I first watched this several years ago, one of the first Kdramas on my route to explore this genre. My impressions then were that it was very romantic and rather full of beautiful people and locations. Oh, the shame!
I now decided to revisit it, and …. well – oh the shame
First – the positives
- Pretty nearly all the males (including the minions) are perfectly acceptable eye-candy – that never hurts. Lee MinHo was pretty dashing because – as he so humbly says himself in one interview I read – is pretty good at anything physical. So that was fun.
- The locations were mostly rather pretty,
- Jan-di's family, even though they were written and played for cheap laughs, were none-the-less an oasis of warmth and humanity in a desert of selfishness. Ga-Eul, JoonGi, and the porridge shop owner were also both fine people. These skilled actors gave very likeable and serviceable performances.

Now – the bad – hope you have a lot of time
- The writing/plot – this was a display of emotional abusiveness masquerading as feelings. Each of F4, with the possible exception of JiHoo, were apparently unable to have any relationship with anyone outside of F4 without bullying or plain using and abusing – they are introduced from the very start as bullies who lack even the moral fibre to do it themselves and instead set the other kids on the weak rather than exerting themselves.
The basis for the romance starts off as game to torment JanDi – and frankly it continues on the same track, even though the ML's feelings are now benevolent to her. However, I struggle to find a single instance of his thinking or caring about what she wants or needs, though he does pay lip service to the idea.
Why is she stuck on him? – you hardly never see them simply having fun together.
The quality of this writing is less even than adolescent standard. Cardboard characters, given a poor-me back story, but no real life in the now.
- The eye candy. The F4 are supposed to be swoonable, but for most of the time they are badly dressed, poorly coiffed, over-made-up, and far too old for the roles. However, if you calm that down a bit, they're not bad. I'd have to say that the swimming and wet suit scene was pretty disappointing, though, but some of the island scenes were pretty – in the man-candy sense. The island was of course gorgeous – sea, sun and sand ... what's not to love about that
- the “luxury” - well tbh, for most of this series we are supposed to be smacked in the eyeballs by the opulence, and the insane consumption. Failed. The interiors do a better job than many in other dramas, with less evidence of an insane designer being allowed to rampage their bi-polar disorder all over the shop, but still no more than middle-class opulence in my (admittedly limited) experience. That experience, however, does include some extremely beautiful locations, with mind-bendingly pricey finishes and furniture. You would expect the Go residence to be replete with custom-designed pieces amd original art - not MDF panelling and paint finishes. However – other give-aways that all this is deeply fake included ...
= insane amount of staff hovering everywhere. The very best staff are ALWAYS invisible
= staff dressed in ridiculous uniforms which make them both pathetic and conspicuous – see above, ref invisible. In addition, the uniforms make it impossible to do a decent job of work.
= security staff all over the place in your face, but unable to straightforwardly control a supposedly adolescent boy. The best security – as with servants – is invisible. In addition, if they decide to lay hands on you – even if careful to avoid actual harm to your person – they do, and you don't have any choice about it. Being unable to efficiently subdue your principal is - in security circles - dangerous, and cause for dismissal.
= the clothes – too often clothes looked cheap and did not fit properly. Awful. If you are going to have beautiful young men, dress them so that we can enjoy their bodies, with things that fit. The styling for the girls was not supposed to be as fancy, and they were much better dressed – until they were supposed to be in posh clothes : then they were shown mincing around in baby-doll nighties, almost.
- The acting. Oh GOD. The pregnant pauses. The mugging. The face-pulling in place of actual emotion – or (god forbid) thought. The laboured “surprise” when someone notices something that has been in plain sight for 10 minutes. LMH was very angry and he did it well enough. He was at times thoughtful and that went OK too. But other actors were less well directed. The F4 were almost universally smug and vacuous. Their idea of “fun” seemed to be hanging around pretending to be interested in girls – never convincingly, sadly. There was damn all character development, even for LMH who is supposed to learn how to love someone in the course of this drama – but his first instinct always remains to lash out emotionally or physically and to wound. Very bad writing or direction or both.
- the plot – was INTERMINABLE as well as implausible, but it amounts to little more than la series of different locations and circumstances for JanDi to be belittled and emotionally abused in
- The music – aural soup. Repetitive, sickly, seldom written to enhance the acting, but just audible wallpaper masquerading as posh – cod “classical” horror. It would have done ab-so-lutely NO HARM to have some scenes play out in silence. In fact – a relief.

I can't bear to think about this any more,
This drama is the sort of thing to which young minds should never be exposed. It is potentially more dangerous than pornography, especially for young girls who might think that this is what you should consider an ideal romance.
Heaven forfend! It's amazing that it has good scores – but then, the first time I watched it I mindlessly failed to engage brain and just watched the visual feast such as it was. As far as that goes (I don't think far enough) – it's OK I guess.
But after a considered viewing, even though I wanted something easy to digest, instead it make me pretty ill.