The reviews on here for Itaewon class are very interesting with a lot of very high or very low scores. At the end of the day I think it's somewhere in the middle.

I think Itaewon's biggest failing is the story, it's a revenge story but not a particularly good one. The ML is wronged and he spends the show attempting to get revenge, but it's not very interesting. It's a weird mix of "the best revenge is living well" and also attempting to take down his enemies. This really ends up being framing for a charming restaurant slice of life and romance with a great cast.

Kim Da Mi and Park Seo Joon play off each other very well with Kim's outgoing and forceful character picking up the slack for Park's more limited dialog. Watching them run a restaurant is great and the three employees at DanBam are good and fit in well. I want to give the show extra credit for having a transgender character and handling her well.

While I don't think the revenge plot is great Yoo Jae Myung does play a great villain. His actions are sometimes uncaring, sometimes cruel, but always feel like they're coming from the place of a real fleshed out character with his own motivations.

My largest issues with the show come near the end. The pacing starts to suffer and the writing starts to feel the need to inject extra tension and drama into the last few episodes rather than letting the story come to a more natural conclusion.

But at the end of the day I really like the show, it was my first kdrama and while it isn't my favorite it's certainly above average and the cast and setting are great.