Cai
A time travel romance drama. The main character is flung from modern day Korea to its origins. She has to navigate the world of the palace, and her relationships while not giving away her secret. Unfortunately this series is nowhere near as good as the original. I’d recommend it to people who are looking for this specific genre but really if you have anything else on your list you’d probably get more enjoyment out of that. This drama is bland.
The story was decent. However it felt like the writers didn’t want to commit to a more political drama so they made the character’s motivations more personal. This ended up limiting the drama as those motivations were not always convincing. The script felt very rushed towards the end in contrast to the fullness of the character exploration in earlier episodes. It was also repetitive at times, rather than exploring new territory with the characters the same events ended up happening each time. The major issue with this drama is that while some characters progressed immensely, others remained two dimensional.
The cast was a mixed bag. Lee Joon Gi as Wang So was phenomenal. He did an amazing job portraying the emotion of his character and was persuasive. Unfortunately towards the end he was let down by the script that didn’t leave him enough room to show the change in Wang So’s motivations. IU was not convincing as Hae Soo. It felt like she could have been replaced by any other pretty face and the drama would have been fine if not better. Part of this is that Hae Soo was written as a character who has things done to her, as opposed to being a character that makes decisions for herself. This could have been made up for by a skilled actress who could have shown the depth of feelings outside the spoken dialog, instead however the viewer was given a blank slate. The rest of the cast was great but the script only allowed them to be two dimensional (e.g. angry ambitious character, bungling character who has all the power and connections, funny cute character forever changed by tragedy, and so on).
The music was on point but nothing remarkable.
The story was decent. However it felt like the writers didn’t want to commit to a more political drama so they made the character’s motivations more personal. This ended up limiting the drama as those motivations were not always convincing. The script felt very rushed towards the end in contrast to the fullness of the character exploration in earlier episodes. It was also repetitive at times, rather than exploring new territory with the characters the same events ended up happening each time. The major issue with this drama is that while some characters progressed immensely, others remained two dimensional.
The cast was a mixed bag. Lee Joon Gi as Wang So was phenomenal. He did an amazing job portraying the emotion of his character and was persuasive. Unfortunately towards the end he was let down by the script that didn’t leave him enough room to show the change in Wang So’s motivations. IU was not convincing as Hae Soo. It felt like she could have been replaced by any other pretty face and the drama would have been fine if not better. Part of this is that Hae Soo was written as a character who has things done to her, as opposed to being a character that makes decisions for herself. This could have been made up for by a skilled actress who could have shown the depth of feelings outside the spoken dialog, instead however the viewer was given a blank slate. The rest of the cast was great but the script only allowed them to be two dimensional (e.g. angry ambitious character, bungling character who has all the power and connections, funny cute character forever changed by tragedy, and so on).
The music was on point but nothing remarkable.
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