m5m

Mixed feelings. The actors were all solid. Chemistry between leads was great. Pretty good show up until ep 19. Then became an absolute garbage script over the last 5 episodes as the writers decided to change the show from "Dating in the Kitchen" into "Corporate Pissing Contest Between Two Spiteful Brothers". Worse, in order to facilitate the pissing contest, the writers applied plot-induced stupidity to make Zhao Lusi's character, Gu Shengnan, suddenly become the most stupid, naive, gullible idiot. Again and again she keeps making the WORST decisions and ends up caught as an emotional punching bag between the two brothers. They also transformed the younger brother from a nice, likable goofball into suddenly being a completely morally broken scheming slime ball who has no qualms about manipulating and hurting the innocent Shengnan in order to get at Lu Jin. She ends up enduring a ton of emotional pain and anguish because of all this. And in the end, we are supposed to think it's all, "OK"???? Lu Zheng is given a complete pass at the end despite having done such scumbag things? Similarly, the show expects us to forgive and forget and let Lu Jin's mother off the hook for all truly cruel crap she pulled? Did the show change script writers for the last few episodes? Or were they on drugs during that time? Because watching the last 5 episodes was just awful. I only forced myself to watch to the end because I'd come this far and despite the truly awful final plot line, I still very much enjoyed both Zhao Lusi and Lin Yu Shen's performances. Even when the script had them behaving like idiots. The show also has a very nice music soundtrack. And the show was great back when it focused more around food and the symbolism and importance of food, cooking and eating in the various plot-arcs that built up the original premise of the show. The show just forgot all that and lost its way for the final 5 episodes.

My advice is watch the show up until some happy point somewhere in ep 19 ... and then just skip to the final happy ending scenes in the last few minutes of ep 24. Everything in between is just garbage.