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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Let's Eat" Episode 5

I'm beginning to get impatient with the lack of progress in the actual storyline. For the most part "Let's Eat" continues to ride on its strengths. If you were hoping for more food porn this time around, don't worry, that shows up pretty much immediately. Jin-I appears to have discovered the secret that will make Soo-Kyeong do basically anything- just present the woman with food and she almost immediately starts salivating.

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The trouble is that we already knew all this already. The episode writ-large just retreads the same basic jokes and set-ups of character-based humor. We don't really get much here that's exciting and new, or that expands our understanding of these people into a greater dimension. Theyr'e just a bunch of adults living their lives in a way that fits their general temperment.

It's nice stuff as far as situation comedy goes but the lack of substance is problematic. I can't even guess what the character arc is going to be, since at this rate the drama will end at the exact same place it began. If the drama was only promising to offer simple jokes and adventures I'd be fine with that. The trouble is that the quality of the direction and the very deliberate emphasis on Soo-Kyeong's Pavlovian reactions to food and social life promise the idea of something more, something more layered than what we've gotten so far.

For what it's worth, by the end we've finally gotten an event so definite in regards to the whole "Is Dae-Yeong a murderer angle" that it's clear we're going to be seeing a lot more of it. There have finally been enough basically mysterious indications about the man to clearly set Soo-Kyeong's alarm bells off, and it's refreshing to for once see her with a clearly defined motivation that has nothing to do with food. This is a woman that, when she knows what she wants, spares no effort in getting it.

But "Let's Eat" needs more than just the promise of future plotlines and immediate future to really warrant holding viewer interest. Well, in my opinion anyway. The production is quality enough I could easily see a less discriminating fan being far more willing to tolerate zany antics for the sake of zany antics. In any event there's enough good stuff going on in this episode to warrant sticking around for the next. I'll just have to hope that it gets more dramatic in the immediate future.

Review by William Schwartz

"Let's Eat" is directed by Park Joon-hwa and written by Lim Soo-mi and features Lee Soo-kyung, Yoon Doo-joon, Yoon So-hee and Shim Hyung-tak.

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