Emily

Also I've seen literally zero people mention that one of the secretaries straight up vanishes part way through??? Like, the plot-relevant side secretary with the plastic surgery? What happened there? Lol.

I had zero expectations but this was ~AWESOMEE~. Tropey as heck in a good way, genuinely well-written, and unexpectedly rewarding to viewers that pay attention. The acting is great all around- KYK is very believable as a dopey man in love and it is cute as hell, but he also has depth and complexity to his performance that surprised me. He's extremely likable. Both female leads are also really great. The double meaning behind the title was a nice twist~~~ Highly recommend if you're looking for something light and sweet.

Finished rewatching Liar Game (Reborn who?) and I'm fully re-obsessed with these two idiots. They're in love your honour! They're so in love!

Not doing the adequate research to ensure your prop medal doesn't look like a nazi medal is almost as cringe as the character names in that drama

Legendary actor. He will be greatly missed.

The chemistry is off the charts. The way I'm gonna be thinking about this drama for the next month ;-;

~~ I should have just waited until the entire drama was out before watching the first two episodes, because hollllyyyy this one is shaping up to be a whole obsession ~~

For future reference, spoiler tags are typically reserved for spoilers for aired episodes- not unreleased episode/source material spoilers, which either shouldn't be posted or should be well telegraphed beforehand.

I've watched dramas with supposedly antihero/manipulative female leads before, but so many times I've been frustrated by their idiocy. (I'm looking at you, Miss Ripley.) But girly is so competent! At least for now. Lol. Loving this so far.

I love when delusional fiction fans post quotes from their favourite book as if they have any meaning or impact at all to people who aren't fans of that book. You might as well be calling people muggles

They also use Satan , from christian mythos. Religious mythological characters are still mythological characters.

Four episodes in and this drama is like a fever dream. The editing feels like the minecraft obstacle course accompanying the person trying to tell some semblance of a story. Things feel very random, almost like it was chopped together from AI prompts. Praying that isn't the case, but atp I'm really only here for the actors.

I think you might be right about that last bit. The only way that it would make sense is if the logic for the time travel is that their love is supposed to be unfulfilled and yearning-filled, and then cut short by her going back, which I can see being necessary because of the limited episode count. My expectations were set too high, I guess, because I've seen a lot of supernatural dramas before where the primary factor that overcomes the laws of time and space is the enduring relationship between the leads. It brings people back from the dead, it body witches them, it reincarnates them, it lets them travel in time, etc etc etc. It tells you that these two people love each other so much and are so devoted to each other that the laws of reality can't hold them back. When the beginning of a drama promises that much, and then devotes barely any of it's already short runtime to justifying that supernatural element, it feels like a bit of a letdown. (I don't have a problem with the focus on cooking; I honestly just feel like the drama dragged on way too much during the politics and minutiae of the competition and could have focused MORE on actual food.)

Sure. But the inscription on the book was extremely heartfelt and promised an enduring and hard-won love. I don't feel like the couple as portrayed so far has earned that. If it was going to be a sub-plot, it should have been a subplot; as it was originally implied, they were supposed to have a love intense, dramatic, and strong enough to travel across time and space. I ain't getting that from those two.

I don't see the next two episodes proving to me that the leads have the relationship and chemistry to support the build-up at the start. A little disappointing imo.

Has it aged well? No. Did it make me cry as much as it did the first 4 times I watched it a decade+ ago? No. Is there way too much screaming and crying in it? Yes for sure. Do I think you should give it a watch if you've never seen it before, if only to understand the massive influence it had on dramas 15 years ago? Yeah.

Side note; I actually didn't find the ML to be all that problematic on this rewatch. Maybe it's because I know where the character is coming from, and where he's going- the ways in which he is mean are actually addressed by the drama and either given good explanations or used as growth points, so it's hard to view them as all that problematic compared to other characters I've seen in dramas. Gil Ra Im, if I'm being honest, also has one of the most tsundere personalities put to screen. Her whole "omg nooo don't take a picture of my face >:[ omg -_- how dare you!!!! I'm going to stay perfectly still while you aim and take the picture.... perfectly still glaring at you ):<" shtick is like... okay girl. You like it. Maybe that's Ha Ji Won being bad at acting, but there are very few things that Ju Won does in this where I'm like, "oh, she's ACTUALLY mad this time".

Maybe I'm just sniffing some special nostalgia glue, but I feel like they were really cooking with this one. Some bits of it have aged BADLY but I really feel like the entire cast was channeling something with this. The main couple are such a power couple it's insane. Some parts of it are cheesy as all hell but overall it still holds up as a really unique, tightly-written drama; Also, for 20 episodes, it has very minimal draggy bits.

AI isn't illegal, but it should be. My point is that it doesn't look like CGI- it looks like AI. The texture and lighting and smoothness, particularly on the beef bourguignon and the leaf on top, look very AI-generated. And the clip with the historical figures eating Peking duck, unless it's based off of archival footage somehow, also definitely pinged my alarm for imagery that was AI generated.

A few thoughts: first, I'm getting frustrated that we have FOUR EPISODES LEFT and it feels like nothing has happened to justify the dramatic tone and grand-feeling scale of the first episode. I'm afraid that emotionally, its gonna be a deflating balloon of an ending. I am loving how much of a focus on food it has but I need more drama from my drama. I'm sensing a time skip in the last episode. The dedication in the book was more passionate than anything I've seen so far would imply.

Second; hearing these Korean actors stumble through Chinese which then is interpreted should be cool but it feels like its actively taking away years of my life.

Third; these past two episodes have definitely had AI in them, no? That beef bourginon picture and the clip for the Peking duck looked so AI. It's not a great look. I hope I'm wrong.

Rewatched this for the first time since watching it when it came out, and I really like it! I remembered really liking it, and it definitely lived up to that. It almost teeters on the edge of being 'really good' with some of the direction choices and the leads' chemistry. It's instead just very solid and fluffy and heartwarming. I recommend it if you want just a solidly 'worth watching' drama to fill your time. Does tend slightly towards the ridiculous.