When we first meet Heo Mun-oh (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik), the protagonist of the Netflix K-drama Notes From the Last Row, he is really not in a good place. From the outside, it seems like Mun-oh should be happy enough: He is a professor of Korean literature at a prestigious university. He has a loving wife in therapist Cho Hyeon-suk (Jin Kyung). And he is respected by his colleagues and at least some of his Gen Z students.
But Mun-oh is miserable. He only sees his perceived failures, contrasted by the success of his university chum Kim Su-hun (Mercy For None’s Huh Joon-ho). While Mun-oh has only been able to write one novel, Su-hun has been churning out successful books since their school days. He is married to the beautiful and elegant Ahn Eun-joo (Kim Yun-jin), their university hubae whom Mun-oh has harbored a not-so-secret, unrequited crush on for decades. While Mun-oh and Hyeon-suk faced fertility challenges that left them childless, Su-hun and Eun-joo have two children.
In the series, an adaptation of Spanish play El chico de la última fila by Juan Mayorga, Mun-oh has resigned himself to a life of quiet resentments, until Lee Kang (Weak Hero Class' Choi Hyun-wook) comes along. A quiet boy who sits in the last row of one of Mun-oh’s classes, Kang has an easy talent for writing. When he writes about the rich family of friend and classmate Se-yun (Lee Jin-woo) for his class assignment, Mun-oh is enthralled by the tale of open envy. He offers additional writing classes to Kang, dreaming about a future when Kang is a celebrated debut novelist who publicly recognizes Mun-oh as his inspiring mentor.
Then, Mun-oh realizes that Se-yun is the son of Su-hun and Eun-joo, and that he has access to information about the domestic life of his frenemy and unrequited love. As a result, Mun-oh’s fascination with Kang’s story turns into an obsession.
In Kang’s story, relayed to Mun-oh over the course of proceeding writing assignments, Min-hui (Han J
