Man, this drama started out SO GOOD. It was fun and funny and engaging, I loved every interaction and every scene…It’s very break the 4th wall modern despite the setting. …and then they went back to the castle, and things dipped so far into boring that it was honestly difficult to slog through. The end picks up ok, but gosh that middle is almost like an entirely different drama.

A lot of kdrama comedies are like this though, they start off fun and then try to get too serious for themselves and turn the comedy from a 10 down to a 1. Normally something like this would get a much lower rating from me, but the good parts were too good to discount. If I were to try to put my finger on exactly what went wrong, I think the FL and ML were exceptional when they were playing off each other. In many episodes toward the middle they get comparatively small amounts of time together, which sucks because they had great chemistry together and that chemistry spread to the entire side character group and created something fun and magical.

The pop culture references were really well executed by both the director and the cast. The music was pretty good, and the sets were gorgeous. All of the actors were fully engaged and invested in their roles. I enjoyed having a strong female lead outsmart all of the overtly sexist men. The production team really cleverly and unobtrusively plays with current social issues without impacting your immersion in the story and without being too preachy. That part was exceptionally well conceived.

Overall it’s worth a watch, I might even watch it again some day.