problem to solve and starts seeing him as a person to know. It’s the question that haunts him until the finale.
“Why would you go all in on love? All that’s left is pain.” – Kang Hoon-nam This admission exposes the wound behind the wit. His history with family and loss has converted vulnerability into a liability, and the line is the thesis statement of his fear. When he later contradicts it with action, the reversal lands because we remember how deeply he believed it. That’s what makes his growth feel like a choice, not a plot device.
“It wasn’t a game to me.” – Yoo Jung-eum Said when the bet finally surfaces, it’s the cleanest boundary she draws. The sentence is simple, but it reclaims the power to define what love should mean in her life. It also invites Hoon-nam to meet her where she is, with humility instead of logic. The apology that follows—and the patient work of rebuilding—earns the happy ending we’ve been rooting for.
Why It's Special
The Undateables is the kind of romantic comedy that sneaks up on you with a grin and a lump in your throat. It pairs a man who has all the theories about love with a woman who has every reason to be skeptical, then dares them to try again. If you’re planning a cozy watch-night, you can stream it on Rakuten Viki and on KOCOWA+; in some regions it’s also accessible through the KOCOWA channel on Prime Video. That means your usual streaming services lineup likely already has an easy path to it wherever you are, so you can press play the moment your evening slows down.
From the very first minutes, the series sketches out a bittersweet, modern Seoul where chance encounters feel like destiny in disguise. Kang Hoon-nam, a toy-gallery director and dating-column whisperer, insists he doesn’t believe in love; Yoo Jung-eum, a former national diver turned relationship helper, insists she’s moved on from fairy tales. Have you ever felt this way—absolutely sure your head knows better, while your heart quietly keeps the light on? The writing leans into that ache, letting banter bloom into vulnerability at an unhurried pace.
What makes their story sing is the director’s instinct for rhythm. Scenes play like a waltz—one step toward, one step away—so a single look across a crowded gallery can say more than an entire phone call. The camera lingers on small gestures: a hand hesitating over a text, a half-smile that breaks when nobody’s watching. Those micro-beats invite us to see not just two attractive leads, but two people fumbling their way through second chances.
Tonally, The Undateables is sunny without being naive. It’s full of bright city light, fizzy montage, and delightfully awkward meet-cutes, yet it also honors the bruises people carry into new relationships. The “zero-match” clients Jung-eum coaches aren’t punchlines; they’re mirrors that reflect Hoon-nam and Jung-eum’s own blind spots. The result is a rom-com with gentle empathy, one that asks, “What if the point isn’t finding the perfect person, but learning to show up as your imperfect self?”
The genre blend is quietly ambitious. You’ll find classic rom-com tropes—the fake client, the reluctant co-worker truce, the rival who isn’t quite a villain—braided with workplace storytelling and family drama. That balance keeps the episodes brisk and rewatchable: a confession sits beside a career setback; a jealousy beat opens into a hard truth about grief. The series never forgets that love doesn’t live in a vacuum; it grows in the mess of everyday commitments and compromises.
Dialogue is another pleasure. The banter is crisp and flirty, but the best lines are often the quiet ones—when Hoon-nam has to apply his textbook know-how to his own messy feelings, or when Jung-eum admits that coaching others is easier than risking her heart again. Those little reversals give the show its emotional hum, making the jokes land brighter and the reconciliations feel earned.
Finally, The Undateables rewards viewers who love a good behind-the-scenes story. The leads are longtime pros with a shared history, and that familiarity shows in the way they play irritation like foreplay and tenderness like a secret. Even when the plot indulges in rom-com sugar, the performances ground it—two adults choosing, and choosing again, to be brave.
Popularity & Reception
When The Undateables premiered in May 2018, it entered a crowded midweek battle and still found a spark with younger viewers right out of the gate, notching the highest 20–49 demographic share in its time slot on opening night. That early sign suggested a show that resonated with people who see themselves in Hoon-nam and Jung-eum’s push-pull, even before the romance fully bloomed.
Viewership ebbed and flowed through the run, sometimes landing behind competitors, sometimes pulling ahead, a pattern that underscores how timing and national events (remember the World Cup interruptions?) can shape a drama’s momentum as much as story beats do. On certain nights, it even edged out its rivals to top the slot, proof that word-of-mouth moments kept drawing audiences back.
Critical chatter was candid. Some early episodes drew comments about tone and pacing, with a subset of viewers debating the lead actress’s broader comedic choices. The cast and creative team addressed those concerns directly during press events, promising episodes that centered the core love story more tightly—and for many viewers, that mid-series adjustment paid off with warmer weekly reactions.
Internationally, the drama developed a soft-power afterlife. On platforms like Viki, fans highlighted its comforting chemistry and gentle humor, the kind of show you recommend to a friend who asks for “something light that still feels honest.” Community threads and review sections brim with favorite moments, from shy confessions to mischievous callbacks—little signals that the series works beautifully as a “feel-better” rewatch.
By its July 2018 finale, The Undateables closed with modest domestic numbers yet left behind a constellation of moments fans still share in compilation clips and gif sets, plus an awards-night nod that recognized how much heart Hwang Jung-eum poured into Jung-eum. Sometimes the scoreboard doesn’t tell the whole story; sometimes a drama earns its place in your queue because it keeps you company on the exact night you needed it.
Cast & Fun Facts
Namkoong Min plays Kang Hoon-nam with the sly charm of a man who can deconstruct anyone’s love life except his own. He makes Hoon-nam’s contradictions appealing: the cool-headed columnist who collects tin soldiers; the control freak who freezes when feelings get real. Watch how he calibrates each micro-expression—pride curdling into jealousy, certainty dissolving into wonder—as if Hoon-nam were reading himself like one of his case studies.
In the rom-com toolkit, Namkoong Min leans on impeccable timing rather than broad shtick. A single delayed breath before a confession, a half-beat of disbelief after a kiss—those grace notes let the comedy sparkle without undercutting sincerity. It’s a performance that suggests why he’s stayed a fan favorite across genres: even at his most playful, he never treats Hoon-nam’s growth as a punchline.
Hwang Jung-eum brings Yoo Jung-eum to life as a woman whose optimism took a hit but never died. She’s kinetic—quick with a pep talk, quicker with a protective glare—but Hwang threads that energy with lived-in tenderness. In scenes with her father and her “zero-match” clients, you feel the bruises she won’t admit to; in scenes with Hoon-nam, you see the fear that loving him might reopen them.
Midseason, Hwang subtly dials down Jung-eum’s armor. The laugh gets a little softer, the eye-roll a little slower, letting us notice the courage it takes to fall in love after you’ve sworn off the fall. It’s the kind of adjustment actors make when they hear the audience and trust the material, and it culminates in a finale arc that feels honest to the character we’ve been rooting for all along.
Choi Tae-joon plays Choi Joon-soo, the longtime friend who turns “I’m here for you” into a vow. He could easily have been written as a plot device, but Choi gives Joon-soo the steadiness of a real physician and the vulnerability of a man who knows he might lose. His confessions land not as pressure but as permission—permission for Jung-eum to be fully seen.
What’s lovely is how Choi handles disappointment. He doesn’t flail; he exhales. You can watch the man choose dignity in real time, a choice that makes the central romance feel kinder rather than crueler to everyone involved. In a genre that sometimes punishes second leads, Choi makes decency cinematic.
Oh Yoon-ah energizes the frame as Coach Yang Sun-hee, a former diving legend who now shepherds a new generation. She’s Jung-eum’s blunt-force truth-teller—equal parts drill sergeant and fairy godmother—and she brightens any scene she storms into. With her, the show taps a different well of love: the tough love that pushes you to jump even when your knees shake.
Oh also anchors one of the show’s sweetest subplots, reminding us that mentorship is its own romance with life: a commitment to show up, to keep showing up, even when the scoreboard isn’t kind. Her warmth gives the series ballast, proof that community is what steadies us when our hearts wobble.
Behind the camera, director Kim Yoo-jin and writer Lee Jae-yoon keep the tone nimble. They stage screwball flourishes without losing the pulse of two people learning how to be brave at the same time. Script readings kicked off in early April 2018, and even scheduling hiccups—election coverage and World Cup preemptions—couldn’t blunt the show’s gentle vibe once it hit its stride.
As a fun bit of context, the leads’ reunion added a dash of anticipation for longtime viewers who’d watched them share the screen years before. That familiarity doesn’t just spark chemistry; it deepens the sense that Hoon-nam and Jung-eum are meeting at the right time in their lives, even if they took the scenic route to get there.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If your week needs a soft landing, The Undateables is a bright, big-hearted place to put it. Queue it up on the platform you already use, and if you’re traveling, consider a reliable VPN for streaming so your nightly rituals keep pace with you on the road. A stable home internet plan helps too; rom-coms thrive without buffering. Most of all, bring an open heart—because this show believes, stubbornly and sweetly, that love is worth trying for one more time.
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