Crash Course in Romance

Instead of Jeon Do Yeon, Jang Young Nam would have looked much better for the female lead character role.

No doubt the performance by every actor and actress was great, but lead couple's age gap was rather unsettling.

Male lead actor Jung Kyung Ho who in fact is actually over ten years younger than the female lead actress Jeon Do Yeon.

Off course, the decade of age gap between the lead characters in a Kdrama is not completely new, it's just that female lead character looked very aged compared to the male lead, I'm not pointing fingers at the actors instead I'm just not satisfied with casting team. Jeon Do Yeon is rather a very skilled actress, even her latest movie Kill Boksoon was an amazing example of her skills.

At first, this show is really great! It's everything you want out of a rom-com k-drama. Likeable leads, nice flow, good acting, high production value. It's a bit heavy, but it's to make a point about the state of the insane educational environment currently prevalent in South Korea.

But, wow, when it starts to stray and put more focus on some of the other plotlines (around episode 10 I think it was), it gets real silly, real fast. It really loses all idea of what it's trying to say, and common sense flies entirely out the window in the process. Side characters become complete caricatures, situations become super forced. In particular, the first hour of the finale is wretched. It is, in all seriousness, truly insultingly bad. Literally everyone starts acting completely out of character, in an attempt to create as much random drama as possible when one can only assume they had completely run out of ideas and are trying to fill time until they can get to the proper wrap-up.

Anyway, overall it's worth watching, because it really is quite good for a while, but you might find yourself rolling your eyes a lot as it enters the stretch run, as I did.

Felt compelled to leave my first review ever.

There's something so deeply satisfying about this story and these characters. It makes you want to stay with them long after the episodes are over. You're going to fall head over heels for Nam Haeng-Seon, her cosy side dishes resto, her tightly knit family and her friendship with her best friend. You're also going to get sucked into the drama and competitive attitudes of high school students, their teachers and their parents.

It's also refreshing to see comedy and tender feelings of romance between the lead pair who are in their 40s and 50s respectively. I've watched some UH-MAY-ZING romances before, for some reason this just tops everything, even crash landing on you, something in the rain, hometown cha cha cha. Hometown cha cha cha may be a close second though.

Can't recommend this enough. Had to leave a review because 7 episodes are already out and i can't believe no one's left a review yet.

I wasn't really interested in watching this, the title made me think it'd be too cheesy. But the title in Korean would have been something like "Top Scandal" instead of Romance so anyway I decided to watch and I'm glad it wasn't just focused on the romance part. By reading the comments here I see that some people find it weird that the female lead was older and "looked like it". That's insulting in so many levels. And more importantly, it happens in real life that people look their age and sometimes they get in relationships with younger people. Both male and female. So that was refreshing to see.

The whole drama managed to include Sky Castle-ish education issues, a mystery case, murder, suic*de (I never saw a trigger warning, maybe I missed it), and others, in just 16 episodes, so that's quite a feat. And that's why it wasn't boring.

The actors were all great, both young and old, as expected in Korean series. If only they spoke juust a bit faster. Watching it in faster speed helped.

Sometimes I was annoyed by how rude they spoke to the brother with Asperger's but I see no one mentioned it so I guess I'm overreacting.

All in all pretty good, and very unexpectedly so!

I like the concept of this series. It explores the academic situation for many teens in South-Korea, especially the darker side of it; all the stress and competitiveness. I really enjoyed that part. The storyline was quite unique as well. The romance was also enjoyable, especially when there were multiple couples to root for.

As many have said, it felt like the crime part of this series started to take over about halfway. I did like the thriller side of the story, but it could have been better balanced with the romance story. I also feel like some of the side characters' stories were left unfinished at the end. This is truly a shame since some of their stories were really interesting.