Fine, but could have gone differently.

I generally enjoyed this series, but found that some of the story elements and character development took a path that dragged on for several episodes and ended up on a path that wasn't the most gratifying for me personally. The beginning was fun and had lots of dynamic elements with the different characters and story elements centering around the startup world, but as the series went on it slowly got sucked into a whirlpool that was the love triangle, to the point where it was predictable and I was just watching the last few episodes to complete the series. It went from being a series about startups with strong romance elements, to a series about a love triangle with a vague setting of "startups" as a backdrop.

I've watched many series where the main dramatic element was a love triangle (which is honestly super common) and thoroughly enjoyed them, but I find this one lost any excitement after the scheming ended, and it was mostly a pity party with lots of tears and denial of feelings, which didn't exactly match the poppy tone of the rest of the series, characters, and side story lines. The Seo family scenes, Ji Pyung and Mrs Choi's relationship, Dal Mi being inspired about business, the In Jae situation, or the SamSan staff scenes were generally much more interesting to me and were the highlights, and it was always a little dissapointing when it would dip back into a love triangle scene.

To confront my bias, I think that Nam Joo Hyuk did a great job acting as Do San, but he wasn't always a likeable character to me and his character arc didn't help the triangle situation. If the love story and characters had been less stagnant mid-to-late series and Ji Pyung had won out in the end, I'd likely would have been more personally satisfied. But in the end I had an attitude of "sure, okay." about the sudden wedding, and was more interested in Ji Pyung's acceptance of the situation and moving on to find more meaningful things to do, Sa Ha and Choel San's relationship, and other endings.

Overall a fine series, but this is the first one I thought flaked out enough to actually write an opinion on it.

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Good, but could have been better.

I overall liked Cafe Minamdang, liked the cast, liked the premise, but just found that the series strayed at certain points. Some of the plot twists weren't exactly neccesary and just added length to the series. Sometimes I wish that a series was 18 episodes, but this one was the opposite, and I found myself pausing after certain episodes and taking a break before revisiting.

Main criticisms from my perspective:
- I really liked the premise about the faux-shaman profiler, but I found they could have leaned into it harder. Some episodes were unique and fit the theme, and others seemed to have forgotten it completely and became more of a generic suspense/mystery/cop series.
- Sometimes I found solutions to mysteries were well explained, if subtly or briefly, by Nam Han Joon's skills, but on other occasions, they just kind of handwave it with a scene of him thinking really hard and having flashbacks that, as a viewer, I felt were didn't link the puzzle pieces together.
- One of my biggst peeves with the series is Han Jae Hee. I like Oh Yeon Seo and thought she did well, but the character was written too inconsistently. Sometimes she was "Han the Ghost" who could run down and beat up entire groups of thugs without breaking a sweat, and other times she was a helpless damsel who suddenly couldn't do anything but struggle and cough and cry, when she should reasonably be able to save herself and others. Especially when Nam Han Joon is the one saving her. I assume this was to play up the romance, but they could have done it in better ways that didn't detract from the character.

I like it, I finished it, but I think it had the potentil to be a 9-10 star series where I actually relished the 18 episode runtime.

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