Summary
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty gets a little more serious in Episode 5 without abandoning its lighter elements, helping to weave the politics and history into the romance and foodie stuff.
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty has been pretty knockabout so far, but the margins have always contained a much more serious show. Time travel is a fun novelty, and the idea of trying to keep a petulant king in check using only French fusion food is quite silly as an underlying idea. But it’s also about tyranny and abuses of power, about revenge and complex royal politics. Episode 5, which is approaching the halfway point of a show that will ultimately clock in at a gargantuan length given these episode runtimes, embraces this a little more than the last two.
Shenanigans aside, though, the core of the drama is easy enough to keep track of. There’s a blossoming romance between Ji-young and Yi Heon that is complicated by their radically different stations, tons of backstabbing at court, and the small matter of Ji-young being from the present day, in possession of knowledge about Yi Heon’s bloody future that lends a Sword of Damocles quality to the narrative. Yet the heart – and indeed the stomach – wants what it wants.
Episode 5 finds Ji-young still smarting from the king having made a move on her in his drunken stupor, and takes it out on the ingredients she makes for his hangover breakfast since she can’t exactly take it out on him. She has enough on her plate with Gil-geum having been hurt by, supposedly, a court lady, who, according to Gong-gil, might have been the same person who killed his sister.
The hook of this episode is Yi Heon deciding to sequester himself away and swear off meals, a decision caused by the stress of having to placate an envoy of the Ming Dynasty, who wants all of the Joseon empire’s ginseng root, then having to talk his advisors out of donating half of the treasury as a tribute for the same, and then Jang-gyun being found collapsed and subsequently going missing. Politically, things are a real mess, and Yi Heon decides he doesn’t want to talk to anyone or eat anything, but of course, he isn’t quite so keen to avoid Ji-young herself.
Through Episode 5 of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, Yi-heon pines for Ji-young’s cooking more and more, but is he actually pining for her company? Either way, the fast doesn’t last especially long. The title of this episode, “Snowflake Schnitzel”, is our usual clue of what food Ji-young prepares for the ruler in the most grandiose dish, which is just as well in this case, as Yi-Heon has been advised against cold food by the doctor. This makes Mok-ju’s chill chicken dish a washout, only earning Ji-young more ire for her culinary talents winning the king’s favour – so much so that he offers her a gift.
Sung-jae wonders if this gift might be lavish, and advises the perfect offering – Ji-young’s bag, which she desperately needs but didn’t ask for to avoid Consort Kang from doing anything rash with it (Kang, as ever, spends most of this episode fuming). It’s a double victory for Ji-young, who gets the bag back and gets access to the freshest of ingredients for subsequent meals. Naturally, this results in some flirtatious hugging and falling, since you’ve got to have that kind of thing, but it also neatly sets up the premise of the next episode. Since the Ming Dynasty envoy is a snob who won’t eat Joseon food, Ji-young is going to have the responsibility of preserving the empire’s reputation by rustling up something delicious.
It’s enough to be going on with, I think. There’s still a slapstick-y element to Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, which can sometimes chafe against the more serious political and historical elements, but here in Episode 5, that balance seems to be achieved a little better, and you can see how the show might well be moving into more engaging dramatic territory. The focus remains the food, of course, but there’s plenty going on elsewhere if you’re looking for it.
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