Summary
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty finally turns the drama up in Episode 11, and cooking competitions seem a thing of the distant past.
It’s Episode 11, aka the penultimate instalment of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, and finally, the K-Drama is starting to act like a show with some pretty significant threads to wrap up that can’t afford to waste three episodes on a cooking contest (yes, I’m still going on about that.) Last time out, I could sense the key themes really emerging, and those are what calcify here. The big question, essentially, is whether what we’re watching is a drama about the inevitability of history or the magical-realist conceit of love and a time-travel gimmick rewriting destiny.
The jury’s still out. But with Yi Heon having finally learned the details surrounding the death of his beloved mother, it’s all a little up in the air. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that the importance of food will be overshadowed by that, and in a way it is, but there’s also plenty of foodie stuff going on here, mandating the usual caveat of staying away from this show when you’re hungry.
We left things, you’ll recall, with Yi Heon asking Ji-young to remain behind in his timeline rather than returning home. That’s obviously a pretty big request, one she doesn’t feel like she can fulfil, but she also wants him to promise that he won’t become a tyrant, which is, similarly, a big ask if that’s what you’re into. But it’s tabled for the meantime since it’s the Dowager Queen Mother’s birthday and a lavish banquet needs to be prepared, a task made slightly more complex by the fact that she no longer eats meat.
A cuisine conundrum in the midst of potentially history-shaping drama isn’t necessarily the most riveting thing – soybeans, really? – but it’s par for the course at this point. Besides, it’s more about the attendant stuff, like Consort Kang wishing the queen well and claiming that the whole poisoning debacle was nothing to do with her, and Prince Jesan saying sorry for the gochujang palaver and being told to resign as penance, that sort of thing. Sure, the soybean meat goes down a treat, but everything Ji-young touches, culinary-wise, turns to gold. The king also does a dance with a big, dramatic face reveal like he’s on Britain’s Got Talent or something.
Bon Appetit, Your Majesty Episode 11 sends things spiralling when Yi Heon learns the truth of his mother being deposed and poisoned, sending him a bit mad, unsheathing swords and threatening murder and trying to kill the Dowager Queen Mother. In a bit of a reach, Ji-young’s fast thinking is once again food-related, with a bit of chocolate lending enough lucidity to the situation to calm the king down and remind him of his mother’s desire for him to become a sage king. But it also reminds him of the grief of her loss, which he never got over in the first place, so you know… swings and roundabouts.
This is, as Ji-young rightly points out, not the first weirdly-timed problematic event, given the whole debacle with Jinmyeong’s poisoning, and she’s right in the sense that Jesan and his conspirators are in the full swing of attempting to overthrow Yi Heon. This leads to the death of Seong-jae’s dad, who overhears something he shouldn’t, and the capture of Seong-jae and Ji-young, the latter’s cap being left behind as a summons for Yi Heon.
Jesan then goes on a killing spree, offing the Dowager Queen Mother and anyone nearby who might side with the king. Since he’s disguised – he’s wearing the mask that the king earlier danced in – the murder of the queen mother is blamed on Yi Heon, who was seen to be going nuts earlier. It’s a pretty good plan. The king himself is lured out into the forest and almost killed, saved only by the heroic self-sacrifice of Seong-jae.
As for Ji-young, she’s rescued by Gong-gil, but then spotted while the two of them attempt to flee the palace, which has now been completely overrun by conspirators. Things are looking rather hairy, and it’s getting pretty easy to see how the line between sage king and vengeful tyrant can be rather thin, and somewhat misremembered by historical accounts (history being, as we know, generally written by the victors).
There’s only one episode left, folks. Can Bon Appetit, Your Majesty somehow contrive a happy ending in the face of all this peril?
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