Kooky lighthearted Romance Comedy

This show maintains its theme all the way through - it starts as a lighthearted ridiculously kooky comedy in the Josen period and maintains that feel till the end. It never takes itself seriously but does use comedic timing and funny characters to make social commentary on serious subjects like suicide, LBGT rights, maternity and paternity leave as well as interesting conversations about what is the role of marriage in the fiction of society.

It does a great job balancing moments of character development and growth without losing the fun silly nature of the drama which makes each scene enjoyable to watch. I particularly enjoyed the character of the female lead who is forward, perceptive and bold. She’s a breath of fresh air in a line up of FL leads that shy away from intimacy and communication. In contrast, this FL could stand perhaps not to communicate so often. Still her dynamic with both the ML and SML is very fun to watch.

The interactions of the ML and the SML also enhanced the show. They have an incredibly pure friendship that shone through and was wonderful to watch. All in all, this was a very enjoyable 12 episode drama and I would definitely recommend this show.

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Congratulations to this drama for getting my lowest score yet.

The MVP of this series was really Netflix for letting me watch at 1.5x speed and the ten second fast forward feature for which this low review would not exist in the universe.

It’s really a pity that the first eightish - nine episodes get completely squandered by the absolute Chernobyl disaster that is the second half of this show. The FL is a mid thirties almost forty year old human who possess ZERO communication skills. It’s really impressive how little communication skills one human woman can posses. I commend the writers for showing that forty year women can also have the same emotional maturity as a sixteen year old girl. Representation matters!

The other watchers of this show seemed to love the Male Lead for being the best boyfriend but if being a good boyfriend = being a complete doormat and running after your girlfriend whose idea of communication is crying, saying she’s sorry and promising never to do it again but then in the literal next scene doing it again *surprise pikachu face* and then whining about how she’s apologized. Her character reaches a point where it's not that she's unable to communicate, she willfully refuses and believes the best way to get ahead is to sit in misery and grind through but also to ask him to do the same. The way to progress forward is for them to simply be in abject misery together.

Let’s talk about the mother of the bride - the worst Asian mother portrayal I’ve seen on tv. If the FL wasn’t also such a doormat, she could have moved out before the season started and I wouldn’t have to watch this character for 12 hours. I have a new nemesis and it’s this Asian mother. She has NO redeemable qualities and yet the writers still put in a redemption scene in the last hour. I’ve never felt less moved by a mother-daughter scene in my entire life. It happens on the street and I was looking for truck-kan the entire time (why don’t you show up when I want you and only when I don’t???). I tried, I tried to look at this in an Asian centric culture mindset but alas I’m a lowly Asian-American and even with my knowledge of traditional Asian family roles, I cannot feel warmth/sympathy towards this mother.

The music: If an English lady crones “it’s hard to be a woman” at me one more time, I’ll end up in jail.

My final gripe: the plot. Writer-Nim. Come back here and explain to me wtf was the POINT of the last three episodes. Just really explain. There’s this whole plot about how she’s going to stick with it and make her big comeback and stand on her own - - for her to get another bf who doesn’t appreciate her, to learn zero communication skills and to STILL quit her job and become a waitress on juju island! Why did they even break up? They learn zero things from the breakup! Here I would like to compare my favorite end of drama breakup “Because this is my first life” where the breakup makes sense. It forces two characters who cannot communicate and have baggage to take the breakup as a reset and reevaluate their needs and goals before coming back together as a stronger and more cohesive couple. That does not happen in SITR. They still cannot communicate, or say full sentences or express emotion.

She just takes the time she could use to communicate to whine about how she’s kept herself miserable for three years to atone for making the best friend/boyfriend sad. Like my girl, no one, not ONE person asked for that. If you choose to live your life that way, that’s strictly a you problem. This whole romance exist on *vibes*. Which I mean I love a long walk in the rain and some coffee but my god.

Anyways there was great skinship in this show so cheers to the director for giving me legit butterflies in the handholding scene. I will look back at drama edits on tiktok of that one scene fondly.

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Cute RomCom with little com and no follow through.

This was a fluffy, slice of life Rom-Com. The second half of the series is at least consistent with its themes over the first half which can't really seem to land any of the jokes or complete out a subplot.

The story revolves around the love story of Si Tu Mo (Momo) and Gu Wei Yi - two college kids who end up being pushed together when they both end up as apartment mates in an off campus apartment owned by Gu Wei Yi's mother. The story's main conflict is that Si Tu Mo has been in love with their mutual friend Fu Pei since high school but he's too scared of his father to confess their mutual attraction so he treats her like a pseudogirlfriend, possessive and needy but also emotionally unavailable. It's a cute little slice of life about being in school, trying to land internships but also the misadventures and misunderstandings of first love and dealing with first relationships. If you want a show that's just mostly fluff with a little bit of drama - this would probably fall right up your alley.

Cons:
- the show cannot for the life of itself land a joke or a subplot - it's constantly embarking on these tiny stories that don't really have a conclusion - Momo's boss steals her work, Momo quits her job, the internet finds out what Momo's boss did and the boss gets in trouble - does Momo land another job? Or get her job back? TBD. The audience is not told the resolution, at the end she's still unemployed and then there's an epilogue so we have no idea. This seems like a running theme in like the whole show. It just cannot land a punchline and complete the ending. There are so many times where I was confused at the point of the last 30 minutes of scenes for it not to progress the story forward and end up getting completely dropped in the next episode.

- the SML/SFL do not make any sense, it's such a one-sided relationship. The SFL (Wang Shan) is such a cool, hot, smart person and for some reason she's madly in love with SML (Fu Pei) who is sad, tall and hot but mentally a child? He grows into a better person by the end of the show from where he started but if you go from -50 to -10, you're still a -10. Fu Pei really sucks as a SML. He really only cares about himself, he has very little ambition and the ambition he does have - he doesn't care for follow-through. He asks the SFL out by saying if she doesn't go out with him, he'll hit himself with a rock. What?? Meanwhile Wang Shan is HOT, she's the third smartest person at their school, she's accomplished, she's sweet, respectful. What is her flaw? Oh, she's from a poor family ??? GIRL PLEASE. Meanwhile she's running after him registering him for his exams, tutoring him, reminding him to apply for bank loans for HIS business, keeping the lights running in HIS business. What is he doing to make her life better? NOTHING.

- the communication trope between the two main leads where the FL is passive aggressive and the ML runs after her all the time is SO frustrating. This is a first relationship show so I'm not even mad at the FL for being passive aggressive, I'm mad at the writers for never correcting it and asking her to grow as a person. This would have made for really good tv for the FL to understand that her bf is not a telepath and she needs to understand how basic communication works. There was a lot of growth and development given to the ML but the FL really doesn't get any emotional or character growth - she is the same through out and that really harms her character in the second half when she is the one being emotionally stunted and block headed.

Honestly I'm glad I watched this because I needed a reason to get over Legally Romance and this was a good palate cleanser but I would not watch this again.

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Watching for the Cooking Scenes, Dropping for the Main Lead

Not even making it to the last three episodes which everyone says are trash cause I for the life of me cannot understand the appeal of the male lead. He’s such a child, it’s unfathomable how he’s the romantic lead in ANY story. He was kinda fun to watch till episode 7 and now he’s spent two episodes jerking the female lead around for NO reason. I truly cannot stand any scene he’s been in the last two episodes and I’m so confused why the female lead would want to be with him any capacity.

Episode 7-9 are just him huffing around like a child, refusing to communicate, blackmailing her over and over again and being overly possessive over someone who is NOT his girlfriend or his employee. He only really seems interested in her when there’s another man around who also shows interest in her. It’s a pissing contest between two men and the female lead is just there waiting for one of them to choose her. In the earlier episodes, she had some backbone and would stand up for herself but that seemed to have dissolved into water sometime in episode 7 and now she's sitting on the sidelines waiting for the men to duke it out and decide whose going to win.

I forwarded to the part where they get together and I’ve never felt so justified in dropping a drama before. They get together because he literally forces her to kiss him in front of the SML and makes her choice for her. Then she quits her job at a company that respects her and aligns with her passion and goals to go back to his company and become his secretary?? If this is romance, sign up up for a lifetime of spinsterhood.

Pro: I genuinely enjoyed the first four to five episodes where she's teaching him to cook. The love of cooking and the art of food is some of the best parts of this show and the reason it got any points with me at all.

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