🌼This show is adorable, with nearly every moment enjoyable. Like Bridgerton, they sometimes wink at historical seriousness and just go for a fun story.
🌿Visually, MSG is a treat. The sets, filming, and costumes are gorgeous. Its budget is clearly more than many historical dramas with its sophisticated fight scenes and costume after gorgeous silk costume.
🌷The story features Princess Hyemyung (Hye) and scholar, Gyeon Woo (Gye). Back in time, we see Hye's mother, the queen, dethroned to open the show. Though assassins were sent to kill her, she was aided in escape and gave birth to Hye's brother, who was returned to the palace. The new queen is backed by the conspirators, and while Hye doesn't know /that/, she knows she hates the new queen. This explains why she grows up surly. Gye just returned from Qing (China) where he excelled. His moniker is: The Treasure of Joseon. Whatever. Hye couldn't care less.
🌳Within days (hours?) of his return home, Gye runs into Hye. She's sauced. She burps in his face, leaving him 🤢gasping in her wake. He rounds a corner and there she is again! She's picked a fight with a horseback rider who almost hurt pedestrians. Gye helps diffuse that situation. Hye turns and pukes on him. He's 😱horrified.
🌻Gye has no idea who she is. Hye isn't allowed out of the palace, afterall. He is assigned to be the prince's (soon to be crowned prince) tutor. The prince and Hye are very close, so as soon as he shows up to work, he sees what he'll be dealing with. Of course, they can't stand each other.
🌱It's good ol' plain fun to watch how Gye is thrown off by Hye. He declares her his enemy, but he can't shake her, & his pain is our gain. The device used to bring them together is her lost 💍. She demands he help her find it, or he'll be in big trouble. That premise could be improved upon, but just roll with it. That enables her to introduce Gye to fermented skate, which everybody agrees, is some of the worst😵smelling stuff on the planet. She also feeds him 🐔 feet. While a somewhat weak premise got the two there, strong stomachs brought us these fun scenes.
🌹Then it all starts. Look for the ring. Who is this wacky broad following Gye around? Gye complains to his friends that he can't shake a crazed stalker. One of them, a popular romance novelist, says they'll go from bring enemies to friends, and then to lovers. She meets his friends as Lady Hyemyung. They love her. They gamble and play a dare game at the 🏮 festival. She rocks all their worlds. Girls that are interested in Gye hate Hye, but Gye falls for Hye & she falls for him. Gye's parents want him away from that sassy princess! The king engages Hye to a prince from Qing. Gye has to stop that! And they finally tackle the mystery from the past.
💐It's tagged as a romance/comedy, but though it starts funny, this is no mere romcom. There's teary moments, intrigues and decent action as well. There's many Kdramas that start out like a romcom that go on to be very romdram. In order of importance, MSG is:
1. Romance
2. Drama (even though most of the drama comes later)
3. Comedy
~and to a lesser degree~>
4. Thriller
5. Action.
Do they have a name for a feature filled with all of that?
RomDramComThrAction?
Does simply everything have to fit in a mold? No, thank you.
🍃The characters are well written and the acting is fantastic. Joo Won, as ML, Gye/Gyeon Woo, is astounding. He communicates with his eyes like few others. I loved him in this role. Go Na-eun, as Councillor King's daughter, Da-yeon, is fabulous at showing a calm (phony) demeanor while seething underneath. Yun Se-ah, as Queen Park, also gives a riveting performance. None of the performances detract from the whole. The directing is also top-notch. MSG has that lighthearted side, but it runs much deeper at times. The plot and dialogue are intelligent along with being amusing.
💠The court intrigues are done especially well. The king is weak, and he has deferred to his counselors for too long, his power mostly drained. The tension builds in the background and develops into full fledged drama in the second half of the show, when the past and present meet up. There have been forces at work against the present regime for decades.
〰🖌Notes on historical context:
📜I watched MSG before I learned to not read any reviews prior to writing my own. Whenever I read before writing, my review would either reinforce one that I read, or I would rebut it in my review. I know now that I have to keep my head clear. In this case, I had read a review stating that the actors were too old for the parts. Per their bios, they were both born in '87, so that's fair, but they both did a great job, and I wouldn't trade out Joo Won periodt. Another complaint is that the court intrigues are nonsense in MSG. I decided to do a quick fact check on that claim (Wiki). Turns out, MSG is not inaccurate at all.
📜Per Wiki, "government officials were ranked in 18 levels. For much of the dynasty, a complex system of checks and balances prevented any one section of the government from gaining overwhelming power until the 19th century when political power became concentrated in a certain family or individual.
📜While the king commanded absolute loyalty from his officials and subjects, the officials were also expected to try to guide the king to the right path. Political struggles were common between different factions of the scholar-officials. Purges frequently resulted in leading political figures being sent into exile or condemned to death. The power of the bureaucrats often eclipsed that of the central authorities, including the monarch." Therefore, rather than a valid complaint, historical accuracy can be removed from MSG's liability column.
🌾MSG was enormously popular in SK when it first aired. This led directly to making the much loved Rookie Historian (which also depicts fights within the bureaucracy) and 100 Days My Prince. Both of those dramas borrowed quite a bit from MSG. That's why the current rating confuses me, though less than 600 people have weighed in so far. Jun Suck Oh is a competent director whose works are all rated over "7" on IMDB except for this one. Two-for-two with me, he directed My First First Love(8), which is also lighthearted fun done right. I am confident the rating for MSG will climb when more people watch - as long as they give it a fair shake, meaning 2 episodes minimum. Ep1's in Kdramas are often set-up for the rest of the show, including introducing the characters as extremes of themselves. MSG is no exception. Princess Hyemyung is slop drunk when we meet her, and Gyeon Woo, though better than the sassy princess, seems 1 tick above a complete egghead. They get adorable with each other pretty quickly.
🌲Gyeon Woo is, perhaps, the primary driver of the show's appeal. Not only is Joo Won enormously talented (MSG is worth watching for him alone) but once he decides what he wants, he works towards it, step by step, one challenge at a time, while being enormously brave and clever. So much for egghead, he can fight, too! With Hye around, that's a necessary skill. So, Don't be scared off by Ep1, and don't be afraid: Gyeon Wu is the only one suffering. Just avoid thinking about fermented skate and the rest should be a stroll through the ⛲garden.
IMHO...
⚡6 🎬8 🤔6 🎭8 💓9 🦋7 🌞8 🎨8 🔚7 (due to MSS) Age 12& up.
👁📺again? Did✅+would✅
MSS: Mandatory Separation Syndrome, an overused Kdrama trope in which couples, once get get together, must separate. 'I love you! Finally, we're together! Now I'll catch you later...' Huh? Sometimes, it's a good thing - a generous 15% of the time. On top of that, most of these people are pushing 40. They ain't getting any younger. All flights appear to be grounded as well, because, even if the separation is 4 years, they never seem to visit each other in that time period.
🐅
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