Perfect Crown

"You were like a bright ember in the dark, I only wanted to chase after you"

Wow this drama was phenomenal. I waited for this drama for about a month once the airing date dropped, and also watched every episode when it aired because I was so hooked (every single episode a major cliffhanger). First, the acting is so good, literally my dream pairing, IU and Byeon Woo Seok so I knew it would already be a banger, and after finishing they did so much better than I expected. I came here mainly for the plot because 21st century prince with girl boss like it was already bound to be a masterpiece, but stayed for EVERYTHING. I love this couple so much I don't think people understand like their literally my parents. Also, after watching so many sad endings recently, it feels so good to finally have an ending thats satisfying and beautiful. This drama is perfect in all aspects, even though im mainly a cdrama girly I definitely will be watching more kdramas after this!

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Before I get started, I want to say that I am A SUCKER for constitutional monarchy tropes. I don't know what it is, but it always catches my attention. So coupled with this trope, BWS and IU, I knew I was going to be waiting up twice every week for a new episode to drop. At first, I thought it was great for what it had been advertised as, a romantic comedy with typical kdrama clichés and a somewhat cliché storyline. THAT WAS FINE. Because I KNEW WHAT I WAS GOING TO BE WATCHING, and if I am going to be honest, I was amused, and I had a good time with the show.

However, the moment I finished, I felt unfulfilled, and upon reflecting, I feel like the show could have done slightly better and before I go into my reflection and perspective, I want to emphasize the amazing cast and acting done by Kim Eun Ho and Gong Seong Yeon. Truly, it was amazing, and the comedic timing of Lee Jae Won and Chae Seo An really tied the show together.

But now for the negatives and parts that left me slightly confused. I felt as though a lot of the transitions were awkwardly cut. It made the setup of the next scene difficult. However, at the same time, I found the two main characters played by IU and BWS. I-an and Huiju constantly flip-flop, to the point it was unnecessary and what I mean by this is their "promises" to be a pillar and defend one another. When ANY sort of issue arose, they were threatened with separation- and just as that separation was about to be fulfilled, they would run back to one another and make the SAME promise again. When it was used for the first couple of times, I thought it was cute, but it just kept happening AGAIN and AGAIN, which really took away from the story.

On top of that, I found Prime Minister Min's shifting loyalties to be quite abrupt. One thing I really did not understand was if he did all of this for SEONG HUIJI, then why did he become her enemy so EASILY? Towards the end of that specific storyline, she wasn't EVEN mentioned. It was as if he forgot her and only cared about his intentions towards I-an. In addition to this, I found the abandonment of his faith to be quite inaccurate, especially considering just how strongly he previously believed. For a person to have such faith, it is somewhat unlikely to simply forget everything he believed in and stood for.

Now, for Lord Inpyeong, I found his character to be so confusing, at first he was this background character that was tied to Yi-rang, and then he became a MAIN antagonist, and while I IMMENSELY enjoyed watching him get his ass beat by I-An. I thought it was so silly that he simply forgot and took no action against I-an other than his original plan.

I feel like there were so many missed opportunities, and if anything, especially the abolishment plotline, could have been extended and really dived deeper into, much like many other interesting ones. Instead, I feel as though everyone's talent was wasted.

And finally, though this is not my last grievance, just the last one I am willing to type out. The costumes? THE COSTUMES FOR IU AND BWS WERE ASS. So so so so so bad.

All in all, I enjoyed Perfect Crown, but if you are looking for something more complex, then I suggest looking elsewhere.

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Strong Cast Wasted by Poor Writing

From the very first episode, the drama felt confused and poorly planned. The biggest problem of the show was the writing — it never felt like the story had a clear direction.

The whole villain arc was weak, pointless, and very badly written. Nothing about it felt interesting or properly developed.

I honestly don’t fully understand what made IU choose this drama. Compared to her usual projects, where she really shines, this role didn’t feel as strong or impactful for her. A lot of the attention the show received also seems to come from IU’s massive popularity and loyal fanbase, rather than the writing itself.

As for Byeon Woo-seok (Lead), I feel like the character writing did not give him much to work with. Most of the time, the same emotions and scenes kept repeating again and again.

Half of the conversations were left unfinished and then shown later in another episode. Doing this once or twice is fine for suspense, but repeating the same writing style in almost every episode became frustrating.

A lot of scenes were just people staring at each other or the lead walking through palace halls every episode, which made the drama feel slow and repetitive.

The only character I actually liked was Gong Seung-yeon (Queen), but because of the weak story, even her character felt wasted in the end.

Overall, the show felt below average and very overhyped for me. I honestly feel like I wasted 12 episodes on this drama.

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Huh!!! What Even Happened Here?

I didn’t know a luxury fashion show or a commercial ad could be stretched into 12 hours long — well, apparently that’s exactly what Perfect Crown was all about.

First thing first — the clothes were pretty good (at least to my non-fashionista self), the location shoots were beautiful, and aesthetically the drama looked expensive and polished. But honestly, that’s where all the praise ends.

So let’s dissect this fashion show.

Now let's start with the fashion designer a.k.a. the writer. This has to be one of the sloppiest scripts I’ve seen in a K-drama in recent times. The characters are underwritten, their actions make little to no sense, and the drama itself never knows what it actually wants to be. It neither functions properly as a political drama nor as a rom-com. In simple words, it’s just a badly stitched designer outfit with an expensive tag attached to it — stylish from outside, empty from inside.

Now to our creative director a.k.a. the director.
From start to finish, the direction felt completely lost. The entire focus was on making the actors look aesthetically pleasing instead of making the characters feel believable. Every scene looked visually polished, yet emotionally hollow. A smart director can elevate weak writing through strong guidance and performances, but here that never even seemed to be the intention. The director cared more about presenting beautiful “models (actors)” than actually selling the clothes themselves — i.e the acting, characterization, and story.

Now coming to the models themselves.

Starting with IU — honestly, God knows what happened to her here. She was supposed to be the star model of this entire show, yet she couldn’t even manage a normal runway walk, i.e. basic acting. To put it simply: she was just bad here. If IU had put even bare minimum effort and conviction into grounding the character emotionally along with right comic sense, she probably could’ve carried it despite the weak writing. But because her acting skills still lacks and heavily depend on strong support around her, her acting flaws became more visible and everything completely fell apart here. Unlike some of her previous works, there was no strong direction or seasoned/talented co-stars here to cover up for her weaknesses.

As for the male lead — with an impressive height of 190 cm, I only wish his acting presence had been equally impressive. Personally, after watching *Lovely Runner*, I wasn’t expecting much from him to begin with, and unfortunately this drama only reinforced that opinion. Within this entire fashion show analogy, he honestly just felt like a plain model with a bad runway walk being labelled as some “supermodel.” Simply put, he was the weakest link in terms of acting in this drama.

In the end, this entire production feels like a massive waste of money and time.The writing is messy, the direction is shallow, and the performances from the leads fail to carry the material. Every major element of the drama feels undercooked beneath all the luxury packaging.

If you’re a fan of the actors, maybe the visuals alone will satisfy you. But for general audiences, there’s very little here to stay invested in. There’s no emotional spark, no narrative tension, nothing truly compelling beneath the glossy surface.

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It Should Have Been 16 Episodes | How Story-telling Can Cheapen Acting Performances

Hear me out— Perfect Crown ’suffers’ from two completely contradicting ‘issues’: The premise of the story is actually extremely deep yet the storytelling is strikingly shallow.

Disclaimer: At the point of writing this review, I haven’t yet watched the last two episodes.


At the beginning of the episodes I felt like something was missing from the two main lead’s acting. It felt like there was a backstory that was never told. Seong Hui-ju has a kind of “chip on her shoulder” personality that is a little off-putting and uhh…well, a bit exasperating. It’s actually obvious over the course of the series that, in the earlier episodes, she is putting on a front, yet we are supposed to pretend like we understand the character and sympathise with the character from episode 1 even though we know nothing about her.

The few snapshots of her past just weren’t enough to have me hooked to her character, and I probably only continued watching because I felt like IU would have picked a more nuanced character than the earlier episodes depicted. In reality, Song Hui Ju is a scared little girl who just wanted to be loved by and a part of her father’s family, and sought to get there by being the best at everything—essentially buying her family’s love through perfectionism.

The reality of Song Hui-ju is that she isn’t as much of a sociopath as the earlier episodes lead us to believe, and I know that this is the point, but by adding 4 more episodes (16 eps total) there would have been time to understand her backstory or even show the first moments she first began trying on that sociopath-type mask. They could have shown us the loneliness she felt after feeling abandoned by her mother, and her obsessive need for love from her father from such a young age by really digging into the backstory. And then shown us Song Hui-Ju’s first devolvement into her sociopathic front and how it WORKED FOR HER as the reason why she kept putting up that front. But all we get is jumping right into a female lead who we have little reason to like. The only clue that Hui Ju may not be crazy is how loyal her secretary is to her—meaning she must be a pretty good boss. There is basically no context for IU’s performance in the earlier episodes, which kinds of makes watching the character of Hui-Ju a little uncomfortable. IMO, I think IU nails the portrayal and the “mask” Hui Ju wears. I saw some characters saying IU’s acting felt fake because it felt like she was pretending to be Hui Ju--but i think that’s the point! “Mean” Hui Ju is an exaggerated persona of the real Hui Ju. When the mask starts to slip in the later episodes we get a glimpses of her true nuances. Think about:

........Sp0iler: the car scene and how the immediately pushed the car to the side to protect the young king, therefore putting herself in more harm. A sacrificial nature in Hui Ju is not depicted in the earlier episodes at all, but it IS in her. I feel like they could have told a better story by letting the mask slip at least a little bit to foreshadow that more nuances to the character is coming


It’s the same thing with I-AN’s characterisation. I-AN is characterised by restraint but there’s no full backstory to really understand what he is restraining from. We get bits and pieces of backstory that he’s a “spare,” but how are us real-world commoners supposed to understand the weight of existing as a back-up who—conceptually—will likely never be needed. That kind of backstory is incredibly deep, but its storytelling portrayal is surprisingly so much lighter than the premise behind the character.

.........SP0ILER alert: the layered performance of BWS in the earlier episodes makes so much more sense after finding out that he knew all along that his sister-in-law denied his late brother’s request to abdicate the throne, meaning every interaction they had she was lying to his face and HE KNEW IT.

BWS’ performance in earlier episodes gives restraint, disgust, and most importantly a numbness that is difficult to understand without story. The earlier episodes force us to dive right into a backstory that we could never relate to, which I actually feel like cheapens the performance.


I am a fan of both BWS and IU, so seeing their acting be criticised made me do some real thought digging, because, when watching the earlier episodes, I actually AGREED—I was off-put by both performances and couldn’t figure out why. In the earlier episodes it’s not that the acting was bad, it was that their acting was much too layered for characters we know nothing about and can’t sympathise with because we just don’t know them like that. It’s funny because I have a tendency to think longer historical dramas can be quite boring, but there was so much room to show everyone’s backstory in more than just a few high school snapshots. Like for the evil queen instead of them saying “she comes from 3 generations of queens,” they could have shown us the generational pressure on both Inpyong (aka Jin Mu) and the Queen Mother to upkeep their own family honor and the greed it birthed within them. That would have been so cool to see, and then it would have made the Queen Mother’s devolvement into wickedness so much more conflicting for the audience. That kind of storytelling would have been incredible.

I do think the little snapshots are cute, but they had so much potential to actually be potent, not just cute.

I know the drama is trying to follow fluff trends and that in regular dramas we complain because we don’t usually get enough time spent on fluff between the leads. I do think that the drama delivers on the fluff the audience enjoys; however, again, it took me 10 episodes before I was able to intellectually peel back the acting-tone layers of the first 5-8 episodes. There is so much material for the story to work with but instead it hops right over excavating the real depth that is fundamental to the series’ premises, in favour of just delivering fluff. I think this actually ends up confusing the audience on the main lead’s acting performances.

The queen mother has been delivering at a high level; however, if you think about it it is easier to understand the angst behind her rage and evil because we are so used to evil mother characters and especially evil queen mother characters from other dramas (let’s be real, almost all queen mother/mother in law characters are evil in historical dramas). So we RELATE to her performance because she is the mother of a young king and her power depends on a child. Who wouldn’t be a little crazy under that circumstance?

Even the Prime Minister…the actor is a great actor, but all we really get in the earlier episodes from his acting is a numbness that is supposed to be validated by “his religion” but we have no idea what that religion means to him. If we had been given more backstory as to why he fell in love with Hui-Ju and what his religion means to him and why he interpreted his faith as meaning he needed to have restrained himself for literally decades from confessing to his love? Like how are we as the audience supposed to relate to that? That’s why:


.........SP0ILER: the later episodes where the gloves come off with the PM, the actor is doing such a phenomenal job because we now understand his anger and the darkness it entails…but it took 10 episodes to get there

On the Main Lead’s Chemistry:
I think “chemistry” is a subjective consideration; however, typically in dramas there is buildup between the main leads through the story and their meet-cute story that delivers a sense of angst between them, only to be relieved when they finally get together. Instead, the chemistry of Perfect Crown’s main leads is characterised by restraint and ***consent. Prince IAN wouldn’t make and moves on Hui-Joo without her consent, and Hui-Joo has a tendency to build up a personality armour to protect herself and “isn’t supposed to” allow herself to fall for a guy she has a business contract with that’s supposed to lead her to the perfectionism that is supposed to gain her the love and approval of her father— this leads to a relationship characterised by restraint. So even though the series delivers on their marriage fairly early, we don’t get the satisfaction of angst and buildup BECAUSE they already knew each other AND have to cordially respect each other. That’s why I feel like episode 10 really delivered…because.

.........SP0ILER: After all her attempts to have done everything to gain the love of her father, she kneels before her father to protect the guy she loves…meaning she has abandoned her desire to be loved by her father to instead serve her partner by giving him love instead.

Anyways I haven’t watched the last 2 episodes yet but I don’t think my take will change. I think it’s a neat little show but the earlier episodes are surprisingly shallow (story) and deep (acting). I personally think both IU & BWS did a great job overall and encapsulated the true nature of both characters. I also think that ironically, if they had actually had less layered performances (meaning technically worse acting), that might have actually gone over better with the audiences, but only because we have no ida what the story is trying to do until we get to the latter episodes.


But who knows, maybe i’m just giving preferential treatment!!! 🤪

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MORE LIKE PERFECT DISSAPOINTMEMMT OF THE YEAR

woooo writing this pains me because it’s literallyy my favourite actor and actress in this shit show. But k gotta say the truth. They should never ever let the person who wrote this pick up the pen again I’m damn serious . Chat GPT would have even given me a better plot than whatever this was


I defended this drama up to episode 4 that’s when I noticed it has no substance just IU and Wooseok carrying but it was so shit that it made them look like horrible actors that if this was my first drama of them I would definitely never watch anything they are in again.

Really tried to overlook a lot but then every second of this shit show had some thing to over look.

I wanted to rate it a 1 but coz my favourites are in it I give it a 4 but honestly they should have kept it in the archives and never released such atrocious performance. uuuurgggh im so mad

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to short for good world building

For a drama about a modern day monarchy, we barely learn anything about how this world actually works. Besides the main characters having the usual sad backstories, we never see how the elites live versus the regular, title-less people. Because they didn't show that unfairness, and because IU’s character basically already had everything besides status, it was super hard to actually root for her to get a title. It just felt kind of lackluster.

Besides the romance (which also ended up being rushed), the plot especially the villains just felt so boring to me. It never felt like they had the upper hand. The 2ML turning “evil” out of jealousy is also one of the most boring tropes ever. The monarchy felt so much like a joke and i couldn’t take it serious at all.

I feel like if they had even stretchers this just to 16 episodes instead of 12 and actually build up a world with a good story, this drama could’ve been way better.

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Purefect!

Perfect Crown is an absolute masterpiece! I am completely in love with the actors; the casting is flawless, and the leading chemistry is incredibly engaging. It is an excellent and highly entertaining romantic comedy that seamlessly blends royal palace politics with a sharp, modern corporate edge. Every episode is beautifully shot, showcasing stunning traditional aesthetics and luxury styling. While it hooks you completely, people need to remember it is pure fiction and enjoy it as a brilliant, dramatic story. A truly entertaining and stunning show from start to finish!

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This Romance Had No Right Being This Addictive

Okay I’m just going to say it… Perfect Crown had me completely hooked way too fast. The story is so well-written in that sneaky way where you think you’re just casually watching and suddenly you’re emotionally attached to everyone. It’s not messy or overstuffed, it actually knows what it wants to say. The pacing is so good that every political twist and emotional turn feels like it matters, not just added for drama. As a Southeast Asian K-drama lover, I really love when a drama trusts its audience like this instead of spoon-feeding everything.

But let’s talk about the ROMANCE because wow??? The writing of the main couple is insane in the best way. It’s not just “they like each other” thrown in your face every episode, it’s all the lingering looks, the almost-moments, the tension that makes you want to scream into a pillow. The kind of slow burn where you start overanalyzing every glance like it’s a life or death clue. Their connection feels so natural too, like it grows quietly until suddenly you realize you’re fully obsessed.

And the actors?? They understood the assignment and then added subtitles for us emotionally unstable viewers. The way they act with just their eyes is criminal in a good way. Even the smallest interactions feel loaded, like you’re constantly one second away from a confession or a breakdown. The supporting cast also really brings the world to life, but let’s be real, I was mostly there for the main couple losing eye contact like it’s illegal. Overall, this drama is pure serotonin + emotional damage, and I would 100% give it a 10/10 without blinking.

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Such a waste of idols drama

Wow a real disappointment. Ive been waiting for this since the announcement was made and mainly because of IU!! A total mess. I think there's an internal clash in creative output between the director and writer. I don't blame the actors because it's obvious they all tried. Completing it only because of IU& I like the antagonists' acting.

Don't make it sound like I'm too critical when the plotholes are many and too obvious. Can't blame the director solely because he has other good dramas in his portfolio but this one is plainly bad. Something is off but it doesn't reach the public's knowledge. Hence we get this mediocre production
As if they couldn't decide what they actually want to focus on. Too many storylines and then chaos. I was really enjoying it in the beginning but then as I said it became too messy - more drama than substance. Such a shame cause it could have been really good with this cast and the premise.

They couldn't bring back the Goong's glory,it had 2000's nostalgia protection lol. I bet if PC was in 2000's then probably it would've blown up lol

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