Perfect Crown

I started Perfect Crown because I was honestly curious about all the hate I’ve been seeing… and I don’t get it at all. The drama is actually so good. I’ve been in a K-drama slump for years, like I can’t even finish one episode without getting distracted. But this? I ended up watching two episodes in one sitting, which says a lot considering my attention span 😭
Both leads delivered. IU is, as expected, so good. She brings so much nuance and emotion to her character without overdoing it, she's fierce and so beautiful, that I have to take screenshots some of the scene 😌 And Byeon Wooseok really understood Lee Ahn his performance is controlled and layered, fitting a composed, repressed, and tragic prince perfectly.
The story is also fast-paced, which I love. It doesn’t drag, and it keeps you engaged the whole time.
Honestly, I feel like some of the criticism is coming from people who either haven’t watched it properly or don’t understand the characters. Because once you actually watch it in context, everything makes sense.
I’m seated for this drama

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was invested at first but then...lost interest?

Modern royal monarchy plots was something that has not been done for sooo many years. I think the last drama I saw was King 2 hearts and Princess Hours years ago, so I was really excited for this show! Overall the show is still good but only issue is that it doesnt leave any emotional connection.

So with the initial setup of SHJ's character I thought that wow once she moves in shes gonna bring havoc to the palace. I was looking forward to this portion cause its usually the comedic relief part. But they took so long going in circles and circles regarding their marriage thing that in the end they only got married towards the end of the drama...

The scene where she was playing with the king, making a change to the palace atmosphere is what I hoped to see more so we could connect with the characters....

Personally wasnt a fan of some of the styling items for BWS cause it didnt really give him the Prince aura. They went with the concept of yes he is in a very high position but actually he has no authority vibes. But then towards the end suddenly everyone is listening to him...

I enjoyed the start of the drama, IU's acting felt very confident and I liked how she was extremely proud of her achievements and you could tell she is really very good at what she does.

Visuals and OSTs were good as well~ yeah so in the end it was just lack of attachment (maybe due to shorter number of eps?)

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Shiny outside....messy inside!

Let me tell you the truth...I was extremely excited when they announced Perfect Crown,specially with IU and Byun Wooseok. I can trust IU after her fantastic script choices like My Mister and When Life Gives You Tangerines. And BWS has been an absolute sweetheart,and the way his career graph rose after Lovely Runner, been so happy to be a witness of that. So Perfect Crown was a fantastic opportunity to bring two of my favs together.

But...my oh my the way all my excitements went to drain after the episodes started to air. They had IU,BWS,catchy cinematography, shiny sets,eye catching entry of the leads,some good supporting casts and all the love from the fans.
But they lacked the most important things for a drama,some good chemistry between the leads,good development of the story,world building,character depths and overall a good ending of all the plotholes.

One thing I realised,IU shines the most in slice of life dramas. Romcom isn’t still her forte,most of the time her eye roles and unpleasant facial expressions were annoying. And her character was somehow shallow too....idk,a rich cinderella shouting on everyone cause of her issues with her father....and then going for a fake marriage with the prince who is ofcourse,already in love with her for YEARS but never made a move until she did...yeah,understandable ig. BWS has always been a pretty faced handsome actor and they used it well by introducing him as bare bodied,showering. But when these two met..there was very little spark. Idk whose fault was that,but there was very little chemistry in the whole show. Even their secretaries had better natural chemistry than these two.

And when you are working on such sensitive plot like the coexistence of monarchy and constituency, it becomes complex. 12 episodes can never do justice to this. The characters lacked depth and their motives were barely touched. I mean.... The PM of the country,such a high reputable status,kept burning the palace cause he can't accept his childhood crush, to whom he never confessed,marrying the Prince.... Isn’t it funny??? Give the characters some time to breathe, let them develop a proper motive,let their actions have some real issue of conflicts.

Also silly plotlines like that car accident... Only for giving the prince a HERO moment before his lover...instead of working on many plotholes like why the late king hated his son,what was the conflict between the prince and his late brother,how did their fake marriage contract got exposed,who sabotaged huijoos car,why there wasn’t any fire extinguisher in the palace when the same place got burned three times..... I lost count actually. They could make such a great drama with proper backstories,characters properly talking, without abrupt cuts if they made it at least 16 episodes.What a waste of potential. And that rushed ending just sealed the deal for me.Didn’t understand where did the PM go,why he just got vanished after his final confrontation with the prince. Also the whole thing about the abolishment of monarchy seemed like something they made up the last moment without any proper buildup or preparations only to give the drama an ending.

One character that shined the most even with intense complexity with her role was Queen Dowager. Gong Seung Yeon nailed it. Her guilt about the late king,her complex relation with the prince,her fear,her protectiveness towards her son....everything was portrayed perfectly.

If you want a romcom without any sort of depth of plot,just eye catching visuals and pretty faces,you will enjoy it. Unfortunately for me,it was'nt anything great from IU or BWS.

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Simple fun

I thought the highs in this one weren’t very high, but the lows also weren’t very low. It’s a fun rom-com but pretty thin on the plot and the character development.

The plot is just not quite there and for me, having seen multiple historical dramas and corporate dramas, I expected there to be much more to the power struggle in the palace and in the business world. Instead, it feels like things are resolved quite randomly and the antagonists never do anything that really feel like a threat. I’m ultimately not sure what the FL was trying to get out of the marriage and how it would help her business, and on the royalty side it feels like the villains just mush together a few assassination attempts and call it a day.

I was expecting there to be more scheming and back-and-forth, but the protagonists seem to solve everything without much pushback. They make one move and 5 minutes later the villain is in jail. This is especially notable in the final two episodes; I-an introduces the EXTREME concept of abolishing the monarchy and there’s not only no build-up to it, but it seems like the advisors just go “darn :(“ and the next thing we know we’re cutting to the reveal that the people have voted on it and have agreed to it. I know people are saying that it’s because 12 episodes aren’t enough, but I felt like that wasn’t the issue here. The plot stagnated and I actually do think we had enough time to delve into deeper topics if the writing wanted it. If abolishing the monarchy was the big conflict, we should’ve seen much more to explain why it was necessary and why it was difficult to accomplish.

It all just feels a little too easy and shallow, which is a shame because I feel like there’s so much you could do with a modern day monarchy plot around corruption, historical precedence, class, etc. It’s hinted to at the start with a contrast between our leads, but we never really confront it beyond the court of public opinion.

Character-wise, we start off with a really strong cast of characters but I don’t think the writing allowed any of them to have complete arcs.

The antagonists ultimately feel pretty underutilized — the Queen Dowager’s father goes to prison extremely easily, and the Prime Minister’s arc honestly doesn’t feel thought out considering how big of a turn he made. Did he do it all because of the FL? If he did, it’s much too shallow of a motivation. If there was more to it, it didn’t come across fully. I think our leads were fun and the romance was sweet, but they also both don’t develop very much. Same with the second couple, who are typical ”sidekick” characters, lovable but with no real arc of their own.

The best arc out of all of them is probably the Queen Dowager. She probably turned out to be my favorite character, even if I found her final switch a bit sudden.

Part of that is her acting, which I think was the best out of the entire cast; she especially killed it with intense moments and facial expressions. As for the rest of the cast, I think it was pretty good but they didn’t have much to work with. I know this has been discussed to death on the internet so I don’t want to harp on it, but I did find the ML to be a bit stiff; he was good in emotional moments but not as much in the subtle ones where we needed more micro-expressions. I don’t want to be too harsh but I’m not sure I completely bought into the main romance, or that the ML supposed to be older.

I know this is a lot of criticism but I actually still found the show to be quite fun to watch. The cinematography was really good and it’s clear that this was a high-budget production. The story isn’t quite as epic as I wish it was, but if you go into it with the understanding that it’s a rom-com and you don’t think too hard about it, I think it was enjoyable.

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A cute romcom with an expensive cast

As I said in the title, we clearly see that they put a lot of money into this drama, for the cast or the clothes or even the locations, but to be honest budget isn't everything.
It started really good, I was obsessed with the series until ep 8 so it's not bad, but after that I felt like there were too many unpredictable events (not in a good sense) and useless as well. I feel like this is the kind of drama that is only interesting when you're watching this as you're procrastinating on any big task...
-> Mini spoil!
In my opinion the main characters do not have any chemistry, only that one kiss wasn't bad but it seemed more like fanservice than anything else. And the second leads being in love was SO unnecessary, they had ZERO chemistry even less that ML and FL, this felt way too forced and I almost skipped every "romantic" moment of them too.

As we were arriving to the end of the drama, it started feeling more and more cliché, more and more empty. Such a bummer given the enthusiasm I had around ep 5.
So I would not recommend it to anyone but I also wouldn't prevent anyone from watching it. Because the beginning is very good but the end....

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weak plot but fun/entertaining to watch overall

its honestly a great drama. there was romance, comedy, and suspense- all of which were alright. but ofc there were some aspects which i wished they went into more depth and def some plotholes for but i mean, the actors all did well and it was fun to watch overall.

i can see that the main production effort was given to the cast and the plot was somewhat interesting but lacking in many ways. execution in general was also pretty bad lol... one thing that ticked me off from start to finish was iu's nails... the nail artist needs to be fired and blacklisted asap.

i really enjoyed the romance between the second couple. it was really entertaining to watch. i've always enjoyed watching yoo soobin and lee yeon in dramas and this was no exception.

the cast's acting was just insane. gong seungyeon's acting... phew it was spectacular. and byeon wooseok (fine shyt) and iu's chemistry was through the roof! the young king was great too! such a cutie patootie

anyways, its overall a great drama tbh. nothing groundbreaking in terms of the plot but it was definitely entertaining. i can def see myself going back to rewatch certain scenes of the drama.

im not mad about it at all. if anything, i really enjoyed this drama. it doesn't deserve the hate its getting tbh. ofc, its not the best but it was fun to watch and not too stressful. a perfect romance drama to binge.

p.s. i loved the ost for this drama they were all bangers def adding to my everyday playlist

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Episode 9 is disappointing

First, they leaned hard into the overused "second lead syndrome" trope, with the Prime Minister getting involved and trying to come between the lead couple. It feels so old and predictable at this point.
What frustrated me even more was the female lead. She's supposed to be this savvy businesswoman who fought her way to the top of a company despite all the obstacles thrown at her by her father and brother. Yet in this episode, she behaves like a bumbling idiot—someone who’s supposedly survived the cutthroat business world suddenly can’t think of any smart way out of her predicament. Instead of strategizing or fighting back, she just cries the whole time. I expected so much more from her character.
And then her big solution is just… divorce? It feels like the easiest, most convenient way out instead of something that matches her established strength and intelligence.

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