K-Drama Rewind, Personal Taste: Lee Min-ho and Son Ye-jin’s delightful romance beats the messy plot

Personal Taste reflects exactly the kind of viewer who enjoys it: it’s personal preference, plain and simple. Is it everyone’s cup of tea? No. Are you getting profound, gut-punch storytelling that leaves you staring at the ceiling questioning life? Also no.

Starring Son Ye-jin and Lee Min-ho, this is a world of overcooked melodrama, slapstick antics, and the occasional dip into scatological humour. It can be unbelievably frustrating—especially if, like this author, you come in fresh from the actors’ far stronger body of work. More than once, you’ll find yourself muttering while the kettle boils: Really? This is how you’re ending it?

But it’s fine. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. You view it as the relationship that could have been something much more and had a lot of promise, but after you cross that six-month mark, you realise that it’s all fun and games, but you would really like something a lot more stable. It’s not me, it’s a you problem?

So, let’s get into it without too many spoilers. Perky Son Ye-jin plays Kae-in, a furniture designer and workaholic—a fact established in the very first episode, which opens with her sleeping on the floor after working through the night. Then there’s Lee Min-ho’s Jin-ho: bratty, arrogant, and her arch-enemy at first sight.

In a scenario that would almost never play out in the real world, the two get into a very public squabble, instantly signalling that this is an enemies-to-lovers tale. And honestly, who ever says no to that? Knowing exactly how much audiences eat up the trope, the show really leans in, piling on the hostility as both are part of rival firms bidding for the Dream Art Center contract. Jin-ho is relentlessly scathing toward Kae-in, and she fires back whenever she can.

In typical K-Drama style, she suffers heartbreak in the first episode itself, as always very conveniently and brutally, because, gasp! Her boyfriend is getting married to her best friend! So the path to Jin-ho is set; a series of more unfortunate misunderstandings and circumstances lead them to live under the same roof.

Yet, as they start living together and as annoying as it is to watch the age-old bumbling woman struggling to piece together her life with the help of a man, the characters are just so warm and loveable that you still do fall for them, despite the entirely predictable storytelling. Jin-ho’s polished cool begins to crack as he falls for Kae-in. It takes some bad shellfish, injuries and some emotional pep talk as Kae-in tries to run back to her ex-boyfriend, only to get burned again.

One of the best scenes of the show is when Kae-in tearfully asks, “Why does everyone think I’m such a pushover? What did I ever do that was so wrong? Why are you all making me so pathetic? Why?” Jin-ho doesn’t hold back and unswers that she is doing all this to herself.

Kae-in’s following speech hurts: “I’m just built like this, what can I do?”

It’s a quiet, painful moment, as both of them tear up while having this conversation.

Personal Taste is peppered with moments like these. You watch two unlikely, slightly batty people open up to each other, fall in love, break up — typically in Episode 15, of course — and by then, the interest begins to wear thin. Despite some unusual detours, like Kae-in tapping into her ‘erased’ memories, the show ultimately defaults to a painfully familiar rhythm.

The breakup is predictable; the reconciliation even more so. And it’s here that Kae-in effectively sets feminism back a hundred years, pleading, “You can betray me a thousand times, I will still love you.” It’s hard not to wonder: after everything she’s endured, has Kae-in actually had a character arc at all — or has the story simply bent her back into submission for the sake of romance?

Sigh. But, it’s fun. It’s also just pleasant to return to the good old days of pounding music and OST’s being the main character in a story.

Personal Taste is the kind of show you watch knowing full well it will test your patience — and then doing it anyway. It has charm, chemistry, and just enough warmth to keep you from switching it off, even as it quietly undoes its own progress. Enjoy it for what it is, question it for what it isn’t, and maybe don’t take its lessons on love too seriously.