Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Five billion people asked for this review of ‘EXO Next Door‘, and though it may be late, I have tortured my way through this web drama just for you. Where is my gin and tonic? Where is my life insurance? Where is my 100 billion dollar contract from SM Entertainment? Where is my ‘Saturday Night Live Korea‘ skit with Tao near a window? There needed to be a light at the end of this tunnel.
Anyway, this web drama came out during one of my most stressful times of my life, which thus made the torture more torturous. Thankfully each episode is 7-15 minutes long because I don’t think I could’ve coped with whole hour episodes. How do extreme fans live day by day? Do you literally eat solidified condensed soul of an oppar? WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR LIFE?
This web drama is perfect for K-drama tropes, so if you like to fill your world with trope after trope, this is the one for you. Heck, the whole story is a trope since it has a predictable love triangle, and the funniest part is it involves D.O. and Chanyeol. Just thinking about it makes me cringe so hard that I feel like I’m going to die in a pile of dust and sadness.
D.O. and Chanyeol actually live with Sehun and Baekhyun, but Baekhyun does shit all and he’s just there for background music or a tree or something. He’s pointless, so forget about Baekhyun all you fangirls, his soul has left the world.
Back to the important plot, they all live together in this fucking massive posh house, and the love triangle the two boys have is with a cleaner. This cleaner girl has this really cool brother who makes coffee with a used dish rag and also has a slight affair with Sehun. Seriously, forget about D.O./cleaner human/Chanyeol plot — this whole shit should all be about weird coffee boy in a tent and Sehun, because that’s the ship that has sailed.
Anyway, Chanyeol is pissed like 100% of the time because cleaner girl (SPOILER ALERT) doesn’t remember him from their childhood. The two of them said they were gonna ~*marry*~ each other when they were like five. That’s basically it. Chanyeol is so fucking heated over some fetus memory of love with a little girl. That’s totally not weird at all.
D.O. also ends up getting annoyed with Chanyeol like a pissy 12-year-old child who doesn’t want to eat their carrots, but there’s not much mystery like the drama suggests, it’s just a lot of post-teen angst.
There’s also this fucking weird sub-storyline with Suho, where he breaks his leg after falling on a water bottle, cries about it, and runs away. What the fuck?
But the main takeaway from this whole goddamn stupid, terrible thing is that D.O. is fucking scary. Why was he chosen for a romantic lead? He’s clearly more of a serial killer. D.O. literally stares beyond your soul and beyond limbo. He’s created a whole new depth of staring. He basically almost managed to turn this into a horror thriller by himself.
And Chanyeol? I just can’t handle his existence in this. If the word “what” was a human, that would be Chanyeol. When he gets frustrated over the cleaner girl, I feel like he’s going to break a testicle or something. Like the emotions on his face don’t match up with his emotions when he’s speaking. It’s like some kind of dubbed movie except instead of mouth not matching up with the dialogue, Chanyeol’s existence doesn’t match with the … well … anything.
In the end … oh look, there’s a window, but NO FUCKING TAO.
Thus, I give this a “I Am Dust, Bye” out of 10.
