I’m ready for this series to be over. It’s starting to get stale. Been there, done that.
“Choongnyeong! How dare you!” Yi Soon-shin!! Yi Soon-shin!! All right already, we get the point. Ugh.
Here’s Choongnyeong’s wife. So yeah they’ll work the Shim story into things. You just knew these writers wouldn’t let a few more perfectly good murders go to waste.
A grumbly Taejong: “It took him six years to finish the whole series.” Specifically the “Extended Meaning of Great Learning” series. Is that a big deal? This took some serious Googling to dig up an English version of an explanation, but here it is:
www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/daxueyanyi.htmlThe length of the thing as best as I could figure is 43 of those thinnish books that we saw the prince reading. And this wasn’t an obscure text in an ancient language; it was completed in 1229 and it in fact is a user-friendly (or at least friendlier) explanation of an ancient text. So the prince’s rate of just over seven volumes per year, yes that would be a very slow pace.
Choongnyeong to Yangnyeong: “If you continue to study hard, you will overtake [me] soon enough.” Maybe he’s right, but this version of Sejong needs a good smack! This was the scene in the council hall with all of the ministers. Very, very squirmy-uncomfortable to watch.
“You should exercise every now and then. If all you do is sit and read, later on you will turn into a fat fool.” Well look at that, Choongnyeong got smacked. Except why did he stand there and let it happen? There was no good reason for him to be standing there in the first place.
“You are the type who cannot go one moment without showing off your knowledge. What is the point of knowing which page of which book “Hyohaengnok” is located? Especially when you are the first to do things that hurts the relationship between us brothers.” You have to give him that one. That type, no question about it, sooo annoying. Maybe Choongnyeong was more like this than other series have shown him to be. Fair enough, have to consider it.
Jo Yeoungmu: “I will leave now.” Geez dude, you didn’t even touch your food. You’re having a hard time getting up in the morning, maybe you need to eat more? But what a nice scene that was. An interesting character so it was nice to see him get a proper sendoff. “I never regretted choosing you.” What a terrific moment that was. And no pounding drums, go figure.
“They say she is so beautiful that once you see her, you never forget her.” Wow that is some seroius casting pressure right there.
(click for full size) Well this is interesting! For once we don’t get the leveraged poles. The same general principle though; pressure on the thighs. We’ve never seen this before, anywhere. Is there any reason to believe this is an actual form of torture from back then? Or is it just a visual device to present something a little easier to understand than the leveraged poles.(which to this day I still don’t understand).
The queen orders the torture stopped, and they stop it. Would that ever happen? Well I guess it had to happen here so we could get another long stretch of crying and wailing. Way too much of it..
And then the next scene in the council hall, just the king and queen, more wailing and crying...Remember when those two were the best thing about the series?
Then more with the head-butting brothers...more of the same...oh wait, they’ve got a camera rotating around them. That fixes everything.
Then the Min brothers going off to exile and guess what, more crying and wailing.
Queen to crown prince: “You are the truly evil one.” Now it’s about spitting venom.
“She is a woman the abdicated king was once fond of.” And here comes the loud music with the pouding drums again...but just this one time, I’ll let them have this one. Taejong’s brain must have been frying, trying to process the news. Showed a flash of the old temper for a moment.
The abdication scene that started the series, it may actually not end the series, not if they’re going to do the Shim killings. In fact maybe it will end with the killings.