The thread is open.
So you don’t have to wait for my write-ups, you may post your comments here.
Yoona’s a veteran actress so I’m not so much surprised by her facial gestures captured in this moment. But the newbie Lee Chae-Min (debuted in 2021) impressed me more because of the chutzpah he displayed when he looked back and shot back at her with his finger-gun. All he needed to complete the picture of a tyrant brazen king was a raised eyebrow and lopsided smirk. So far, so good.
Let’s enjoy the show.
I’m reposting @monmor’s comment here.
******
Episode 3 Interesting reference to the movie, “the king And the clown” About king yongsan. According to M DL, this movie is about 2 clowns who will be spared death or some reprisal of some sort.If they can make the king laugh.
Thank you all for interesting background and discussion.
I am watching this show partly because I am intrigued about how the relationship will play out between the despot and the displaced cook! This in view of all the historic narratives. I can’t see potential for a romance at the moment. But with the notebook signalling a pre-existing love affair – romance is not impossible. This will be a case of the storyline redeeming the historic account.
I am also struck by the immersive quality of the production; it vividly transports you into the spaces, culture, atmosphere, and colours of the Joseon era.
There is something zany and rather touching about the gourmet food storyline and Yoona’s unmistakeable 21st Century Yoonaishness also keeps this story located as much in the present day as it is vividly situated in the Joseon era. This helps soften the impact of it being a blood-stained time.
@Monmor thank you for drawing parallels with Faith. It’s always interesting to imagine the production team proposing this to the investors… ‘It’s like Faith but with more dark and despotic characters and Yoona adding audience appeal and bubbly enthusiasm!’
I am also looking forward to the unravelling of the mystery of Manjurok and how a time loop might play out.
Ep.4 Well, that was fun, sort of. I forgot to eat first. Very important before cooking shows in my case. So I ended up discovering that braising was a good way to deal with only partially thawed tilapia fillets
Maybe the idea of “technique first” was implanted by the show, in addition to the search for that refreshing, savoury taste (the remains of a can of peeled romas, white wine, celery, onion. a bay leaf, a pinch of curry leaf and some elderly basil and warm rice on the side).
I do really want to make up a quick technique or hack for sous vide flank steak for one also. The seaweed wrapping looked key. Beef is impossibly expensive, so one needs to think back to the postwar recipes for tough meat.
Watching Episode 4, there’s a crucial moment where the fluidity of the time loop becomes clear. It seems less about a previous visit by the FL to the Joseon era, and more about her current time slip actively setting up her eventual journey back from the 21st century.
What is the FL’s Father’s relationship with Mangunrok? He is clearly aware of its significance…
The awfulness of bare-chested dining.
Done once, a blip in bad taste.
Done twice (I am now in ep.4), maybe the ick factor is intentional? The Tyrant is a creepy debauched 20-something after all.
Will she actually save him from himself or will she stop the oncoming purge by some slipperier means? Yoona is not good at true love so the former will be boring. I’d prefer the latter.
(spoiler: another drunken oopsy kiss. Creepy debauched 20-something reigns)
@kate @ibisfeather
IJust glanced at your comments above. I need to finish episode three and start episode four. I am excited.
And yes, I have had my lunch but.I am a little hungry😁
(another spoiler) And Mangunrok? It disappeared from its hiding place just as the Tyrant began to write it? Does he have a heart after all (but if I remember 2000 yr old anatomy it was actually believed to somewhere in the stomach region?).
I just finished episode three and I’m much more on board for this drama. I just restarted episode three at the haute cuisine scene. Now I am feeling some of the attraction between the main leads.And of course now the suspense of the cooking competition.
Posted my Ep 3 write-up here:
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty: Ep 3 Quick Takes
Posted my thoughts on butterflies here:
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty: On Butterflies
In Episode 4 we do see one of the rules of time travel play out: that the same person or object cannot exist in both past and future form at the same place and time. We see that King Yi Heon is creating a record of dishes Yeon Ji Yeong serves him. It is only when he writes the book title, Mangunrok, and affixes it to the cover of the diary he’s begun, that the future copy of Mangunrok disappears from Yeon Ji Yeong’s purse, locked in his cabinet. I haven’t yet figured out if it is significant, but when the book’s magical powers are activated, it shows first in the lettering of the title. And the first instance of the magic awakening in the book happens in the airplane bathroom, as Yeon Ji Yeong reads the dedication, which is mostly written in Hangul: “My dearly beloved, if you were to read this someday, may you come back to my side.” The butterfly pendant also begins to glow.
Yeon Ji Yeong tells King Yi Heon at least twice that the book she’s looking for, the one in her handbag, is entitled Mangunrok. She doesn’t divulge the contents of the book, just her suspicion it played a role in bringing her to the past. Even he’s unsure of the meaning of Mangunrok as he writes the Chinese characters for his food diary title. He wonders if it means “to yearn for the clouds.”
Being that King Yi Heon does have possession of Yeon Ji Yeong’s handbag, it’s a wonder that he still questions her claim to have come from the future. Didn’t he look carefully at the bag and its contents? He would find remarkable such things as her cellphone, passport, and other modern-day objects likely found in her purse such as a ballpoint pen, a tube of lipstick, a wallet with credit cards (made of plastic!), etc. Didn’t he look through the Mangunrok that came back in time with her? Since he has a burning curiosity about who she is and where she came from, it makes sense he’d closely examine her belongings. If he didn’t, why not? If he did, why does he question her claim to have come from the future?
@Welmaris Well taken point about her purse.
And that scene follows after the bastra/pasta scene which I rewatched last night.
In this scene the king is not able to make the distinction between the 3 sounds B/P can make in Hangul. He also adds an extra sound that often occurs when those new to Hangul try to pronounce loan words written in Hangul.
Even more interestingly to me, he writes the word pasta in Hangul in his book that he labels Mangunrok(the title is in Hanja or classical Chinese). I am not sure of that distinction.
My study of Korean is in its nascent stages but I think this is what is going on. He knows both classical Chinese and Hangul which was invented by his grandfather? The educated of the period would have written in classical Chinese but they would have had no idea how to write a loan word so he resorts to sounding it out and writing it phonetically with Hangul characters.
This encounter between the earlier Korean culture and current day is repeated in many ways in this drama. Another one is the use of the word chukrok.
The literal translation of chukrok is “chasing deer”. Figuratively it symbolizes intense competition for the throne. The modern use of this word is now used to describe a fierce struggle for leadership in politics or other walks of life.
I cannot locate the part of the drama where she uses this word with the King. I think it was during the cooking competition. There is an additional wordplay on the word green which sounds very similar. It perhaps refers to the colour of the spinage?
The point though is that she uses a modern word to indicate that she is aware of the high stakes and, at the same time, the audience(if they are Korean) understands the reference to the high stakes of the fight for the throne. It is not a simple polite competition but a ruthless fight for legitimacy and control.
Feeding the man-child…(have decided to put my more general puzzling on things here whilst waiting for shafts of brilliant clarity from y’all.)
from a wonderful fashion/cinema blog, breathless survival….”I dislike too many references as to how similiar JY is to LH’s mother…If LH thinks of his mother one more time when JY is offering him food,I’ll smack him with the nearest spoon.” (!)
I love Foucault-sian musing on cultural metaphor but dont produce it at the drop of a hat. Maybe casting a net too widely, but about insisting your [friend] feed you with a long spoon..
1. A sign that a couple is ‘dating’ in kdrama is that they feed each other in public while giggling a lot. It hints at a private intimacy where they share food.
Does this spring from some seminal show like midnight ramyeon? Now its all so intertwined that couples do it in RL. NB, in a romantic version, the man never feeds the woman first. She always takes care of him first.
2. Mothers feeding sons the best bits. Merging into a culture of passing good bits to a loved one’s rice bowl at family dinners is both interpersonal and part of family solidarity.
3. An undertow of sorrow and anxiety around food, stemming from partly hard times after the Korean Civil War and under the Japanese occupation. It is a triumph and a relief to eat well. In addition, in SK there is an entire social sector of hidden shamefully Dickensian poverty, unconsciously creating feelings of shame and falsity which are eased by social unity through food.
4. The home audience for kdrama was, at the beginning of Hallyu, skewed 45-ish women, either working in the home or also in poorly paid office work. Does that affect the trope?
@MM, when she feeds him deer tongue, her research in her French career on her own Ktraditions is proudly presented? I love yr sensitivity to the modern alive within the shell of the story.
So maybe the green play on words refers to those brilliant green peas in the field.🙂
My impression was that the “spinage” was a translator’s idea for a korean word-formation — maybe a formal one — mistakenly made by the characters in the show.
What is the transliteration of the Korean word for spinach?
I wondered if it was the translator’s way of saying that the Wait the characters were saying spinach was somewhat off. I will check.
That when I have a chance. It could be another example of the word play related the 2 Different times presented in this drama.
Also, for green?
The deer tongue meal had the most spectacular visuals, my heart lifted when the king is transported to an open field of grass with deer cavorting at a distance…
Spinage/espinage the Old French term for a persian loanword (+-ispanax) working its way up from sicily thru france and into England. (-edge was the first Eng.spelling) So the ladies had ahold of the current form in 1504?
The track of the word from persia to Korea could have been the silk road or the marine? So what was the form as received in korea after its journey? (via arabic, via aramaic via china via south Asian sea peoples)
However it sounded like a comic calque to me — the ladies were trying to sound hoity toity, so they used some a loan-word from a more sophisticated language?
‘more sophisticated’ from their mistaken view, of course.
I just lost a rather fussy post about the word, will repost @MM other place.
@IF I want to rewatch that scene. I was so impressed with how green the peas were.
I had a big spinach salad yesterday.And now I think it was a subliminal suggestion From the From the drama. But maybe
Not so subliminal , because I am trying to eat more healthily.
Oh found it. the chinese word for spinach is Persian Greens / bosi cai. Just as JY would probably have easily guessed the Old French (e)spinage, since she speaks French and not English, just so in the jungly wilds of translation, if some form of the persian ispanax was known to the ladies in korean or the chinese, some kind of comic loan-word may be occurring in our script, and in an English translation they are speaking French, sort of.
Just a quick response because I am on my way out.
I was very surprised to learn that persian language infiltrated chinese back in the day.
Infiltrated may not be the best word to use.But I think you know what I mean and I am in a hurry. But I wanted to post because this is also interesting.
I have a few minutes to take a closer look. It seems like the word spinach went east and west from persia back in the day.
So we may be on to something.
시금치 Is the korean word for spinach. I can see that part of this word means now. I need to look further but don’t want to lose this message while i’m looking.
So much in a hurry that I lost my most recent comment but now I have a few minutes.
It seems that the word spinach traveled from persia both east and west.
In korean it can be broken down into the first part which means now and the second part which is chi as in kimchi. So I don’t know if the spinage Might be a play on time and on a possible french pronunciation.
I wonder if our conversation would be a source of merriment to korean speakers!
I also thought about my lettuce/spinach Spinner but I think I am getting idiosyncratic here.
Interestingly, The word for spinach in chinese korean and japanese acknowledges its source in Persia.
Very interesting that the word in old french for spinach is espinage. Not at all close to epinard or is it?
I love how scenes in korean dramas can lead to such interesting explorations.
Maybe this is the place for non-historicity too. I had assumed that this was 1504 and it would be a Monkey year, altho as far as I know the 5 elements never included blue.
But not at all. It was a year of the rat, and the wood rat as well. Monkey would have been 4 years before or 8 years in the future.
We know it is now 1504 or maybe 3 bec JY worries about the Gapshin literati purge (in 1504). So I am guessing ‘blue monkey’ is a sign we are not in Kansas anymore.
Under a blue moon.
(my lord I loved that blue tiger in kpop demon-hunters)
@ibisfeather, I also think we are being given hints that Yeon Ji Yeong’s time-slip experience isn’t true to history. She cites the worst tyrant in Korea’s history by a slightly different name than what appears in our historical record, and it’s a name not recognized by either King Yi Heon or Gil Geum.
There are some things that have been bothering me, from a scene and conversation that come and go quickly. We see a flashback to when Mokju was imprisoned for murdering her noble husband. She had been a courtesan, then was sold to a scholar. Prince Je San (he of the unusually large mouth) is promising to save Mokju from death if she’ll be loyal to him. She threatens to kill him. He deflects her death threat by saying she can’t kill someone who died ten years ago. Is Prince Je San also a time traveler? If so, he’s traveled forward, rather than backward like Yeon Ji Yeong. He’s not exactly in hiding, meeting frequently with treacherous ministers.
For Mokju to become the king’s concubine, wouldn’t she have had to confirm she was a virgin? As a former courtesan and wife, she wasn’t. My guess is she adopted a false identity in order appear suitable for the king.
Prince Je San and Fourth Concubine Mokju are shown having an affair. In other Kdramas and Cdramas I’ve seen, women who enter the palace as members of the king’s harem are unable to leave the palace the rest of their lives. Yet Mokju is shown meeting King Yi Heon in town, to surprise him, as he returns with captives Yeon Ji Yeong and Gil Geum. Access to the area where the king’s harem resides is tightly controlled, so it’s unlikely the previously deceased Prince Je San is hooking up with Mokju in her palace quarters. Mokju’s presence as a royal concubine with some freedom of movement needs explaining, in my opinion. So does Prince Je San ‘s claim to have died years earlier.
I apologize to anyone who cares about the blue monkey I made a mistake, 1504 is indeed the year of the monkey, the wood monkey.
scratch that I made the mistake of using an AI answer too quickly. 1504 wood rat. No monkey in sight except the Tyrant.
Food and Love or lack thereof. The powerfully emotional feeding moments in this show elevate it above food porn. Not eating, but being fed.
On the death day of his mother 22 yrs earlier, on the day of a solar eclipse, the King goes out to hunt his departed father’s pet deer to spite his memory. His father deposed his mother when the young prince was three. How often did he see his mother in the next three years until her death in 82? He was the child of a mother exiled from the palace, adopted by another. All of those memories probably involved food, and the King is a super-taster.
The adult love of the King is also missing, a woman who slipped out of the future in another lifetime, and who has been recalled to the king’s world again by a magic cookbook. He has not met her in this timeloop yet, but he has met her before.
The memory of taste/smell is more powerful and long-lasting than any other. For many, although the memory of a long-ago lover’s face has faded, a sudden reminder of taste or fragrance can bring back the sensations of love more surely than a photograph. In the governor’s mansion YH’s body knows that his love has returned from the future before his mind does. He thinks about the sous vide beef slice umami bomb exploding in taste sensation and says to himself, “it is almost as if it is familiar. It has been a long time since my palate has been pleased”.
Their unspoken communication has begun, although he is much more aware of it and sensitive to it. In the forest earlier, angry, wounded, tired, with his hands bound behind his back she had made fun of his fussiness by feeding him as a mother would her child. The taste of the food is new but the dish of bimbap is a simple one that a child is given; what he remembers is the feeling of being fed. The interaction utterly overthrows his defenses, and with the second spoonful he remembers his mother and begins to cry silently.
Set up by everyone to fail at her first meal to please the king, unfazed by his challenging attire, she is at her crisp professional best. And after the hors d’oeuvre and soup, he insists JY be his taster for the grilled deer tongue. As he watches JHY chew he has vision of his mom tasting his food for him. His face changes, becomes flushed. With great intensity, he insists that JY feed him. She is definitely shocked because of the dating connotation that feeding a man in public signifies, but the customer is always right, so she feeds him. Flashback to him feeling as every child does that they are the little king/princess of their mother’s heart. Then YH the King, says to JY the cook, “How did you see into my heart? …How did you know I would like this dish?” He knows what he cannot know. His body remembers.
I composed the previous comment in word and thought it would reformat when I pasted it in. Maybe I should try again in two sections and see if the paragraph breaks come through if I make them actual spaces…
Anyway I dont see a place in pcml3’s other topics for the idea of ‘history’, so I’ll stick a thought in here too.
As an ex highschool teacher I always chuckle at the hapless time traveller who didnt pay any attention/didnt do their homework in highschool history class and now really really regrets it. Serves them right!
But this show does something different. JY has done her research as an adult for her professional life and also seems to remember the gist of Korea’s detailed and long history pretty well.
But most importantly, she says that this knowledge will be her secret weapon against the King’s power/arrogance/dangerous narcissism. And, in the conversation after the doengang pasta meal, she displays an innate caution over the consequences of time travelling. She respects history and knows the rules about changing the future.
As a absolutely normal South Korean of the present day, who knows her time-travelling dramas!, I wouldnt have been surprised had there been a reference to some more recent show in that vein.
Trying again…Food and Love or lack thereof.
The powerfully emotional feeding moments in this show elevate it above food porn. Not eating, but being fed.
On the death day of his mother 22 yrs earlier, on the day of a solar eclipse, the King goes out to hunt his departed father’s pet deer to spite his memory. His father deposed his mother when the young prince was three.
How often did he see his mother in the next three years until her death in 82? He was the child of a mother exiled from the palace, adopted by another. All of those memories probably involved food, and the King is a super-taster.
(Death-day, he would surely now it, but the memory flashing before he killed the dear is of his mother being deposed as queen? He looks older than 3 but creative license..)
The adult love of the King is also missing, a woman who slipped out of the future in another lifetime, and who has been recalled to the king’s world again by a magic cookbook. He has not met her in this timeloop yet, but he has met her before.
And, we assume, she fed him, in the general sense of cooking his meals…So any dim memories of her would involve meas..
I need to find out what kind of noodles those were!
There are references to modern day dramas. Many of her reactions and the arc about her purse are similar to the 2012(I think) drama Faith which had a very mixed reception. Also I wondered if her falling into the net trap and ending up hanging in the tree was a reference to CLOY-not time travel but about an intersection of cultures.
The other reference to Faith is the Mangurok. There was a journal in Faith that was very important to her navigating the time travel dilemmas.
(meals)
The memory of taste/smell is more powerful and long-lasting than any other. For many, although the memory of a long-ago lover’s face has faded, a sudden reminder of taste or fragrance can bring back the sensations of love more surely than a photograph.
In the governor’s mansion YH’s body knows that his love has returned from the future before his mind does. He thinks about the sous vide beef slice umami bomb exploding in taste sensation and says to himself, “it is almost as if it is familiar. It has been a long time since my palate has been pleased”.
Their unspoken communication has begun, although he is much more aware of it and sensitive to it.
In the forest earlier, angry, wounded, tired, with his hands bound behind his back she had made fun of his fussiness by feeding him as a mother would her child. The taste of the food is new but the dish of bimbap is a simple one that a child is given; what he remembers is the feeling of being fed.
The interaction utterly overthrows his defenses, and with the second spoonful he remembers his mother and begins to cry silently.
Set up by everyone to fail at her first meal to please the king, unfazed by his challenging attire, she is at her crisp professional best. And after the hors d’oeuvre and soup, he insists JY be his taster for the grilled deer tongue. As he watches JHY chew he has vision of his mom tasting his food for him.
His face changes, flushes. With great intensity, he insists that JY feed him. She is definitely shocked because of the dating connotation that feeding a man in public signifies, but the customer is always right, so she feeds him.
Flashback to him feeling as every child does that they are the little king/princess of their mother’s heart. Then YH the King, says to JY the cook, “How did you see into my heart? …How did you know I would like this dish?”
He knows what he cannot know. His body remembers.
(there. that looks better. I still dont like the length. Will do better next time.
I had not thought much about the powerful connection between smell taste and memory that you discuss, as it relates to this drama.
She notes the smell of the forest initially. Forest bathing is very much about engaging the senses. So we have this foreshadowing of the importance of the senses of smell and taste. Very clever, writer-nim.
eps7-8
What a difference an episode makes!
Ep 8 blasts the series back to life! The cooking competition is filled with chicanery and magnanimity (and a chance to use big words yay!) — all of the various baddies with their different motivations and schemes make this a much better than usual sageuk plot development.
And I do love a good cooking competition. This is a great one, and those special effects surrounding tasting get cooler and cooler. I thought nothing could top the disco-ball settings earlier….
Somewhere in the comment sections there was an observation to the effect that LCM was giving a master class in eating technique for actors. Every time he surprises me at how much I believe that he loves each particular dish. Some of the faces he and the Envoy make in tasting-ecstasy in ep 8 are wonderfully funny.
Ep7 got the king, cook, jester and swordsman out of the palace to meet some mad inventor in the forest. The inventor had some great machines, very interesting in themselves, but the plot to get them all out there (and thus exposed to attack) just served as a silly excuse for a breather, I think. The contrast between the King’s poutiness on that ep7 trip and his clever sagacity during the ep8 cooking competition is extreme.
I stick by my idea, which is that one can tell which sections were filmed first by LCM’s performance — he got better as he worked and settled in, and a clever (sagacious!) director would have filmed the beginning last for maximum punch.
There is something strange I havent noticed before, but I am not much for rewatches…
The translations/subtitles appear to have been or be in the process of being tightened up. Unnecessary circumlocutions etc are being taken out — instead of “your Majesty put your lips on her” now it is she was kissed by your majesty…
Does this normally happen?
I am a little distressed because I learn a lot about how other languages are structured by the oddities of literal translations. It feels as if a window is closing into the language. I really will have to start learning Korean after all.
One of my pet peeves is when oppa gets translated as the name of the person.
I have not noticed a pattern of it changing.But I certainly notice poorly Structured translations where I would like more grammatically
Transparent translation in order to better understand both the language and what is going on.
I know people have talked about differences in the translations between netflix and vicki.
What I have really appreciated in some chinese dramas is how they give you the literal translation of an idiom and perhaps the english version of the idiom. That is fun and a window into The culture and the language.
For example a chinese idiom for adding insult to injury, In one drama I watched, Refers to throwing someone’s shoes down the well After.
Throwing in the person.
I didnt mean to imply there was a general change but that right now as I rewatch these episodes the subtitles seem to be being edited in real time?
There is no way to say this elegantly — I like poorly structured translations in the subtitles because I feel closer to the language being spoken. Apologies to both languages. That’s just me.
Oh are you noticing the subtitles on your rewatch are different than on your original watch?
Someone is reviewing and fixing the edits, in real time, as you put it?
Not something I have noticed.
It seems to me that translators like to Finesse the translations so that they are just like the language to which they are being translated. Like you.I prefer the sentence structure to reflect the original language, In our korean lessons, we will translate from Korean into englishmaintaining the sentence structure. It is just somehow more comprehensible to a learner.
It reflects the reality of the language rather than some translators ability to catch the essence rather than the actual words. That is probably a good skill to have as a translator But as someone who wants to learn the language, I prefer a more word by word translation.
Eps9-10: once again the second episode seems more powerful, but maybe that is because in this show I am more invested in the plot than the comedy.
Ep8 is cheerful and fun, definitely with some over-the-top touches which I will not spoil. Although nothing will ever top the disco-ball tasting-reactions to the macaroons in my heart, well, the judges got pretty excited over the Korean soup.
The proper palace plot goes into very exciting high gear in Ep.10 and the romance also proceeds apace. The best scenes for me went against the ‘palace’ grain’ and as in the Haunted Palace, gave the sense that in the end, the royal family, despite all the personnel, is still all about the love and loyalties between children and their parents.
Most exciting of all, the complex character of this king has been slowly emerging from his actions — a series of flashbacks from JY’s point of view construct that idea, I think. His aggression, impulsivity and clarity of expression, his sardonic sense of humor, his deep loyalties and hidden emotional attachments, all part to reveal a glimpse of a dignified, charismatic man with the ability to love sincerely.
As long as he doesnt lose control and drench the palace in blood, as Uncle Prince Jesan intends he should.
Thanks for the update, @ibisfeather. Will catch up with the show today.
Am home taking a break. 🙂
do not feel that the time travel aspect of this drama was well fleshed out.
As far as I could tell there were few clues about whether or not they were in a Repetitive time loop or if new time lines were created. We have no idea how the present day views the king and whether there was any consequence to her travel to the past. The existence of other characters from the past in the restaurant is only confusing and not clarifying.
I do wonder if there were clues in the meal He makes for her. I just had that thought as I am writing.
We have some idea why the book is important but it is never Fully explained. I would like to have known how the book got to the future and then how she became the recipient.
I also did not feel that tonal shifts were well done in this multi genre drama. An example of tonal dissonance that I found off putting occurred in the last episode , where the kitchen staff with their kitchen tools arrived to fight the swordsmen. I had to tell myself This is supposed to be funny because it was not well set up. A better set up would have been to allow the audience to anticipate the kitchen staff, by having them moving through the forest, or perhaps, a musical lead in.
I wonder what others think about this drama now That it is finished.
@Monmor,
I enjoyed the series and was very glad of a resolution of the story unlike that in Scarlet Heart!
But I also felt the ending was a little anti-climactic after all the anticipation of how it might be worked out and the role of the journal.
This was a show, after all, that prided itself on detailed story telling. It seemed to give up on that narrative texture at the end.
I wanted a little more backstory to the King’s journey to reconnect with the FL. That might have ended up looking clunky or perhaps they ran out of ideas!?
I had also wondered about the FL’s Dad being in on the mystery of the journal and that coming into the final episode etc
All that said, I was glad of a happy ending!
I thought it was fun
that it was the actual king and not just a look alike. I enjoyed how they used his sageuk speech to clue us in. Yes, a much more satisfying ending than scarlet heart.
I was restless and unsatisfied after ep12. A pretty ending, heartwarming to see LCM making breakfast for his FL. But like everyone else, my plaint is, “how did he get to Paris and why?”
I wont rewatch the show, but I wouldnt discourage anyone else from bingeing it as long as they kept their expectations low. But a fast binge would be best.
A few of my favourite things (sorry pcml, I just had to say it):
The special effects around tasting in the cooking competitions.
The cooking competitions.
LCM eating.
LCM’s kissing scenes.
I will look forward to seeing the new characters LCM will create.
BAYM never coalesced as hoped, and I dont currently have good or clear ideas as to why. But I am enjoying the comments of other, smarter, bears. Sufficient unto the day.
🙂🤣