2
10
roylyn
United States
Great Show
The top reviews for Dong Yi are mostly accurate as it is a wonderful show. The writing, acting and chemistry between the characters-especially the Dong Yi and the king are wonderful. They entire cast did a great job.The story flows quite nicely after the initial time jump to adult Dong Yi but falters around episode 23-28 I personally feel as though they dragged this and with each episode being over one hour long, you feel the unnecessary near misses, and filler scenes.
After this was resolved, the show picked up again-and one of the best moments happened but then it fell off again because they needed to create more conflict to fulfill the episode count, i suppose. Frankly, the last 20 episodes were unnecessary. The should could have stopped at episode 40 and been great.
After watching Yanxi Palace and Minglan, my standard of female leads went all the way up-especially when it comes to dramas that deal with scheming, manipulations etc. I now need to have a capable female lead who not only is intelligent, quick witted but does not fall prey easily to deception. The same goes for the male leads as well so when i started Dong Yi, I was worried because in the first couple of episodes of adult Dong Yi, she made some pretty impulsive and dumb decisions but you soon forget those and grow to appreciate her type of intelligence and strength.
The King was great as well. His smile and laugh were infectious and he smiled and laughed A LOT when he was with Dong Yi. His portrayal of a man in love was lovely to watch.
I wish there was more skin ship and time spent between dong yi and the king
Lady Jang can ACTT-that is all that i will say.
I feel a lot of people have a misunderstanding of the antagonist’s character-that is they believe that she is inherently a good person who was led astray by her family members but that is not my perception of her. She was never a good person-her earlier acts of “kindness” were not for kindness sake or for the good of the person receiving it but for herself. She wanted to foster a sense of loyalty in them and create a perception of herself as a magnanimous with every kind act. Your actions in the face of adversity is a reflection of your character and what she chose to do, on numerous occasions was the wrong thing without remorse. This is not a misunderstood woman. This is a woman who fails to see her faults and understand that the world does not revolve around her and that other people’s suffering matters less than hers.
Flashbacks were plenty and incredibly misused. There are flashbacks of scenes that just happened 30 seconds ago which was like watching a show and having someone take the remote and rewind a scene you just finished watching for no reason.
My only other qualm was the king’s indecisiveness. While he has to be one of my favorite historical king/emperor, his inability to have a definite stance when it came to the women of the inner palace irked me. He was always dumbstruck when accusations were made against the bad wife as if he wasn’t aware of her character. He gave her so many chances but not the kind and generous wife who was accused originally but had literally never done anything. I just wish he was more firm and less susceptible to her manipulations.
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Don't be fooled by the FanFair.
I've dropped 3 dramas: 1 being Backstreet Rookie (couldn't handle the dude with the locs with flies in it being a regular character) and the other was a drama that I couldn't get into at the time, but I might revisit. Vincenzo was the worst of the three.Where do I begin?
Let's start with the plot-
I don't think the general idea behind the plot is a bad one. In fact, I was interested and genuinely enjoying the first couple of episodes. It was as the story progressed that I realized that there was nothing to the story beyond the titular character.
When they named the drama "Vincenzo" they really meant it was the "Vincenzo Show" because quite literally everything was about this character. I don't ordinarily have an issue with this but if you're going to make a story about one character, make the story about them. Don't tell other people's story and force him to be the hero in it.
Things that made no sense-
-Vincenzo was meant to be an Italian lawyer. He was adopted at a young age and went to law school and practiced law in Italy. Realistically, he would have a far lesser understanding of Korean law than the female lead yet she and the other Korean lawyer on their team kept deferring to him for the next move as it related to the trial. That makes absolutely no sense-if anything, the female lead, who's been working at the firm that they're going up against for 8 years should've spear headed their case but because it's the "Vincenzo Show"...you get the gist.
- Our introduction into the female lead character is of her bribing a witness to prevent their testimony at trial while working at the firm they're now going against. However, when their case against the company (Babel) who's being represented by that same firm begins and they have witnesses to testify, she not only doesn't anticipate that this same tactic would be used, but she's surprised by it. She doesn't believe that they could do something as despicable as bribing witnesses WHEN THAT WAS LITERALLY WHAT SHE'S DONE FOR THEM BEFORE! Did the writer forget all about their female lead character once she met the male lead? It's like they decided that she's no more than his sidekick/love interest and he's the only one that gets to utilize his skills but if that were the case, why even bother making her a lawyer? Why even bother establishing her connection to the evil firm in the first place.
- What is Vincenzo's motivation and connection to the story? Beyond his desire to get his gold that's buried underneath the building that's primed for demolition, he's got absolutely no real connection to the story. He's singled out as the largest obstacle in Babel and the law firm's way, but he has no real drive for why. The female lead, however, does. She spent 8 years working for the firm-trusting the people within only for them to betray her. Her father was murdered by the evil corp. Her assistant whom she trusted for years turned out to be the leader of the evil Corp -he not only lied and manipulated her for years, but he murdered her father and grieved with her over the man that he killed yet the focus is on Vincenzo as we move forward with the plot to destroy them.
I feel like it would've been a much better story had they not spent every episode making Vincenzo the magical savior and allowed the other characters to shine as well. They could've split the responsibilities between Vincenzo and Cha Young-since they've already established that he's a morally grey character who's a member of the "Italian Mafia" and Babel is a company that operates outside of the law to get its way, they should've had Vincenzo handle the illegal things-things that are necessary when going up against such a company but ordinary people wouldn't have the means or resolve to do-killing, kidnapping, blackmail etc. while she handled the things in the light-using the law against them. Fighting them in court, with the skills that they taught her and also her ability to anticipate their moves as she's done it all before.
I didn't finish the drama obviously, but I learned that it was Vincenzo, once again who had the final show down with main villain and wouldn't it had made more sense if the one who brought Jang Han Seok to justice/ended him was Han Seok's brother and Cha Young (the female lead)? Han Seo spent his entire life under his brother's shoe, being terrorized by him and when he finally develops the strength to stand up against him, they kill him off so that Vincenzo can have the opportunity of the final show-down with him.
Also, the side characters were exhausting to watch at times unless you have the attention span of a fruit fly and you're between the ages of 12-14.
Vincenzo is the most random character in this story, and I feel as though the writers weren't thinking beyond casting Song Joong Ki and they ended up smothering what could've otherwise been a good drama.
You couldn't pay me to finish this mess.
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Unsatisfying/Incomplete Ending(Beware Main Couple)
This is a wonderful and heartwarming drama.The male lead is one of the kindest and most principled male lead and characters that I have ever seen on tv. He cares so much for others, especially those who have ever shown him a slither of kindness. He’s meant to be “stupid”, but I feel he’s actually an incredibly intelligent person-he resolves every problem that comes his way without ever compromising his values/principles.
The other characters are just as great-everybody brings their own brand of special to the story.
My issues with the show are as follows:
Loony- I don’t have as big an attachment to looney as most people seem to but I still have issues with the way his story ended. It was poor writing with really crappy logic. For starters, who gets into their dealer’s car the moment after they exit prison from serving time for drugs? It’s also highly unlikely that someone who spend months in agony to get sober for a reason tied to their sobriety, chooses to shoot up or use literally a minute after they get out and when they’re like 30 mins away from getting the love of their life back. That’s stupid and I know the show was basically a “anti-drug” ad and they were trying to show how bad addiction is but that was just ridiculous. Sober people don’t necessarily crave drugs the way those using do-he went through withdrawal, and he no longer had any in his system which means his rational faculties should’ve been intact enough for him to say fuck off and keep walking-if he had fallen off the wagon a month later or something-I’d get it-but this was a minute after he got out. You’re telling me that a sober person decided that all the pain he went through to get clean for his boyfriend was worth throwing away 30 minutes before he’s reunited with his boyfriend because someone gave him a syringe? Also, this whole thing was illogical as hell-there’s entrapment and there’s ENTRAPMENT and this was ENTRAPMENT. The entire sting was pointless because it would never hold up in a court of law, they intentionally caused a citizen they are meant to protect harm, and they essentially admitted that the justice and prison system are useless by entrapping looney. It also made no sense that the cops were so worried about a junkie being back on the streets that they wasted valuable hours and resources to find his release date, locate his dealer from Japan and carry out a sting operation to coerce him to use again so they could arrest him-no one would do this unless he was freaking El Chapo or something. Why did they do it? What are they going to say when they try to indict him-we waited until this completed his sentence for his crime and then we coerced him into re-using so that we could arrest him for using because…? This would make sense if like a month later he was dealing drugs, they knew and sent an undercover agent to try to buy some from him and then arrested him-but he wasn’t committing any crime(s). They created a crime and then forced him to be the main player. The only way this ends out is looney is released and suits are filed against the department, but all his efforts would have been wasted as he would have to start all over to get clean.
The male lead’s relationship-why? Why did they show us the flashback of who she is? It was a really cute relationship until then. I loved their story when I thought they were best friends from grade who ended up falling in love, but they ruined it by showing us that she was actually they child of their coach whose house they used to stay at. I can’t reconcile with that. Some people have argued that there’s nothing wrong with their relationship because they aren’t blood related and big age differences in adults dating is a non-issue but no, just no. They aren’t blood related, but they knew each from when she was like 8 and he was like 18-he lived in her house, and she called him and his best friend uncle and then it changed to brother as time went by. He looked after her and she looked up to him as an older figure in her life. It’s one thing if he knew her when she was 8 and he was 18 and then he left and never saw her again until she was an adult and while getting reacquainted, he fell in love with her, but this is not the case. He was in her life the entire time-that’s low-key grooming. Like how can we be certain that the emotional attachment she feels towards him rn is romantic and not admiration mistaken for romantic feelings?
The ending-I understand that the show is about Je hyeok but it was also sort of an ensemble cast yet we never got to see how everybody else was doing after the time jump and that bothered me. Min-Chul who’s been in prison for like 22 years finally gets out and also gains 2 children in the process-I want to see how they are, how is he acclimating to the new world and so much more. We never get to see Captain Yoo walk out of prison, I also wanted to see if his brother’s life got back on track after pausing it to help captain yoo. Even Crony-we don’t get an estimate on how much time he has left, if he got out-has he remembered how to “be a human/person” on the outside or did he regress? What is he doing? -i thought he had a real knack for catching and could’ve potentially become a catcher.
I don’t know, if felt incomplete without knowing how everybody fared-it would have also been cool if they ended it with them in the stands at his first game back, but this really is a great show and despite this issues that I personally had with it, you should give a try. You won’t regret it.
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I love the show but I feel it's a little lacking towards the end. For starters, the show could've ended a lot sooner than it did. At least 15 episodes toward the end were unnecessary not mention it slightly ruined the story due to all the unnecessary fillers. The ending wasn't the best it is a relatively happy one for which I'm glad but the episode itself was done poorly. There's a lot of confusion as to what actually happened. The episode feels both rushed and filled with unnecessary storylines. It focused entirely too much on side characters that frankly I couldn't care less about anymore. Like Cangling- I didn't need to know how his life was 5 years later or the sideburns dude. I feel they could have used that time to properly conclude the mains' story. Moreover, I think the show relied too much on flashbacks as a form of storytelling. There were a lot of random and useless flashbacks, there were flashbacks of flashbacks that we've seen at least 5 times during the show-even the final episode was ruined by a flashback in my opinion. LC's leaving seclusion scene was completely stolen by the flashback of him going into seclusion which was something we had already assumed had happened so it was entirely unnecessary. Regardless, I enjoyed the show and the actors. The love between the 2 mains, especially of Lin Chenlan for LZ was incredible not to mention both of them are extremely beautiful. I truly recommend watching the show as although the ending is a bit lackluster, the brilliance and beauty of the story and characters makes up for it. Was this review helpful to you?
