Post by ajk on Apr 5, 2016 13:37:24 GMT -5
A mixture of very good and very shaky in this one.
The Ming envoys' reaction to the Okru clock was entirely understandable. Joseon made a big mistake not inviting Ming people immediately to come see the clock as soon as it was finished and not offering to make one for the Ming emperor. Gotta be sensitive to those politics. In fact if they had offered a clock to the emperor right away, JYS probably wouldn't be under such pressure to leave Joseon; he could have made it at home and trained some Ming people under him. Could have cut that deal easily. And the hot daughter asking him to go to Ming with her? Even if that doesn't tempt him, certainly she could help cut a deal for him.
BTW a lot of guys would go to Antarctica with her if she asked them.
The cranky official who showed up in the construction yard at 16:15, I wasn't able to translate his name from Hangul. The first figure has some sort of variation that isn't on my character chart. Can anybody help? (The other guy, the supervisor, looks like his name is Im Hyodon, I think.)
The palanquin used in this episode, is it historically accurate, even remotely? It looks more like a popcorn wagon than anything a king would travel in. Seems awfully small and rickety.
The whole sequence with the palanquin falling apart, it was awful. First of all, if somebody is going to sabotage the thing with bad nails, would they really leave some of the bad nails sitting there in broad daylight? And then come on, the thing travels twenty yards and falls apart? Nobody gave it a test ride before the king set foot in it? And okay, switching some nails is plausible, but where the heck did the Spiked Strip of Nail Puncture Death come from? It would take planning and significant work to install and conceal that. Who put it there? It was totally unnecessary for the story and made no sense. Somebody on the production staff needed to put a stop to this sequence and rethink it.
On the other hand, the scene with Hwang and Ha and Yi Cheon, that may have been the best scene in the series. I had wondered about the actor playing Yi, he seemed like an odd choice...but he's done well and in this scene was fantastic. His frustration, and the way he struggled and failed to find a single word after Hwang and Ha laid it all out, really well acted.
Is there any historical evidence that Ming put pressure on Joseon to remove or execute JYS? Apparently there isn't a lot known about his fall from grace...but the way it's being presented here, with the envoy in a bind (and by the way, Yun Bong is a very interesting character; wish we had seen more of him), it certainly is plausible, even if it's speculation. So give the writers credit for that.
And for that matter, the idea that someone would sabotage the palanquin to hurt JYS, that's plausible too. It's known that there were officials who resented him. Certainly they couldn't hurt him by sabotaging his astronomical work, because they wouldn't have understood the first thing about. But paying off somebody in the construction shop to yank out some nails, that's certainly not impossible. So a good piece of writing there too...
...So why do I have an ominous feeling that the final episode is going to do something very, very naughty? Like, completely rewrite history for the sake of a bigger ending? Sure hope I'm wrong but there's a vibe brewing...We shall see.
The Ming envoys' reaction to the Okru clock was entirely understandable. Joseon made a big mistake not inviting Ming people immediately to come see the clock as soon as it was finished and not offering to make one for the Ming emperor. Gotta be sensitive to those politics. In fact if they had offered a clock to the emperor right away, JYS probably wouldn't be under such pressure to leave Joseon; he could have made it at home and trained some Ming people under him. Could have cut that deal easily. And the hot daughter asking him to go to Ming with her? Even if that doesn't tempt him, certainly she could help cut a deal for him.
BTW a lot of guys would go to Antarctica with her if she asked them.
The cranky official who showed up in the construction yard at 16:15, I wasn't able to translate his name from Hangul. The first figure has some sort of variation that isn't on my character chart. Can anybody help? (The other guy, the supervisor, looks like his name is Im Hyodon, I think.)
The palanquin used in this episode, is it historically accurate, even remotely? It looks more like a popcorn wagon than anything a king would travel in. Seems awfully small and rickety.
The whole sequence with the palanquin falling apart, it was awful. First of all, if somebody is going to sabotage the thing with bad nails, would they really leave some of the bad nails sitting there in broad daylight? And then come on, the thing travels twenty yards and falls apart? Nobody gave it a test ride before the king set foot in it? And okay, switching some nails is plausible, but where the heck did the Spiked Strip of Nail Puncture Death come from? It would take planning and significant work to install and conceal that. Who put it there? It was totally unnecessary for the story and made no sense. Somebody on the production staff needed to put a stop to this sequence and rethink it.
On the other hand, the scene with Hwang and Ha and Yi Cheon, that may have been the best scene in the series. I had wondered about the actor playing Yi, he seemed like an odd choice...but he's done well and in this scene was fantastic. His frustration, and the way he struggled and failed to find a single word after Hwang and Ha laid it all out, really well acted.
Is there any historical evidence that Ming put pressure on Joseon to remove or execute JYS? Apparently there isn't a lot known about his fall from grace...but the way it's being presented here, with the envoy in a bind (and by the way, Yun Bong is a very interesting character; wish we had seen more of him), it certainly is plausible, even if it's speculation. So give the writers credit for that.
And for that matter, the idea that someone would sabotage the palanquin to hurt JYS, that's plausible too. It's known that there were officials who resented him. Certainly they couldn't hurt him by sabotaging his astronomical work, because they wouldn't have understood the first thing about. But paying off somebody in the construction shop to yank out some nails, that's certainly not impossible. So a good piece of writing there too...
...So why do I have an ominous feeling that the final episode is going to do something very, very naughty? Like, completely rewrite history for the sake of a bigger ending? Sure hope I'm wrong but there's a vibe brewing...We shall see.