What I've been watching: Queen Seonduk
Queen Seonduk
Genre: Historical. Action-adventure, court intrigue, crossdressing, romance, pretty costumes, badass martial arts, female empowerment, it's got everything.
Status: Finished! FINALLY. It's 62 episodes long, so it took me a while.
Verdict: aslasjlksadlkjasdkjlasljdkjklasdjlksad I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS DRAMA. (Most of them good) I was gonna make another big reaction/review post of all the stuff I've been watching lately, but then realized I was going to have to talk about Queen Seonduk for 21098310377824091273982 words and that was probably going to take me a while.
This show is amazingggg. I love it so much words do not describe. It's nearly the same premise as The Legend, except instead of men fighting over who's going to inherit the throne and unify Korea, it's three women. I love it. It's not QUITE as good as The Legend, but it almost is and that's really high praise coming from me. The pacing and storytelling is not as tight and finely crafted, but that's mostly a symptom of having 62 episodes versus 24. And it does have some aspects where I think it's even better than The Legend.
First, better villains. The villains in The Legend were either the scenery chewing "MWAHAHAHA I AM EVIL. SEE HOW EVIL I AM. THERE'S NOTHING I LOVE MORE THAN THE SMELL OF EEVVVVIIILLLL IN THE MORNING" inexplicably immortal guy, or the agentless Kiha and Hogae who spend most of the series as pathetic puppets. I hate that. My biggest pet peeve in the world is characters who are not active agents of their own destiny. (This is one reason why kdrama romcoms and I often have trouble getting along)
The big baddie in Queen Seonduk is Mishil, the concubine of the ~suspiciously deceased former king, and, oh man, she is one BAMF. The actress who plays her is amazing. She does this thing where her eyes widen and her lips curl up in a small smile and then you want to run for cover 'cause you KNOW somebody gonna die. Plus, the motivation behind all the manipulative shit she does is believable, which is such a rare trait in villains.
Also, as great as The Legend is with female characters kicking ass, taking names and (more importantly) being real people instead of sweetly smiling ciphers, Queen Seonduk automatically gets +1 for having the main power struggle be entirely between women. All the men in this series (and there are some awesome ones) love them and obey them. It's doubly awesome for the fact that they're all based on real historical figures. Although the historical Princess Deokman (Seonduk is her posthumous regnal name) probably had a childhood that contained less crossdressing and mistaken identity.
All right, so. I have some thoughts about the actors. First, there are a LOT of them. The drama spans like 60 or 70 years or something ridic like that, with I think 6 time skips. The cast of characters is immense to begin with, and on top of that some characters are played by three different actors over the course of the show. Gets confusing.
I've already mentioned how amazing the actress for the villain is. Loved her sfm. It did defy belief a bit that the same actress portrayed Mishil through the entire series, eventually I was kinda like, "lol fake bitch can't age." Although anyone else in the role would have paled in comparison, so probably better that they didn't try. Though they could have at least put some gray in her hair and wrinkles on her face towards the end.
The adult actress for Princess Cheonmyeong was really distracting to me (that's her on the left of the promo pic) because tbh I think she looks like an alien. Her face has this skeletal quality that just freaks me out. I couldn't even say if she were a good actress of not because I was so distracted by how much I hated her face. :X
The actor for Kim Yushin, Uhm Tae-woong, I was REEEALLY apprehensive about. He's in all the promo pics and credits and whatnot (that's him above) so I knew from the beginning that UTW would be playing the male lead. His character isn't introduced for a fair while, and he's played by a child actor at first, but I was dreadddding having to watch UTW in the role. I know he's a popular actor, but the only thing I've seen him in is Delightful Girl Chunhyang, which I hated, as the villain, which he completely and utterly failed at. And I didn't know whether that failure was because of bad writing and lack of chemistry with the eponymous female lead, or if he was just a bad actor. In which case I was going to spend a large portion of this series stewing angrily about a major miscasting.
Luckily, since the character was introduced with a child actor at first, my baggage about UTW didn't interfere with me developing an emotional attachment to the character of Yushin, which I hoped might sustain me even through a similarly dead-eyed emotionless performance as he gave in Delightful Girl Chunhyang.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that UTW is leagues better with a) good writing; b) a talented costar to play off of (the aforementioned Chunhyang was played by IMO one of the worst actresses I've ever seen in my life); and c) a role that suits him. He's still a fairly wooden, robotic actor IMO, but since his character of Yushin was written to be a kind of emotionally reserved stick-in-the-mud (in a good way), UTW's woodenness came off as somehow charming. Like, he felt all these deep sincere emotions, but was a total inept dork at figuring out how to express them. It was cute. I spent the first half of the series shipping him/Deokman like a champ.
Then I dropped him like a hot potato to spend the second half of the series shipping Deokman with Bidam, played by my one true love Kim Nam-gil.
Since finishing Queen Seonduk I've been devouring the other shit Kim Nam-gil has starred in, which, while none were nearly as good as this, has included one movie with a quite long, graphic sex scene. So I'll count that one as a win.
Apparently prior to Bidam's debut in the series (around episode 23) everyone was referring to him as "the secret weapon" that was gonna keep viewers hooked, and it was after the immense positive audience reaction to his character that the series got extended for another 12 episodes. Yes yes yes. I love him. He is my new tv boyfriend. I have a lot more ~feelings~ about his character, but I'll talk about those later with more detailed spoilers about the series ending.
I will say that I've thought about it, and I think the reason I ended up shipping Bidam/Deokman so hard is because their relationship is basically Spike/Buffy redux. Bidam is an irreverent, bloodthirsty, amoral character, but he knows how to love with his whole being, just like Spike. TBH, I might give Bidam/Deokman pride of place even over what was one of my first OTPs (before I even got into slash!) because I like Deokman about 98743987374923 times more than Buffy. Also, Deokman gets +1 for actually loving him back instead of being remorseless user. /unresolved Spuffy bitterness.
I have a few thoughts about the overall plotline. <--vague overarching spoilers
While overall quite good, over the course of 62 episodes there are some places in the middle where the plot drags. After a while it starts to feel a bit episodic in the way that it's like "and now we will spend the next 5 episodes looking for Mishil's secret book! And now we will spend the next 5 episodes fighting Mishil over a solar eclipse! And now we will fight Mishil about usury for the next 5 episodes!"
For me, the absolute high point of the series was the eclipse subplot. I was totally cackling and seal clapping with joy during the climax of that storyline, but after that the show mostly moved away from more active swashbuckling adventures to lots of intricate court intrigue. Not nearly as interesting to me.
The war with Paekche towards the beginning of the series, while Deokman is still concealing her identity and living as a soldier, was also another high point for me. Lots of great scenes during that subplot, I look back on it fondly.
For me, the absolute low point of the series was the end. Basically, everything following the last time skip was excruciatingly depressing for me.
I have lots of FEEEEEELINGS about the ending. <--detailed spoilers follow
So, the series is about Princess Deokman's journey to how she becomes Queen Seonduk. And I spent a lot of the series waiting and waiting and waiting for her to actually BECOME queen, so that then she could put all this in-fighting behind her and go forth to fight external enemies.
Um, yeah. Wrong. The last time skip jumps from basically her coronation to 14 years into her reign. But there's no external enemies to fight. Instead, all of the characters I had grown to know and love so dearly suddenly all hated and mistrusted one another and fought amongst themselves for the last ten episodes. asdljasljkdsalkjasdljas I WAS A WRECK. I was like "NOOOO T_________T STOP FIGHTING OMG. HUSH CATS YOU SHOULDN'T BE FIGHTING ANYWAY. OMG THIS IS SO UPSETTING STOPPPP." And then they decided to kill each other and I was legit bawling like a baby. I was inconsolable. I skipped over half of the last two episodes because I just could not bear to watch. I felt lied to by the very premise of the series, because for 50 episodes Deokman always managed to triumph in the end. But not here. DDDD:
My problem with Queen Seonduk was that all I knew of the ending (seriously, spoilers) was a quick wiki of Bidam's names. Under one name, he married her. Under another name, he led a rebellion against her and was killed. I spent the entire series going "OH SHIT WHICH IS IT WHICH IS IT WHICH IS IT." And then I thought the answer was "marry!" and rejoiced. Then in the finale I found out the answer was "BOTH!" and sobbed like a child.
I hate unhappy endings. Real life has too many unhappy endings, in fiction I want the mfing emotional payoff of seeing the hero you've been rooting for all this time succeed and be happy. The fact that my two favorite characters died tragically, lonely and unhappy, just crushed me.
Also, I think part of why I was so upset was simply not being prepared for it. I read a bunch of reviews and reaction posts afterward, and people who knew Korean history and went into the drama cognizant of and expecting that final tragedy were able to appreciate the beauty the show brought to those events, instead of just being crushed by the events themselves.
I mean, to cheer myself up afterward I decided to go watch an episode of Ryomaden, which is based on Bakumatsu period Japan. Which, when you think about it, the end of Bakumatsu was like an IRL "ROCKS FALL. EVERYONE DIES." Like 60% of the named characters are going to be assassinated and I'm fully aware of it and love that series anyway. I'm not emotionally invested in their long-term happiness because I know they won't have any. So, my strong reaction to the ending of Queen Seonduk has convinced me to set aside my natural aversion to spoilers and duly investigate all future dramas I watch. Do not want to be blind sided by an unhappy ending ever again.
Although now that I've had some time to digest it, I can appreciate the ending more. The show found a way to turn Bidam's historical rebellion into a expression of his love for Deokman. Thinking of him single-handedly fighting his way through that sea of soldiers, counting down the number of paces between him and Deokman... asljasdljkasdljkasdlj. That was an amazing scene.
In conclusion: Watch it. Watch it now.