![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
...for not producing a Taiga Drama that's held my interest since 2004. How lucky for me that there's saeguk in the meantime, specifically Dong Yi, aka Yi San's great-grandmother.
It kicks off with the standard Daejanggeum formula: young girl tragically orphaned? Check. Imperative to clear the name of parents wrongly accused? Check. Prophecy about much hardship followed by illustrious future? Check. Hard-won entry into the palace followed by days of drudgery?? Check. Flash-forward to our heroine as a spunky yet intelligent adolescent? Check...
Unfortunately, Dong Yi's scriptwriters are apparently operating under the impression that the formula means they don't have to try as hard--so far much of the the characters' actions and reactions are there to advance the plot, instead of in response to the plot. Luckily, this can be appreciated on a meta level by counting how many times someone forgets about the potato, or which of the court maids have gone back to being Forces For Good. (Seriously, saeguk appear to be as regular as a 9-5 job for many of the actors in secondary and tertiary roles.)
I've also found that if I wait long enough, dramas following this formula will usually (but not always) reach a critical point where the scriptwriters say, "Okay, now that we've got all that out of the way, it's time to get the story started" and you get a hint of the angle they plan to take to make this saeguk stick out from all the others. (In essence, I'm going to write a 58, but this time...Hakkai tops!) That moment came at precisely 43:40 in Episode Six, and it was glorious. Thus far, Dong Yi has averaged about a six on the anachronism scale, but not only was this is a historically accurate twist I can get behind, the anachronisms it is sure to give birth to are likely to hit many of my kinks. Hurrah, Dong Yi! You can look forward to me sticking around for another 40-odd eps.
これで以上です。
It kicks off with the standard Daejanggeum formula: young girl tragically orphaned? Check. Imperative to clear the name of parents wrongly accused? Check. Prophecy about much hardship followed by illustrious future? Check. Hard-won entry into the palace followed by days of drudgery?? Check. Flash-forward to our heroine as a spunky yet intelligent adolescent? Check...
Unfortunately, Dong Yi's scriptwriters are apparently operating under the impression that the formula means they don't have to try as hard--so far much of the the characters' actions and reactions are there to advance the plot, instead of in response to the plot. Luckily, this can be appreciated on a meta level by counting how many times someone forgets about the potato, or which of the court maids have gone back to being Forces For Good. (Seriously, saeguk appear to be as regular as a 9-5 job for many of the actors in secondary and tertiary roles.)
I've also found that if I wait long enough, dramas following this formula will usually (but not always) reach a critical point where the scriptwriters say, "Okay, now that we've got all that out of the way, it's time to get the story started" and you get a hint of the angle they plan to take to make this saeguk stick out from all the others. (In essence, I'm going to write a 58, but this time...Hakkai tops!) That moment came at precisely 43:40 in Episode Six, and it was glorious. Thus far, Dong Yi has averaged about a six on the anachronism scale, but not only was this is a historically accurate twist I can get behind, the anachronisms it is sure to give birth to are likely to hit many of my kinks. Hurrah, Dong Yi! You can look forward to me sticking around for another 40-odd eps.
これで以上です。