Tae Ho

seems like there is an element of time jump in the story. i am confused too :)

Jo Yeong can be always on guard and at the same time also loosen up on his stiffness when the King is safe in his chamber and there are plenty of guards outside. i honestly think it's lazy writing, Jo Yeong's character feels so flat like a horribly done pancake WTF i am so angry, the writer really did him dirty.

LMAO, great analogy!

what's your thought? are you going to keep watching week by week or wait till it finishes? i am really kinda losing patience LOL.

:(

i can understand that but for some people we're still waiting for it to get better. ugh.

=Dialogue consistently slowed the scenes down

=The prime minister and Lee Gon scenes feel off. I imagine that the writer originally wanted their scenes to be fill with tension and underlining hostility but sprinkled with some forbidden spicy attraction coming from the prime minister but I’m not getting that. The pauses and breaks in dialogue delivery and stiffness of facial acting sucked away the connection between the two. Second female lead is being wasted of her potential as a captivating love interest and individually an interesting character in her own right.

=The directing and editing is still so frustrating. Too many close-ups and slow drawn out scenes with slow delivery in lines. Feels like many scenes are filmed slow-mo but everything looks beautiful, stunningly beautiful.

//

we're totally on the same page. i edited my comment (the one you replied below) to express my thoughts better. i added some points to yours above. great observations :)

thank you, next.

am i the only who liked ep. 3 so much better than ep. 4?

can someone tell me if in addition to time freeze, there was also sudden time jump? why is it when Tae Eul waited for the reissuance of her police officer ID, she was told that the date is suddenly 11/11/19 when she was waiting for it to be issued in late October? that part is confusing AF.

i also feel that it's so regretful that the much awaited bromance between Lee Gon and Jo Yeong is almost non-evident. Jo Yeong is stiff like a statue, doesn't show the littlest of smile and doesn't even exchange interesting banter with the King when he teased him WTF. i know he's the chief royal bodyguard, but even when they are by themselves he doesn't let loose which annoy the hell out of me because Woo Do Hwan simply deserves better! even Eun Sup (alternate universe version of him) is lame AF, i have only noticeably seen scenes of Eun Sup where he contributes to product placements in the drama. i thought he was going to be the rookie detective in Tae Eul's crime division, so he was going to take up a more prominent role as part of the trio (Shin Jae, Tae Eul, Eun Sop).

my another big gripe with this drama is that Lee Gon seems to take up too much screen time, that it leaves not much room for other characters to show their unique, interesting sides. this would not have been so glaring if many of Lee Gon's scenes were more purposeful than they are fillers. when Lee Gon was at Republic of Korea for the first time, instead of giving too much uninteresting exchanges between him and Tae Eul, the writer could have given us more flashback scenes between Lee Gon and Jo Yeong, present scenes of Lee Gon and Eun Sup or simply more of Lee Gon/Eun Sop and Maximus, LOL.

can you share the link to the interview?

CG you mean the shots when they move from Kingdom of Corea to Republic of Korea? yeah the shots when they show the statue of the admiral and the city/palace at night when Lee Gon explained why Busan is the cultural capital also the location of the palace was just outstandingly pretty.

btw, you study film? how interesting. are you studying it formally?

what world building?

i already wrote a lengthy comment below about this episode. when you said nothing really new came about this episode, i disagree. there are some subtle progress plus new characters were introduced which may become important later.

i also personally felt the story is a bit slow, but i think it makes sense now that in ep. 2, Tae Eul keeps being condescending to Lee Gon, but in this episode she started to receive the results of the things she verified about Lee Gon's real identity. i think it works, because the slow progress has its purpose in the same way Tae Eul needed to wait for the multiple results of the identity verification to come back.

not Yi/Lee Won, Yi/Lee Gon.

i can agree with that.

kinda agree, but i think the rest of the episodes matter more and will slowly pick up now that Lee Gon has figured Lee Lim can also travel to the parallel world, that's why he returned to his kingdom immediately.

i actually didn't really notice those product placement in an emotional scene. which one? the grocery store scene i agree, was kinda obvious and pointless AF.

LOL yeah that was reaching it, lmao.

you might want to hold off until the drama finish airing completely and bingewatch it later if you lack patience. the story is already developing slowly from this episode because Lee Gon has figured that Lee Lim can also cross to the other world because he has another half of Minpanseok.

agree! it's slowly picking up :)

yes but she has black belt in taekwondo.

okay i liked this episode better at showing some budding chemistry between Lee Gon and Jung Tae Eul.

so Tae Eul checked for these things and they came negative for Lee Gon:
1. his DNA.
2. his registration records (ID).
3. the phone call she received back from Korea Racing Association about the white horse, Maximus where the person on the other end said that it is not stolen, and indeed a rare Spanish breed that's not found in Korea.

you can see that she's started to feel confused, doubting herself about doubting him and starting to get curious whether he's indeed telling the truth. i mean, these are all really solid points you can't just ignore coming from a person who has the investigative authority to verify things.

p/s the guy who's Louie's neighbour from Shopping King, HE'S HERE!!! HAHAHAHA he already made burst into laughter at his first scene LOL LOL LOL. was he really born in 1993 or i am blind?! hahahaha. also the appearance of the ahjumma who was Suzy's mother in WYWS (she's in many dramas, i think she plays a very important role here but we don't know that yet). was she the one who slid a note in a book inside a bookstore saying the king is not in his palace to Lee Lim? damn that ahjumma.

i think the story is slowly picking up itself, but i do note that the way the dialogues are written are always a bit on the edge of being corny/cheesy.

i read that the reason why it feels quite bland so far is because of the relatively slow pace and poorly written dialogues. i can definitely agree with that. not entirely the fault of any of the leading actors.

p/ss i loved when they incorporated time freeze (maybe it happens when Lee Lim crosses the other world). i loved when Lee Gon explained that the reason Busan is the cultural capital and location of the palace is so that the royal guards can protect the capital and defend their country first against attackers. i loved when Lee Gon's dialogues have these mathematical equations incorporated in, like when he explained about how he likes the number 0, and how he is trapped in the square root that Tae Eul is standing in front of, and also the close up of many mathematical equations he wrote on the windows of the hotel room.

p/sss now Lee Gon already figured that Lee Lim can also travel to the parallel world just like him because he has the other half of the Minpanseok. can't wait for the scenes when they finally confront each other as adults. i can already see that their fighting scenes would be really epic, and would have been the saving grace for this drama!

maybe we wanted/expected more, and deserved more, but so far i am pretty satisfied with this drama up to this episode and how it can lead to better things from here. xx

i feel like this drama can be like another Hotel del Luna, some people loved it to bits, others didn't really. perhaps that's okay :)