Summary
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty feels bogged down by a subplot in Episode 7, and the pacing remains a real issue, even if everything else is decently compelling.
I’ll be the first to admit that I thought a cooking competition was a good idea for Bon Appetit, Your Majesty. It might still be. We wouldn’t know, since it still hasn’t happened yet. And thus, in a roundabout way, Episode 7 has come full circle and revealed the concept to be short-sighted. It would have made a nice one-off for a single episode – and even that would have been pushing it with these runtimes – but as the driving impetus for a good chunk of the season? Nobody cares that much, least of all me.
This isn’t a slight on the quality of the show itself. I still think a lot of it is really good! That makes the structure and pacing even more egregious, in a way, since we’ve got time to notice issues we ordinarily wouldn’t. The impulse to languish for the length of a feature film, even on a relatively standalone episode like this, feels self-indulgent. And that’s off-putting to me.
The general idea behind this episode is, I think, a really smart fusion of the show’s underpinning elements. Ji-young wants to cook a dish that requires a pressure cooker, which obviously hasn’t been invented yet, so she has to go on a little side quest-style excursion to find an inventor who can help. This obviously justifies Yi Heon tagging along, so you have a combination of everything – the time travel, the cooking, and the romance. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory.
But it’s in service of an episode that feels like a diversion, right in the middle of the season, with an event we’re looking forward to – we are, aren’t we? – being pushed frustratingly out of reach. I like the dynamic between Ji-young and the king, and the silly conceit of rice fired from a cannon raining down like they’re in a snowglobe, but this kind of thing would be a better supplement to something else rather than the actual main course.
There is a note of danger here in Bon Appetit, Your Majesty Episode 7, with plans being made to kill Ji-young while she’s away from the royal court, since it’s easier to explain away as some kind of tragic accident. The political plotting is always threatening to overwhelm everything else, and it’s a nice note that the Ming Dynasty representatives don’t really want to get involved with those shenanigans. But nobody’s really buying that Ji-young is in any danger, and the episode’s much more interested in the rom-com theatrics surrounding the pressure cooker.
And there’s that formula creeping in again, since the only way Ji-young can compel Chun-seng to make the cooker is – all together now – by cooking for him. Again, I like this show’s approach to food, and the culinary scenes are really well shot and presented, but this can’t be the solution to every problem every episode.
To be fair, it isn’t where the assassins are concerned. This injection of excitement is very welcome, even if there isn’t a great deal of legitimate jeopardy to it, and it gives a fun Home Alone quality to the proceedings. But the pressure cooker lid being the main casualty says a lot about the show’s priorities. Indeed, whether or not Ji-young will survive is obviously a less pressing concern than whether she’ll make it back in time for the competition. The question remains whether Bon Appetit, Your Majesty will commit to it in the next episode or put it off for another week, since at this point it’s impossible to tell. At least the Ming Dynasty chef seems pretty reasonable.
The table is laid either way. With Ji-young’s hand hurt and her secret ingredient exposed, her back is going to be against the wall during the cook-off, presuming it happens, but there’s little doubt in my mind that she’ll pull it off. Maybe, with a bit of luck, I’ll be surprised.
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