irmar

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.

Let me answer you. Because we know exactly what will happen. It's like painting by numbers, all the clichés and coincidences put together, a story like dozens of dozens of others we've already watched. The plot, the character, everything. Of course it's only the first episode, but I am not very optimistic.

It could be lower. This episode is like déja vu, like dozens of dramas we've seen already. Yawn! Let's hope it gets better.

Watching this in 2024 I can feel how k-drama has made a lot of progression in the past 10 years. At that time, things were thought funny that we now find distasteful and infuriating.
And of course, if anyone is curious why so many women in Korea are giving up on marriage and children, let them watch this drama. Of course it's an over-the-top comedy, but most articles and interviews with real researchers will tell you that it's not that far from reality for many daughters-in-law until a few years ago and, in some more conservative circles, even today.
Still I couldn't stomach more than 3 episodes, so I dropped it.

What I meant was The Undateables. I thought it was a complete train wreck and even he couldn't save it.

Yes, I liked that one too, but Our Blues is of a different style. More slice of life, since that's your thing. And the cast is... what can I say! All the stars of Korea in one drama!

Except once. But we will forgive him that bad choice because we love him so much.
(Can you guess which one I'm referring to?)

I'm with you on this.

Ha Yul (thank you for the name because I am very bad at remembering them) did like and trust her teacher even then, but the "think for yourself" part was towards the end, in the scene where she recommended she goes to the demo class by Mr. Pyo.
In the same episode one, do you remember (I think it was one of the very first scenes, if not the first) how she counselled a new teacher, telling her the tricks of the trade, and the advice was despicable.

You' re mixing the times a bit. The conversation with the female student that prompted the female student to say those things happened towards the end of the drama. AFTER our FL got inspired by the ML's method and (after their big fight on that) she told him "you win", she said "the USB files are not my treasure" etc. That is, when she wanted to return to her old self and started doing it. Part of this was telling students to learn how to read understand the texts by themselves and not just memorize answers, and also told the female student to attend Mr. Pyo's class in the rival hagwon, and to make her own mind about things.

Have you seen "Our Blues"? For me, that stood out.

No, she was this only at the beginning of her career. When we met her (present time), she was telling a rookie teacher to only concentrate on getting the answers right etc. The very first scene, remember? And she had files on possible questions that she guessed correctly most of the time etc. And that was also the content of the famous USB drive that was stolen. But then, after meeting him again, and after the encounter with Mr. Pyo, she was reminded of her past ideals and wanted to come back to them again.
When she was reminded of her youthful passion after meeting the ML, she is drawn to do an unconventional lesson to the one student who shows up. That was a spur-of-the-moment decision, triggered by her old student's present who brought back memories of her old self. Not what she had been doing so far!
Then she fought hard with him because he wanted to do something unconventional. At first she didn't agree. Only after a lot of pushback, she conceded that he was right, and she wanted to change. That's when she said that the USB files "are not my treasure anymore". Because she wanted to change her usual method. She started putting it into practice, but the parents were not thrilled. What? No more homework? No more handouts? Yes, they attributed it to her being in a relationship and becoming lazy, not taking care of her students anymore. But even if there were no scandal, they would eventually find out and would have complained. They certainly wouldn't let her go on that route.