Post by ajk on May 26, 2019 3:15:13 GMT -5
Well the good news this time is that we got much more focus on important things and less of the K-pop princes and princesses. We’re into the Goguryeo war, finally. So that was nice.
“Let’s go to Ungniha! I will go with you!” Did nobody have the cojones to tell Sayu not to go charging into a war zone? Obviously not, since in real history he did indeed go.
Payun to KG: “Sayu is coming with soldiers. You have to go. They’re as quick as the wind.” Now see, was that so hard? Good for Payun and good for KG for listening...but then wow what a stupid chase scene. How did the Goguryeans catch up so far and get so close to the fleeing Baekjeans? Were their horses on steroids? That was ridiculous. Unnecessary scene; poor judgment to include it. And then KG willingly puts himself into a soon-to-be-surrounded fortress and a siege warfare situation? He didn’t do that in real history and there was no good reason to write this because it makes him look like an idiot.
Sayu: “I felt inferiority from defeat for a long time...There is no growth without self-examination and reflection.” That was a very well-written scene. Spelling out his own reasons why he was leading the campaign himself, I thought it was a necessary scene to address the hanging question about why a king would do something so seemingly foolish. Arguably it was foolish anyway but at least we understood the character’s thinking.
“You are a reckless tomboy, but I was like that too.” “Then why are you telling me to leave?” Yeah you’d think the queen would be a little more sympathetic. But she does deserve some credit for being a good advocate for her husband in this episode, and even being gracious towards her new stepson. She’s matured and isn’t just thinking about her own interests.
And speaking of people stepping up, good for Jin Seung for knowing when to put country before politics. He still should be a chief strategist but maybe he was feeling too alienated from KG for KG to trust him at the time. So on second thought maybe I was wrong for criticizing that.
“Even if Zhao Yun of Changshan was here, he couldn’t get Sayu’s head with 100 soldiers.” Had no idea what this meant, but here’s a Wikipedia entry:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Yun
Geez look at how much material there is about this guy, and he lived 100 years before KG.
We did get a good presentation of the Baekje battle tactics. This series can do those kinds of things well when it wants to.
Mok Gohae (Dugo): “Why didn’t you say so? Our soldiers almost killed him!” THANK you. Okay we need to sort this all out. Surprise, Sa Gi was a double agent. I’m guessing from the earlier talk about a Sa Gi spoiler that this really happened in history. If that’s true then the series did a pretty good job showing his presence during the war but a poor job of setting it up beforehand. In real history (as truth told us recently) he fled to Goguryeo because of the horse incident—or at least that’s what the cover story would have been. But why create the whole bad-marriage story? Are we now supposed to believe that the marriage was deliberately set up to fail to help Sa’s cover story? And the anger we saw from KG after Sa and his wife had that physical altercation, is this now all forgiven and forgotten, with the way KG embraced him? And like Dugo said, they just about killed the guy when he was fleeing to Goguryeo—shouldn’t somebody have told them to back off? The whole thing seems sort of bizarre in the end. Good for the writers for including this in the story but bad job of handling the setup. Not well thought out at all.
Oh and prior to all this, Sa Gi killed a Baekje officer who was about to stab Sayu. Which totally sold the Goguryeans on his loyalty...and which made the strange torture scene from two episodes ago completely unnecessary.
Overall this was certainly a better episode than the previous one. It’s gotten a litte frustrating because it seems like the writers have tried too hard to get clever with the story and inject unnecessary things rather than use the real story as their guide and fill it out. But we’re down to the final ten percent (six episodes) now so hopefully we stick with the war and get a good presentation of the big confrontation with Sayu.
“Let’s go to Ungniha! I will go with you!” Did nobody have the cojones to tell Sayu not to go charging into a war zone? Obviously not, since in real history he did indeed go.
Payun to KG: “Sayu is coming with soldiers. You have to go. They’re as quick as the wind.” Now see, was that so hard? Good for Payun and good for KG for listening...but then wow what a stupid chase scene. How did the Goguryeans catch up so far and get so close to the fleeing Baekjeans? Were their horses on steroids? That was ridiculous. Unnecessary scene; poor judgment to include it. And then KG willingly puts himself into a soon-to-be-surrounded fortress and a siege warfare situation? He didn’t do that in real history and there was no good reason to write this because it makes him look like an idiot.
Sayu: “I felt inferiority from defeat for a long time...There is no growth without self-examination and reflection.” That was a very well-written scene. Spelling out his own reasons why he was leading the campaign himself, I thought it was a necessary scene to address the hanging question about why a king would do something so seemingly foolish. Arguably it was foolish anyway but at least we understood the character’s thinking.
“You are a reckless tomboy, but I was like that too.” “Then why are you telling me to leave?” Yeah you’d think the queen would be a little more sympathetic. But she does deserve some credit for being a good advocate for her husband in this episode, and even being gracious towards her new stepson. She’s matured and isn’t just thinking about her own interests.
And speaking of people stepping up, good for Jin Seung for knowing when to put country before politics. He still should be a chief strategist but maybe he was feeling too alienated from KG for KG to trust him at the time. So on second thought maybe I was wrong for criticizing that.
“Even if Zhao Yun of Changshan was here, he couldn’t get Sayu’s head with 100 soldiers.” Had no idea what this meant, but here’s a Wikipedia entry:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Yun
Geez look at how much material there is about this guy, and he lived 100 years before KG.
We did get a good presentation of the Baekje battle tactics. This series can do those kinds of things well when it wants to.
Mok Gohae (Dugo): “Why didn’t you say so? Our soldiers almost killed him!” THANK you. Okay we need to sort this all out. Surprise, Sa Gi was a double agent. I’m guessing from the earlier talk about a Sa Gi spoiler that this really happened in history. If that’s true then the series did a pretty good job showing his presence during the war but a poor job of setting it up beforehand. In real history (as truth told us recently) he fled to Goguryeo because of the horse incident—or at least that’s what the cover story would have been. But why create the whole bad-marriage story? Are we now supposed to believe that the marriage was deliberately set up to fail to help Sa’s cover story? And the anger we saw from KG after Sa and his wife had that physical altercation, is this now all forgiven and forgotten, with the way KG embraced him? And like Dugo said, they just about killed the guy when he was fleeing to Goguryeo—shouldn’t somebody have told them to back off? The whole thing seems sort of bizarre in the end. Good for the writers for including this in the story but bad job of handling the setup. Not well thought out at all.
Oh and prior to all this, Sa Gi killed a Baekje officer who was about to stab Sayu. Which totally sold the Goguryeans on his loyalty...and which made the strange torture scene from two episodes ago completely unnecessary.
Overall this was certainly a better episode than the previous one. It’s gotten a litte frustrating because it seems like the writers have tried too hard to get clever with the story and inject unnecessary things rather than use the real story as their guide and fill it out. But we’re down to the final ten percent (six episodes) now so hopefully we stick with the war and get a good presentation of the big confrontation with Sayu.