I've read the manwha "Shall We Have Dinner Tonight?" even before my kdrama addiction has started. So I was kind of hyped about this drama. Also Before Sunset is like one of my favorite movies of all time & I'm bringing this up, because the manwha reminded me of that quite a bit. I'm saying it confidently that the writers have butchered the magic of the original. The witty dialog & the bonding over food is almost completely missing from the drama. What's funny though that I did not even mind while watching the first half. Episodes 1-9~ were very entertaining for me with a lot of charm, it felt like I was watching a light hearted romcom, where even the exes were interesting in their own way. I hate love triangles, but while watching those early episodes I thought that with a story sequenced like this having more aggressive secondary love interests was perfectly fine.
Unfortunately the ratings were low & as customary with live filming, major changes were made. There are about 3 episodes where the focus is completely on Jung Jae Hyuk's (second ML)'s mental illness & not only that but our FL is also doing some incredibly stupid and frustrating things. Honestly at times I felt that the writer was just cruel to the audience.

The entire cast was great, perhaps the ML's performance is the weakest link. The OST is extremely repetitive, there was an episode where the the "Mokja nyan nyan" song was played like 6-7 times. The visuals were great, but nowadays that's true for all kdramas..

My suggestion is to keep watching until episode 11 & then just skip to episode 14 for the best experience.

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This is obviously very good, so the 8.5 rating is definitely justified, having seen the other reviews here all the good points were already mentioned, so I'll just focus on what I did not like.

The OST is just as repetitive as in Pretty Noona, yes it's very good, but there are only like 5 songs & there are episodes where the "seasons change" song plays more than 4 times.
Pretty Noona has become terrible after the midpoint, here the start is not quite as explosive, but still very good and the show never becomes terrible, but there is a lot of forced drama in the second half that I did not like. Especially episodes 14-15(28-30 in the stupid numbering system) were quite eyebrow raising at times. Having a second male lead like this is fine for maybe 2-3 episodes, but for 16 it's just ridiculous, at least this was handled better in Pretty Noona. People talk about how real this show feels, but this character is completely immersion breaking & the same is also true for how Jeong-in interacts with him.
From a Korean viewer's standpoint this show is probably quite progressive, but frankly I don't like it when the dark side of Confucianism is showcased this much. (parents forcing their will upon their grownup kids , the barbaric Korean divorce law and Korean social stigmas) Also there were some acting hiccups here and there, overall the acting performances were incredibly good for the most part, but I felt that nearing the end the actors have ng-ed scenes at times, but the director just let it go for ehm reasons, but I realize that this could be considered nitpicking. The flow of the story & character progression have some inconsistencies , I sense that there were some script rewrites & character micro adjustments, I feel that I would not have noticed much, have I not been watching all episodes over the course of 3 days.


edit: I was bored and rewatched the show.
I was impressed by the early episodes a lot more than the first time around. They way how fate and extreme attraction is brought to life in this show is just beautiful and there were just so many great conversations & touching scenes all the way to the end.

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It's difficult to review this drama, because the story/writing is just abysmal, but despite that there are some amazing things in it too. Many comments talk about Hwang JungEum being terrible in this, personally I think that this is the role that fit her the most out of all the roles that she had, her acting was phenomenal, it's not her fault that she had to portray a superstitious nutjob idiot of a woman. Ryu Junyol himself is also a nice surprise, he was so much more interesting in this one than in R1988. (I never understood why everyone wanted him to be main character in 88) Their chemistry was amazing. I liked pretty much all the side characters too, the exception being Gary Choi. What a super annoying male second lead he was..

To elaborate more on the bad writing. After enjoying the first 5-6 episodes the drama really started to drag & the stupid triangle started to annoy me quite a bit and then finally when all that was resolved following just one fuzzy episode everything went to shit as usual in many kdramas. I mean good God, that fortune teller just had to ruin everything. The ending is a cliche fest, forced separation into time skip into a rushed reconciliation.

I could nitpick about inconsequential things too such as how Tennis players don't have agencies, but rather they employ a crew, or an agent if they have to. Tennis is not the SK entertainment industry. Then there is the blonde Novak Djokovic...
There is also the recurring theme of stealing games/code pre-release. There are very good reasons why this doesn't happen, especially how it went down the second time around. Then again these I could easily forgive..

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I was a bit disappointed at first, I found the first 5 episodes a bit boring . However by the time we reached episode 10 I was over that and I started to dread the moment of the inevitable reveal, but I was pleasantly surprised when that moment came (very late in the series), because the revelation drama/conflict had gotten resolved swiftly and the resolution was very beautiful and unexpected. Throughout the entire show I was waiting for various terrible things to happen, but they were only teased, none of them came to be. (such as extreme love triangle plots, forced separation, or strong rivalry induced melodrama) This is one of those shows that's about enjoying the journey, rather than anticipating the end. I really liked the character interactions, the comedy and the main leads had great chemistry, the entire cast was amazing really. Having watched Legend of the Blue Sea I kept thinking how much better Shin Hyesun could have been at being a hapless mermaid, I like Jun Jihyun as an actress, but that mermaid character was nearly identical to this 30 years old teen character, but it's blatantly obvious whom this role fit better.

The OST was awesome, not at Goblin levels, but not much worse really.

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While I somewhat enjoyed watching this, I don't think this is a good office drama. The show is presented in a sitcom format, but it lacks the intensity that a sitcom would need to keep the audience interested. There were many really boring episodes, the comedy is just not that great. While I liked the acting ensemble & also the couple, but outside of a few episodes there is really not all that much worth seeing. The romance between the leads is good, but just so little of it is shown.. I watched about 2-3 episodes of this every day after work & I fell asleep multiple times, if I'm watching something worthwhile that rarely if ever happens.

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