L13

I dip in and out of this drama when I'm looking to kill a few minutes and I fast-forward through a lot of scenes (including all of Cho-hee's office drama, her in-laws, her frenemy and her family, etc.), so I may have missed this, but--who is Seul-ah's sick relative? Is it her father or a sibling? Or did she perhaps have a child at a young age that her mother is raising and that's why she's so worried on the phone? She keeps telling Kang-rim and her friend that they don't know what kind of life she's had, so I'm wondering what her dramatic backstory is.

I like that Bo-ri is finally having a substantial interaction with CH's boss this week; that romantic subplot has to start up at some point.

Wishing her and Choi Tae-joon the best as they become spouses and parents!

It's more fun than funny for me.

The premise and plot (or what we know of it so far) are *very* similar to those of Secret Royal Inspector, which aired earlier this year on KBS2, but I have to say the first episodes of SRIJ were markedly more fun for me than the first episodes of SRI. I like the main characters better, and Yi-eon and his manservant seem smarter and more competent as far as secret royal inspectoring goes than Yi-gyeom and his sidekick in SRI.

I LOVE the way they subverted the stupidest trope ever in the last episode. It was both clever and funny and also just a better, more satisfying way to end the drama. One of the strongest final episodes I can remember watching recently just for the fact they tied up all loose ends, gave all secondary characters a nice send-off, and didn't do anything annoying and unnecessary with the main couple.

Really? I already can't stand this puta. He's so condescending to MWQ; when she asks him what's going on, he's all ~don't worry your pretty little head about it~ when she's obviously a smart and capable person who can handle (and deserves to know) the truth about the situation she's entangled herself in. And he tells his subordinate if he moves into her house, he can "take care of her"? Who is he to take care of her? She can take care of herself!

He hasn't met her since they were children and yet he's already following her around, inserting himself into her life and trying to run it for her after just a handful of meetings. I hate this shit and never see it as romantic. I hope he gets a real love interest quickly so this love triangle nonsense can be laid to rest.

It's not the costume budget that bothers me but the subtly anachronistic fashion. MWQ wears this butterfly hair clip in several scenes that looks old-fashioned at a glance but is actually asymmetrical and oblong, which are modern design features. Similarly, women in the drama wear low-heeled shoes with T-straps and diagonal straps, which are very pretty and kinda resemble shoes from the right period, but they have these really pointed toes that are very modern. And the floral-pattern coat TXL wears on the ship in the first episode is just completely out of place in this period.

The haircuts, especially the women's, are also vaguely old-timey but actually not true to the period at all.

It doesn't bother me too much, but I wish they'd gone in more of a Battle of Changsha direction with the costumes and styling.

Man, my heart broke for Song Bai Yu and his mother. The way his mother killed him unwittingly because of her loyalty to Zhao Rui was ~tragic irony~ of the most tragic variety. That scene of Bai Yu's final moments in the car trunk while his mother was playing a lullaby on her phone was just Too Much. Both of them were very complex and well-drawn characters (by cdrama standards).

I only wish we'd seen Yuan Hao meeting up with Wen Wan and her child in the epilogue and being a good friend to Bai Yu's family as a way of putting Bai Yu's memory to rest.

Also... Lin Lan/Yuan Hao nation, we got a single very tiny crumb in the literal last seconds of the final episode...??? I can't believe they did us dirty like that! I choose to believe they finally started dating after they basically decided not to move away so they could keep living together and Lin Lan officially gave him his helmet. Because COME ON.

I have a feeling Won-tak and Chak-hee will get some minor romantic development in the final episodes.

The leads get a lot of screen time where they share private moments together, so there's plenty of relationship development between them, and every couple of episodes someone will suggest that they like each other or that they should get together, but so far there hasn't been any explicit romantic development. The romantic tension is just overt enough that you can't say it's all in our heads, so I hope we'll get some crumbs in the final episode(s).

Several closely connected cases that build up to one big mystery.

Yay, that's what I was hoping to hear! Thank you!

It seems this should be coming out soon, but no release date has been reported to my knowledge. Does anyone know roughly when we can expect this drama?

More serious than I expected.

Korean dramas tend to reinforce very one-sided and nationalistic readings of history, especially when it comes to Japan and the period of Japanese occupation. That's a symptom of the issue that Korean-Japanese relations haven't really recovered since the first half of the 20th century, so anti-Japanese attitudes and stereotypes are how Koreans cope with the fact Japan has refused to take responsibility for its historical actions.

Unlike Germany, whose government has made efforts to take responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis and acknowledged them as evil, for example, modern Japan has a very complicated relationship with its imperial past and still refuses to acknowledge many of the war crimes it committed in Korea, China, Taiwan, etc.

All this is to say that I agree with you that fictional depictions of Japanese characters in Korean historical dramas tend to be very two-dimensional, cartoonish & naively patriotic (in the sense of justifying Korean patriotism), which points to the larger issue of blind nationalism in Korean society, but also Japan has refused to apologise for many of the atrocities it committed, so it's hard for Koreans to move on and reexamine the past critically/objectively.

Thanks for the info! I was confused because MDL says the drama airs every weekday and YOUKU had all the episodes up to 25 when I checked (for paid subscribers only, I think), so I assumed more episodes had come out.

@KaizenSubs is subbing and uploading with links to the files on their Twitter (same handle).

Does anyone know if the episodes after 16 have been subbed in English somewhere?

True! Let’s hope it lives up to the hype.

She’s a very talented actress and also probably one of the most beautiful women on the planet! And Allen Deng is really charming as well, the premise of the drama is cool and the first trailer nails the aesthetic I wanted them to go for and looks super dramatic and romantic!

My expectations are really high!