This review may contain spoilers
When they promise NeW and Different!! and deliver the same old.
While this show started strong, it slowly loses steam and abandons most of the things that made it original and intriguing until you're left with another bland costume thing which grows increasingly similiar to all the other bland costume things you've seen. It never becomes unwatchable, but I did become frustrated with it because it set itself up as defying convention, and then repeatedly chickened out and reverted to type
The initial premise is that 'K' transmigrates into the novel The Obsessive Tyrant as the side character Cha Seon Chaek. She immediately manages to get messy drunk and decides she's going to watch the titular tyrant Prince Gyeong Seong meet-cute heroine Cho Eun Ae. Except, she's derailed the plot too much, and it's she who gets the meet cute. Or, y'know, drunkenly accosts the guy. By being both audacious and offering empathy and understanding to Prince Gyeong Seong (because of her knowledge of the character) she SOMEHOW (I wish they had elucidated whose impetus it was, it feels like a major missing element) ends up in bed with him. He then fixates on her because she popped his cherry. And like, Girl, I am so here for it. What sort of nasty shit did y'all get into that he was so desperate to have that sex on lock down? Like, for real. She has to have been the top. I hope she rode his face.
So we have this messy, horny fangirl. Fun, right? I want to watch her disaster through this. I hope she trips on a banana peel and accidentally pegs him.
Yeah, I know. It was too much to hope for. But hope springs eternal, darn it!
While Seo Hyun is very charming, and is working her ass off carrying this thing on pure charisma... this is another script with a very carelessly written female lead. Cha Seon Chaek's previous identity matters so little it doesn't even rate a name. The show paints her interest in the novel The Obsessive Tyrant rather sheepishly as a depression-fueled indulgence bourne of a recent friendship collapse. That collapse is THE ONLY THING we know about K's life in the modern world, and we only know about it because it serves as a minor roadblock to her relationship with Yi Beon. Once she transmigrates and bangs Prince Gyeong Seong she drops the depression and becomes quite perky and bold-spirited; essentially like any other FL. Her actions also become more like those of a stock character, not of a modern woman with a head full of plot and character knowledge. Do you think she's going to form a real friendship with her maid character, instead of treating her like an appendage? She isn't. Will she use deep character analysis and genre-savvy narrative deconstruction to understand evolving character motives and defy expectations? She won't. Does she cook a meal with utmost confidence which she serves to the ML that turns out to be awful? She does.
It's especially weird because she's meant to screw up the plot-- except she does such a mid job at it the show introduces a couple of other characters who are just there to obfuscate. Since Cha Seon Chaek's relationship with Prince Gyeong Seong causes less trouble than the original one with Cho Eun Ae, they even have to add a new antagonist. Which feels...dumb. Because the antagonist is someone who probably should have appeared in the original novel because he helps resolve Prince Gyeong Seong's story.
And because it makes Cha Seon Chaek's presence feel somewhat extraneous. In the end very little of the plot is really about Cha Seon Chaek in any significant way, which is a very great shame to me. It all is tragically low stakes and low effort. She doesn't even really, truly, properly get worried that when the story 'ends' she might STOP EXISTING. And I want to dig into a character who doesn't think that's a cause for alarm.
Almost all the conflict and agency belongs to Yi Beon. He has a tragic back story, it's his situation that they need to extricate themselves from, its he who needs to grow and change as a person. Ok Taec Yeon does a fine job with his part, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. His interactions with her family are fun and sweet, he does a great job of looking at her adoringly and hinting that she should probably do Reverse Cowgirl again, same old.
Everything else goes exactly as you've seen before; the former Heroine becomes a villain for reasons not entirely clear, a former female villain/rival gets redeemed, the 2ML is generally useless, there is some vague thematic work with fathers which is so badly attended it might as well not be there, no questions about the nature of reality are asked or answered, no pegging is confirmed, and nobody was harmed in the making of this drama.
It's like ordering a fun sounding cocktail, only to find out it's orange soda with some tajin on the rim. Orange soda is fine, great, if that's what you intended to order; but you kind of wanted the exciting cocktail they advertised. But they think the tajin will distract you from the fact that it's orange soda, the same as Fanta and Sunkist and Crush and Jarritos. It's orange soda. So long as you know and want orange soda going in, you'll be fine.
The initial premise is that 'K' transmigrates into the novel The Obsessive Tyrant as the side character Cha Seon Chaek. She immediately manages to get messy drunk and decides she's going to watch the titular tyrant Prince Gyeong Seong meet-cute heroine Cho Eun Ae. Except, she's derailed the plot too much, and it's she who gets the meet cute. Or, y'know, drunkenly accosts the guy. By being both audacious and offering empathy and understanding to Prince Gyeong Seong (because of her knowledge of the character) she SOMEHOW (I wish they had elucidated whose impetus it was, it feels like a major missing element) ends up in bed with him. He then fixates on her because she popped his cherry. And like, Girl, I am so here for it. What sort of nasty shit did y'all get into that he was so desperate to have that sex on lock down? Like, for real. She has to have been the top. I hope she rode his face.
So we have this messy, horny fangirl. Fun, right? I want to watch her disaster through this. I hope she trips on a banana peel and accidentally pegs him.
Yeah, I know. It was too much to hope for. But hope springs eternal, darn it!
While Seo Hyun is very charming, and is working her ass off carrying this thing on pure charisma... this is another script with a very carelessly written female lead. Cha Seon Chaek's previous identity matters so little it doesn't even rate a name. The show paints her interest in the novel The Obsessive Tyrant rather sheepishly as a depression-fueled indulgence bourne of a recent friendship collapse. That collapse is THE ONLY THING we know about K's life in the modern world, and we only know about it because it serves as a minor roadblock to her relationship with Yi Beon. Once she transmigrates and bangs Prince Gyeong Seong she drops the depression and becomes quite perky and bold-spirited; essentially like any other FL. Her actions also become more like those of a stock character, not of a modern woman with a head full of plot and character knowledge. Do you think she's going to form a real friendship with her maid character, instead of treating her like an appendage? She isn't. Will she use deep character analysis and genre-savvy narrative deconstruction to understand evolving character motives and defy expectations? She won't. Does she cook a meal with utmost confidence which she serves to the ML that turns out to be awful? She does.
It's especially weird because she's meant to screw up the plot-- except she does such a mid job at it the show introduces a couple of other characters who are just there to obfuscate. Since Cha Seon Chaek's relationship with Prince Gyeong Seong causes less trouble than the original one with Cho Eun Ae, they even have to add a new antagonist. Which feels...dumb. Because the antagonist is someone who probably should have appeared in the original novel because he helps resolve Prince Gyeong Seong's story.
And because it makes Cha Seon Chaek's presence feel somewhat extraneous. In the end very little of the plot is really about Cha Seon Chaek in any significant way, which is a very great shame to me. It all is tragically low stakes and low effort. She doesn't even really, truly, properly get worried that when the story 'ends' she might STOP EXISTING. And I want to dig into a character who doesn't think that's a cause for alarm.
Almost all the conflict and agency belongs to Yi Beon. He has a tragic back story, it's his situation that they need to extricate themselves from, its he who needs to grow and change as a person. Ok Taec Yeon does a fine job with his part, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. His interactions with her family are fun and sweet, he does a great job of looking at her adoringly and hinting that she should probably do Reverse Cowgirl again, same old.
Everything else goes exactly as you've seen before; the former Heroine becomes a villain for reasons not entirely clear, a former female villain/rival gets redeemed, the 2ML is generally useless, there is some vague thematic work with fathers which is so badly attended it might as well not be there, no questions about the nature of reality are asked or answered, no pegging is confirmed, and nobody was harmed in the making of this drama.
It's like ordering a fun sounding cocktail, only to find out it's orange soda with some tajin on the rim. Orange soda is fine, great, if that's what you intended to order; but you kind of wanted the exciting cocktail they advertised. But they think the tajin will distract you from the fact that it's orange soda, the same as Fanta and Sunkist and Crush and Jarritos. It's orange soda. So long as you know and want orange soda going in, you'll be fine.
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