SHOW ABSOLUTELY TO WATCH!
I really liked this drama, it touches sensitive topics: the power when is held by women, power as the highest possible aspiration and how to obtain it, it's legitimate to use every means, the death of innocent people perceived as "collateral damage". Each individual character has his own ideology and his way of obtaining results and therefore a profound political and social confrontation is created that determines the path of events. It isn't a romantic screenplay, it's a political screenplay and the romance, the union between women and men is determined above all by the political benefits that this can bring to individuals. Love is given up for power, feelings are sacrificed for political gains, and the lovers die for the same reason. There are no good or bad characters here, but characters who make more or less questionable choices based on the interaction between the political factions. Let's take the two women most hated by most viewers, Lady Cho and the Queen Mother. Neither was bad by choice of life, but having been used and eventually sold for a political cause ends up turning them into monsters. Lady Cho is deceived by the King, she thinks she is loved, that she has been chosen for love and when she realizes that she was just a pawn in the political game between her father and the King, she directs her anger pathetically towards the other woman, but it must be hard to admit to yourself that your father used you for personal outbursts and therefore better blame those who have nothing to do with it than accept a painful truth. The Queen Mother has a similar path, she loves a man who has abandoned her for the good of the country, she lives obsessed with jealousy towards the woman he has as a legitimate consort and does everything to not lose those few moments that he deigns to share with her and why this happen does not come from doing a masacre. But even the legitimate wife does not have a stimulating situation, for more than half of her life she has been next to a man who loved another woman. Lady Jung is also repeatedly manipulated and in this power play, between the King, Park Gye Won, ministers and political factions they kill her whole family. We also have another interesting topic that clearly develops in this drama: the class struggle which, as Karl Marx would say, is never dead. Contempt towards the people, towards the servants, towards their needs is highlighted at every step of this drama. The King who for once looks the campesinos in the face while they cultivate rice in the palace, Lady Cho who mistreats her servants are examples of how the palace is not really interested in the needs of the lower classes. The actors are all very good, without exception, the disgust I felt for Lady Cho means that Park Ji Yeon did a great job, the hatred I felt for the King and Queen Mother is proportional to the skill of the actors in the play. Special mention for Jang Hyuk, that man was born to act, every performance of him is incredible and therefore his characters always end up becoming among the most charismatic of all. I loved him in his role as Park Gye Won and I also had a lot of sympathy for Lady Jung too, I hated the King, the Minister of War, and I felt a lot of compassion for Lady Cho, the Queen Mother and Gye Won's wife. But these are my personal sympathies for the various characters and therefore are arbitrary. The ending I think is good, it leaves the enigma about what future political plots are going to happen and I wouldn't want to be in Lady Jung's shoes with Lady Cho lurking when she has as her point of reference a figure as fickle and interested in power as the King. For sure there will be more blood shed.
Excellent photography, editing, setting, costumes and OST. I repeat, absolutely to watch, for me a 10/10.

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love as the only way of salvation

This is a beautiful drama that develops on two fronts, one is that of the revenge of a woman who saw her parents killed by people who wanted to take over the family business in an illegal and violent way and the other that of the love's story that develops between this woman and the man that has indirectly was the cause of the death of her family. We have complex main characters, no one is completely good or bad, all struggle with their ghosts and past hurts, and are rooted in dysfunctional families that deeply mark their behavior. RaEl the absolute protagonist of this drama is a woman marked by the pain and loss, for a period of 13 years she puts first her firm will to take revenge on those who ruined her life and that of her family. Yoon Gyeom Kang the male protagonist is a man marked by the murder of his mother, by the contempt of his father and by the deep loneliness in which he grew up. SoRa is the anti-heroine of this drama, she is the daughter of a psychopathic killer who killed her mother, mistreated her, this man used and abused economic and political power to bring profit to her miserable life. Seo Eun Pyung is the sweetest character in the quartet, an orphan boy who is a human rights lawyer, is kindhearted and an eyewitness to the disaster that happened to RaEl's family. He becomes a politician to eradicate corruption and refinds RaEl after 13 years and falls in love with her. Then there are a number of very complex and well-made secondary characters that I will not describe due to lack of space. The pace of the drama is good, maybe a little slow and sometimes too swirling, but overall it keeps you hooked and curious about what's to come. Basically it is the lead couple's journey on a healing pafìth that will lead RaEl to give up revenge for the man she loves, Yoon Gyoem Kang to give up the desire for power and money for RaEl's love and sake and find peace together by stopping to hate and to feel anger as the only way to be happy. The big bad guys pay everyone for their sins, so in the end comes revenge too. Great acting of Seon Ye Ji and Yoo Sun magnificent in their respective roles , I also loved Park Byung Eun in this dark but charming starring role and Lee Sang Yeob does a good job as this kind hearted guy who has unrequited love but still tries to help RaEl even when he knows the woman's heart who he loves will never belong to him. I recommend it and give it a rating of 9.5 / 10.

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This series normalizes forced sexual intercourse.

Strange country Thailand where a person instigates a gang rape against a minor, is discovered, there is evidence and instead of calling the police, reporting him and having him arrested, they leave him crying in the middle of the street. Same thing for the elder brother of the protagonist, he introduces his minor brother to a friend asking him to take care of him for serious family reasons and he rapes him, because having sex with a minor even if consenting is rape beautiful people for the law and the ethical sense of sane people there are not two opinions, but the elder brother instead of breaking the face of his "friend", denounce him and send him to jail continues to attend him peacefully and also invite him to lunch at the family home. Not to mention the times that the supone protagonist straight or bisexual tells the other that he doesn't want you to touch him and that he continues unscrupulously to do what he likes. In Thailand it seems that they still don't know that when a man or a woman says NO it means NO and you have to stop. This series normalizes forced sexual intercourse in a terrible way, it's garbage, violence and abuse from start to finish.

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Uno dei più bei drammi coreani di sempre.

Sono stata gradevolmente colpita da questa magnifica storia, mi è piaciuto tutto, gli attori principali, quelli secondari, la musica, la grafica, la profondità del messaggio che ci vogliono trasmettere infatti It's ok not be ok, possiamo permetterci di stare male e va bene così. Lei è strabiliante nel suo personaggio, Oh Jeong-se nei panni del fratello autistico è di una bravura assoluta, la signora che fa da mamma della antagonista è anche lei fantastica così come lo è il direttore del centro psichiatrico. Tutti fantastici perfino gli attori invitati, Kwak Dong-yeon ballando in mutande al meeting politico di suo padre padrone mi ha fatto emozionare fino alle lacrime, quante volte sentiamo il bisogno di essere apprezzati dai nostri genitori anche se non siamo poi così eccezionali e ci serve solo essere compresi e accettati. Essere compresi per quello che siamo un bisogno insopprimibile di ogni essere umano! È un dramma di dolore e guarigione, d'amore per gli amici, la famiglia e la propria coppia dove le persone non sono perfette ma provano ad andare avanti superando i propri traumi, limando le proprie asperità per infine crescere nel percorso travagliato della vita. Guardatelo, ve lo consiglio davvero tanto non ve ne pentirete. 10/10.

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Insipid drama.

Boring, flat and monotonous drama. The plot is based on nothingness itself, they give us the love story of a Superman and an Invisible Woman, who speaks little, does little and only knows how to say "I don't have enough experience, I'm afraid of disappointing you And she really disappoints, she looks like an overly spoiled 10-year-old girl who dresses like a 65-year-old lady. There is no adrenaline here, there is no breaking point, no conflict, no antagonist, no tests to overcome, everything develops without taste, without smell and without color , flat, boring, sleepy. And indeed in the episode 19 I fell asleep and then abandoned this, it is absolutely not my cup of tea. It's good to have communication and get along but I want to see how this chemistry works when the couple faces a problem or conflict and this doesn't appear in the drama.

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