Let's Eat 2

Let’s Eat 2

6/10

Let's Eat 2

Genre:                                 Episodes: 18                         Year: 2015

Romance

Comedy

Synopsis:

Gu Dae Young moves to a new town. One of his new neighbours is Baek Soo Ji, a girl he was friends with in elementary school who now holds a grudge against him. In order to sell insurance to the civil servants Soo Ji works with, Dae Young promises to help her get married to Lee Sang Woo, a man Soo Ji has liked for a long time who doesn’t even remember her name.

Cast:

Yoon Doo Joon (Gu Dae Young)

Seo Hyun Jin (Baek Soo Ji)

Kwon Yul (Lee Sang Woo)

Hwang Seung Eon (Hwang Hye Rim)

Lee Joo Seung (Lee Joo Seung)

Kim Hee Won (In Taek Soo)

Jo Eun Ji (Hong In Ah)

Kim Ji Young (Lee Jeom Yi)

General Thoughts:

I liked it but didn’t love it. It’s easy and mostly uncomplicated, but did kind of lack the airy cute feel that breezy dramas tend to need. It’s not that this drama wasn’t fun, but it did spend a lot of time focusing on a relationship that wasn’t going to last.

Yeeaaaahh...this won't last long

It’s pretty obvious that our main man Dae Young is going to be involved in some sort of romance, or the writers wouldn’t have mentioned his breakup with the girl from Season 1. That was basically a big green light for a second romance. And yet, even knowing this, for about 16 of the 18 episodes our heroine was either pining for or actually dating another guy. So that’s the reason there was minimal amounts of cute.

Cute, but not overwhelmingly so

Sure, there were some cute moments between Sang Woo and Soo Ji, but these were always marred by the fact that it was highly likely that they would break up once Soo Ji realised she liked Dae Young. And then there were cute moments between Dae Young and Soo Ji, but these were always marred by the fact that Soo Ji was dating a different guy. The rest of the characters were okay, but beyond the main three leads I didn’t really care much about the others. Grandma could be cute at times but she could also come across as nosey and obtrusive- particularly where Joo Seung was concerned. The landlady and her son just seemed money hungry and rude and it was difficult to find either of them cute. Joo Seung was far too busy being constructed as a red herring for the mystery to actually get any real development of his own, which left him in limbo as far as likability went- you didn’t want to become too attached incase he was a criminal, but you didn’t really hate him because there was no concrete proof. In Ah could be sympathised with, but her constant attempts at subtly putting Soo Ji down became grating the longer they went on.

Office scenes were rarely entertaining

The friendship that formed between the two was nice overall, but it was hard to really like In Ah after so many episodes of her snarky comments. Hye Rim and Taek Soo were really the only side characters that I had any affection for. Taek Soo was so pitiful and his loneliness and constant desire to be with someone made him easy to sympathise with. His clingy attitude towards Dae Young was funny more often than it was annoying, and most importantly the character never overstayed his welcome.

Hye Rim was the lightness this drama needed

He was present when he needed to be, but didn’t grab too much screen time. His appearances were spread out nicely and hit just the right balance of humour and sadness. Taek Soo wasn’t just comic relief, nor was he a constant downer, but sat nicely in the middle. Hye Rim was the youth that the series needed. At the start the characters were feeling a bit old- and while there's nothing wrong with that it did run the risk of losing the interest of the younger viewership. Hye Rim wasn’t an important character but her bubbly attitude and charm were refreshing in a series that had a surprising amount of angst (resulting from the love-triangle). Hye Rim’s relationship with Joo Seung, while not riveting was interesting enough, and balanced out the hardships Dae Young was going through. There were nice enough relationships between all the characters, but they never really drew together as a family the way I was expecting them to. In fact, a lot of the relationships felt like they were being maintained in order to gain something rather than simply because the two people liked each other.

Friends or no?

Dae Young and Grandma had a sweet relationship, but Grandma never seemed to warm up to Soo Ji the way she did with the boys that lived in the building. The landlady was so money focused that none of her relationships with her tenants felt like they would survive if any of the tenants moved out. Hye Rim seemed to only be pretending to like Grandma so that she could stay with her, and at times it even felt like Dae Young was pretending to be friends with Sang Woo just so he could help Soo Ji in her romantic endeavours.

Yoon Doo Joon is Dae Young- no one could fill his place

Dae Young never seemed relaxed around Sang Woo the way he was around Taek Soo, and while no two relationships are the same, it would have been nice to see him really relax into the friendship so that we knew he liked Sang Woo (which I’m sure is what the writers were aiming for). The acting was all okay. There was nothing exceptional, but there was no one that was glaringly bad either. Yoon Doo Joon once more made Dae Young come alive and settles into character well. He delivers both humour and heart and makes Dae Young a really loveable hero. Also, it’s weirdly fun watching Yoon Doo Joon eat, which is a total bonus. Soo Ji was a significantly less annoying heroine than last season (though I will admit that her inability to handle her finances drove me slightly insane), and Seo Hyun Jin gave a fair performance. She didn’t add anything dramatic to the chaacter that wasn’t already on paper, but she made Soo Ji cute and likeable enough. Her chemistry with Yoon Doo Joon was sweet and the two sold the friends-to-lovers dynamic extremely well.

Omg just don't spend money on stupid sh*t- it's not hard.

This was probably the most likeable I’ve ever found Kwon Yul- probably owing to the fact that he got to act a character that had a shred of personality. Kwon Yul nailed both the personalities of Sang Woo (the cool, calm worker and the playful, swearing kid), and made one hell of a second lead.

I'm glad neither had to suffer for the other's development

It was nice that Sang Woo was a character that was able to remain likeable to the end, and yet he never took away from Dae Young. K-Dramas can tend to let the character of the second male lead suffer in order to enhance the good qualities of the lead, but instead ‘Let’s Eat 2’ simply showed that Dae Young was a better fit for our heroine. There was nothing wrong with Sang Woo so it was enjoyable that the writers never felt the need to make him clingy, short tempered or rude just to explain why the heroine would choose another guy over him. As expected there was copious amounts of food porn, but the show focused a lot less on eating than it did last time. While the characters still obviously enjoyed eating and spent a good deal of time doing it, it didn’t feel as though 70% of every episode was watching people eat (the way Season 1 sometimes felt). Season 2 also seemed to explore a wider range of food than Season 1. The characters did go to restaurants, but the show also showcased takeaway Korean food, homemade Korean food and Korean convenience store food.

Yes, please, and thank you

There were also occasions where the show focused on international foods as well. It was interesting to see a Korean take on Thai or Mexican (it looked very different to the Thai and Mexican we get here in Australia). I will say this though, boiling that octopus alive was super off-putting. Please don't do that again. Ever.

What Was Great:

Love Swap:

I really enjoyed the romance of this drama, even if I do wish we’d gotten there a little quicker. The whole situation was so different from what we had in Season 1, which is a total relief, otherwise it could have felt too same-same. Rather than having two girls fall for our main man, we had the more standard rom-com triangle of two guys in love with the same girl.

Though for a time it did seem like they were fighting over Dae Young- which isn't bad either

It was a nice switch up as it meant we got to see different sides to Dae Young. This fit in nicely with the direction of Season 2- in the first season, Dae Young always remained a bit of an enigma with no one really knowing what was real and what was just salesman persona. Watching Dae Young discover his feelings for Soo Ji felt like we were getting to know him in a different, more in depth way than last time.

It felt like they actually liked each other (unlike last season)

Dae Young didn’t want to let his feelings show, so when they did we knew they were genuine. Dae Young also got to remain the cool guy in Season 1 where he could take his pick from the girls fawning over him, but this time around he showed a much more uncool, more relatable side of himself as he was pining for his friend’s girl- who he set up together no less. While it might not have been necessary to have Soo Ji and Sang Woo date for so very long, it was a direction the story needed to take. Soo Ji would never have learned that comfort and happiness were more important than looks and credentials if she hadn’t spent that time with Sang Woo. Realising that dating Sang Woo wasn’t enjoyable or comfortable was the exact ‘aha’ moment Soo Ji needed to be able to see Dae Young in a romantic light. It always felt natural between Soo Ji and Dae Young, whereas she could never be herself in front of Sang Woo for fear of disappointing him- and that’s a type of relationship that could never last. I do wish the writers had made it a tad more obvious that Soo Ji wasn’t actually having a good time dating Sang Woo, as occasionally it did seem as though the two were getting closer and more relaxed- such as when they would swear in the car together.

Ooooooo such angst 

Ultimately Soo Ji’s switch in romantic interests was very understandable and believable, but it could have done with being hinted at earlier. It's always a bit tricky to have characters from the main love-line be involved with someone else during the drama’s run, but thankfully ‘Let’s Eat 2’ handled the situation nicely, with both Soo Ji and Sang Woo coming to terms with the end of their relationship in their own way.

What Wasn’t:

Fake Mystery:

I think I was part of the minority that actually enjoyed the mystery of the first season, but the added mystery element in the second season felt forced and fake. While the first season mystery was more a question of who rather than what, the second season gave the answer of who but danced around what the what really was.

This guy reeks of red herring

Which isn’t an awesome set up for a mystery- particularly when the mystery isn’t the central idea of the drama. Rather than being intrigued by the character of Joo Seung, I just became annoyed whenever he was on screen. It was hard to gain an understanding of him as a character and thus hard to connect to him due to the writers purposely withholding information. As nothing bad was actually happening it was easy to dismiss all Joo Seung’s odd behaviours as red herrings- which they mostly ended up being. Because while Joo Seung’s actions were odd and suspicious, they didn’t actually hurt anybody, thus reducing any tension the drama was aiming for. Not having a phone, hiding a suitcase of cash and using someone else’s ID are strange behaviours, but they’re certainly not behaviours that cannot be explained into a less suspicious situation- which is ultimately what happened. Sadly, the mystery in the second season lacked any sense of threat, and didn’t add much to the series at all.

5 Minutes of Romance:

I was so onboard this romance that I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when we got so little of it. The execution of Soo Ji’s feelings transitioning from Sang Woo to Dae Young was brilliant, but it all happened a bit late.

This show focused a lot more on Sang Woo than on the friends-to-lovers thing

You’d think that a 2 episode extension would give our lovers more time to, you know, be lovers, but that was not the case. Instead the breakdown of Sang Woo and Soo Ji’s relationship was streeeeeetched out. And then no one told Dae Young that the girl he’s been crushing on is finally single again?

And then the series ended

Lame. While the angsty conflict was enjoyable for a time, it was slightly marred by the fact that I could see the end of this drama fast approaching and the leads still weren’t together. Understandably Soo Ji needed time before she was ready to be in another relationship, but that doesn’t change the fact that the writers could have ended the Sang Woo-Soo Ji line a few episodes earlier and given us more time on the Soo Ji-Dae Young line. The last few moments of the final episode were really sweet, and I won’t deny wishing that I could have seen more on how Dae Young and Soo Ji’s new relationship went- I’m positive there would have been loads of laughs and entertainment there. At the end of the day, I just felt a bit robbed that after 18 episodes of cheering on Dae Young’s feelings for Soo Ji, we only got to see 5 minutes (or less) of their happiness together on screen. 

Recommend?

Uhhhh, this is a tricky one. If you liked the first ‘Let’s Eat’, you’ll probably like this one BUT you have to be mentally prepared to let go of the first season’s love-line. If you didn’t like the first season, then chances are you won’t like this one either. If you haven’t seen the first season it really doesn’t matter- you can go straight into season 2.

More Yoon Doo Joon as Dae Young is never a bad thing