Bitches Over Dramas

Let’s retrace our steps to Episode 11. In Episode 11, King YiHeon listed the ingredients and drew the bibimbap that JiYeong had made for him at their first meeting. But its exact name eluded his memory. He called his Eunuch to show his sketch to him. [I checked. He called the bibimbap, “barley rice.” JiYeong […]

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I’ll get to the straight to the point because I have yet to watch Episode 12, and people are lurking to read my commentary. It shouldn’t be difficult to see why the screenwriter chose soy meat gujeolpan, and eggplant pie to reveal the subject of this episode. In one word, it’s substitution. The theme of […]

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This is the end of my discussion of this theme. I promise. 8. Restore the meaning of the Cheoyongmu dance I should have explained the significance of this dance back in Episode 3 when King YiHeon danced it with the jesters. Hold your breath; I’ll take a deep dive again. If you google search the […]

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Just as a recap, here are the different choices of metaphorical “restaurants” (or “restorative soups”) in Episode 10 that many viewers missed because they snubbed the food theme. Ha! 😂 1. Recover the missing gochogaru 2. Recapture the memories of their physical contact (and restore his dignity by not falling down) 3. Restore his sanity […]

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I’m enjoying this series still so I’ll probably watch the final 2 episodes next week. Not only is it an ingenious idea to use food to move the romance plot forward, but I absolutely love finding these small connections. For example, in Episode 5, the “Snowflakes Schnitzel” was about discovering the favorite things of JiYeong so […]

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I watched Episode 7, skipped 8 (will watch after this), and finished Episode 9. Let me explain the pressure-cooked chicken soup because I know people are waiting for this. (I’ll explain Eps 7 and 8 later). A note to the lurkers just joining my critiques of this drama now: I had posited from the beginning […]

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I know many viewers want to focus on the romance and ignore the palace politics. But the palace politics drives the plot and it gets less confusing when we can identify the faces. So, I took screenshots as visual aids. To me, the set-up of the palace politics is like a game of chess. We […]

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Once in a while, I feel the urge to “correct” the way some kdrama/cdrama viewers think. I did it a long time ago when I imposed a ban here on my blog on words like “cinematography,” “bromance,” “chemistry,” and “oppa.” Posters often use them, thinking that they’re saying something meaningful, when in reality, they only […]

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Part 1 is here: Bon Appetite, Your Majesty: Ep 5 On Snowflakes Schnitzel, part 1 Where were we? Oh! I was about to tell you how I think the “snowflake schnitzel” reveals the theme of the show. If you watched the English-dubbed version on Netflix, you wouldn’t have spotted the “snowflake” reference since it only appeared […]

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In this episode, JiYeong cooks a lot of food for King YiHeon but he rejects most of them because he isn’t keen on eating. He seems to have lost his appetite because of state affairs: a. the upcoming diplomatic visit of the Ming envoy, the eunuch Yu Kun He’s supposedly the leader of the “Imperial […]

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I need a visual reminder. Episode 1. Course Number 1 Gochujang Butter Bibimbap The mixture of two worlds, specifically the French butter (i.e., beurre noisette) and the quintessentially Korean paste (i.e., gochujang), can elevate an ordinary meal to an out-of-this-world experience. Similarly, when a French chef meets a Joseon king, their encounter is literally, out […]

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Hmph! I told y’all, didn’t I? 😂 I said from the beginning that food featured in each episode isn’t randomly chosen. They’re meant to be metaphors and/or symbols of the theme of the episode. Any viewer, or poster for that matter, who simply gushes at the “ooooh, wonderful cinematography!” of the dishes and does not […]

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@agdr03 and @GB, why aren’t you watching this kdrama yet? Join me? Things that baffled me: 1. Was the assassin that shot an arrow at King YiHeon also his court jester? According to Prince JeSeon’s minion, the assassin was hired by Kim YangSon, the older brother of Kim YiSon whose corpse was desecrated during the […]

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In case you missed them, the butterflies were everywhere in Episode 1 and Episode 4. In Episode 1, we first saw the butterfly as a jade pendant hanging from the book Mangunrok. Next, the butterfly became an insignia of sort on King YiHeon’s headband while he was hunting. Then, we saw real butterflies flitting in […]

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