The men are weird, but you may find it fun to watch because of that
If you can get past the cringe of the forever single men, you might enjoy the humor and eventual wholesome interactions of the cast. In other dating shows, you're looking for possible couples. In this dating show, you're looking to see if a man can convince a woman to have a dinner date outside of the show. So lower the romance threshold, and if you have some empathy towards awkwardness, and you might laugh at the absurdity of it all.My initial impression of the men was that they're far too weird don't visually match with the female participants. But the women are open-minded and they're the ones who have to try to go on dates with them, so I kept watching to see with a learning mindset. The show's school theme encouraged this too. The women must have been mentally prepared, as they do a good job communicating how they're feeling, though they're a bit more honest in the interviews but they try to keep it polite with the men during the show. Maybe because they saw the men as ignorant rather than rude, even though some of the worst moments from the men did seem rude, but it ended up as laughs and the women weren't too disturbed.
Production-wise, there are many recognizable elements from I Am Solo, with the decent amount of interviews, nicknames, the 3 person MC panel with mild observations and humor, the place they stay was also rented out by IAS S29. A lot of drone shots and shots from the house-cameras. I thought the editing was fine; namuwiki summarized that the netizens sometimes noticed villain edits towards the males. I blame the casting for this, the men let out their hearts too openly.
This reminds me more of the 2022 show The Skip Dating than IAS. In that show, pairs ended up with a possible date after of 15 minute mini blind dates, while in this one, it takes 5-6 days of effort for these guys to try to convince their potential date. There's some memorable characters, but I wouldn't count this among my favorites even though I enjoy dating shows (IAS is one of my favorites). It's just good enough to pass the time.
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Fluffy show, more of a popular Korean mukbang for foreigners to taste than a Jeju scenic trip
Note that I watched this on youtube on the MBC every1 channel with AI subtitle translation. I couldn't find official or fan translation.This pop-up hotel show has the light humor you expect. It's very food-heavy, though mostly showing Korean comfort food and the guests' reaction to it. What's unique and charming about the show compared to other B&B/hotel shows is that the cast travels with the guests outside the hanok for events like walks, lunches and snacks at times like friendly tour guides.
Overall, the show isn't business oriented at all, so there's no stress other than making the guests feel welcome. The first episode has a different vibe than the rest, and each other episode feel more relaxed than the last. Most of the show is focused around mealtimes, with only a few parts about sightseeing (though one event with the first guests was canceled due to bad weather). My favorite parts to watch are the planning, prep, and work parts, but there's not many of these until the second guest group. I also enjoy the amount of cast interaction with the guests. The cast eats breakfast and dinner with the guests, and a few of them also stay with them for lunch, planned events, and snacks or desserts, adding in plenty of comfortable small talk. Aside from Go Doo Shim and Jeon Seong Gon, the cast speaks English impressively so their communication is great and they even try to communicate well with the few guests who don't speak English.
While the cast did a great job, I felt that the production/editing is a little lacking. It's possible the youtube cut is not the same as the original broadcast, but I have no clue. There are some events they show in flashbacks that they never show otherwise. The first guest group felt like something went wrong with the footage because it was not as good as the second half, but it feels too heavily edited as we don't see anything but the "big" stuff. Their formula is "introduce the guest and show them their room" into "here's lunch/dinner!" and then "here's snack/event!" and then "here's breakfast!" and the cycle repeats. It might have been interesting if we could also hear stories about either the guest's or the cast's itineraries and plans. When we follow the team that goes outside, we don't hear much about what the kitchen team is doing, at most, a small flashback during dinner about that dinner's preparation. The producer interviews the guests, but they only have a handful of soundbites from the cast at the end.
It's a bit closer to a lighter/shorter version of the Chinese variety show The Inn season 4 than other Korean B&B shows I've seen.
Not bad to watch if you want something relaxing or are fans of any of the cast. Lee Dae Hwi, Son Na Eun and
Lee Joo Young stood out for me.
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This review may contain spoilers
In short, the vibe kind of feels similar to Offline Love?
Ten young professionals get a five day vacation at Hainan, at a beach side hotel with a tropical climate. Then, we get a second half where they can choose to meet each other to date one on one. The visuals of the participants are pleasant and realistic - you can see their head shots on the cast page. From my view, they are calm, rational, and polite people who still hold onto some hopes and ideals. Just at the stage between the edge of youth and maturity. They mostly were filmed being themselves. This created a pleasant, positive vibe where you enjoy the feeling of people meeting new friends and getting to know each other, so if you like lighter shows mostly centered around real conversations and contemplative moments, you might enjoy this.The ladies have stronger personalities and it's really wholesome that they get along so quickly. They felt like long-time college roommates having a small reunion. While the guys also got along okay, the show is carried by the ladies having fun together and taking time to confide in each other, with so many shots of them talking with each other, laughing with each other, and having fun. The shots of the guys are almost all them alone or off to the side, hovering but not directly interacting with the group of girls - although I can imagine college self at a party or bar trying to find an "in" to chat with a girl when they're in a group - nearly impossible if I were in their shoes. Luckily, they got to get some alone time and interactions through the dates on the show.
Even then, the production of the show gets the group off to a slow start. The show's accommodations have them all staying on a single hotel floor. They don't have the normal co-habitation of other shows in this sense. The cast often chose spend time in their rooms, sometimes together but often alone. They were only forced to meet at the hotel dining area on another floor, which had a long table that often separated the guys and ladies due to their comfort. Guys had to either send letters, take the initiative to knock on multiple doors to invite ladies private late conversations, and the guys felt much more shy than the ladies, despite the ladies also being introverted. So, half of the shots in some episodes end up being people alone in their room contemplating life, rather than group interactions. Eventually, people do get to know each other better, but it's a slow burn show.
The style of the production is hands-off, aside from offering date options and having daily cast interviews, there's no panel and no feeling of heavy handed producers directing storylines behind the scenes. Music choices and sound effects were all pleasant, indie-pop or pop covers in a soft style. The filming angles were from long-distance and were focused on being non-intrusive, though I can imagine some lighting crews working really hard behind the scenes. Unlike some shows, there weren't strict rules about how they could communicate, like not being able to tell each other ages or jobs until a certain day. So they all knew basic facts about each other and were free to pursue or not pursue anyone, they were only forced to choose a date activity and preferred partner, and they could also choose not to go on the date. I think the dates ended up being less important than their communication attempts at night to get to know each other.
In all, the casting and production choices led to a quiet, cozy show with many shots of just everyday activities, only sometimes accompanied by what the editors could get from the interviews about how they were feeling and those little editor text overlay comments. In the finale, my feeling was that of quietly rooting for these people to find happiness.
Note, I watched this on the HunanTV youtube channel, which that at the time of my review, episodes 4, 5, 6 and 10, the final main episode lacked English subtitles, and there's some errors in episodes 1-2. My Mandarin isn't great so it's possible for me to have missed some interesting tidbits.
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Immature drama with some unnecessarily dark parts
Beware: this drama has trigger warnings for SA and DV (in separate instances). Although it cuts them to be as off-screen as possible, the shock and repercussions are clearly shown, so avoid this drama if these topics are uncomfortable for you.The drama is flawed primarily because of the maturity level of the writing. As the above, there's some dark parts that felt tonally off given some of the other plot. There's also many character-level inconsistent writing, for example, the FL is written to be both an immature kid but also an intelligent woman. The attempt to make her a relatable girlfailure isn't bad, but then almost everyone surrounding her also acts as if they were high schoolers, sometimes even the elderly. As the drama goes on she gets more and more mature, because the writers realized they wanted to follow storylines about her being a decent mom and decent struggling businesswoman. It's probably for the best, but then why include the annoying immature parts and confuse the audience until this point?
Even if it gets better with the FL, immaturity plagues the other characters. I can't blame the actors' performances given the material, but it is weird to see mid-thirty year old adults (and sometimes even the elderly) act like teenagers for the entire drama. Many of the issues in the drama arise as a product of stupidity or ignorance with some miscommunication, which makes the situations more frustrating to watch than usual. Certain characters are telegraphed to be just tools rather than being realistic. Characters reactions don't stay consistent to their characters making them feel fake.
As other reviews have probably noted, ML is probably the only reason to watch this, but he doesn't have a huge amount of screentime. I'd estimate maybe 20%? It's way more on FL, and even the daughter (my other most likeable character) and the FL's ex get more.
If you are in the mood for a female centered modern drama, I would highly recommend to watch a different drama that at least feels more age-appropriate with smarter writing and plot such as Remembrance of Things Past, Alliance, Nothing But Thirty, There Will Be Ample Time, Meet Yourself, or many others, even many family dramas are fairly decent at following female characters.
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