The Life of Mrs. Ock (2024)

One of the Best Dramas I have Watched

The drama is an emotional rollercoaster. Every episode is a thrilling ride full of twists and turns which keeps you on the edge wanting more.
The romance is sweet and just enough given the setting.
It has a lot of interesting characters each having a story to tell and everyone's story arc is carved out with perfection.
This drama make you smile, cry, excited. It also talks about a lots of issues during that period.
It an amazing drama that you would definitely wanna rewatch.
There are no filler minutes forget filler episodes in the entire drama.
I feel every characters storyline is made meaningful.
The actors do a great job in making you fall in love with their characters.
The OST is good. I initially started the drama because of Lim Ji Yeon as I don't usually watch historical dramas but I am glad I did
100% Recommended

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drop-worthy drama full to the brim with contrivances

let me start by the conclusion. I would have dropped this one by the second or third episode max, and the reason why I didn't might sound strange to some people, but I just continued watching because I had done the mistake of batch-downloading the whole drama, so I didn't want the bandwidth and memory space to go to waste, so I kind of just pushed myself to finish the whole thing.

the story here despite being original on paper was executed simply put; badly.

first off, it is a story that has to resort time and time again to some over the top unbelievable plot points that constantly require the viewer to commit to some strong levels of suspension of disbelief, but above all the biggest point that ruined the story for me was unfortunately that it relied on a romance plot that felt contrived.

the writers pushed onto the viewer a love story that was at best not allowed to mature properly on screen; but rather it felt like a dish that was taken out of the oven still uncooked or even cold and shoved in our face selling it as one of the best epic love stories, of two star-crossed lovers battling different social statuses and a horrible cast system.

I mean I personally watched their first encounter thinking to myself that I was looking forward to how their coming interactions would progress until it develops into romance, but then suddenly we are made to accept the fact that that first meeting was nothing short of a life-altering moment for the ages especially for the ML, despite the fact that it felt lackluster at best . Just a few moments after that first encounter, the ML is gazing at the stars reminiscing about the FL and how he had somehow fell head over heels for the disguised slave, just cause of the fact that she opened his eyes to the role of art and entertainment in the lives of commoners and poor folks, an epiphany which later helped inspire his life's mission or whatever.

I mean I get that they were portraying it as love at first sight, but it wasn't just that I could barely buy their initial attraction , just after a couple of interactions with her supposedly changed him to the point that despite the fact that he was portrayed as a spoilt brat who didn't care for education, he was willing to give up all of his final pocket money after being disowned by his father in order to stop slave hunters from searching for the FL whom he'd only ever met a couple of times and who had run away to escape persecution, no they went even a step further and made him infatuated by her for years and dreaming of only her, but the most frustrating part was that when they finally met years later he was acting as if he knew her and her character thoroughly and was even wishing she would be true to herself, I was almost screaming at the screen "how the he'll do you claim to know her character when you've only ever met a bunch of times briefly?!".

You could tell the writers were unsure the viewers were sold on how deep and genuine their feels to each other were, they had to constantly make us listen to him narrating that lazily written boring story of how they met and how the lost noble fell for the female slave disguised as a man who taught him the deep lesson of how people are just too sad and miserable they enjoy any half assed show they can watch, and that' moment helped him to realize his true calling was in being an entertainer. I reached a point were I was rolling and my eyes and fast-forwarding whenever that tale was mentioned.

I do not wish to blame the actors for how I never felt for their romance story on screen (though to be honest I never managed to feel any chemistry between them, maybe barely during the last couple of episodes) and I do believe that if the trajectory of their relationship had taken a less sudden steep increase like it did, and we were allowed more screen time of their encounters prior to her running away and them separating, maybe it would have served the romance more. but maybe then we would have blamed her for so readily accepting a marriage proposal from her first crush's lookalike, so that's a whole other point. Maybe that was why their encounter felt so rushed, they had to make her think that he wasn't THAT into her, so she wouldn't be stuck at the memory of him.

to be honest it would have helped a lot if the first couple of episodes didn't feel so rushed, like the writers were feeling anxious and wanting to haste the story to the climax-worthy moment that would change our main characters fate and Kickstart her journey as a noble woman. don't know if maybe it was out of fear of losing the viewers before the main plot point was revealed or what, but man that first episode sure felt like riding a Rollercoaster that later felt like it almost suffered a crash.

The main plot is not bad per-se, it is fun to watch a rags-to-riches story that involved impersonating a person of a different social status, and the struggle to prove one's true worth and potential against all odds, but the methods and plot tools the writers took in order to move the story forward included a string of convoluted over the top convenient and unbelievable coincidences, chance encounters, perfect timings, and obviously unexplained cases of doppelgangers, it all felt so forced and contrived it was pure eye-rolling material requiring major suspension of disbelief. I mean there is a whole main character that was rendered but a mere story tool; only brought out and utilized when the writers have managed to push themselves in a corner with their plot and are struggling for a way out, and then he is kept to the side for another pinch. there were side characters that felt more fleshed out and endearing I was genuinely thankful for their existence in the story, not saying their parts were always equally engaging but at the very least they felt like a living person rather than a prop or device.

another thing that bothered me sometimes, is how the directing of certain scenes that aim at stirring the viewer's emotions whether in happiness or grief, tended to overdo it to the point it felt either cringe-inducing or flat. It is a waste to feel glad by a character's hard earned success only to have a whole village cheering and clapping, or to feel moved by the death of maybe one of the only characters that I genuinely liked, only to be met with a long scene of his apparition saying his farewells you almost feel emotionally- detached from the whole scene.

the production was overall good, great costume and prop design.

the music, nothing stuck with me, but I have one last grievance, they would use in some of the fluffy, comedic or romantic scenes this one cheesy beauty and the beast OST sounding track don't know if it is plagiarism or by design but it really annoyed me a lot.

overall the pacing of the story was off, the use of convenient coincidences was too much, the romance in the first half felt off at least in my own humble opinion, and all those points combined and other minor issues just destroyed the whole experience for me I find it hard to recommend to anyone.

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