OZE

5. Family by Choice

1. Twenty-Five Twenty-One 2. Spirit Fingers 3. Reply 1988 4. Hospital Playlist

Fair enough. Given that you replied "exactly" to that comment, I don't think my interpretation was entirely unreasonable. That's why I responded to the food-related point.

I think you're confusing "food matters" with "military life is easy."

This is a drama about a military cook, so naturally food is a central theme. My country also has mandatory military service, and from my own experience, food is one of the biggest morale boosters for ordinary soldiers. When you live with restrictions on your freedom, privacy, and daily life, meals become one of the few things people genuinely look forward to. Given how important food is to morale, I don't find it strange that officers would care about it.

And even if you think the show idealizes certain aspects of military life, isn't it a bit of a stretch to dismiss it as straightforward military propaganda? Especially when the show openly depicts corruption, procurement scandals, abuse of authority, and other institutional problems.

I Love mbc

Hi, I really enjoyed reading your review! You explained the story and characters clearly, and it was interesting to see your perspective. Thank you for sharing!

Yeah, he does eventually start winning — it’s not one of those “suffer endlessly for realism” endings. The tone stays pretty grounded and philosophical, but there is payoff and hope by the end.

Romance-wise, it’s not a super fairytale type of ending, but they do emotionally choose each other in the end. So it’s more quietly hopeful than tragic.

I’m not sure. Other currently airing K-dramas have seen rating drops too, even without controversy, and people seemed confused then as well. I can’t help wondering if there’s a pattern here.

But if the drama spent a huge amount of time focusing in detail on every step of her adapting to modern life, would most viewers actually enjoy that?

People are usually more interested in seeing how a historical character interacts with the modern world once the basic adjustment phase is over, not watching her learn how to use phones, money, or transportation step by step.

At some point, the story and character dynamics need to move forward. If the show tried to make the adaptation process completely realistic, the pacing would become painfully slow and many viewers would probably lose interest early on.

Understanding technology and abandoning a lifetime of royal identity are two completely different things.

She learned how the modern world functions, but that doesn’t mean she’d instantly stop thinking like royalty. Knowledge changes faster than identity.

Even in real life, people keep the habits and mindsets they were raised with long after their environment changes. Even modern-day royalty would realistically struggle to completely abandon that identity overnight, so someone raised in an even more rigid class system would obviously have an even harder time.

Honestly, it would be far more unrealistic if she suddenly started acting like an ordinary modern person overnight just because she learned how modern society works.

The whole comedy comes from that contrast.

Imagine a scene where Hwang Dong-man is told something that essentially invalidates his life, a “hunger” signal appears on his emotional watch, and he returns home and eats in a frantic, uncontrolled way. Now imagine the same scene, but with him eating calmly and properly instead. It might look more “polite,” but it would fail to convey the shock and emotional collapse he is actually experiencing.

In that scene, messy eating isn’t really meant for comedy or as a comment on manners, but as a way to show a character’s psychological state. Rapid or uncontrolled eating usually suggests emotional strain or a loss of self-control, not “bad manners for laughs.” It works because eating is a basic human action that can reveal internal states without dialogue. The point of the scene is character expression rather than comedy.

It’s “IT’S ART” by PSY.

As far as I know, in Korea you have to complete four years of university, pass the teacher certification exam, and (for men) serve about two years in the military, so becoming a teacher at 18–20 just doesn’t work time-wise, no matter how much of a genius he might be.

I really appreciate how Korean dramas still manage to create this level of depth and complexity in storytelling.

I couldn’t understand Hwang Dong-man’s obsession with weather-themed dramas—until the ending of this episode made things a little clearer.
It was never about the weather itself. It was a quiet longing for both him and his brother’s hearts to finally clear, like skies after a storm.

By the end of the episode, Dong-man meets Eun-ah, who truly understands him, and he also begins to find a new sense of purpose through the process of searching for his niece. From then on, even when he climbs the mountains, he no longer shouts his name out loud.

Yes, that’s basically the idea. Jin-man’s point is that poetry (and meaning in general) isn’t fully understood just by reading it superficially — you need to internalize it, even “memorize” it, to really feel its depth. It also connects to the theme of looking deeper to recognize true potential, like Dong-man.

It’s “IT’S ART” by PSY.

I thought the directing worked well and the flow felt natural to me, but I guess it really comes down to personal preference.

I really enjoyed your review. This drama reminded me of Reply 1988 and My Mister — both have that same emotional depth and realism. Honestly, it feels like they all belong in the same tier of storytelling.