Post by ajk on Apr 15, 2017 11:36:35 GMT -5
This was a terrific episode with one staggering blunder at the end.
The first half had a bunch of good scenes and some beautiful background music. What a great job the actor playing Choe C is doing. He'll seem so out of it, poor clueless old guy...but then he surprises us by being alert and savvy and insightful when he needs to be. We'll be losing him soon and that's a darned shame.
Yi Kyubo...dude...Always let the boss win! But did anybody else get the impression that Choe might have banished Yi for Yi's protection? When it happened it seemed like Choe had gone senile, but his comment afterwards about how keeping Yi around longer "might have cost him his life"...hmmm, maybe Choe wasn't being a goofy old man after all.
Here's the narration we got about Yi:
http://medieval_literature.enacademic.com/648/Yi_Kyubo
You can also buy an English-translated book of some of his poems for real cheap, if anybody's interested.
During the chess game Choe C said the board positions reminded him of Xiang Yu's battle with Liu Bang. Here's what he was talking about:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaixia
A complicated backstory but the battle account is fascinating. Has nothing directly to do with this series; just posting it for anyone who's curious.
A couple of unusual camera shots in this episode. One was the high-angle view in the assembly hall (around 27:30 in) that showed how far away the emperor is from everyone else in the room. It was almost jarring seeing his isolation, and the way the colors were distributed with his bright yellow robe above all of the other uniform colors below, made for a striking image. And then we got some great high-angle shots of the emperor's procession leaving the palace. (Did you notice how many bearers his palanquin had? Wow that thing was a monster.) I don't ever recall seeing either of those angles before. The direction and cinematography in this series continue to be very impressive.
Oh, and that wide throne that Gojong was sitting on, it looks like the exact same throne that MBC used in Shin Don.
Was anybody else a little bit let down by the final polo round? Like the writers maybe went to the well once too often? They dragged out the first round for so long, and then did a lot of the same stuff in the second...and all three times we saw the same kind of thing with KJ being beaten down so badly and rising back up. The final round felt sort of anticlimactic. At least they didn't drag it out, certainly give them credit for that...but you'd think the final round would be the toughest and it felt like it was the easiest for KJ.
So KJ went back to wearing a helmet for the finals. Wonder why. And we heard that the mallet he's using is silver. I wonder if that's possible, the mallet being silver-alloy in the 13th century.
"Watch out! His mallet has a blade!" Okay, at that point the match should have been stopped and the cheater disqualified. Good that it was spotted right away--in some historicals they'd have let it go on as though nobody saw it--but the cheater shouldn't have been allowed to continue with a non-game weapon. Fortunately he got knocked out early anyway, but letting him fight at all, I didn't like that bit of writing. (And if he's getting knocked out early anyway, why even bother introducing the blade story at all? Ugh.)
Okay, so KJ wins the tournament, gets the ceremonial sword, everybody's going bananas cheering for him, and then finally he's asked to tell the emperor what his request is. Multiple episodes of combat, blood, drama, suffering, all leading up to this moment...the place goes quiet and waits for his answer...and the sappy pop ballad starts. Un. Freaking. Believable. It totally sucked the life out of everything, and it didn't even make sense because KJ and Wola don't have a romantic relationship. KJ going through all of that struggle so he could give his "sister" her happy life back, it was such a beautiful gesture. Popping it up like that totally trivialized the moment. This has been such a smartly produced series and the music has been so good, it's inconceivable how something so stupid could have happened. Have to wonder if some meddling network executive forced it in there to help sell soundtrack CDs. Yes I complain about this kind of thing a lot, but am I the only one who thought the pop ballad in that scene was a disaster?
Oh and speaking of stupid, how about Songi standing there at the end, looking totally offended because she thought KJ's request would be all about her. Sheesh.
So now I guess the next question is whether or not Wola goes back to the temple. Certainly they'll grant such a simple request...but now she has a patroness so who knows. Anyway now that KJ has his military appointment and the Mongols are starting to move in, hopefully we'll start getting more into the real historical meat of the story.
p.s. What is that word they were chanting for the bigshots attending the tournament? Sounds like "Choon! Choon!" but I couldn't tell.
The first half had a bunch of good scenes and some beautiful background music. What a great job the actor playing Choe C is doing. He'll seem so out of it, poor clueless old guy...but then he surprises us by being alert and savvy and insightful when he needs to be. We'll be losing him soon and that's a darned shame.
Yi Kyubo...dude...Always let the boss win! But did anybody else get the impression that Choe might have banished Yi for Yi's protection? When it happened it seemed like Choe had gone senile, but his comment afterwards about how keeping Yi around longer "might have cost him his life"...hmmm, maybe Choe wasn't being a goofy old man after all.
Here's the narration we got about Yi:
By age nine he was known as a poet of genius. He rose in the court late, recommended to the overlord by Choe U at age 32. He was known as a drinker and a libertine. His love of drink, poetry and music earned him the nickname "Three Vices." Even today The Collected Works of Minister Yi remains a literary and historical work of great beauty.And here's a web page with a little more about him:
http://medieval_literature.enacademic.com/648/Yi_Kyubo
You can also buy an English-translated book of some of his poems for real cheap, if anybody's interested.
During the chess game Choe C said the board positions reminded him of Xiang Yu's battle with Liu Bang. Here's what he was talking about:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaixia
A complicated backstory but the battle account is fascinating. Has nothing directly to do with this series; just posting it for anyone who's curious.
A couple of unusual camera shots in this episode. One was the high-angle view in the assembly hall (around 27:30 in) that showed how far away the emperor is from everyone else in the room. It was almost jarring seeing his isolation, and the way the colors were distributed with his bright yellow robe above all of the other uniform colors below, made for a striking image. And then we got some great high-angle shots of the emperor's procession leaving the palace. (Did you notice how many bearers his palanquin had? Wow that thing was a monster.) I don't ever recall seeing either of those angles before. The direction and cinematography in this series continue to be very impressive.
Oh, and that wide throne that Gojong was sitting on, it looks like the exact same throne that MBC used in Shin Don.
Was anybody else a little bit let down by the final polo round? Like the writers maybe went to the well once too often? They dragged out the first round for so long, and then did a lot of the same stuff in the second...and all three times we saw the same kind of thing with KJ being beaten down so badly and rising back up. The final round felt sort of anticlimactic. At least they didn't drag it out, certainly give them credit for that...but you'd think the final round would be the toughest and it felt like it was the easiest for KJ.
So KJ went back to wearing a helmet for the finals. Wonder why. And we heard that the mallet he's using is silver. I wonder if that's possible, the mallet being silver-alloy in the 13th century.
"Watch out! His mallet has a blade!" Okay, at that point the match should have been stopped and the cheater disqualified. Good that it was spotted right away--in some historicals they'd have let it go on as though nobody saw it--but the cheater shouldn't have been allowed to continue with a non-game weapon. Fortunately he got knocked out early anyway, but letting him fight at all, I didn't like that bit of writing. (And if he's getting knocked out early anyway, why even bother introducing the blade story at all? Ugh.)
Okay, so KJ wins the tournament, gets the ceremonial sword, everybody's going bananas cheering for him, and then finally he's asked to tell the emperor what his request is. Multiple episodes of combat, blood, drama, suffering, all leading up to this moment...the place goes quiet and waits for his answer...and the sappy pop ballad starts. Un. Freaking. Believable. It totally sucked the life out of everything, and it didn't even make sense because KJ and Wola don't have a romantic relationship. KJ going through all of that struggle so he could give his "sister" her happy life back, it was such a beautiful gesture. Popping it up like that totally trivialized the moment. This has been such a smartly produced series and the music has been so good, it's inconceivable how something so stupid could have happened. Have to wonder if some meddling network executive forced it in there to help sell soundtrack CDs. Yes I complain about this kind of thing a lot, but am I the only one who thought the pop ballad in that scene was a disaster?
Oh and speaking of stupid, how about Songi standing there at the end, looking totally offended because she thought KJ's request would be all about her. Sheesh.
So now I guess the next question is whether or not Wola goes back to the temple. Certainly they'll grant such a simple request...but now she has a patroness so who knows. Anyway now that KJ has his military appointment and the Mongols are starting to move in, hopefully we'll start getting more into the real historical meat of the story.
p.s. What is that word they were chanting for the bigshots attending the tournament? Sounds like "Choon! Choon!" but I couldn't tell.