My favorite Kdrama song so far has come from this series. I am a bird, yo, now cook me some fries! How you make a song with such weirdly shallow lyrics so beautiful I will never know, but it's absolutely stunning to my rock-beaten eardrums.

The Kdrama itself has such a deep, expansive, and compelling storyline. The lead actor is exactly perfect for this role, he's basically a world-wise older brother who quietly, slowly, but persistently moves through life past every failure to success. The lead actress, at first I thought she was a side-character. Her character is both fun and annoying, she's a legit shallow brat at the start. But her character arc is exceptionally well executed and she ends up being the anchor for the entire drama. The actress delivers an absolutely masterful performance that has such a broad range from child to brat to growth to powerhouse. Both the main leads have such growth and intelligent story arcs that you feel like you are watching people actually progress through life. The whole thing was really well done.

I went into this drama like...wtf Itaewon Class?? I don't want to watch a school drama...I don't want to watch a cooking drama...meh this sounds boring. But it got such good ratings I decided to give it a shot. Boy is it nothing like its title. It's not a story about cooking, and definitely not a story about cooking, it's an inspirational story of overcoming absolutely devastating life challenges. Not by supernatural ability or even astounding talent...they overcome every challenge by sheer force of will and dogged persistence. It feels like it's a story about actual people that could actually exist.

The best part about this drama is watching the growth of the lead and side characters. You're anchored by the male lead and you watch as the other leads and side characters like water moving around a rock in the river. They are often so far from where he is at every step, and yet he brings them all into his gravitational pull and they end up with such a deep cohesion that you literally want to be one of the planets orbiting the sun that is the lead.

Dude does have the worst haircut of all time. Couldn't avoid mentioning that. Someone at some point needed to take this dude to a barber in the show so we'd all get to stop looking at that truly disastrous fringe. I didn't knock any points off for the bad hair though, since clearly it fit with the character's personality....but come on...