Post by ajk on Jun 16, 2013 21:06:21 GMT -5
I’m glad we did QSD here. With all the attention and acclaim it got, it definitely deserved a proper viewing in our forum. And it was the best choice at the time anyway. So no regrets for choosing it, and for everybody who enjoyed it, glad we did one you liked.
But I didn’t care for it at all. For the following reasons....
First of all, calling it a historical drama, well...It’s more of a half fairy tale (brave, smart, plucky young girl grows up poor in the countryside, discovers she’s a princess and goes to do battle with the wicked queen) and half Dallas/Dynasty soap opera (elites jockeying for power and influence). Which is fine--you want to make that kind of show, great, lots of people love that stuff. But then, make up your own characters and present it as a fictional story. Don’t go pitching it as “Based on a true story!” and taking names and the minimum amount of history needed to dupe a lot of people into thinking it’s historically valid. One of my favorite things about these shows is being able to learn about the events and cultures we see, but I learned very little from this one. A huge disappointment because I expected a series based at least somewhat on real history.
Second, if you’re going to call a show “Queen Seonduk,” well...what would viewers expect? A series about a queen ruling a kingdom. Nope. They didn’t even put the crown on her head until Episode 51, and even after that it was mainly Bidam and Yushin. Good grief, she ran around as a male soldier for an entire third of the series! And the kingdom, we saw very few events involving anything outside of the palace. It was overwhelmingly about squabbles for power within the palace, over and over and over. I got more and more frustrated waiting for all of the bickering and cross-dressing to stop so we could start seeing meaningful, larger things happening involving the title character. What are they bickering for? What’s the point? With a few exceptions—Baekje conflicts, the food-pricing and grain-growing stuff, assimilating the Gayans—we got very little of it. Most people loved the huge doses of Mishil and the squabbling, but after a while it wore me out and got aggravating.
Now how about gender. The real QSD, it must be a fascinating story about a woman in a male-dominated time and place who rose to the throne and was at least reasonably successful (enough that they let another woman succeed her). We never got anything remotely like that. Instead we got a bizarre alternate universe where women had 98 percent of the brains, and spines, and cojones. Were where the men? I don’t mean males, I mean actual grown-up, adult, tough, influential men. It was ridiculous. Who was the strongest male character we saw? Have to say it was Gyebaek—the enemy. Shillan soldiers? They deliberately avoided regular Shillan soldiers as characters, in favor of the pretty-boys they cast to be Hwarang. (Not all pretty-boys, but most.) And most of them were about as intimidating as bunnies. You could see what was going on; the producers were trying to draw female viewers. But was it really necessary to go to such lengths? Hey, ladies, we’ve got our men just the way you like ‘em: cute, dumb and compliant! UGH. The nobles? Nearly all of them, in the presence of Deokman or Mishil or Cheonmyeong they turned into blobs of Jell-O. And the invertebrate king, powerless to stop Mishil because she prayed during a drought and it rained so now the king is an afterthought? Just stop it already. Obviously people loved it the way it was all presented, but I thought it was extreme to the point of being absurd (and short-changed what the real QSD accomplished).
Okay, those things, personal preference; most people might not mind them. Whatever. But the writing...Everywhere I look on the Internet, everybody gushes about how well-written QSD was. I don’t understand that, not one tiny bit. All kinds of problems:
--There were some good storylines but too many weak ones, and too much repetition and filler. And way too many chase scenes. Some of it was because the series was extended—I’ll get to that—but that’s beside the point. And some of the storylines were ridiculous. An entire episode based on only one person in the whole Shillan army realizing that, gee, maybe there’s more than one guy in Baekje with a red helmet? Seriously? Deokman as a male soldier, undiscovered for twenty episodes? Way too much of that kind of thing—situations or storylines where any writer with half a brain would immediately say No, that’s silly, we need to throw that out and come up with something better. If these writers really did plagiarize the series concept, then you’d think it would give them some extra time to come up with more story ideas! Guess not.
--Not enough depth to the characters and not enough emotion, aside from anger. Suddenly Deokman loves Yushin, or Oh Bidam I long for your touch—where was any real feeling of passion or desire? There wasn't any. Too much chip-on-her-shoulder smugness from that character and not enough soul. And Mishil--what made Mishil such a good character? Not the writing. It was the way the actress brought so much life to the character with the non-verbal stuff (expressions, gestures, inflections) that wasn’t in the script. Her character, did we ever really connect with her (positively or negatively)? Even when they gave us that Sadaham backstory that was supposed to be what broke her heart and shaped her life, it was like a dry recitation. Or when she died: bor-ing. Okay, I’m going to die now, goodbye. We did get the I-wasn't-born-royal-boo-hoo-I want-to-be-queen stuff but that was very weak. The one scene of hers I'll remember most was when Bojong lost his match to Bidam in Episode 34. Mishil immediately dropped everything and went to comfort him and hug him, and my jaw dropped. Wow, there’s a human being in there and we’ve never seen this from her. That kind of openness and vulnerability is when we learn the most about characters and they become interesting. The series needed more of those kinds of scenes.
--Static characters. With a few exceptions, we didn’t see the characters grow or develop or change. You can get away with that in a two-hour movie but not in a long series; the characters get stale. Deokman, for instance...in Episode 39 when she was struggling with Mishil’s advice and ended up killing those two villagers to get her point across, wow that was great stuff, because we saw her growing into a leader. But that kind of thing was rare (and even that growth didn't stick; Deokman did the exact opposite to Mishil’s followers later on). Mostly it was the same Deokman glaring at Mishil over and over again in exactly the same way, and then asking her for advice yet again. People don't stay the same as years pass, and good characters are written that way. Look at what happened to Santak, going from an annoying pain in the butt to someone we (or at least I) actually cared about by the end. We needed more of that. It all did start getting stale, and well before Mishil died.
--Way too many glaring mistakes in the storyline. Errors, omissions, contradictions, too many and too often and it drove me nuts. Other historicals have had similar or worse problems with this, but they're not praised for great writing. Why does QSD get a pass? I know, people who watched the show for the fun and escapism of it, they’ll say I overthink these shows and over-track the details. Which maybe is fair. But it’s easy enough to get this stuff right, so why not get it right? Put in a little more effort. Come up with acceptable explanations for things, and pay attention to continuity. When we’re told the tax rate is 50% and then four episodes later it's 5%, that's unforgivable. Either the writers weren’t even trying or else they completely lost control of things and the job got too big for them.
Enough of beating up the writers. Just one last thing that I think we'll all agree on: don't pander to the viewers. Plan and the series and stick to it. Don’t screw with it based on what the ratings numbers are. We talked about this already. Too much of Mishil-because-Mishil-was-popular, to the point where the title character was no longer the main character. And Let's-give-the-shippers-Deokman-plus-Bidam, wow that certainly didn't work, did it. And if you're going to extend a popular series, it should only be done by adding new material to the end. Adding more filler to the middle, more of the exact same stuff because you're afraid people might not like something different, that's gutless and ends up only hurting the series. The QSD people made the same mistake the DJY people did.
Bottom line, if this had been a series focused on QSD and her real kingdom I would have enjoyed it more, even with the writing issues. There are things I liked about it and I'll certainly remember those. But too many things about it bothered me, to the point where I'd wouldn't watch it again.
And with that, on to Shin Don!
But I didn’t care for it at all. For the following reasons....
First of all, calling it a historical drama, well...It’s more of a half fairy tale (brave, smart, plucky young girl grows up poor in the countryside, discovers she’s a princess and goes to do battle with the wicked queen) and half Dallas/Dynasty soap opera (elites jockeying for power and influence). Which is fine--you want to make that kind of show, great, lots of people love that stuff. But then, make up your own characters and present it as a fictional story. Don’t go pitching it as “Based on a true story!” and taking names and the minimum amount of history needed to dupe a lot of people into thinking it’s historically valid. One of my favorite things about these shows is being able to learn about the events and cultures we see, but I learned very little from this one. A huge disappointment because I expected a series based at least somewhat on real history.
Second, if you’re going to call a show “Queen Seonduk,” well...what would viewers expect? A series about a queen ruling a kingdom. Nope. They didn’t even put the crown on her head until Episode 51, and even after that it was mainly Bidam and Yushin. Good grief, she ran around as a male soldier for an entire third of the series! And the kingdom, we saw very few events involving anything outside of the palace. It was overwhelmingly about squabbles for power within the palace, over and over and over. I got more and more frustrated waiting for all of the bickering and cross-dressing to stop so we could start seeing meaningful, larger things happening involving the title character. What are they bickering for? What’s the point? With a few exceptions—Baekje conflicts, the food-pricing and grain-growing stuff, assimilating the Gayans—we got very little of it. Most people loved the huge doses of Mishil and the squabbling, but after a while it wore me out and got aggravating.
Now how about gender. The real QSD, it must be a fascinating story about a woman in a male-dominated time and place who rose to the throne and was at least reasonably successful (enough that they let another woman succeed her). We never got anything remotely like that. Instead we got a bizarre alternate universe where women had 98 percent of the brains, and spines, and cojones. Were where the men? I don’t mean males, I mean actual grown-up, adult, tough, influential men. It was ridiculous. Who was the strongest male character we saw? Have to say it was Gyebaek—the enemy. Shillan soldiers? They deliberately avoided regular Shillan soldiers as characters, in favor of the pretty-boys they cast to be Hwarang. (Not all pretty-boys, but most.) And most of them were about as intimidating as bunnies. You could see what was going on; the producers were trying to draw female viewers. But was it really necessary to go to such lengths? Hey, ladies, we’ve got our men just the way you like ‘em: cute, dumb and compliant! UGH. The nobles? Nearly all of them, in the presence of Deokman or Mishil or Cheonmyeong they turned into blobs of Jell-O. And the invertebrate king, powerless to stop Mishil because she prayed during a drought and it rained so now the king is an afterthought? Just stop it already. Obviously people loved it the way it was all presented, but I thought it was extreme to the point of being absurd (and short-changed what the real QSD accomplished).
Okay, those things, personal preference; most people might not mind them. Whatever. But the writing...Everywhere I look on the Internet, everybody gushes about how well-written QSD was. I don’t understand that, not one tiny bit. All kinds of problems:
--There were some good storylines but too many weak ones, and too much repetition and filler. And way too many chase scenes. Some of it was because the series was extended—I’ll get to that—but that’s beside the point. And some of the storylines were ridiculous. An entire episode based on only one person in the whole Shillan army realizing that, gee, maybe there’s more than one guy in Baekje with a red helmet? Seriously? Deokman as a male soldier, undiscovered for twenty episodes? Way too much of that kind of thing—situations or storylines where any writer with half a brain would immediately say No, that’s silly, we need to throw that out and come up with something better. If these writers really did plagiarize the series concept, then you’d think it would give them some extra time to come up with more story ideas! Guess not.
--Not enough depth to the characters and not enough emotion, aside from anger. Suddenly Deokman loves Yushin, or Oh Bidam I long for your touch—where was any real feeling of passion or desire? There wasn't any. Too much chip-on-her-shoulder smugness from that character and not enough soul. And Mishil--what made Mishil such a good character? Not the writing. It was the way the actress brought so much life to the character with the non-verbal stuff (expressions, gestures, inflections) that wasn’t in the script. Her character, did we ever really connect with her (positively or negatively)? Even when they gave us that Sadaham backstory that was supposed to be what broke her heart and shaped her life, it was like a dry recitation. Or when she died: bor-ing. Okay, I’m going to die now, goodbye. We did get the I-wasn't-born-royal-boo-hoo-I want-to-be-queen stuff but that was very weak. The one scene of hers I'll remember most was when Bojong lost his match to Bidam in Episode 34. Mishil immediately dropped everything and went to comfort him and hug him, and my jaw dropped. Wow, there’s a human being in there and we’ve never seen this from her. That kind of openness and vulnerability is when we learn the most about characters and they become interesting. The series needed more of those kinds of scenes.
--Static characters. With a few exceptions, we didn’t see the characters grow or develop or change. You can get away with that in a two-hour movie but not in a long series; the characters get stale. Deokman, for instance...in Episode 39 when she was struggling with Mishil’s advice and ended up killing those two villagers to get her point across, wow that was great stuff, because we saw her growing into a leader. But that kind of thing was rare (and even that growth didn't stick; Deokman did the exact opposite to Mishil’s followers later on). Mostly it was the same Deokman glaring at Mishil over and over again in exactly the same way, and then asking her for advice yet again. People don't stay the same as years pass, and good characters are written that way. Look at what happened to Santak, going from an annoying pain in the butt to someone we (or at least I) actually cared about by the end. We needed more of that. It all did start getting stale, and well before Mishil died.
--Way too many glaring mistakes in the storyline. Errors, omissions, contradictions, too many and too often and it drove me nuts. Other historicals have had similar or worse problems with this, but they're not praised for great writing. Why does QSD get a pass? I know, people who watched the show for the fun and escapism of it, they’ll say I overthink these shows and over-track the details. Which maybe is fair. But it’s easy enough to get this stuff right, so why not get it right? Put in a little more effort. Come up with acceptable explanations for things, and pay attention to continuity. When we’re told the tax rate is 50% and then four episodes later it's 5%, that's unforgivable. Either the writers weren’t even trying or else they completely lost control of things and the job got too big for them.
Enough of beating up the writers. Just one last thing that I think we'll all agree on: don't pander to the viewers. Plan and the series and stick to it. Don’t screw with it based on what the ratings numbers are. We talked about this already. Too much of Mishil-because-Mishil-was-popular, to the point where the title character was no longer the main character. And Let's-give-the-shippers-Deokman-plus-Bidam, wow that certainly didn't work, did it. And if you're going to extend a popular series, it should only be done by adding new material to the end. Adding more filler to the middle, more of the exact same stuff because you're afraid people might not like something different, that's gutless and ends up only hurting the series. The QSD people made the same mistake the DJY people did.
Bottom line, if this had been a series focused on QSD and her real kingdom I would have enjoyed it more, even with the writing issues. There are things I liked about it and I'll certainly remember those. But too many things about it bothered me, to the point where I'd wouldn't watch it again.
And with that, on to Shin Don!