beesknees

I thought that, too. It seemed like the emperor thought Nan Heng's uncle had the empress killed and Nan Heng somehow led her to her death but the emperor was a jerk to him before then. He told him his kill of four rabbits was a stench. It's obvious the emperor hates NH mom and uncle but the kid is an innocent victim of all three of them doing power plays. More explanation needed. The script writer really was as bad as the heroine said!

What about Yuan and the chef? Their lives were completely altered by the Shen family? What about the empirial edict" It's not just the paintings. Them all perishing in the fire (but not really due to time travel) because of the villain makes sense. But everyone forgetting them makes zero sense. There would have been too much evidence. If you are going to go with shared dream, make it like Love Game in Eastern Fantasy.

I do not understand the emperor/father at all. I get that he wants 18th to inherit. I get that he is angry over what happened with the empress. I even get that he hates 7th's uncle. But does he really have to be this big of a jerk to his own kid? Only on ep 19, is this explained later?

Also, if you haven't seen Secret Inspector and Joy I'd recommend that over this.

Bon Appetiti is, I think, a little bit stronger than this one. The leads have more chemistry between them and the humor is sharper. However, both go from silly, happy comedy in the first episodes to dark towards the end. There are also A LOT of cooking scenes in Bon Appetit. Some found them boring, some found them fun. Your tolerance of those will determine how much you like that one.

First Night with the Duke has her staying in the past/fictional world.

Right? I mean, I'm not going around and fighting people on drama threads for women's rights for people who are either fictional or dead but at least I can pat myself on the back for not judging others ;-)

The problem is that when this came out in 2018 the age of consent in Japan was 13. In 2023, it changed to 16. So this show isn't technically about someone doing anything illegal with children. Would I watch it? No. I disagree with Japan on both those ages. Would I tell the Japanese, who are not my people, what they can or can't do? Also no. I might try to persuade them but I wouldn't start from a position of "You can't because I find it problematic."

I struggled with the last two. I liked the show, I just didn't find it perfect.

I've never seen a drama featuring pedophilia discussed on these forums, so before I respond specifically to that, I would have to know what we are taking about. What shows are these? Regarding the rest, believe what you want about the stupidity of the bulk of viewers and posters who enjoyed the show.

I'm not the thought police. I won't tell people what they should or shouldn't like. I've worked in the romance novel industry for years and have always found it odd how anxious other women are to tell grown women what we can or can't enjoy. It's okay if you don't like something and say so. Especially if you are calling a show, book or movie out based on is merits or lack thereof. But I find it problematic when people curtail free speech by insisting that something has to exist to their standards in order for anyone to be allowed to enjoy it

Again, with entertainment, unless it involves pedophilia or something along those lines, I don't think we should say, "No one should enjoy that." Kill Me, Love Me has an assassin heroine who tried to kill the hero over a misunderstanding. Should no one enjoy that because she was initially violent? It also includes tribute women (she uses that to enter the country and kill her target). So I guess we should ban that one since he led the wedding procession with the women into the captial, and yet falls in love with a tribute woman. What about Prisoner of Beauty? That's an arranged marriage where they don't like each other and he initially uses his military superiority to make life very difficult for her, Should we call that one out, too? Who gets to draw these lines over what is and isn't okay?

But Business Proposal did include a modern, 21st century man having sex wih a woman so drunk she couldn't remember the encounter. How could she have consented?

I was okay with a TV show including the fact that kings enslaved young girls during this era. I am not okay with the fact it happened.

I'll add that I gave the show a 7. I didn't like the ending, I didn't like that the whole issue with his mother's death and the concubines/dowager ganging up on her seemed unclear, I didn't understand why his mother was deposed and murdered but he was made king, and I didn't like how Yeon was so tough at the start, claiming to know Taekwondo, showing flashy sword skills, fighting with the king but was captured TWICE when she knew things were dangerous and she should be extra careful. The same thing with Songjae. How was he so alert having a casual convo with his bestie that he could block an attack to his back with a fan and yet so lax when spying on the enemy that someone snuck up on him?

Well, technically all fictional shows are "werid". Look at Business Proposal - what rich guy would actually do that, LOL. The whole plot was goofy (but so, so fun). In a historical drama, they will include some things to make the story seem more authentic and over look other things (like the fact the typical king was old and ugly) to make the story seem more enjoyable. You don't like what they included in this one. It didn't bother me. When it comes to entertainment and what we enjoy/tolerate as individuals, we can both be right. What we shouldn't do as say, "No one should enjoy this because. . . "

What I noticed in the show is that she changed toward him as she got to know him and found out what was driving some of his behaviors. Such as when she discovered the cooking competition with the Ming was about unjust tribute practices. As she encountered the people in the palace, she also realized that he was responding to wrongs done by others. For example, it was the grandmother, IIRC, who wanted to maim Cook Yeon in that initial competition for head royal cook. Yeon was merciful by not having the other cooks pay the price she would have been forced to had it been her, not them, that failed. And the king went along with her request for mercy. So the two came to a mutual understanding - as she got to know him, she could see his point of view, and as he got to know her, he changed to accommodate her wishes. This was actually one of the more realistic aspects of the show - real relationships require compromise, and the more different you are at the start, the greater the compromise will have to be. As far as including it, tribute women were a very real part of history for a long time. It would be weirder to have a historical set in that time and not include it .

If you are speaking of the historical real life kidnapping, that has nothing to do with the show. We learn from history by accepting that things which were societal norms in the past were wrong (like slavery) and acknowledging they happened while also saying they should never happen again. Watching a movie/show where this happens and the heroes may have taken part is not the same as saying, "Yes, that was a good thing to do." It is our way of saying, I hope most of those people treated the women they were given well, I hope some fell in love. We are looking at things that happened to our however many great grandmothers in the past and hoping that there had been some joy then, too. If you are talking about the kidnapping in the first few episodes of the series, things were explained to my satisfaction. The Ming demanded tribute women, he had to consider the lives of all citizens if he provoked a war by refusing, and took the better of two unacceptable options. The wrong would be on the Ming, not him, in that case. He also targeted some of his raids to harm the people who harmed his mother. His purpose was to hurt those people. Some of them (like the grandfather in ep. 2) took the punishment themselves rather than letting their daughters do so. I imagine that plenty threw the daughters under the bus because women weren't equal citizens then, So, I felt satisfied with his explanation. Not everyone will. And honestly, a lot of people will probably feel more comfortable with contemporary stories because women have had rights and powers only for a century or so.

My understanding is that he is a fictional character, using *some* of the traits of a historical king, to show how history can miscontrue things, especially since the winners write history. It's not a glamorization of a rapist kidnapper but an entirely FICTIONAL look at how the label tryant can be utilized by political enemies after a defeat. The use of time travel and comedy, use of the whole 21st century haute cuisine/cooking show rivalry all highlight the very FICTIONAL nature of this account.

I get that for some people it really worked. I think for others it just didn't. Of all the many movies/shows like this I've watched, this had one of my least favorite mechanisms for the ending. She didn't reincarnate, she was the same person throuhout, she literally travelled through time with her memories intact. He didn't reincarnate, his body moved from the Joseon era to present day. If they had reincarnated, their memories of past lives would have reawakened and they would have intact recollection of both lives - their present and past. But she appears in the past having never been born there. He appears in the present having never been born here. So not reincarnation but time travel. The time travel through the book pages and eclipses is sloppy because it doesn't, especially for him, explain how they can just appear in the other era. Moreover, all that changes is that his body was never found in the past (because it moved with him to the present). It was extra sad that the story just left him without a better ending in the past. At about the midway point, she had wondered if history had gotten the king wrong and if she was there to fix that. Then that just goes away and nothing really changes except that they (nonsensically) reunite in the future. She's the only one who knows what really happened. He still took the blame for all that happened. History wasn't changed.