Sherayith

My first drama ever was Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo - a funny, heartwarming coming-of-age story about a girl in a olympic sports career college, and honestly a good drama for a brand new viewer.
Another good starting drama is My Love from Another Star. It feels a bit dated now (2013!!!), but it's still hilarious and the OST is fantastic; Jun Ji Hyun knocks it out of the park in her role as as Cheon Song Yi, a popular actress who falls in love with a literal alien from outer space.
If you want to dip your toes into sageuk/historical setting dramas, my favorite one to this day is Moon Embracing the Sun, but there are other excellent ones like The King's Affection and Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo (the latter being very sad but very good), and funny ones like The Tale of Nokdu or Love in the Moonlight.
I also enjoy watching a lot of crime/thriller dramas as well, such as Tunnel, Signal, Black Out, and Defendant.

All happy endings except for Fangs of Fortune which made me cry my eyes out. Though if you watch the bonus extra episode, it gives a more of a hopeful ending.

This drama really...*sigh*...really could've been so much better. After 17 episodes, I just don't have the motivation to continue watching. I'm truly sad since I was really excited about this drama, but it's just such a far cry from the original source material, and with so many cliche tropes added in, that I just can't enjoy it. Both this and Legend of a Female General have been such disappointments for me. Exceedingly poor adaptions of good books.

14 episodes in, and honestly I think the scriptwriters should not have deviated so far from the original setup. Even after taking out Chu Yu's reincarnation, they should have kept Chu Yu and Wei Jun's engagement from the novel instead giving them a weird non-relationship (barely enough to even be called friendship) with no attraction involved. Like, have her actually care about Wei Jun as a potential marriage partner, have Wei Jun actually excited to marry her, so that when he dies she's not just insinuating herself into the Wei family tragedy for a totally unrelated reason, but instead she is actually involved in it due to her engagement. I think that if they'd just left Chu Yu's dad alive like he was in the novel, and didn't have the stupid "I'm going to investigate the crossbow that killed my dad by marrying this dead guy who ran the arsenal" plot device, it would've flowed so much better. Putting Wei Yun at odds with Chu Yu in the first 10 episodes just didn't sit right with me, considering that never happened in the novel. Sigh...I'm really trying to like this drama (and honestly when it comes to the side characters, it is pretty good) but the nonsensical changes to the main couple's story arc are making it hard. The drama's pacing makes Wei Yun's crush on Chu Yu feel so abrupt because he spends the first quarter of the drama suspicious of her motives and wanting to get rid of her.

These are the dramas I know of that are about, or feature, Lee Bang Won:

1. The Queen Who Crowns (2025) - about, portrayed by Lee Hyun Wook
2. Lee Bang Won, King of Tears (2021) - about, portrayed by Joo Sang Wook
3. My Country: The New Age (2019) - featured, portrayed by Jang Hyuk
4. Tears of the Dragon (1996) - about, portrayed by Yoo Dong Geun

not sure if there's any that I missed.

Well, I can truly say I enjoyed this drama from beginning to the end, with the beginning and end being the best parts, and the middle being a liiiiiittle draggy. I get the general criticism of Yimeng's character in the middle part of the story - while I completely understand WHY she would keep driving Nan Heng away even after he's bared his heart to her (multiple times!!!), the drama didn't exactly do a stellar job of making the audience sympathize with her. It's obvious to the audience that Nan Heng's character has changed and fallen in love, but it's easy for viewers to forget how little (and how negatively) Yimeng actually interacted with "Nan Heng" as opposed to "Li Shiliu". I think the scriptwriters should have given the audience more of a window into Yimeng's thoughts, her inner conflict over wanting to save her own life vs falling in love with the man who tried to kill her, etc. They did, a little bit, but it wasn't enough, so while Nan Heng is sitting in a corner being absolutely miserable and abandoned, Yimeng ends up looking extremely and unreasonably harsh.

I hope Sang Yeob is able to get more lead roles someday; I've loved his acting since I first saw him as Lee Yu Beom in While You Were Sleeping.
In fact, if he would act in a sageuk that would be amazing - he hasn't been in one since Jang Ok-Jung in 2013.

Gonna be real, the title made me think this was a sequel to The Devil Judge. I was kinda disappointed it wasn't but honestly I'm just happy to see Ji Sung on my screen again. :)

I have a hard time watching dramas with sad endings, even if they're really excellent stories. I can list on one hand the number of SE dramas I've watched. I have to have mental preparation going into it, because I always get so emotionally hung up on the ending that it often totally overshadows the rest of the story and I end up being morose for days at a time afterwards.

So tell me, is this drama good enough that I should put myself through that?

I know that there's a 16 ep version of this drama but is Hulu the only way to watch it?

I can name one: Dashing Youth! Hou Minghao was top billing but his character was sidelined about halfway through the story to the point where there were episodes where he had maybe 6-10 min of screentime.

I am really enjoying this drama so far after 9 episodes! My only pet peeve is the illogical medical practices; they keep using the defibrillator on people when their hearts are still beating!!! EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE LITTLE STUPID THING, THE DRAMA IS GREAT!

They left in the hopes of finding new prospects. In the novel its more clearly explained, but essentially because the Wei family was in trouble and likely to be eliminated by the emperor, the families of those women wanted them to leave and remarry, cutting ties with the Wei family while also securing their futures. If Wei Yun hadn't been found innocent, their reputations and lives would have been ruined. It was out of respect for Chu Yu's resolve and the love they had for their deceased husbands that they stayed long enough to see the Wei household stabilized with Wei Yun's investiture as a Marquis.

I was also massively disappointed with this adaptation. They massacred my boy...

Well...the marrying the coffin thing does technically have precedent. China does have an ancient tradition of ghost weddings, where they would perform a wedding ceremony for a dead unmarried man so he would have a spouse in the afterlife. Generally these were performed with a dead woman as the "wife" for the dead man, but I can see it as not being completely unheard of for a woman to do what Chu Yu did in the drama. But yeah, I also wish they'd just kept her betrothal to him instead of this new plot.
Sorry to see you go! I'm gonna stick with it to the end, because I have managed to enjoy what Iv'e seen so far, even if it's not everything I'd hoped. At the very least, it hasn't disappointed me in the way Legend of a Female General did - that one hurts.

I'll keep it vague to avoid any major spoilers, but let's just say in the novel she experiences a great humbling that actually brings her and Chu Yu closer together as sisters.

I’m disappointed that they removed her rebirth, but I’m gonna watch it and see how I feel about it. I honestly feel better about this one than LOAFG, they absolutely butchered that one, but so far in the first few episodes, FFL hasn’t upset me.

Her sister does have strong character development in the book, let's see if they keep it in the drama.

The crown prince lied, but he is the firstborn son and chosen heir so the emperor decided to protect his son and hide the truth. The emperor is not a strong leader, and sacrifices the Wei family's reputation to protect his and his son's position, because he is afraid of the Wei's becoming too powerful. Wei Yun (in the novel) ends up overthrowing this weak emperor/crown prince duo (and the OTHER evil emperor who comes after him), but I'm almost 100% certain this won't happen in the drama because China doesn't allow the overthrow/killing of emperors in their tv media.

Building on what Breadfruit said, the ML's mother did not approve of their relationship, so Chu Yu and Wei Yun did not marry for quite a while, but the mother was eventually won over by Chu Yu's steady devotion and strong character and finally approved their marriage.