This had all the potential to become a great drama: a well-known cast with great acting, the camera work is flawless, the action scenes make me want to jump in my seat from excitement, and the premise of the drama was incredibly promising. I find mixing the supernatural with what would have been an ordinary sageuk to be awesome, and in this drama in particalur, the supernatural takes center stage.
So how could this drama possibly fail when you have an actor like Lee Seung Gi and a gumiho character? When we have in our hands a wishy washy writing such as this.
You'd think that –at least, from the title- getting the Gu Family book would be the most important objective of our hero, but this plotline is tossed and picked up several times whenever the matter of becoming a human is convenient. And still, Kang Chi does nothing to get the book because he's too busy with other things that the writer throws at him. The same happens with the other plotlines; the writer would introduce a certain plot that would then take a backseat to another subplot before finally being continued once we've already forgotten about it.
"Oh, that issue is not resolved yet? I thought it was over two episodes back."
The writing is not sturdy or pulled together; it's confusing and annoying how events simply crop up and how they go down without a proper conclusion, how the rules of this world (which are, in this drama, equivalent to fine print on a contract) are not clear from the beginning and just pop up whenever it's convenient or complementary to the plot to mention, how blatant and forced (and illogical at times) the events that would lead us to major events are. The writing completely lacks the subtility needed for such a plot to be exciting.
One thing I need to concede is that the female leads were amazing; Yeo Wool and Chung Jo are both strong characters that never failed to surprise me—they are so unlike the rest of typical k-drama female leads and I wish to see more of those, but preferably not from the same writer.
The last episode was so messed up I wanted to cry for all the time that I spent watching this show—I felt like the writer was like, "Let it all go to hell! Woohoo!". The only reason I watched all 24 episodes was because of Seung Gi and Suzy, but even if I love those two to bits, I should've quit when it was apparent that the screenwriter hasn't the slightest clue about what she's doing.
(Only when I was writing this review did I find out that the screenwriter is the same person who wrote King of Baking and Man of Honor, both of which I was not able to finish because I couldn't stand the plot and characters.
Now that is pretty interesting.)
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