irmar

And the best friend too, she stepped aside to let her have the man. They are both stellar best friends!

I agree with you. Her acting, her expressions, even her hairstyle is the same. Yes, in Lovely Liar her character was way more confident, this one is more messy, but she's still her same old self. I also preferred her in her younger years, at least there was a freshness there, we hadn't seen her so much to notice the lack of versatility.

It's not that we feel we are on his side, we just pity his mental condition, because he's clearly not stable. Should do some therapy before attempting to date again.

Yes, sometimes I'm suprised to learn that those plots are written by actual adults.

It was a dream, that's why everything was bundled together.

Let's wait until their real mutual kiss and then we can judge whether this one was intentionally simple or not. (I tend to think it was)

Oh, I see. I had no idea. Thanks for the info.

Yes, that's perfectly fine, but when she went to the military base it was to confess her love. So obviously not yet dating.

Yes, that's perfectly fine, but when she went to the military base it was to confess her love. So obviously not yet dating.

None of us ever mentioned the actor so I don't know what you're talking about. The response letter was only one. If you notice the dialogue, it says that she sent letters to this address and she also received one reply.

None of us ever mentioned the actor so I don't know what you're talking about. The response letter was only one. If you notice the dialogue, it says that she sent letters to this address and she also received one reply.

Did you skip something? When he was in the military she went to deliver a gift box and also to confess. So they were not dating. She was his first fan. But she wasn't even able to meet him at that time, and the guard said his batallion was transferred to a mountain location where nobody could see them for six months.
If you noticed, it was when he he was already starting to be a celebrity and she was a loyal fan who came to watch the interview and cheer for him even if she had not slept the whole night, and she fell asleep on the table, that's when he said, looking at her, that he thinks he'll start dating her.

I agree on not hating etc. but what do you mean with your last sentence? What happened on their previous drama? Did they even have a drama together before this?

In my opinion it's not. So many great dramas out there. Even in that fluff romance category, there are much better ones.

About the peck. Well, he wasn't so sure that she was willing, so it was a rather tentative kiss.

For you chemistry is enough, I understand that, but for me there's no chemistry. In addition, the characters are pretty dull and the acting is nothing to write home about either. As if the actors were slightly bored. I've seen both of them do better elsewhere. I liked the ML so much in Eye Love You, if I had seen this one first, he wouldn't have made an impression. As for her, what's different from what she did in My Lovely Liar? She's the same, only less bright.
I wanted to mention dramas from different genres, to pinpoint that each of them was above the rest in its category. That's why I wandered away from rom coms too, after one example.
And you are right in what you said, that usually the good Korean rom coms don't rely just on the romance, because that wouldn't be enough to fill 16 episodes, so they typically also have something else to spice them up. Either a rare illness, a childhood trauma or birth secret (that made the handsome CEO so cold), a weird hobby or some sort of mystery to solve.
If you want romantic comedies that I found above the rest and didn't have any fantasy or sci fi element whatsoever, I can give you some:
Discovery of Love, I Need Romance 3, Madame Antoine, Another Oh Hae Young, I Am Not a Robot, Dali and the Cocky Prince, Jealousy Incarnate, Fated to Love You, School 2017, Something about 1% (pure fluff, that one, but sweet and enjoyable), The Secret Life of My Secretary (well, that had a rare illness as major part of the plot), Touch Your Heart (riding on the wave of Secretary Kim but was good too), Witch’s Romance.

That's fine, then! You're luckier than me who have to watch it even if I don't enjoy it, because I'm in the Viki translation team.

We are talking about rom coms here, not about other genres. And yes, romance can give you a lot of thrills!
For instance, take What's Wrong With Secretary Kim. The plot was not novel. It was an office romance. Boss with secretary? Oh, there were many before it and especially after it. What made it special? Well, how to put it? It was done better.
Why Secret Garden, more than 10 years after, is watched again and again? Didn't it have tropes? Low class girl with rich CEO, disapproving mother-in-law, magical body swap... If you see the Timed Comments, most people have watched it more than 2-3 times!
Take Goblin. So many stories with immortal beings and mortals. Not as many as rom coms, but still there are quite a bit. They might not be goblins but nine-tailed foxes or the Monkey King or whatever. What made Goblin special? Was it because there was no other love story like that? Of course not. And why was the "My boyfriend is a nine-tailed fox" so lame? Wasn't it again a tragic love story? Yet it was less than meh.
And why was "Hotel del Luna" so special among the "immortal versus mortal" love stories? The answer might be in the depth of the themes explored, in the good acting, in the lavish production, in the heartbreak, in the poetry of the shots... or whatever.
And what made Misaeng stand out among office dramas? And "Life" stand out among medical dramas, to make us become enthusiastic and thrilled about something as alien to most of us as hospital management politics? What about "My Mister"? What was special about that that we all raved about it?
There are so many travel to the past films and dramas, both in the West and in Asia. "Go Back Couple", "Familiar Wife", "Operation Proposal", "Manhole", "Lovely Runner", and last night I watched a Chinese film too, "Yesterday Once More" which was Lovely Runner condensed. Then what made "Twinkling Watermelon" so fresh and exciting?
I might write an essay trying to explain what I mean by "special" and "stand out" and "fresh". But if you've watched as many dramas as you did, I think you know the answer.

How to spot a low-budget series. (These are general things, not particularly for this drama)
It's when
there's only one or two simple locations, no luxurious hotels and restaurants, people don't travel to the countryside or the sea.
they always wear generic clothes, the characters don't have any distinctive style.
The characters do not live in mansions with lots of servants,
they don't work in an office with many rooms and many employees,
they don't go horseriding or on boats...
you mainly see the main actors with very few secondary characters and no crowd scenes,
no car chase scenes,
no things breaking or whole buildings going to flames,
no fight scenes either,
no going to the theatre or movies and showing a bit of what's going on on stage...
There's only one or two OST songs, and the singers are not famous.
there is no clever editing but just run of the mill, what you and I would have filmed and edited.
the camerawork is not very crisp, I mean the quality of image, the colours.

In short, they avoided all the things that cost money to produce and to film, they also avoided the highly-paid best technical crew.

Judging from the first episode, it's very mediocre. Usually one shouldn't judge from the first episode, but this drama being so short, it doesn't have much time to improve.