I like dramas that offer up something original while including some clever twists and turns. Thus, I enjoyed The Golden Spoon a lot. The drama attempts to illustrate how helpless and powerless the poor can feel and the lengths some might go through to claw their way up to become rich and powerful. There was a lot of good acting in this drama but the biggest revelation to me was Lee Jongwon, who played Hwang Taeyoung. He managed not only to switch convincingly between his rich and poor iterations but also made me care about a character who started off as seemingly entitled, shallow and flawed. I think Lee Jongwon stole the show from Yook Sungjae, who is no acting slouch himself.

I recognize that the Hwang Hyeondo character was one-dimensional and that his apparent omnipotence was not believable. Plus, as another reviewer also noted, there seemed to be an excess of golden spoons floating around towards the end. But the drama was so much fun that I didn’t really care.