With Eyes East

Episodes 10-12, the finale

Food so good you’ll lose your mind! Or regain it

My girl almost got away with it, too. I know, you can’t have everything. Or can you? This is the funny thing about K-dramas, that the endings are so critical, it adds an extra layer of tension to the viewing. “Please don’t screw it all up!” It makes sense, though. Because K-dramas are, by default, limited to one season, there’s an actual expectation of a narrative conclusion, unlike in American television (where shows are either canceled prematurely or go on so long they drift off into incoherence). Thematically, there’s also an aspect of wish fulfillment. A show like Bon Appétit, Your Majesty is a romantic fantasy following the template of countless fantasies before it. We know all the beats – and we anticipate them – so laid down and preserved for their dramatic potential. Without a doubt, one of those beats is the officiation of the romance, however that takes shape (I don’t even have the term for it). The audience proxy, in this case Royal Chef Ji-yeong, lives this fantasy of winning over the palace one-by-one with her masterful cooking skills, including the scary-sexy King Yi Heon, with whom she eventually falls in love. Why shouldn’t she be able to hold onto that love, too?

Unfortunately for Ji-yeong, there’s plenty standing in her way. Immediately following her big victory at the Ming contest, she’s swept back into the life-or-death stakes of palace politics, accused of poisoning the young Prince Jinmyeong. If she can’t prove her innocence in three days, she’ll be tortured to death. This outrages Yi Heon, of course, though his hypocrisy is subtly thrown back in his face by the good eunuch Chang Seon. He may not like that Ji-yeong is locked up in a cage, but it’s the very same one he’d put her in when she first arrived. This is another complication for the romance, and it’s the question that propels us through the last stretch of the show: will Yi Heon become the treacherous king remembered by history (based on the real-world King Yeonsan), or can Ji-yeong convince him not to give in to his violent impulses – even to save her life? The final complication, of course, is that Ji-yeong is from the future, and she’d like to see her dad again, but that would mean leaving Yi Heon and all her new friends, like Song-jae and the court lady/food taster Choi! Well, a rapidly rising body count might solve that last problem.

I’d almost forgotten that Bon Appétit was a K-drama, because by the time it arrives at the most outward tropes, like “We have to hide our relationship” and the previously put-together male lead practically tripping over himself to express his love, they feel like a natural outgrowth of what’s come before. I especially like the small breaches of protocol in this environment so rich with decorum and rituals, as when Ji-yeong serves the royal meal for the first time after being bailed out by Queen Dowager In-ju. Usually, she and Choi are led into the chamber and it’s a whole production, but this time, Yi Heon pokes his head out through a side door and runs over to embrace her. Later on, to absolve Ji-yeong of the poisoning, he tastes her food first to prove that it’s safe, which is dangerous and, I suppose, unbecoming. Wouldn’t you know it, but the dastardly Consort Mok-ju was responsible, which had me terribly worried that she’d end up in the torture chair next. She manages to tie up loose ends, however, proving that loyalty to backstabbers doesn’t always pay. Who would’ve thought?

Look at how evil

It did take everyone a little too long to figure it out between only two suspects, one of whom has nothing to gain from killing the young prince. Still, Bon Appétit, Your Majesty manages to keep a lot of balls in the air like this, with numerous, overlapping conspiracies and their own cascading contingencies. Even in my favorite K-dramas, like Search: WWW and Cheer Up!, the “A and B plots” don’t have much to do with each other, and here, they’re intertwined. Prince Jesan’s ultimate plan is to get Yi Heon to lose his temper and kill everyone, which would allow him to overthrow the apparent tyrant with a rebel force standing by. In-ju’s 70th birthday banquet provides the perfect stage for this coup. The plan is actually pretty solid because it wouldn’t be the first time that Yi Heon’s committed a violent purge, and to kick things off, Jesan need only reveal the truth. In-ju did arrange, along with other court officials, for Yi Heon’s mother to be deposed and killed – force-fed poison. When that truth comes out, and a sword-wielding Yi Heon stands before In-ju, I’d say his revenge is justified. But if he kills her, he’ll be next. What’s gonna stop him, Ji-yeong? Only our next line item on the check list: “I love you.”

Perfect. It’s so over-the-top and thrilling and consistent with the show’s heightened atmosphere, which exists inside a sort of controlled ridiculousness. To my surprise, though, this only slows Yi Heon down. Ji-yeong has to feed his biological grandmother, brought forth by Jesan to babble about his mother’s fate, with chocolate that restores her sanity (in case you thought the “ridiculous” claim was too harsh). Speaking of Search: WWW, this is Ye Soo-jung, playing a much different character here. If there’s any major exception I’d take to Bon Appétit, it’s probably the pacing, making it hardly unique among K-dramas. There’s the needling play with time, as when Prince Jinmyeong is seizing after having taken the antidote without a full stomach, and Ji-yeong’s offer to cook a meal (that would take forever!) sparks an argument with the two queen dowagers – and then she goes and cooks the meal. Then there’s the redundant beats, like requiring multiple resolutions to quell Yi Heon’s vengeful anger, and some of the battle scenes to come.

With the banquet massacre a bust, Prince Jesan puts his second, riskier plot into motion: just kill everyone that Yi Heon was supposed to kill, and blame it on him. He’s able to move Yi Heon out of the palace by capturing Song-jae and nearly Ji-yeong, if not for Gong-gil’s intervention. You know, we’ve spent so much time on political intrigue that poor Gil-geum never got her own romance subplot with the handsome jester. If only you guys knew how successful this show would be, you could’ve done 16 episodes instead of 12 – budget notwithstanding. Jesan then proceeds to murder or have murdered several people, including Song-jae’s father, Song-jae himself, and even Court Lady Choi! With her death, I knew exactly where this was going. Come on, guys. This is Avengers: Infinity War. They can kill whoever they want because Ji-yeong is gonna come back through time and reset everything. She’ll point a finger at Jesan, prevent Yi Heon from being a tyrant, and they’ll jump back into the future together, probably with Gil-geum. That would be a fine ending!

It would not, however, be historically accurate. As I’ve noted before, Korean film and television does not have a science fiction tradition, which harms me greatly. A time travel story like Bon Appétit exists in a vacuum where “A Sound of Thunder” and, I guess, The Butterfly Effect, are never mentioned. Still, the rules are the same, albeit for different reasons. It would be weird if Ji-yeong changed a bunch of stuff in the past and then returned to 2025 and we had flying cars and Jessica was still part of Girls’ Generation. Like, that’s not what the show is doing. Yi Heon will still be remembered by history as a tyrant, but only because Prince Jesan succeeds in framing him that way. It’s a very clever resolution that effectively sidesteps a counterfactual debate about how much individuals can alter history. If you were to time-travel and kill Hitler before he came to power, would there still be Nazis? This isn’t to say that that’s what the show is doing, either, but it is grappling with the idea that none of its players in the palace drama – Yi Heon, In-ju, even Jesan – are entirely morally good or bad. Jesan is trying to prevent tyranny after all, though only by means of tyranny.

Yi Heon survives the assassination but cedes the throne to the newly crowned Jinmyeong. He will, however, kill Jesan before he can influence the boy. This leads to a battle between Jesan’s forces and the survivors of Yi Heon’s loyalists, joined by the royal kitchen and finally by the inventor Jang Chun-saeng, who’s cooked up explosives. It’s a bit silly to see the cooks involved in combat – Ji-yeong included – but I suppose they needed to adapt their roles to this new plot thread. Can’t solve everything with food, though I’m impressed how far it’s gotten them. Jesan’s men are killed, but the scoundrel manages to capture Ji-yeong and tells Yi Heon to meet him somewhere else, alone. I don’t know, I felt like that was somewhat awkward. It’s a screenwriting trick, changing locations to reset the clock on scenes which aren’t supposed to run longer than a few minutes. K-dramas tend to bend and break that rule, though, so it was probably a production matter, that they didn’t want all the cast just standing around for the climax.

Ji-yeong finds herself bound for perhaps the last time, in this Joseon world where women are trafficked as part of international diplomacy and the road to power begins in the harem. Fortunately, we’re getting close to that fateful moment when Ji-yeong goes back to the future, but who will come with her? Gil-geum’s already disqualified herself by saying that if Ji-yeong had zapped back to her own time, that’d be okay. But what about Yi Heon, who truly has nothing left? In fact, history states that he dies shortly after his exile. I did appreciate, in the scene of his being escorted out of the palace, that Jesan asks Mok-ju why she looks troubled, and actress Kang Han-na looks over at him while simultaneously rolling her eyes. The character is in her bones. In her final moments, Mok-ju tries to kill herself instead of granting Gong-gil his revenge, but it doesn’t take right away. Spiteful, to the last. Anyway, Ji-yeong learns that Mangunrok is the journal that Yi Heon has been keeping, recording all the meals she’s prepared over their tumultuous time together. After she’s slashed by Jesan, the book takes her back as Yi Heon cries out. He’s not going with her, but he did promise that he’d find her again somehow.

I have felt guilty these past couple of days, as this site has seen an increase in traffic – specifically the last report on this show, entitled “K-Drama Report: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, Part II.” That’s exactly what might come up in a google search of news (or reports) about a second season (or part two). But that’s been my naming convention for these posts from the start. I assume that once the reader sees it isn’t a news article but a bloviating review thing, they go back or try another search. So much to say, I’m not trying to trick anyone into reading these, because I don’t believe that works. Now I’m just getting a bunch of inflated stats that don’t matter anyway because I’m not monetizing this site, despite the copious, intrusive ads. “PetMeds”? Get 20% off pet essentials with code NC20? What even is that? No, I heard PetMeds is funded by a Satanic cult, so don’t use it. Anyway, I know people are googling about a continuation to this story because K-dramas end when the relationship begins. It’s no different here, and that relationship is full of intriguing questions.

Back in the present day, Ji-yeong tries desperately to return to the past, but nothing is working. A month later, she reluctantly takes a job to run the kitchen of an upscale restaurant, and overhauls the menu with the taste of Joseon. And then the magic happens. The kitchen staff? It’s the old gang. Min and Maeng (who I could barely tell apart the whole time, though I remembered Min from getting wrecked by Jun Ji-hyun in the Kingdom prequel), and Bong-sik, though these are not their names in 2025. “Descendants?” Ji-yeong wonders. But why do they look the same? And sweet Gil-geum is here, too, and man, I would’ve loved to have seen what their new dynamic was like. Interestingly, Song-jae returns, as a man fraudulently posing as a Michelin judge. It takes the intervention of a breathy young man to save the day, none other than the real King Yi Heon himself, here dressed in a modern, black suit, but still speaking of swords and “how dare you?” Yep, that’s definitely him.

Yi Heon fulfills his promise to cook the bibimbap which was Ji-yeong’s first meal for him, way back when Gil-geum was ducking the authorities and the throne was but a twinkle in Jesan’s eye. It’s 2025 again, and that means Ji-yeong and Yi Heon’s story is over. It leaves us with a tantalizing glimpse into what this relationship would be like, and I’m left with just enough to be satisfied. “What a cute story,” I think, apparently forgetting the dozens of bodies left in its wake. Still, it was clever enough in construction not to touch the sharp edges of playing with bloody history, either saying that you can change a man but you can’t change the world or saying nothing at all. This was a romance set against an epic, period backdrop, where the usual love confessions and even PDA reliably have a gasping audience, lending additional weight to the proceedings.

That’s not something I want every time, but I really liked it in Bon Appétit, Your Majesty. Through its middle section, I was thrilled, and in the dramatic climax, I was fascinated by the interlocking click of so many building tensions. In any K-drama, the male lead will take on the world for his girl, but the tyrant king of Joseon actually would. The resolution doesn’t rewrite history (too much), but it did allow Yoona and Lee Chae-min to shine, from moments of desperation, grief, howling anger, and finally, catharsis. And I’m not too bent over Mok-ju’s fate. That was probably the best I could’ve asked for.