Post by ajk on Jul 21, 2016 20:54:32 GMT -5
Didn't like the premise in this one. The shipping rights to China's Grand Canal are legally monopolized by a Shillan group. The Chinese government sets up a competition for them--not with a Chinese group but with Madam Jami. And Sul Pyung doesn't go out and hire the best ship and most experienced Grand Canal sailors for the competition. No, he disregards the pleas of his best subordinates and puts the fate of his entire business in the hands of a low-level Shillan employee who's never even sailed the canal before. Really? Then the whole thing depends on the news that part of the canal has been siezed by rebels--which is supposed to be a secret? And to top it all off, GB is the only person in all of Yangzhou who knows how to sail upwind? Seriously? Ugh. The whole thing was just a strained, silly excuse to set up more GB-versus-YM drama, which we've had plenty of already. Very, very poor writing.
The production was very nice, though. Beautiful location shots especially, and once again the ships looked great. Sure hope the writing steps up to the level of the production because it's been a visually beautiful series so far.
To give one point of credit: if what Madam Jami said about Sul's tax-grain ships sinking or arriving late "on many occasions" is true, then it would be entirely appropriate to open up that transport business to competition. Absolutely.
"He will freeze to death out here." Not when there's no frost coming from your breath he won't. Oops. But that aside, it sure was nice of Mak-bong and Soon-jong to show compassion to some random poor slob on the street. The storyline brushed past it without a second thought but it really was very touching. I hope YM rewards them for it someday.
Was anybody else surprised that Master Jo went straight to Yi's group with his information instead of Sul's? I thought he was a good guy and firmly allied with Sul. Maybe he figured Yi would need the info more and pay more for it, and fair enough he can certainly do that. It just felt surprising.
"I saved him from a life of slavery on a horse ranch, only to have him betray me ungratefully." True! Yes he did have good reasons for turning his back on her (remember she sent her men to attack government troops) but he does owe her. Sorry to keep harping on this but it keeps coming up and GB has never acknowledged it.
Why is GB explaining his sailing strategy right in front of his competition? Keep quiet! Okay he wants to rub it in Madam Jami's face, but that's no excuse for revealing a valuable business secret. Once again he's not exactly showing himself to be a business genius.
Speaking of which...the whole sailing-into-the-wind thing, I got curious about it and found a couple of non-technical explanations about how ships can sail upwind. They're fun to read:
physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2015/05/the-physics-of-sailing-how-does.html
www.livescience.com/32822-sailboats-sailing-windward-not-impossible.html
So there it is. But it did leave me with a question about the episode. When we saw GB and Yon looking at ship plans they explained to Sul's daughter that they needed to have a lighter ship with less of a draft, to keep it from running aground during the dry season. Fair enough...but that was for a Grand Canal voyage. If you're going to go out to sea and sail into the wind, you need a significant keel--like these two web pages explain. Those are two very different kinds of ships. I won't be critical of the writing for this--it's getting very detailed and yes I get very nit-picky sometimes--but it would have been a gold star for the episode if the writing had been thorough enough to clear this up. One thing we saw in the Jang Youngsil series is that you definitely can present this kind of science-y stuff and do it in an interesting way for a historical drama.
It hadn't occurred to me before, but YM really doesn't have much of a chance with Jung-hwa no matter what, because of his connection to the pirates that wrecked her life as a girl. And he knows it; we heard him say so in this episode--that stuff he said to her about the unforgivable sin he committed. That really does put the whole thing in a different light. The feeling of self-loathing that he always seems to be carrying around, I guess it really is there and this would certainly explain it.
P.S. People spend sooooooo much time staring at each other in this series. Or staring off into space by themselves. So much screen time on people's faces and so much staring. Not saying it's good or bad, just never seen anything like it.
The production was very nice, though. Beautiful location shots especially, and once again the ships looked great. Sure hope the writing steps up to the level of the production because it's been a visually beautiful series so far.
To give one point of credit: if what Madam Jami said about Sul's tax-grain ships sinking or arriving late "on many occasions" is true, then it would be entirely appropriate to open up that transport business to competition. Absolutely.
"He will freeze to death out here." Not when there's no frost coming from your breath he won't. Oops. But that aside, it sure was nice of Mak-bong and Soon-jong to show compassion to some random poor slob on the street. The storyline brushed past it without a second thought but it really was very touching. I hope YM rewards them for it someday.
Was anybody else surprised that Master Jo went straight to Yi's group with his information instead of Sul's? I thought he was a good guy and firmly allied with Sul. Maybe he figured Yi would need the info more and pay more for it, and fair enough he can certainly do that. It just felt surprising.
"I saved him from a life of slavery on a horse ranch, only to have him betray me ungratefully." True! Yes he did have good reasons for turning his back on her (remember she sent her men to attack government troops) but he does owe her. Sorry to keep harping on this but it keeps coming up and GB has never acknowledged it.
Why is GB explaining his sailing strategy right in front of his competition? Keep quiet! Okay he wants to rub it in Madam Jami's face, but that's no excuse for revealing a valuable business secret. Once again he's not exactly showing himself to be a business genius.
Speaking of which...the whole sailing-into-the-wind thing, I got curious about it and found a couple of non-technical explanations about how ships can sail upwind. They're fun to read:
physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2015/05/the-physics-of-sailing-how-does.html
www.livescience.com/32822-sailboats-sailing-windward-not-impossible.html
So there it is. But it did leave me with a question about the episode. When we saw GB and Yon looking at ship plans they explained to Sul's daughter that they needed to have a lighter ship with less of a draft, to keep it from running aground during the dry season. Fair enough...but that was for a Grand Canal voyage. If you're going to go out to sea and sail into the wind, you need a significant keel--like these two web pages explain. Those are two very different kinds of ships. I won't be critical of the writing for this--it's getting very detailed and yes I get very nit-picky sometimes--but it would have been a gold star for the episode if the writing had been thorough enough to clear this up. One thing we saw in the Jang Youngsil series is that you definitely can present this kind of science-y stuff and do it in an interesting way for a historical drama.
It hadn't occurred to me before, but YM really doesn't have much of a chance with Jung-hwa no matter what, because of his connection to the pirates that wrecked her life as a girl. And he knows it; we heard him say so in this episode--that stuff he said to her about the unforgivable sin he committed. That really does put the whole thing in a different light. The feeling of self-loathing that he always seems to be carrying around, I guess it really is there and this would certainly explain it.
P.S. People spend sooooooo much time staring at each other in this series. Or staring off into space by themselves. So much screen time on people's faces and so much staring. Not saying it's good or bad, just never seen anything like it.