[Drama 2013/2014] Let’s Eat (식사를 합시다)

[czakhareina]

Eating vicariously?

By Chung Ah-young | April 8 2014 koreatimes
Yoon Hoo, the son of singer Yoon Min-soo, was catapulted to stardom by “eating voraciously” on MBC’s high-rating reality show “Where Are We Going, Dad?” Choo Sa-rang, the daughter of Korean-Japanese combat sports star Choo Sung-hoon, is winning the hearts of viewers mainly for her “eating” scenes on KBS’s variety program “Superman Returns.” Ha Jung-woo is often portrayed as an actor who is good at “meokbang,” a new broadcasting term in Korean, which means “eating well” on screen.
Watching someone eat on TV is becoming a bizarre trend in Korea. As “meokbang” gives viewers vicarious pleasure, a growing number of TV shows are competitively obsessed with providing eating scenes.
First aired in November, a cable drama series “Let’s Eat” on tvN, the first of its kind, has been gaining popularity. The show features the eating scenes of characters who live alone. Based on romance and everyday routines, the drama portrays the female character played by Lee Soo-kyung relishing eating. In the drama, Lee plays the role of a 33-year-old divorcee who is happy to be living alone. One of her pleasures is food. Goo Dae-young played by Yoon Doo-joon, a member of K-pop group BEAST, is another foodie who lives alone too.
Park Joon-hwa, producer of the drama, said that Korean dramas have lots of eating scenes in which conflict erupts or settles down. “The drama focuses on building relationships between strangers through having a meal and ultimately relieving their solitude. It portrays the process of how people improve relations via food,” he said.
“The Hungry Woman,” based on the eponymous webtoon, deals with a single woman’s life in her 30s and connects it with food. It has so far had more than 3.2 million views on Naver’s TV cast. Yoon Sung-ho, director of the film, said that the recent trend is adding eating scenes to the ordinary story. “Isolated individuals find consolation by seeing others eating. Meokbang is a symptom of our society’s loneliness,” Yoon said.
The recent fad in watching someone eating is attributed to an increasing number of the one-person households in Korea. According to Statistics Korea, one-person households represented 9.1 percent of the total in 1990, 12.9 percent in 1995, 15.7 percent in 2000, 20.2 percent in 2005, and 24.2 percent in 2010.
The steep rise is attributed to the increasing number of young singles in their 20s and 30s who leave their parents, as well as those who don’t marry or get divorced along with the elderly who survive their spouses. Cultural critics said that those who live alone feel loneliness and find more vicarious pleasure by seeing someone eating.
The trend was provoked by Afreeca TV, the online channel, which aired the live-streaming service of eating enormous amounts of foods by its broadcasting jockey since 2009.
CNN reported in February that the show hosted by Park Seo-yeon airs hours-long eating scenes. After eating various kinds of large quantities of food such as pizza or beef, Park talks to her fans in a chat room which accompanies her live-stream channel.
“A lot of my viewers are on diet and they say they live vicariously through me, or they are hospital patients who only have access to hospital food so they also watch my broadcasts to see me eat. Fans who are on a diet say that they like eating vicariously through me,” CNN quoted Park as saying.
The program’s fans are mostly women and her show is more popular with women than with men.
CNN also quoted professor Park Sung-hee of Ewha University’s Division of Media Studies as saying that for Koreans, eating is an extremely social, communal activity, explaining why the Korean word “sikgu” means “those who eat together.” And Koreans hate eating alone.
 
Following Japan?
 
For a long time, cooking and food have been a central element of fiction in Japanese TV dramas. Korean shows seem to follow Japanese social and cultural trends to some degree.
In the 2000s, Japan’s NTV aired “Food Fight,” a popular drama series, based on an eating competition, and revolving around love and friendship. Also, “Late Night Diner,” which was first broadcast in 2009, deals with customers who come to a restaurant which opens at midnight. In the drama, people with diverse stories share them with others while eating.
Also, “Lonesome Gourmets” began airing its season 3 in 2012, and “Ms Hana’s Cooking” portrays a housewife’s cooking recipe, while “Just Eating” focuses on the eating binges of a man and a woman.
However, this is a cultural difference compared with TV shows from Western countries. On Western TV, cooking or food on screen is basically nonfictional, usually seen in teaching how-to-cook to the audience, except for cases in which characters gather to eat in a certain restaurant or bar.

[traciecullen]

Hello~ have u gals watched the special episode w/ english sub yet? If yes, can u give me a link where// Thanks!
Found photos w/o watermark from coffeemrkim:)

[Guest evykdramafan]

hello to everyone! 
I love this drama!!! I've become a kdrama fanatic all over again bec of this...I also become YDJ and LSK fanatic to the point of loving and watching all their previous dramas/performance ( YDJ as member of BEAST)...And I couldn't believe that I just finished reading this entire thread and loved all the photos, topics and BTS vids...
I miss Let's EAt already and I even dream of season 2! if its possible...


:-h :-h

[Guest kawaiiyuki]

I actually really loved the drama.It had a different tone which i liked. I mean it still had the kdrama romance but,how can you not throw it in there. Too bad we don't really know which restaurants they ate at cause it would be fun to check it out since they most likely exist. I think this drama will be one i'd watch again on a rainy day.

[stewiefg]

Hello everyone, long time no speak! Did you see this piece of news??? Keep fingers X that they can reunite the original cast! 
http://www.dramabeans.com/2014/06/who-wants-a-second-helping-of-lets-eat/

[Guest trotwood]

@stewiefg Yes, I saw that, too.  I had seen a rumor about it on twitter before, and then I saw the dramabeans post.  I am not sure how I would feel if they turn this into a franchise like I Need Romance or the Answer Me shows.  I want to go back with this particular group of people. I miss them.  In the first I Need Romance, I was so mad the way it ended that I was perfectly happy for another one.  And the Answer Me shows seem pretty well wrapped up, so moving on to different groups did not bother me either.  But this group of characters?  I could so see them in another season of a show.

[grapefruit7]

OH this will be great!!! hi buddy @stewiefg u really bring out a good news to me!

[Guest adikkeluangman]

Yoon Doo Joon wears Basic Knit Grey by BESLOW in this scene.

[Guest adikkeluangman]

Yoon So Hee wear knitted sweater by Kosoyoung in this scene from drama Let's Eat.

[Guest kawaiiyuki]

stewiefg said: Hello everyone, long time no speak! Did you see this piece of news??? Keep fingers X that they can reunite the original cast! 
http://www.dramabeans.com/2014/06/who-wants-a-second-helping-of-lets-eat/

[Guest adikkeluangman]

Yoon So Hee wears winter jacket by Kosoyoung in this scene.

[hmmmgood]

Today I did a google search for Let's Eat season 2 and found this on the Viki website.  I'm pretty certain it was put up recently.  There's not much information beyond a projected early 2015 broadcast for now.

http://www.viki.com/tv/24330c-lets-eat-season-2

I hope SoompiTV will air the second season.  In case Soompi doesn't try for the license, remember to submit a request form on Viki.  Hopefully, someone  licenses the show.

[stewiefg]

hmmmgood said: Today I did a google search for Let's Eat season 2 and found this on the Viki website.  I'm pretty certain it was put up recently.  There's not much information beyond a projected early 2015 broadcast for now.

http://www.viki.com/tv/24330c-lets-eat-season-2

I hope SoompiTV will air the second season.  In case Soompi doesn't try for the license, remember to submit a request form on Viki.  Hopefully, someone  licenses the show.

[hmmmgood]

stewiefg said: Thanks, that's great news! I have been waiting to hear about Let's Eat Season 2 for some time. Especially when they raised the possibility about tvN's Liar Game Season 2, I wondered, hey, what happened to all that talk about tvN's Let's Eat? When I was in Seoul a couple of months ago enjoying the fabulous food, I was thinking of Let's Eat too

[Guest neuhaus9889]

Can't wait to watch the season 2 for this one! I remember going to Ktown restaurants almost every week when this show was aired haha. 

[hmmmgood]

@neuhaus9889 - If you haven't already, you should try the variety show, Three Meals a Day, on TVN.  I get hungry watching them cook and eat. 

[stewiefg]

Hey All, Dramabeans just posted an article on Let's Eat Season 2
http://www.dramabeans.com/2014/12/lets-eat-2-heads-to-mondays-and-tuesdays-this-spring/

Excerpts from the post:'Yay, some good news from tvN — Let’s Eat has secured a timeslot for its second season, and the show will move from its once-a-week slot on Thursdays, to Mondays and Tuesdays this coming spring.' Yippee!!!

And'None of the dramas has been cast yet, and that’s the one sticking point with me and Let’s Eat 2, since we still don’t know if they’re looking to do a multi-season show with the same core cast a la Rude Miss Young-ae, or do a spinoff with a whole new cast. While I’d much prefer a continuation of the original story (because the characters are what I liked about the first season), I have a feeling it’s way too easy to recast a new version of a show like this, where the concept — tasty food, natch — is so plug-and-play. The second season will reportedly begin casting soon. C’mon, Lee Soo-kyung and Yoon Doo-joon — you know you wanna!'
Yes, please, please keep the original cast! They were fab!! Plus, there remains unanswered questions about who was stealing all the mail in the block....hehe.

[Guest sihams]

wow its good news about season 2 , i hope not changing the cast

[Guest neuhaus9889]

hmmmgood said: @neuhaus9889 - If you haven't already, you should try the variety show, Three Meals a Day, on TVN.  I get hungry watching them cook and eat. 

[yongshinforever20]

@stewiefg Yes, I saw that, too.  I had seen a rumor about it on twitter before, and then I saw the dramabeans post.  I am not sure how I would feel if they turn this into a franchise like I Need Romance or the Answer Me shows.  I want to go back with this particular group of people. I miss them.  In the first I Need Romance, I was so mad the way it ended that I was perfectly happy for another one.  And the Answer Me shows seem pretty well wrapped up, so moving on to different groups did not bother me either.  But this group of characters?  I could so see them in another season of a show.

Boy,am I late! I had no idea about this! That's just amazing amazing amazing! But it's the end of December and there's no news about another season as yet? I really hope that they did not give up on the idea. Also, like all of you guys I hope that it's the same cast.I mean what would let's eat be without shikshanim? Unless ofcourse they find a perfect cast like they did in reply 1994.I guess I wouldn't mind then, but the story line too should be just just as awesome as the first series. If they do plan on doing the drama with the same cast,I'm hoping to see a development between Jin Yi's and the delivery boys (sorry, I have forgotten his name) relationship. They were way tooo cute!