Dramas like
Crash Landing on You

Same writer, same recipe. Park Ji-eun again: slapstick for eight hours, an ensemble of relatives who steal every scene, then a hard swerve into a weepie you did not consent to. The chaebol house replaces the North Korean village as the place where outsiders get slowly absorbed. Difference: the central couple starts already broken instead of falling in love, so the first four hours are colder.

Slow start Episode 4, when the in-law hierarchy flips. The chaebol scaffolding takes a while to pay off.

Park Ji-eun's earlier version of the same engine: an impossible gap between two people, played for comedy before it is played for tears. Cheon Song-yi is the blueprint for every proud, ridiculous, secretly lonely heroine that followed. Difference: it is a 2013 SBS show and the production shows its age in ways CLOY never does.

Slow start Episode 3, once she moves in next door and the bickering starts.

The same fated-couple ache with time instead of a border in the way, and the same devoted male lead who quietly rearranges his whole life around one person. Warmer, funnier per minute, and it understands what being a fan of someone actually feels like in a way CLOY does not. Difference: much lighter emotional load and no political stakes at all.

Hooks early Episode 2, the first jump back. Be warned: the lead's fan-girl register in the first two episodes is a lot to take, and it settles around episode 6.

If what you rewatch CLOY for is the banter and the second couple, this is that isolated and concentrated into twelve fast hours. Same webtoon-bright comedy, same competent-woman-meets-stiff-rich-man shape. Difference: it never once tries to make you cry, which is either the appeal or the dealbreaker.

Hooks early Episode 1. It commits to the bit in the first ten minutes, and that is the appeal.

The other side of the same wound: a divided Korea, an impossible love across a line drawn by history, and a scale that CLOY only gestures at. Kim Eun-sook writing at her most painterly. Difference: it is genuinely tragic and there is no comic relief village to come home to.

Slow start Episode 5, once all three men circling her are in play. The opening hours are a history lesson, and the real barrier is the writing register: the dialogue is elliptical and the flashbacks last seconds, and that is where it either has you or loses you.

A fated trio, a supernatural conceit that exists mostly to force people into each other's lives, and a found family that ends up mattering more than the premise. Difference: half-hour episodes and a procedural rhythm, so it never builds one long unbroken sweep.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the three of them realise they are dreaming the same futures.