Flower Boy Next Door is a 2013 Korean comedy-romance-drama series. It's the 3rd installment in the Flower Boy series and, like the other shows before it, it is extremely light in tone. You'd be hard pressed to think of too many other K-dramas that are "softer" than this one is.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
First off, this show has nothing to do with flowers; "flower boy" is a Korean idiomatic expression that essentially means "pretty boy". Our story begins by introducing the titular "flower boy" to the primary character (Go Dok Mi); Dok Mi is the shy shut-in type girl who has a crush on the handsome young doctor she watches in the building across from hers. Dok Mi is perfectly content living alone in her apartment and interacting with no one; unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as the case may eventually be), Dok Mi's neighbors are an odd collection of outgoing personalities that become increasingly harder for her to avoid. The most prominent of these neighbors is the character named Enrique. He's the "flower boy" that catches Dok Mi spying on his doctor cousin, soon realizes she's a lost & lonely soul, and takes it upon himself to bring Dok Mi out of her shell and into the world around her. Actually, all the male neighbors are "flower boys" to some degree, but Enrique is the most "flowery".
Dok Mi is the way she is because of something that happened to her back in high school that made her not trust people and withdraw from society. Having a crappy high school experience doesn't really rank all that high on the life problem scale in the long run; when you're in high school though, or not far removed, there is nothing of greater importance than NOT having a crappy experience at that stage of your life, and, that's what we have here; a young woman who just can't get over her past and move on with her adult life.
Park Shin Hye plays Dok Mi. She's pretty effective at portraying the perpetually weary/sad eyed introvert who slowly begins to overcome her fears/wounds as the series progresses. She gets the job done about as well as can be expected of what's asked of her. Yoon Si Yoon plays Enrique; the young and playful expatriate who has nothing better to do than dote on Dok Mi while he's back in Korea; he gives a nice enough performance as the relentlessly positive and energetic pretty boy who simply wants to help Dok Mi, but soon finds himself falling in love with her instead.
The two secondary M/F parts involve the guy that lives next to Dok Mi, and Dok Mi's former high school girlfriend. He's had a crush on Dok Mi for some time, but he's never been able to approach her in order to get close to her. It's an indication of how light this show is that neither he nor Enrique really even compete for Dok Mi via expected methods. Dok Mi's former schoolmate is the only antagonist here, but she barely even qualifies as one, as she and her gaggle of cohorts are about as bothersome as a litter of hungry kittens. She's a scheming spoiled brat of course, and she was rotten to Dok Mi back in school, but she's mostly pretty harmless overall. There are a number of small side stories as well (involving the kooky webtoon editor, the security guard, neighbors, etc). These side stories are mostly played for comedic &/or romantic effect, and, they work well enough to serve as a compliment to the main story line.
This show skews VERY young; the cast is packed full of attractive young people dealing with young people problems. This show is also frequently silly and sickeningly sweet, and the melodrama is so inconsequential in the scheme of things; nobody's dying, nobody will lose everything, nobody's family is at stake, etc. It's more of the "I'm sorry your feelings were hurt, so here's some ice cream" type melodrama. It's an effective series though that's fairly well written, performances are solid throughout, and it's well paced and nicely scored with an appropriately cutesy soundtrack, etc. There's not a whole lot of meat on its bones, and, it may contain the least amount of masculinity in any K-drama I've ever seen (and that's saying something), but otherwise, there's really not much to dislike here.
On the down side, there were two minor sub plots that didn't work very well; one involves the guy living next door having a secret rich family, and the other involves Enrique's troublemaking fan club. The former story was pointless and unnecessary, and the latter had too much importance placed on it. I also wasn't really fond of the way Dok Mi's suitors came across as borderline stalkers on occasion, who were blindly insistent that Dok Mi was in need of their help, when in fact, they had just as much "growing up" to do as she did; that was really the whole point of the show though (i.e. these guys help Dok Mi heal over time while she serves as the impetus for everybody to find out more about themselves, move forward in life, discover love, etc).
Through it all, this show is consistently funny and charming, and, its biggest attribute is that it never loses sight of the fact that this is where its heart lies. The other thing going for this series is that it's sixteen 40 minute episodes, and I love this format because it results in very little time for filler or dragging things out, and everything's usually pretty snappy as a result. Get in, get out, move on to the next scene, episode, series, etc. I wish more K-dramas utilized this format actually.
Bottom Line: This is an adorable little show with a simple and approachable story, and, it's often quite good!...As a bonus, it's also easy to watch/ignore while pretending you don't like it (in case you're too manly or mature to admit as much).
Nicely done overall!...8 out of 10 stars!
