Empress Ki (2013)

Dated with poor storytelling

The third time's the charm they say, however, no matter how hard I tried I still couldn't get beyond ep 12 of 51. For one, the story is beyond farcical. Secondly, the titular character, who should have been at most in her early 20s, was played by 34-year-old Ha Ji Won whose face looked even older than her real age. I'm sorry but IMO she was absolutely the worst-looking Korean actress I've seen in a historical drama. Not only did I keep getting distracted by her thinning hair but also by her boxy body shape.

The main male actors, Ji Chang Wook and Joo Jin Mo, were 25 and 38 yrs old IRL respectively but they looked much older because the styling department gave them the worst possible hair and wardrobe styling.

Then the scriptwriters decided that one-dimensional characters and plot were good enough; depth and nuance be damned.

I kept wondering why I would care about any of our three main leads. One was a cowardly puppet Emperor, the other was a deposed King who I couldn't sympathize with and of course, there's Empress Ki who they both "loved". All very unlikeable characters. I didn't care and once the first cardinal rule of character building is lost, what else is there?

Lastly, this came out in 2013 which means it was filmed between 2011 and 2012 and perhaps the novelty of having such a palace drama made it popular then because recent historical dramas have better storytelling, tighter plots, better casting, and clearer more dynamic cinematography.

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Dumb cliché tropey mess

This review is only for the first 4 episodes because I couldn't handle more.

For the life of me I don't understand all of the positive reviews. This is a not a terribly old show being released in 2013, but it looks like it was made in the 90s. I felt like I was watching Xena the Warrior Princess because the show was filled with so many cliche tropes and looked outdated.

Moreover, the gender bender trope is utterly suspect. Two grown man are having a crush on a boy, who is actually a girl, but think that she is a boy, all the while trying to convince themselves they are not gay after having erotic dreams about the "boy". Then, they actively compete with each other in a jealous rage for the "boy". The whole "I'm not gay" thing would've been more convincing if they secretly knew that the "boy" was a girl. Please, lets burn the gender bender trope with fire.

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