My Lovely Liar

• Korean: 소용없어 거짓말
• Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lovely_Liar
• Rating: 5/5 
• Posted: March 18, 2024

Two star-crossed lovers, a Manchester United fan (who still wears a Rooney jersey in 2023) and a Liverpool fan who, against all odds, help each other overcome their poor life choices, especially their choices of football teams once they realise that those teams suck major...

I'm just messing with you, football is not central to the theme of the show at all. Let's start this review over in earnest.

This show has become a favourite of mine for many reasons, among them an extremely intriguing storyline based on a premise just as unique. The FMC from birth is able to detect lies; when she hears someone says something in near vicinity (she must be able to hear the words directly so no written communication, no phone conversation), her ear rings when it's a lie. She has been using this ability to make money with a simple motto: whatever she ways must be so, because it is the truth. For the first 27 years of her life, this uncompromising philosophy has some success, but it also distances her from everybody around her. It also caused her to first accept a marriage proposal and then later rejected since she started hearing his lies. Her philosophy came to a serious challenge when the MMC, who had never set off her lie detector before, uttered his first lie while sleep-talking, “I didn't kill her.” This is where the show goes from good to amazing.

The central theme of the show is very simple: a lie does not always imply malice. People are fallible, people's intentions are always nuanced, being able to discern a lie at face value does not mean you know the truth. The MMC in this show has been hiding his identity for the last 5 years due to the death of his ex-girlfriend, but because the corpse has not been found and thus the case could not be ruled a suicide, he remains the prime suspect on that closed case. While he believes that she committed suicide due to him breaking up with her for her obsessive and possessive behaviour (what she had for him wasn't love, but a sort of crazed obsession that would soon drown the both of them; this is expected of people who have never loved before, so they often don't know what love should be like), the fact that he is lying when he says “I didn't kill her” means he does really believe that he is responsible for the death, and that he has been carrying this guilt everyday for the last 5 years. This is a very nice subversion of expectation; generally a character believes in their innocence and the audience would also like to root for characters that are innocent. What happens when the character themselves does not think them innocent? The FMC in the past has always started pushing people away once they started lying; but for such a damning lie like this, can the FMC rely on her lie detecting abilities alone, or what more can she do to protect the love of her life?

Obviously by episode 9 when the MMC explained to the FMC everything that happened, FMC's beliefs in the MMC's innocence became validated. I don't want to spoil the story much more than I already have, but I want to list out a few other things that I find very refreshing about the show:

• Many K & C shows toy around with either the FMC and MMC being indecisive between their past and main love interests. Some extreme cases that leave a bad viewing impression for me are Full House and Destined With You. This show doesn't do that. Both FMC and MMC at very early points in the show very much eliminated the possibility of any love triangles going on. This is very important to me because while I enjoy romantic comedies, I dislike love triangles, especially love triangles with indecisive characters who use this plot device for the sake of character growth. I like characters who can be honest with themselves, be a bit aware instead of oblivious, and most importantly know what they want and are not afraid to fight for it.
• The last two episodes are given to the FMC and MMC spending their time together post resolution of the main obstacle. Many shows kept the drama going so that the FMC and MMC can't truly be together until the very end. The worst offenders of this trope has to be Full House and to some extent Business Proposal due to what looks like a rushed ending. That the main conflict is resolved early enough to allow the last two episodes to be dedicated to the main characters working together and overcoming minor obstacles is very fun and refreshing to watch.