I thought the cast for this was very strong, especially the three leads. Bong Soon and Min Hyuk have near fatal chemistry and that's the clear highlight of this drama. Bong Soon is adorable and Min Hyuk's mannerisms and romantic approach are overpowering. The rival character is also one of the strongest I've seen in this role, even if I had such a strong distaste for him early on. I don't care at all for love triangles but this one was relatively reasonable and well-acted.

The show has way, way too much comic relief and non-central character focus, to the point that I felt like every episode had nearly 10 minutes of filler. The comedy itself is often very lowest common denominator (don't get me started on the wine gag and loud is funny humor), though the main character centered comedy is pretty good. I'm also an opponent of overarching psycho pervert thriller-style conflict, though here it sort of makes sense given the comic-book/action movie premise. This conflict trope is extremely overused and very often distracts from what actually works for the central relationships. In my mind, Strong Woman Bong Soon should've been a more focused romcom with episodic villains; for instance, they should've made housing development and local thugs the central source of conflict - the show teases this possibility before diving into the thriller stuff. I think defeating villains and converting them to acquaintances/friends would work way better for the tone this show sets early than using the genius evil sicko. One example of why this fails - the main antagonist, despite the job he has, carries around basically tens if not hundreds of rolls of cash; honestly, if the plot needed it, I'm sure he would've had more money on hand than the ML. He's meant to be taken seriously but the overall presentation of his character doesn't make a lot of sense. The slice of life side of this show is undoubtedly the best part so the conflict should be on that level; as it is, there's a sharp divide between what works tonally and the conflict the show forces.

Also, I didn't like the use of wealth in this show (though I'm not a fan of this dynamic in general). Min Hyuk is a very young CEO entrepreneur-type who's absurdly wealthy and who uses it and its influence to basically coerce the main character to him. I don't like rich guy/poor girl dynamics because it leads to a lot of plot expedients and holes in logic. For instance, "if he is so rich, why didn't he do X, Y, and Z" that anyone with that money would do in the circumstance? Beyond such plotting problems, Bong Soon is also extremely economically dependent on her relationship's success to maintain her job. I think having a character be filthy rich actually robs us of layers that their personality could've taken on otherwise and, in this case, moves the relationship further towards the concerning side of the spectrum. I had to bracket off dimensions of their relationship to fully enjoy it, but Bong Soon as a character is so compelling that eventually the wealth problems fade a bit into the background.

Still, a lot of this could be ignored because the show doesn't take itself too seriously and aims mostly for fun over logic. Even so, I think the lack of a clear focus and the weak overarching conflict are major detriments. I would recommend this because it has so many features that one might connect to when watching. Even if I'm pretty critical above, it has a lot going for it at the character level.