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kdramaL Ja Myung Go
Jun. 3rd, 2015 08:57 pmCongratulations, Ja Myung Go, you are the first kdrama I actually regret watching the entirety of.*
I'm not going to worry about spoilers here, because this drama is 6 years old and was massively overpowered by Queen Seon Deok when they aired, and so not likely to be on many people's "to watch" list.
Very brief summary of the plot, which is based of the folktale "Prince Hodong and the Princess of Nakrang": Nakrang and Goguryeo are two warring countries. Nakrang is small but fertile, Goguryeo is huge, but mostly barren, and the king of Goguryeo wants to conquer Nakrang for it's resources. In the beginning, the future king of Nakrang has two wives who are pregnant. There's a prophecy that if he has a daughter, she will bring about the fall of Nakrang. Both queens give birth to daughters on the same night. The second queen conspires to save her daughter, Lahee, by having it declared that Ja Myung, the daughter of the first queen is the prohecied destroyer. Ja Myung is supposedly killed and set adrift in a boat with Il Pum, the toddler son of one of the first queen's attendants, FOR REASONS. Strangely, not fake!cest reasons, as Ja Myung and Il Pum are possibly the only m/f attractive adopted siblings in kdramas to appear to have a completely platonic relationship throughout. Like, ever. (This doesn't prevent Hulu from having one of their banners for the series be one that makes it look like Ja Myung and Il Pum are the Epic Lovers of the series. Clearly, Hulu knows that Il Pum is the best of the male characters in the series.) There're a number of episodes where everyone is running around doing political scheming stuff, and the series will periodically cut to BABIES SLOWLY DYING AT SEA that starts to look neverending. Thankfully, they eventually end up in China and get adopted by the circus and procedd to have the least sucky lives of anyone in the series for about 18 years. Fast forward, and the king of Goguryeo decides to engage his son, Ho Dong, to Lahee as part of his Take Over Nakrang plan. Hodong has rather epic issues that largely stem from the fact that his mother was from a not very popular tribe, and there are various plots that center around trying to replace him with his stepmother's son, except the king of Goguryeo refuses to have anymore children. Between the king's emotional abuse and her father's "give me a grandson to make king or die" antics, the queen's frustrations build up a bit too much and she kinda sorta tries to kill her beloved-until-then stepson. That relationship tuns rather sour, and gives both even more epic issues.
Fast forward a bunch and grown up Hodong is still trying to get Lahee to fall in love with him so he can take over her kingdom, Lahee doesn't trust him but can't help falling for him, and Ja Myung is getting ready to leave the circus and try to get back to Nakrang to find out who she is. Ja Myung and Hodong fall in love and a lot of plot happens before she eventually leaves him (note that Hodong spends their entire relationship trying to seduce Lahee and attacking her insecurities any time she expresses her doubts that are actually completely right about him). By the time we catch up with the folktale, Ja Myung has gone home and become the Priestess of Nakrang and constructed the mystical drum named after her, and Hodong is still hung up over their Epic Forbidden Love even as he marries her sister. (Ja Myung appears to be mostly over their Epic Love Story at that point, despite not being remotely over Hodong himself. Sadly, her pragmatism gets forgotten at a rather crucial point.)
Ok, listen, this is an Epic Sageuk. That WAS really brief.
Here's the thing: I knew going in that I wouldn't like the ending. I mean, the folktale it's based on pretty much goes "Hero manipulates Heroine into betraying her country, Hero betrays Heroine, Hero's father betray's Hero and everyone dies." it took me over a year to finish despite my really being into most of it because I knew it was going to end with a lot of death. Ja Myung Go follows the (now mostly abandoned, I think) sageuk tradition of opening the series with scenes from later in the series before going back to the beginning. In this case, instead of spending a few minutes in the future, Ja Myung Go spends and entire 2 episodes on the events after the fall of Nakrang, and does so in a way that is actually rather amazing and creates a lot of pre-investment.
Anyway, like I said, I knew I wouldn't like the ending going in, but I had heard a lot of good things about its characterization of women and focus on their choices and decisions, and it's sensitive and sympathetic portrayal women who are usually dismissed or straightup villified by sageuks, and I can usually handle an ending I don't like if if getting there is worth it, and for the first 34 or so episodes it was great.
The I got to the final arc. And I know that a lot of it is because they had to cram about 15 or so episodes of character developments and motivations into just a few episodes because of the network cutting back on the run, and things get lost there (the last 2 episodes really felt like a cliffnotes version of 5-6 episodes to me) but they could have done better. I couldn't help but think they completely sacrificed all of Ja Myung and Lahee's intelligence to force the plot to where it wanted to go. With Ja Myung, that's mostly concentrated around her decision to burn the message from Goguryeo even though she knew not to trust Hodong because her womanly feelings just overpowered her intellect there, but it was pretty much complete character assassination. Yes, Lahee tended to be ruled by her emotions when it came to Hodong (my read on Lahee's tendency to be irrational there has always been that Hodong is the only thing Lahee ever really let herself want her herself, and he spent most of their adult lives manipulating and emotionally abusing her to encourage the emotional independence) but part of her always knew he was untrustworthy and maintained some caution (which, as I mentioned earlier, he always used to attack her and make her feel like the villain for not blindly trusting his lies and manipulations) but all that goes out the window. I mean, he takes her to Goguryeo, reveals that he's betraying her, turns over her countrymen to his father to be slaughtered, and then spins his story about how if she destroys the mystical drum, no one will be hurt and Goguryeo will welcome the people of Nakrang with open arms. And she believes him and gives her reason for agreeing as not wanting him to die.
Excuse me while I barf in my mouth a lot.
Fast forward a bit, and we get to the scene where Lahee is being stoned to death for betraying Nakrang while Hodong sits in his room being tragic and regretful. As Lahee is being stoned to death because of him, the show plays sad, tragic music and has a romantic montage of scenes where Hodong is seducing/manipulating Lahee to use her and Nakrang to try to become king of Goguryeo. I mean, clearly his angst and guilt are the most important factors here.**
And then we have the end, where the show decides that Ja Myung and Hodong must die together for their Epic Love, and seems to have Ja Myung agree that they can't live without each other, even though I think that's COMPLETELY contrary to her characterization for the entire series.
There's also the final battle, which felt gratuitius to me and like the show was just going "nope, we need to kill off more characters. You just THOUGHT some of these secondary characters were safe because they were mostly offscreen all episode."
Things I did like about the ending:
1. Uhm...I'm pretty sure Hodong's aunt lived, along with Ja Myung's circus parents, so there's that. They probably didn't have enough time to work in death scenes for them, though. Or they went by so quickly that I missed them.
2. Maesolsoo won, which part of me secretly wanted all along, even if I shouldn't have.
3. Ja Myung's "Screw you and your speeches about our epic love, you killed my sister" when Hodong starts up on that again. Too bad we couldn’t keep that until the end, and have her get on with her life.
Between this last arc and the last arc of Queen Seon Deok, which I also only recently finished, I'm actually getting scared about the end of Hwajung (still my favorite thing I'm currently watching) despite the fact that it won't end for several months yet.
*Ok, TECHNICALLY the second, but Goong was one of the very first kdramas I watched and it was The Drama at the time and I kept watching it out of completionism and to try to understand why everyone loved it so much. If I were to try watching it for the first time now, I'd quickly realize that it wasn't for me and move on after an episode or two.
**I get Hodong and why he is the way he is. I just never managed to sympathize with him, at all once he was an adult. Part of it is that his entire arc is his singleminded obsession to become king of Goguryeo to prove he's his father's son, not his mother's. There's never really any indication that he thinks he's what's best for Goguryeo, or really that he cares a lot about Goguryeo itself. In comparison, Lahee has it drilled into her from birththat she's not only the best choice for Nakrang, she's the ONLY choice, and that she can never have any desires for herself, only for the wellbeing of Nakrang. And while she makes some epically bad choices (Mostly in trusting Hodong. Ever.) her choices are guided by what she thinks is best for Nakrang and it's people, not in her desire to rule Nakrang. Which is why I can sympathize with her even when her choices are bad or selfish, but couldn't really sympathize with Hodong.
I'm not going to worry about spoilers here, because this drama is 6 years old and was massively overpowered by Queen Seon Deok when they aired, and so not likely to be on many people's "to watch" list.
Very brief summary of the plot, which is based of the folktale "Prince Hodong and the Princess of Nakrang": Nakrang and Goguryeo are two warring countries. Nakrang is small but fertile, Goguryeo is huge, but mostly barren, and the king of Goguryeo wants to conquer Nakrang for it's resources. In the beginning, the future king of Nakrang has two wives who are pregnant. There's a prophecy that if he has a daughter, she will bring about the fall of Nakrang. Both queens give birth to daughters on the same night. The second queen conspires to save her daughter, Lahee, by having it declared that Ja Myung, the daughter of the first queen is the prohecied destroyer. Ja Myung is supposedly killed and set adrift in a boat with Il Pum, the toddler son of one of the first queen's attendants, FOR REASONS. Strangely, not fake!cest reasons, as Ja Myung and Il Pum are possibly the only m/f attractive adopted siblings in kdramas to appear to have a completely platonic relationship throughout. Like, ever. (This doesn't prevent Hulu from having one of their banners for the series be one that makes it look like Ja Myung and Il Pum are the Epic Lovers of the series. Clearly, Hulu knows that Il Pum is the best of the male characters in the series.) There're a number of episodes where everyone is running around doing political scheming stuff, and the series will periodically cut to BABIES SLOWLY DYING AT SEA that starts to look neverending. Thankfully, they eventually end up in China and get adopted by the circus and procedd to have the least sucky lives of anyone in the series for about 18 years. Fast forward, and the king of Goguryeo decides to engage his son, Ho Dong, to Lahee as part of his Take Over Nakrang plan. Hodong has rather epic issues that largely stem from the fact that his mother was from a not very popular tribe, and there are various plots that center around trying to replace him with his stepmother's son, except the king of Goguryeo refuses to have anymore children. Between the king's emotional abuse and her father's "give me a grandson to make king or die" antics, the queen's frustrations build up a bit too much and she kinda sorta tries to kill her beloved-until-then stepson. That relationship tuns rather sour, and gives both even more epic issues.
Fast forward a bunch and grown up Hodong is still trying to get Lahee to fall in love with him so he can take over her kingdom, Lahee doesn't trust him but can't help falling for him, and Ja Myung is getting ready to leave the circus and try to get back to Nakrang to find out who she is. Ja Myung and Hodong fall in love and a lot of plot happens before she eventually leaves him (note that Hodong spends their entire relationship trying to seduce Lahee and attacking her insecurities any time she expresses her doubts that are actually completely right about him). By the time we catch up with the folktale, Ja Myung has gone home and become the Priestess of Nakrang and constructed the mystical drum named after her, and Hodong is still hung up over their Epic Forbidden Love even as he marries her sister. (Ja Myung appears to be mostly over their Epic Love Story at that point, despite not being remotely over Hodong himself. Sadly, her pragmatism gets forgotten at a rather crucial point.)
Ok, listen, this is an Epic Sageuk. That WAS really brief.
Here's the thing: I knew going in that I wouldn't like the ending. I mean, the folktale it's based on pretty much goes "Hero manipulates Heroine into betraying her country, Hero betrays Heroine, Hero's father betray's Hero and everyone dies." it took me over a year to finish despite my really being into most of it because I knew it was going to end with a lot of death. Ja Myung Go follows the (now mostly abandoned, I think) sageuk tradition of opening the series with scenes from later in the series before going back to the beginning. In this case, instead of spending a few minutes in the future, Ja Myung Go spends and entire 2 episodes on the events after the fall of Nakrang, and does so in a way that is actually rather amazing and creates a lot of pre-investment.
Anyway, like I said, I knew I wouldn't like the ending going in, but I had heard a lot of good things about its characterization of women and focus on their choices and decisions, and it's sensitive and sympathetic portrayal women who are usually dismissed or straightup villified by sageuks, and I can usually handle an ending I don't like if if getting there is worth it, and for the first 34 or so episodes it was great.
The I got to the final arc. And I know that a lot of it is because they had to cram about 15 or so episodes of character developments and motivations into just a few episodes because of the network cutting back on the run, and things get lost there (the last 2 episodes really felt like a cliffnotes version of 5-6 episodes to me) but they could have done better. I couldn't help but think they completely sacrificed all of Ja Myung and Lahee's intelligence to force the plot to where it wanted to go. With Ja Myung, that's mostly concentrated around her decision to burn the message from Goguryeo even though she knew not to trust Hodong because her womanly feelings just overpowered her intellect there, but it was pretty much complete character assassination. Yes, Lahee tended to be ruled by her emotions when it came to Hodong (my read on Lahee's tendency to be irrational there has always been that Hodong is the only thing Lahee ever really let herself want her herself, and he spent most of their adult lives manipulating and emotionally abusing her to encourage the emotional independence) but part of her always knew he was untrustworthy and maintained some caution (which, as I mentioned earlier, he always used to attack her and make her feel like the villain for not blindly trusting his lies and manipulations) but all that goes out the window. I mean, he takes her to Goguryeo, reveals that he's betraying her, turns over her countrymen to his father to be slaughtered, and then spins his story about how if she destroys the mystical drum, no one will be hurt and Goguryeo will welcome the people of Nakrang with open arms. And she believes him and gives her reason for agreeing as not wanting him to die.
Excuse me while I barf in my mouth a lot.
Fast forward a bit, and we get to the scene where Lahee is being stoned to death for betraying Nakrang while Hodong sits in his room being tragic and regretful. As Lahee is being stoned to death because of him, the show plays sad, tragic music and has a romantic montage of scenes where Hodong is seducing/manipulating Lahee to use her and Nakrang to try to become king of Goguryeo. I mean, clearly his angst and guilt are the most important factors here.**
And then we have the end, where the show decides that Ja Myung and Hodong must die together for their Epic Love, and seems to have Ja Myung agree that they can't live without each other, even though I think that's COMPLETELY contrary to her characterization for the entire series.
There's also the final battle, which felt gratuitius to me and like the show was just going "nope, we need to kill off more characters. You just THOUGHT some of these secondary characters were safe because they were mostly offscreen all episode."
Things I did like about the ending:
1. Uhm...I'm pretty sure Hodong's aunt lived, along with Ja Myung's circus parents, so there's that. They probably didn't have enough time to work in death scenes for them, though. Or they went by so quickly that I missed them.
2. Maesolsoo won, which part of me secretly wanted all along, even if I shouldn't have.
3. Ja Myung's "Screw you and your speeches about our epic love, you killed my sister" when Hodong starts up on that again. Too bad we couldn’t keep that until the end, and have her get on with her life.
Between this last arc and the last arc of Queen Seon Deok, which I also only recently finished, I'm actually getting scared about the end of Hwajung (still my favorite thing I'm currently watching) despite the fact that it won't end for several months yet.
*Ok, TECHNICALLY the second, but Goong was one of the very first kdramas I watched and it was The Drama at the time and I kept watching it out of completionism and to try to understand why everyone loved it so much. If I were to try watching it for the first time now, I'd quickly realize that it wasn't for me and move on after an episode or two.
**I get Hodong and why he is the way he is. I just never managed to sympathize with him, at all once he was an adult. Part of it is that his entire arc is his singleminded obsession to become king of Goguryeo to prove he's his father's son, not his mother's. There's never really any indication that he thinks he's what's best for Goguryeo, or really that he cares a lot about Goguryeo itself. In comparison, Lahee has it drilled into her from birththat she's not only the best choice for Nakrang, she's the ONLY choice, and that she can never have any desires for herself, only for the wellbeing of Nakrang. And while she makes some epically bad choices (Mostly in trusting Hodong. Ever.) her choices are guided by what she thinks is best for Nakrang and it's people, not in her desire to rule Nakrang. Which is why I can sympathize with her even when her choices are bad or selfish, but couldn't really sympathize with Hodong.