If I could rate the story less than 1/10 I would. Apparently all it takes is some guy with a yoyo with lights in it to explain away all the inconsistencies before spending the back half of Episode 16 creating even more inconsistencies and questions.
I am just reposting a conversation I had with Charlotte, I thought it is interesting.Some people say say that…
MDL users tend to really inflate ratings of Korean dramas. It is what it is and you just need to keep it in the back of your mind or ignore the rating and read reviews.
Weird how that didn't work out. The Republic and Kingdom look almost exactly the same. Even the different time periods (1990s and present day) don't seem very different. I think that's a huge problem that's overlooked at least around here - I know it's been brought up in Korean.
Sure the visuals are beautiful but they do very little to distinguish where the characters are.
A Western show worth talking about that dealt with alternate realities and managed to show differences was Man in the High Castle. They blended American with Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany. You knew when you were in the Japanese Empire part of America and the Nazi Germany part of America without even needing to think. You knew when they were in our timeline (where America wins the war) immediately as well. You could see the visual team went to great lengths to make it easy for people to figure things out.... whether it was Japanese troops or Nazi police or their fascist symbols or even architecture CGI to make places look more like a city that could be part of one of the two fascist states.
With Kingdom Eternal all we have is that giant billboard with the King and his palace. Does the Republic have street cars (like the Kingdom)? I guess that might be another difference. Can't really think of anything else. Office buildings and streets exist in both worlds... I mean they could have had the Korean royal insignia featured everywhere on major buildings. Had features of Korean architecture on most buildings too.
So we're entirely reliant on the characters and their conversations and reactions to tell us where we are. But pretty quickly we're learning the majority of them have been to each world so we can't even rely on that anymore.
Yeah this is messy. I wonder if even the actors themselves understand the plot.Kim Eun Sook's last monster budget…
I'm not so sure. This is a big failure for her but her last two were pretty big budget and succeeded (at least in the back half of these shows).
I could see her getting another chance but maybe there might be more approvals required, more review of the concept and scripts and less trust and rope will be given to her.
I mean you look at her list of dramas and outside of King Eternal I don't see a recent flop. Every single one built up ratings outside of King Eternal. A few of them were praised. One even spawned a marriage between actors (even if it didn't last).
Damn, you went in on the show. My criticism has been more of the over-arching nature but when you break down individual scenes you see just how bad the whole thing is from its pieces to the grander story they're trying to tell.
The only things I think are worth mentioning in a positive light would be the visual/sound teams and some of the performances by the actors like the Prime Minister or Lee Lim or Woo Do Hwan playing two different styles of people and doing it convincingly. And that's not a shot at the rest of the actors. None of them have done a poor job in my opinion. It's the story that sucks.
i feel so stupid for not understanding the drama (ep14 and ep15 were brain damage for me) i honestly had no clue…
Do not feel stupid. They completely messed up on the time travel component. The show is beyond being saved. The writers and directors have failed. And you can still enjoy the show... even if the plot and story being told makes no sense.
I mean even if we gave the writing team the benefit of the doubt and once again they can get off with not explaining**** how time travel has suddenly started happening with a broken device...
They replayed a scene from Episode 1 to show the viewer the 'present' (grown up Lee Gon and Tae Eul) had been changed... and yet nothing seemed to change for characters that should have been directly impacted by this change. It's absurd.
*** and they do this for so many characters and plot points it's a huge problem. They should not be given the benefit of the doubt for failing to tell a story.
I get it. This is a fantasy drama. The logic we are accustomed to cannot be be applicable (in all sense) to the…
For anyone out there who thinks the time travel and messing with the chronology has been good, a masterpiece... here's something to think about:
Time travel in books and TV generally falls into two categories - the future is changed, the future is inevitable.
Episode 1 - Lee Gon hugs Tae-Eul who has no idea who he is.
Episode 14 - Tae-Eul hugs Lee Gon. The writers tried to give Tae-Eul lines making this seem much more special and dramatic than it is.
This is the same scene. Indicating the future has been changed by time travel to the past.
So the romance has been re-written entirely in the history of this TV show 'universe' yet earlier in the same episode the Prime Minister is still in trouble and under some sort of house arrest for actions she took because of that relationship and romance development that has been altered.
So we see a plain as day examples of the writers trying to have the best of both worlds. The world changes where they want it to. The world does not change where they do not want it to. There is no logic or reason to it. It's not like the Prime Minister is unrelated to the King or Tae-eul. She wants the King, she wants to be Queen. So if the romance has changed and Tae-eul needs less convincing... do the King and Tae-Eul still do everything exactly the same so the Prime Minister finds about Tae-eul and decides to become Lee Lim's agent?
And that's just one problem. How about all the other characters impacted by what the King and Tae-Eul did in the original timeline? Many decisions were made because of what the King or Tae-Eul said or did. If Tae-Eul knows why would either one have to say or do any of that stuff in this new timeline? They wouldn't. So the curiosity of the supporting characters is gone and they do not take actions like research who the King is.
The writers have shown they'll just put in and throw out whatever they want out of convenience. An individual scene means nothing if they can say "lol just kidding, this thing we built up to be significant is not significant and actually it's changed because I said so".
In other books and shows with time travel they try to address this. So maybe Shin Jae becomes suspicious or curious on his own for another reason. But because they've backed themselves into a corner with time... we get no explanations. Everyone remembers what they need to so that the show can resolve itself. Random characters that I don't even think had actors cast for them are killed off screen by Lee Lim's henchmen as he sits in an interrogation room...
I think she is Moon Ji In. look at her profile and tell me if i am right.https://kisskh.at/people/3279-moon-ji-in
I don't really remember what she looked like but the Korean wikipedia for the show lists 윤영경 as the actress for the secretary of Lovely Cosmetics. But she doesn't have her own page so she's obviously a really minor actress. Try giving 윤영경 a google search.
This is a show that has grown on me over time. It's far from a masterpiece. I think 7.5 is fair in a vacuum (probably a little unfair with the inflated ratings KDramas tend to get).
The soundtrack is overplayed. Shi Won's character is overacted and it looks silly on such a masculine person but for some reason I don't mind it that much. And Kang So Ra is beautiful and talented. One of my favorite South Korean actresses. Wow. The supporting cast is good too. The older actors and actresses are usually the strongest in KDramas.
Some of the violence is a bit over the top but these kind of horror bosses do exist.
Despite the show's faults I think it does a decent job at highlighting some important things in life especially surrounding the struggle to survive and keep your job and how you treat others from the top right down to the cleaning staff. There are some emotional moments for the characters that were convincing for me.
The ending fell a bit flat for me. The show was big on justice and reconciliation and certain characters seemed forgotten.
For me this reminds me of Ms. Temper & Nam Jung Gi which was also a subtle drama with older leads that has also really grown on me over time.
It's not a classic KDrama romance. It's not a classic KDrama comedy. But it's a good and solid show.
It's all explained quite well, and the PM had it coming, you need to really rewatch from ep 1, your obviously…
We're all aware of the tension between the King and the Prime Minister. Nobody is denying that. But you have to explain why the Prime Minister broke with her character as shown in the previous 12 episodes. For 12 episodes she was portrayed as one thing. In Episode 13 her character completely changes. And before I get "the scenes aren't chronological" - go back and watch yourself. It doesn't matter they're messing with chronology. There are way too few scenes to explain the scenes from Episode 13. Like I said - the job of the writer is to explain how we get from A to B with a character. The Prime Minister's character was about as bad as Game of Thrones and Danerys staring at a clock tower before deciding to massacre a bunch of innocent people. It's just stupid character development to conveniently serve the plot and that is a sign of very poor writing and directing. She's a wolf who becomes a lamb and the turn around is way too fast with too few scenes.
I kind of delayed watching since it was so bad SBS delayed an episode to air a movie released months ago...
The big reveal in Episode 13 fell flat. That's it? What else is there now? It feels like the remaining episodes need to focus exclusively on Lee Lim because that's still the gaping hole of this show. He still makes no sense. He made no sense in Episode 1. He makes no sense in Episode 13.
Also not a fan of how the Prime Minister's character did a 180 with no warning. She's the one who holds her tongue and plots her revenge. What the hell happened in Episode 13?
If the writers can't handle basic character development of a side character what hope do they have of managing time travel and alternate realities?
I'm half expecting the same thing that played out with the Prime Minister to play out with all remaining characters to force some obnoxious ending we can't predict. The writers can feel smart when in reality it's garbage. It's like that Brian Regan joke about the phrase "one thing led to another". The job of the writer is to explain how that one thing led to another thing. The clip and joke are out there on youtube and it sums up my feelings.
Honestly I'm down to watch the end of this. It's just so bad and so stupid. It's like a trainwreck or a car crash. You can't look away from the carnage as you pass by it.
It's not surprising when they reveal yet another character crossed worlds. At what point did this happen? Off screen as usual so it's some big twist and not viewed as a lack of imagination and planning by the writing team?
The ending to episode 11 was probably the dumbest romance scene (or display of love, whatever you want to call it) I've seen in my entire life. It was more like really bad fan fiction than something someone should ever get paid to write.
I mean damn, it's bad, really bad. But now I'm just treating it like an unintentional comedy, like The Room. I'll make it through one laugh at a time.
The payoff was basically not there. I don't care if the themes are forgiveness and redemption... it was still awful how they went about it. Forgiveness and redemption doesn't have to be displayed with grand gestures by supporting characters.... which by design take away the main character's ability to act.
The ending sucked because of this. I'm fine with death. I'm fine with redemption. I'm fine with forgiveness. I'm not fine with the main characters being completely uninvolved in the ending of major storylines.
Looks messy, not something I'd normally do but Xu Hao was hilarious and adorable in Taoism Grandmaster that I'm going through so I'll give her a shot for her first leading role.
TKEM was rated 8.7 here a few days ago.And now it's rated 8.4.Why so much hatred?T TI'm gonna throw a hashtag…
Weak writing and directing rearing its head in Episodes 9 and 10 is the reason. Episode 10 in particular was really, really bad.
It's just a jumbled random mess of scenes with very little coherence or chronology. They sidelined interesting characters like the Prime Minister in favor of random scenes here and there and then finished off with Lee Lim cheat-mode like it's a video game. You can tell how little thought was put into writing, creating and cutting these episodes.
Hate is a strong word but the show is starting to lose me. If 11 and 12 are similar to 9 and 10, I'll be dropping this show. It was that bad. I can live with 1-8 but 9-10 was the train going off the rails, falling into a lake and blowing up. I'm not sure how the show recovers from such a disastrous combination of episodes.
1 
1 
Sure the visuals are beautiful but they do very little to distinguish where the characters are.
A Western show worth talking about that dealt with alternate realities and managed to show differences was Man in the High Castle. They blended American with Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany. You knew when you were in the Japanese Empire part of America and the Nazi Germany part of America without even needing to think. You knew when they were in our timeline (where America wins the war) immediately as well. You could see the visual team went to great lengths to make it easy for people to figure things out.... whether it was Japanese troops or Nazi police or their fascist symbols or even architecture CGI to make places look more like a city that could be part of one of the two fascist states.
With Kingdom Eternal all we have is that giant billboard with the King and his palace. Does the Republic have street cars (like the Kingdom)? I guess that might be another difference. Can't really think of anything else. Office buildings and streets exist in both worlds... I mean they could have had the Korean royal insignia featured everywhere on major buildings. Had features of Korean architecture on most buildings too.
So we're entirely reliant on the characters and their conversations and reactions to tell us where we are. But pretty quickly we're learning the majority of them have been to each world so we can't even rely on that anymore.
I could see her getting another chance but maybe there might be more approvals required, more review of the concept and scripts and less trust and rope will be given to her.
I mean you look at her list of dramas and outside of King Eternal I don't see a recent flop. Every single one built up ratings outside of King Eternal. A few of them were praised. One even spawned a marriage between actors (even if it didn't last).
The only things I think are worth mentioning in a positive light would be the visual/sound teams and some of the performances by the actors like the Prime Minister or Lee Lim or Woo Do Hwan playing two different styles of people and doing it convincingly. And that's not a shot at the rest of the actors. None of them have done a poor job in my opinion. It's the story that sucks.
I mean even if we gave the writing team the benefit of the doubt and once again they can get off with not explaining**** how time travel has suddenly started happening with a broken device...
They replayed a scene from Episode 1 to show the viewer the 'present' (grown up Lee Gon and Tae Eul) had been changed... and yet nothing seemed to change for characters that should have been directly impacted by this change. It's absurd.
*** and they do this for so many characters and plot points it's a huge problem. They should not be given the benefit of the doubt for failing to tell a story.
Time travel in books and TV generally falls into two categories - the future is changed, the future is inevitable.
Episode 1 - Lee Gon hugs Tae-Eul who has no idea who he is.
Episode 14 - Tae-Eul hugs Lee Gon. The writers tried to give Tae-Eul lines making this seem much more special and dramatic than it is.
This is the same scene. Indicating the future has been changed by time travel to the past.
So the romance has been re-written entirely in the history of this TV show 'universe' yet earlier in the same episode the Prime Minister is still in trouble and under some sort of house arrest for actions she took because of that relationship and romance development that has been altered.
So we see a plain as day examples of the writers trying to have the best of both worlds. The world changes where they want it to. The world does not change where they do not want it to. There is no logic or reason to it. It's not like the Prime Minister is unrelated to the King or Tae-eul. She wants the King, she wants to be Queen. So if the romance has changed and Tae-eul needs less convincing... do the King and Tae-Eul still do everything exactly the same so the Prime Minister finds about Tae-eul and decides to become Lee Lim's agent?
And that's just one problem. How about all the other characters impacted by what the King and Tae-Eul did in the original timeline? Many decisions were made because of what the King or Tae-Eul said or did. If Tae-Eul knows why would either one have to say or do any of that stuff in this new timeline? They wouldn't. So the curiosity of the supporting characters is gone and they do not take actions like research who the King is.
The writers have shown they'll just put in and throw out whatever they want out of convenience. An individual scene means nothing if they can say "lol just kidding, this thing we built up to be significant is not significant and actually it's changed because I said so".
In other books and shows with time travel they try to address this. So maybe Shin Jae becomes suspicious or curious on his own for another reason. But because they've backed themselves into a corner with time... we get no explanations. Everyone remembers what they need to so that the show can resolve itself. Random characters that I don't even think had actors cast for them are killed off screen by Lee Lim's henchmen as he sits in an interrogation room...
The soundtrack is overplayed. Shi Won's character is overacted and it looks silly on such a masculine person but for some reason I don't mind it that much. And Kang So Ra is beautiful and talented. One of my favorite South Korean actresses. Wow. The supporting cast is good too. The older actors and actresses are usually the strongest in KDramas.
Some of the violence is a bit over the top but these kind of horror bosses do exist.
Despite the show's faults I think it does a decent job at highlighting some important things in life especially surrounding the struggle to survive and keep your job and how you treat others from the top right down to the cleaning staff. There are some emotional moments for the characters that were convincing for me.
The ending fell a bit flat for me. The show was big on justice and reconciliation and certain characters seemed forgotten.
For me this reminds me of Ms. Temper & Nam Jung Gi which was also a subtle drama with older leads that has also really grown on me over time.
It's not a classic KDrama romance. It's not a classic KDrama comedy. But it's a good and solid show.
The big reveal in Episode 13 fell flat. That's it? What else is there now? It feels like the remaining episodes need to focus exclusively on Lee Lim because that's still the gaping hole of this show. He still makes no sense. He made no sense in Episode 1. He makes no sense in Episode 13.
Also not a fan of how the Prime Minister's character did a 180 with no warning. She's the one who holds her tongue and plots her revenge. What the hell happened in Episode 13?
If the writers can't handle basic character development of a side character what hope do they have of managing time travel and alternate realities?
I'm half expecting the same thing that played out with the Prime Minister to play out with all remaining characters to force some obnoxious ending we can't predict. The writers can feel smart when in reality it's garbage. It's like that Brian Regan joke about the phrase "one thing led to another". The job of the writer is to explain how that one thing led to another thing. The clip and joke are out there on youtube and it sums up my feelings.
It's not surprising when they reveal yet another character crossed worlds. At what point did this happen? Off screen as usual so it's some big twist and not viewed as a lack of imagination and planning by the writing team?
The ending to episode 11 was probably the dumbest romance scene (or display of love, whatever you want to call it) I've seen in my entire life. It was more like really bad fan fiction than something someone should ever get paid to write.
I mean damn, it's bad, really bad. But now I'm just treating it like an unintentional comedy, like The Room. I'll make it through one laugh at a time.
The ending sucked because of this. I'm fine with death. I'm fine with redemption. I'm fine with forgiveness. I'm not fine with the main characters being completely uninvolved in the ending of major storylines.
It's just a jumbled random mess of scenes with very little coherence or chronology. They sidelined interesting characters like the Prime Minister in favor of random scenes here and there and then finished off with Lee Lim cheat-mode like it's a video game. You can tell how little thought was put into writing, creating and cutting these episodes.
Hate is a strong word but the show is starting to lose me. If 11 and 12 are similar to 9 and 10, I'll be dropping this show. It was that bad. I can live with 1-8 but 9-10 was the train going off the rails, falling into a lake and blowing up. I'm not sure how the show recovers from such a disastrous combination of episodes.