BeachPrincess

Through most of the episodes, this show had me cracking up every few minutes. Somewhere mid-series it also began to bring tears to my eyes. I'm always impressed when a show can successfully deliver such opposing emotions. I've decided that Wang HeDi is quite a talented actor. Daoming Si, Dongfang Qingcang, and now Xu ChiAn are three very different characters, but he plays each one so naturally, like it was tailor-made for him. In this one it seems like he is just showing up to work to play around and hang out with his buddies (but in a "it looks natural" way, not a "not putting in effort" way)-this just seems like his real personality. So who knows?

At episode 8, my thoughts were:
Anyway, I'm liking it a lot so far. However, there is frequent gruesomeness that I wish were excluded. Torture. grrrrr
I decided that I need to go back and collect the proverbs that Wang He Di keeps tossing out. Golden. I need them for my students. And so far, none of the actors/characters are irritating me, which is a refreshing change. All of the major characters seem tailer-made for their actors (or vice-versa...?). In that way, I'm very impressed. I do have apprehensions though that some romance will be spilled in and mess up the groove. As much as I live for romance, in a few instances it just messes up a good thing. This is one of those where it is completely unnecessary.

Further along in the series I realized that there was one person who bothered me. That annoying gold guardian girl. I don't know what her deal was, but she rubbed me the wrong way. However, she did provide me with this little bit of amusement: "That annoying gold guardian girl. We'll call her AGG. So AGG is doing her cranky whiney thing, and Gold Guardian hyeong is not paying attention. She stops walking, smacks him, and says, "I'm sowing discord. Show me some respect." Wha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!! I'm sowing discord! I love it! How can I work that in to a casual conversation?"

Although I enjoyed the series as a whole, I had to skip most of the final three episodes because of the graphic nature (more torture). I think there out to be a warning keyword for torture and similar drama aspects. After completing the series I'm left with a lot of unanswered questions and I was not a fan of what felt like a rushed ending. Since I learned that a season 2 was coming as I watched this, I wasn't as bothered by the final as I would normally be, but I'm still not happy with it. In the end, I came for Wang HeDi, and stayed because of the fantastic relationships/interactions and natural acting. I lost track of how many times I thought of The Avengers or Ocean's while watching this. Oh, and Wang HeDi is right, he is perfect for this role.