This review may contain spoilers
It definitely started strong,
I haven't been this hooked on a drama in a while, but somehow this show has lost me around epsidoes 8-10.
I think the acting is great, the chemistry between the leads was pretty good, the romance is cute, and I loved all the characters however the plot lost heart somewhere and became very rushed.
[The King & Consort Kang]
Consort Kang who was supposed to be the King's favorite (probably because of the parallels with his mother) until Ji Yeong shows up and Consort Kang basically becomes non-existant in the King's life and the show never really bothers to flesh that out in any regard.
After a while they just stop having scenes together at all which was a total let down.
Consort Kang's character also feels all over the place to me?
Her loyalty lies with the evil uncle, so much so that she's willing to marry him, but she's still hell bent on getting rid of Ji Yeong for no other reason than because.....?
She's oddly possessive over the King for no real discernable reason and that makes her hostility toward Ji Young so plastic that it takes me out of the show.
It's clear Ji Young isnt a spy, she isn't a danger, and her only fault is apparently the fact that the King fell for her, which with his reputation why would anyone find it wildly out of the ordinary for the King to be getting around? Ji Yeong is only really a problem because everyone else is convinced she is for no tangible reason in my opinion.
If Consort Kang only truly cares about working the the evil uncle to get the King deposed, why spend so much time targeting Ji Young specifically when she could be doing literally anything else? The show never elaborates on why I should care about the fact that Consort Kang loves the King, in fact the show tells me that she wants him deposed, but she is still catty and jealous because...?
Consort Kang starts strong but because the show just abandons her at some point her character just fell flat and she's more of a plot device than anything else.
[Court Lady Chu Wol]
Also, Chu Wol's extreme loyalty for someone who is very aware of how the court ladies are discarded also seems extremely out of place. Doing a job because if you dont you die is one thing, but her prison scene where she looked ready to jump out of her body to save Consort Kang was so comically dramatic for no reason? Maybe the scene would have made sense if they gave us insight on why she is so staunchly loyal, but otherwise it was just confusing to me.
Why? Why is Chu Wol so dedicated? Just, because....? It would have been nice if they fleshed out her character more.
[The Royal Family]
I know Yi Heon is a fictional take on a real tyrant, but I didnt expect them to soften the edges of that story so heavily?
The real Deposed Queen Yun was a woman who didnt come from any noble background, gave birth to the crown prince, and though the King seemed to love her she was essentially bullied out of the palace by other noble families (in what I've put together looking into this bit of history)
She supposedly lashed out and scratched the King's face, though she tried to hide it everyone around him jumped on the opportunity to force her out and have her deposed and executed, especially the King's mother.
In the show, they do a lot to sand off the edges of Yi Heon's family. The Dowager Queen and Queen Ja-Hyun especially. When I realized they weren't going to get any depth as characters I kinda tapped out. If theyre both decent people who care about the King and Ji Yeong, then what weight does the Deposed Queen's death even have?
The edge in the early episodes, that sense of venegence Yi Heon was after and the bite he had going after it evaporated at some point. I understand Ji Young changed him, but Yi Heon was at his best when he was a misunderstood tyrant with something to prove but that doesn't hold any weight when the key people involved in the Queen being deposed are presented as 'not that bad actually'.
When the grand prince was poisoned, imagine if we had gotten insight on Yi Heon's relationship with his step mother? Maybe how she neglected him, or favored her own son over him in a way that gives weight to him feeling lonely in the palace? How he wished his step mother would care for him like she cares for her son? Something? Like, give us a reason to care about the deposed Queen because when you present the royal family as mostly decent, except that one evil guy, the stakes disappear.
Queen Ja-Hyun had utterly no screentime outside of being the benevolent mother just caught somewhere in an evil plot that she has no relation to. For someone who *should* be important, she's barely important to the plot at all.
[Cooking]
The cooking in the show and how every instance of cooking is a race against the clock for something becomes this weight on the plot. The spectacle becomes more important than the story and the cooking takes up so much time the story doesnt get time to develop. It also becomes boring and predictable when the keep doing the same thing over and over, beat for beat.
I wish we had more scenes like the Dowager Queen remembering her mother rather than long winded cooking competitions against the Ming chefs, and dont get me wrong- I liked the Ming chefs, but they didn't do a whole lot to move the internal plot forward and that block of story is probably why all the other relevant things to a major backseat and ended up rushed.
Something exciting happening every single second doesn't really make space for all the other plot elements you built up to reach satisfying conclusions, especially when the royal drama was so interesting before it got watered down, like the writers gave up on committing to a complex plot.
[Evil Uncle]
Also, Prince Jesan, Mister Evil Uncle.
Who would have expected the guy who is involved with all the medicinal things would have some hand in the Prince being posioned?
For a man who was supposed to be the big master mind behind trying to get the King deposed, doing something so obvious felt like the writers gave up, like they just needed any reason for the King and Ji Yeong to follow the trail back to him to wrap that plotline up. Prince Jesan went from this foreboding villain where I'm waiting for this grand clash and story peak, to more so just a Scooby Doo villain waiting to get his mask torn off and then we all move on.
Choi Gwi-Hwa was so good in this role its a shame that it all fell flat. I could tell after a certain point, or maybe I just became disillusioned, but all the actors performances started to feel flat. Like, compared to the first episode by epsiode ten it feels like they're just reading their lines to get it over with. The story lost it stakes, the edge was sanded off, the royal drama isn't all that dramatic anymore, and all the cooking just became so painfully limp and repetitive.
The drama lost heart somewhere, and it really sucks because it had a lot of potential, the spectacle of the cooking aspect was just way too disconnected that the plot came second to everything else.
I think the acting is great, the chemistry between the leads was pretty good, the romance is cute, and I loved all the characters however the plot lost heart somewhere and became very rushed.
[The King & Consort Kang]
Consort Kang who was supposed to be the King's favorite (probably because of the parallels with his mother) until Ji Yeong shows up and Consort Kang basically becomes non-existant in the King's life and the show never really bothers to flesh that out in any regard.
After a while they just stop having scenes together at all which was a total let down.
Consort Kang's character also feels all over the place to me?
Her loyalty lies with the evil uncle, so much so that she's willing to marry him, but she's still hell bent on getting rid of Ji Yeong for no other reason than because.....?
She's oddly possessive over the King for no real discernable reason and that makes her hostility toward Ji Young so plastic that it takes me out of the show.
It's clear Ji Young isnt a spy, she isn't a danger, and her only fault is apparently the fact that the King fell for her, which with his reputation why would anyone find it wildly out of the ordinary for the King to be getting around? Ji Yeong is only really a problem because everyone else is convinced she is for no tangible reason in my opinion.
If Consort Kang only truly cares about working the the evil uncle to get the King deposed, why spend so much time targeting Ji Young specifically when she could be doing literally anything else? The show never elaborates on why I should care about the fact that Consort Kang loves the King, in fact the show tells me that she wants him deposed, but she is still catty and jealous because...?
Consort Kang starts strong but because the show just abandons her at some point her character just fell flat and she's more of a plot device than anything else.
[Court Lady Chu Wol]
Also, Chu Wol's extreme loyalty for someone who is very aware of how the court ladies are discarded also seems extremely out of place. Doing a job because if you dont you die is one thing, but her prison scene where she looked ready to jump out of her body to save Consort Kang was so comically dramatic for no reason? Maybe the scene would have made sense if they gave us insight on why she is so staunchly loyal, but otherwise it was just confusing to me.
Why? Why is Chu Wol so dedicated? Just, because....? It would have been nice if they fleshed out her character more.
[The Royal Family]
I know Yi Heon is a fictional take on a real tyrant, but I didnt expect them to soften the edges of that story so heavily?
The real Deposed Queen Yun was a woman who didnt come from any noble background, gave birth to the crown prince, and though the King seemed to love her she was essentially bullied out of the palace by other noble families (in what I've put together looking into this bit of history)
She supposedly lashed out and scratched the King's face, though she tried to hide it everyone around him jumped on the opportunity to force her out and have her deposed and executed, especially the King's mother.
In the show, they do a lot to sand off the edges of Yi Heon's family. The Dowager Queen and Queen Ja-Hyun especially. When I realized they weren't going to get any depth as characters I kinda tapped out. If theyre both decent people who care about the King and Ji Yeong, then what weight does the Deposed Queen's death even have?
The edge in the early episodes, that sense of venegence Yi Heon was after and the bite he had going after it evaporated at some point. I understand Ji Young changed him, but Yi Heon was at his best when he was a misunderstood tyrant with something to prove but that doesn't hold any weight when the key people involved in the Queen being deposed are presented as 'not that bad actually'.
When the grand prince was poisoned, imagine if we had gotten insight on Yi Heon's relationship with his step mother? Maybe how she neglected him, or favored her own son over him in a way that gives weight to him feeling lonely in the palace? How he wished his step mother would care for him like she cares for her son? Something? Like, give us a reason to care about the deposed Queen because when you present the royal family as mostly decent, except that one evil guy, the stakes disappear.
Queen Ja-Hyun had utterly no screentime outside of being the benevolent mother just caught somewhere in an evil plot that she has no relation to. For someone who *should* be important, she's barely important to the plot at all.
[Cooking]
The cooking in the show and how every instance of cooking is a race against the clock for something becomes this weight on the plot. The spectacle becomes more important than the story and the cooking takes up so much time the story doesnt get time to develop. It also becomes boring and predictable when the keep doing the same thing over and over, beat for beat.
I wish we had more scenes like the Dowager Queen remembering her mother rather than long winded cooking competitions against the Ming chefs, and dont get me wrong- I liked the Ming chefs, but they didn't do a whole lot to move the internal plot forward and that block of story is probably why all the other relevant things to a major backseat and ended up rushed.
Something exciting happening every single second doesn't really make space for all the other plot elements you built up to reach satisfying conclusions, especially when the royal drama was so interesting before it got watered down, like the writers gave up on committing to a complex plot.
[Evil Uncle]
Also, Prince Jesan, Mister Evil Uncle.
Who would have expected the guy who is involved with all the medicinal things would have some hand in the Prince being posioned?
For a man who was supposed to be the big master mind behind trying to get the King deposed, doing something so obvious felt like the writers gave up, like they just needed any reason for the King and Ji Yeong to follow the trail back to him to wrap that plotline up. Prince Jesan went from this foreboding villain where I'm waiting for this grand clash and story peak, to more so just a Scooby Doo villain waiting to get his mask torn off and then we all move on.
Choi Gwi-Hwa was so good in this role its a shame that it all fell flat. I could tell after a certain point, or maybe I just became disillusioned, but all the actors performances started to feel flat. Like, compared to the first episode by epsiode ten it feels like they're just reading their lines to get it over with. The story lost it stakes, the edge was sanded off, the royal drama isn't all that dramatic anymore, and all the cooking just became so painfully limp and repetitive.
The drama lost heart somewhere, and it really sucks because it had a lot of potential, the spectacle of the cooking aspect was just way too disconnected that the plot came second to everything else.
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