This is WEnchanteur’s post. I’m just reposting here so you can comment on it as you please. WEnchanteur’s blog is w4worlds.eklablog.com.
I’ll post later. Please be patient. I had to fight off fangirls from attacking a small canoe. But logic and the script always win the day. -pm3
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Example of how drama make spectator confused.
I tried to put myself in the context of the first time I watched the drama, without taking into account the information I got afterwards, in the following episodes, or by re-watching the episodes.
***** Context study of the timestop scene Episode 3 *****
Episode 1: (16:00) LL goes into ROK for the first time. He kills his double and so on…
We can observe that during the first episode, the director clearly indicates with a subtitle what world we are in, on a few occasions. Alas, he will lose this habit afterwards! Too bad, because it is an effective way to help the viewer.
Episode 1: (33:00) LL meets his lieutenant, the “saltz man”.
The man is thin, his face is hollowed out, chiseled and wears a hat.
This man was part of the palace assault troop at the beginning of the episode.
– Context: unknown place, unknown time, unknown character.
– Confusion character: impossible to recognize the man. He appears quickly at the beginning of the episode, and his appearance is different.
– Confusion place : the spectator has as a memory the fact that LL is in ROK.
– Understanding : fortunately easy here, thanks to a previous scene, where the corpse of the fake LL is found on the beach. This suggests that LL is back in QOK. The conversation between the Saltz Man and LL shows that they know each other and that Saltz Man is faithful to him. So a man from QOK. Even without having physically recognized the henchman at the beginning of the episode, we manage to deduce that he is one of LL’s henchmen.
– Resolution : At the end of the scene, LL says to him “Come, I’ll show you a new world”.
– Conclusion : The Saltz Man is going to go in the world of ROK. As a spectator, this is the place where I expect to find this character the next time I will see him, as well as LL. (hey hey)
Episode 1: (01:01:45) LL is in his paint shop. There’s a timestop.
– Context: Unknown location.
– Confusion : As I review the scene, I realize I was wrong. I was sure that LL is in ROK. But in reality, there is no proof of that here. It will be possible to deduce it in episode 2 when LL paints a temple (and again, nothing certain). Later, this painting workshop will be used again. In the course of the story, I’ll end up forgetting where it is, whereas I had concluded the first time it was in ROK.
– Conclusion: staying on my original idea (ROK), I conclude that timestop occurs when LG goes through the portal. A few episodes later, I’ll also conclude, wrongly, that timestop occurs when the two characters meet in the same world.
Episode 2: I don’t want to dissect it because the second half of this episode is particularly painful. A lot of scenes with unknown context, producing an effect of erosion of the viewer’s concentration. Each time, difficulties to understand, because of misleading correlations.
As for LL, I still understood from the first time he returned to ROK. He meets a woman with a handicapped child and offers to help her by hurting other children. The radio voice-over announces the news, and the woman he met in ROK during episode 1 listens to the radio.
Conclusion : LL is in ROK. I was lucky because I could have missed a step. I still squeezed my buttocks hoping it was not a flashback.
Episode 3 : Finally the heart of the matter. If I evoked the previous scenes, it’s because they have an impact in the understanding of the timestop of this episode.
Episode 3 doesn’t have a focused storytelling of specific characters, following their adventures. The easiest case to understand, and often to enjoy. Instead, a lot of jumps from one situation to another. Fortunately, no unknown minor characters, no unknown location context. However, let’s not forget that at this point in the story, even secondary characters are still being tested during the first viewing. The viewer’s concentration is thus eroded.
Episode 3: (41:45) Yoyo Boy, Shin-Jay’s mother and bookstore.
– Context: Unknown location, unknown characters.
– Confusion: First appearance of the yoyoboy. Little time to keep his face in mind, and avoid confusing him with other kids in the drama.
– Confusion: Shin-Jay’s mother, because that’s how she will be identified shortly afterwards when she will be with her son. Actually, it’s her doopleganger in QOK, according to Packmule3. If I missed a scene in this episode or a previous one where this woman appears in QOK at the palace, I apologize. It’s also part of the confusion. As far as I’m concerned, this is the first time I see her in the story.
– Confusion: If we remember the character (it’s not obvious, it’s a woman walking down a dark street for three seconds), we will recognize her the first time she is with her son, in a later scene where the mother has stolen money from a casino.
– Confusion: Since we will have deduced that this character is in ROK, we will also deduce that the bookstore is in ROK, if no convincing clue appears in the meantime on the world where this shop is located.
Episode 3: (41:15) PM Koo slumped on a bed at his mother’s house.
– Context: QOK.
– Confusion: on the surface, none, and yet yes, it will come… this scene and/or the next one may be flashforward, in reverse chronology, on top of that. Big laugh in perspective.
– Confusion : the purpose of the scene is to show at the end the umbrella of LL. The scene is rather badly rendered. The conversation doesn’t seem to make sense, since PM Koo is designing an object that the director doesn’t show correctly. I understand his approach, he probably wanted to preserve the suspense… At the beginning, we see the mother putting down an umbrella. The umbrella is shown incompletely for a very short time. So when PM Koo then asks “what is it”, after talking about something else, it’s difficult to understand that she was talking about the umbrella. So the scene looks like a mundane, uninteresting and somewhat wobbly conversation. It’s only at the end where the director brings the top of the umbrella out of a foreground blur. And then it’s like, “Oh, shit, he wanted to show us something…”
– Conclusion : First you have to guess that the umbrella contains the flute, I succeeded this first step. Maybe the drama show this before, I don’t remember.
Episode 3 : (45:00) LL walks around in the sun with his umbrella.
– Context : QOK. You have to look at the king’s poster to find out. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the director, at the end of the scene, he does a close-up and displays a subtitle “Kingdom of Korea”.
– Confusion : thank you, thank you… or maybe not !. Because this detail will persuade us that at this moment, in real time, LL is in QOK.
– Confusion : at the beginning, we can say to ourselves “nice, I recognize the top of the umbrella, it’s the same as the one that was at PM Koo’s mother’s house”. But suddenly, it’s a total misunderstanding. If that umbrella was just put at PM Koo’s mother’s house, what the hell is it doing in LL’s hands?! There are two umbrellas in the story?! It’s another day, and he got his umbrella back in the meantime?! Or is this scene a flashback taking place BEFORE he drops his umbrella at PM Koo’s house?! If this flute is so precious, why is he entrusting the umbrella to some random woman? He should never part with it. Damn, it’s really all over now, and it’s not over yet…
I can’t resist, and I’ll put this back to you:
Episode 3: (48:50) Romantic Timestop !!!
– Background: ROK. A particularly important thing: this scene is directly following the one described before (LL with his umbrella).
– Confusion : Gigantic !!! LL has just walked in the sun in QOK. The director made a close-up on the king’s poster, and to be sure to fuck us up, he put a subtitle insisting “KINGDOM OF KOREA”.
– Confusion : since we believe that LL goes in ROK, the place where LG is, we wrongly deduce that the rule of a timestop is “when the two flute pieces are together, a timestop occurs”.
– Conclusion: no doubt is possible! LL has just left QOK, and he has just arrived in ROK! Except that no. This is just a confusion section.
– Conclusion (the real one) : LL has just left ROK, and he has just arrived in QOK. No way to guess it yet. So how do we do it? Well we don’t do anything for a while, because the clues won’t appear quickly. For now, we’re going to live out the rest of the drama in some kind of smoky sewer with opium fumes. And why did you show the two previous scenes in QOK? Why are these scenes reversed chronologically, even between them? Prout.
Episode 3: (48:50) LL goes to the bookstore.
– Background: Unknown. No evidence of the world where this enigmatic place is located.
– Confusion: A cascade of misunderstandings. Since everything indicates that LL has just arrived in ROK, we deduce that the bookstore is also in ROK. However, after having seen episode 9, we can see that Luna goes in the bookstore, whereas she is in QOK. How long will this confusion last? I don’t remember, but a long time. We can say that we then watch the drama, as if there was nothing concrete.
– Confusion: This is confirmed by the scene of Shin-Jay’s supposed mother going into the bookstore.
– Confusion: we deduce that the yo-yo boy is in the world of ROK. This will be FURTHER confirmed when TE is pushed by the yoyo boy when he is riding his bike. Of course, you’ll have to recognize his face, but the character is striking enough to be recognized. Moreover, the kid has the same hairstyle. The only thing that changes, he’s riding his bike instead of playing yo-yo. A kid still has the right to have fun in different ways.
– Confusion : LL reads a note saying “the king has left the palace”. This contradicts the fact that people think he’s in ROK. So we imagine that the bookstore is a place located in ROK, but where a mysterious unknown agent leaves messages to LL. Maybe the owner of the second umbrella. Maybe he cut his piece of flute in half to make two quarter-pieces. Normally, however, this note should warn us : beware guys, you are in QOK, not in ROK ! But at this point it’s too late, it just adds more misunderstanding.
– Confusion : a guy comes to visit LL. Actually, this guy is the saltz man. He is totally unrecognizable. Different hairstyle, no hat, glasses, even his face looks different. But in case we manage to recognize him (bravo) : perfect, in the scene of episode 1, LL had promised the saltz man that he would show him the other world. So that’s why this character is now here, in ROK.
Episode 3 : (54:00) Voice-over from LG with pictures of LL’s army.
– Background: QOK. We can recognize the saltz man with glasses.
– Confusion: since it’s an LG voice-over, it’s typically the kind of scene that doesn’t need to be live. Even if it happens in QOK, it’s easily a flashback of a previous moment when LL was gathering his army.
– Confusion: the location is so different from the bookstore, that anyway, you wouldn’t imagine that LL and his henchman have travelled to a salt marsh, when the only scene there in the meantime is LG in the bamboo forest doing his voice-over. The current scene actually.
– Conclusion: none, despite the pitiful effort to show us LL in QOK.
Of course, if I had the time, I would gladly analyze the scenes of the following episodes to check how far the deception goes. But it’s really long to do, and here, I’ve already written a scary sized commentary.
Perhaps PDnim will read this and take notes. 😎
Well done and with wit, WEnchanteur.
Transferring Fern’s comment here.
@WEnchanteur, it’s very good to have someone who understands the mechanics of dramas here. I picture you with a machete, hacking through the tangles of this drama to make the path clear and planting some new things here and there where it matters.
Transferring GB’s comment here.
Bravo @WEnchanteur! What an effort, of heroic scale! Now I see clearly the difficulty we are facing and how tiring it is to watch this show if we want understanding and clarity immediately.
I recall LG’s words to TE: “I’m telling you not to become exhausted.” But many of us are exhausted already, and from your lucid points, it’s clear why.
So why do some of us still plough away happily while we watch? Perhaps the fun is in trying to break the code. If this show is a great big PPL of many brands, with a fantasy woven in somehow, then it is also a fantasy with a code to break. We crazies are out to break the code before too much is revealed to us so that we have the satisfaction of seeing how things fall into place, as a result of our own great thinking and wild guesses.
LOL.
Transferring Tomato101’s comment here
@WEnchanteur That long comment of yours…… You just reminded me of that nightmare that was ”the first four episodes of the show”. That’s why I had to watch episodes at least 4X … it totally failed to convey a lot of stuff to the viewer. I hope they go back and refix those scenes. The script really is decent, but those edits, wow, it was glaringly obvious the production had issues. I also remembered the umbrella scene and LL walking w his umbrella afterwards, I was like, ‘WTH??????? what is happening?’
“ For now, we’re going to live out the rest of the drama in some kind of smoky sewer with opium fumes.” <—— rofl that description is just about right.
I generally had the same first viewing experience as you described.. lots of confusion and train of thought severely disrupted while watching. Humor and suspense scenes fell flat. Feeling of no cohesiveness. Faces mostly unrecognisable because of lack of highlight. It was like an symphony that didn’t have any highlights or climax, it just droned and droned til the end. The only reason I stuck around was bec I liked Kim GO Eun a lot, and i enjoyed the scriptwriter KES’ concept, approach and pace behind her other kdrama, Goblin. Discovering this site also helped loads… I could ignore all the production issues and just concentrate on the script (thank you packmule3) Otherwise I would’ve just dropped it.
Again, Thank you so much for the effort of writing this up btw. 🙂
Transferring WEnchateur’s comment here
@GB,
I go out to buy a bottle of whisky and come back to answer you after that. 😉
Thanks for moving my comment @pkml3! LOL 😂 @Wenchanteur did my comment, in particular, warrant a whole bottle of whiskey before you could respond???? No, I jest. I’m sure you just needed to go out for a bit of air and exercise so that you can settle in to type your reply. 🤔
I’m amazed at your meticulousness, at first being aware of every thought and confusion, remembering some or most of them, and then painstakingly re-watching and recording them (with timestamps!) so that we have a chart of confusions 😵 any PD should note and avoid. At least they should avoid repeating them 😵 to the extent that this PD does.
I find it interesting that the production team choose to do this even into Episode 8 and to an extent up to Episode 10. They seem to care not that the viewers leave in a huff, or that ‘bad press’ will make others not even take up the show. Many others who are led by what their peers say will also develop negative opinion and spread this throughout the netizen world. However, the production team (other than adding a PD) have stuck to their guns. (Like Lee Gon!)
And like LG on the battleship and like LG facing down LL in public, it can go very well 😁 or very wrong. 🤬
They have also blatantly, can I say, intentionally, put in PPL after PPL in as obvious a way possible as they can. They could do it with more subtlety, but they do not. It’s like they are trolling the viewers: “You hate it don’t you, all these badly stuffed in ads? Well, too bad… here’s another one!! Take it or leave the show!” [add diabolical laugh 😈 of PD Team] I take it as a gauntlet thrown.
I accept it all with a smirk and a guffaw. Each time I see a PPL coming up I grin and if they do it exceptionally badly, I laugh. I cannot imagine that it is ineptitude … I feel it is deliberate. As for the confusions, I will, 🙄 roll my eyes at them, and look for plot holes that I can accuse show of. And I will wait it out to see if jigsaw pieces do fit. Only after that may I rant my disgust … which will be enjoyable anyway. 😏
“Disgust us all you want”, I say to the Production Team. “I’m going to enjoy the heck out of this show, in spite of you!!!” 😆 🤪
@Fern @Tomato101 @WEenchanteur
I agree with @Fern that it’s a relief to see how to disentangle the mess if only the episodes could be re-edited with scenes rearranged.
@Tomat101 your post reminded me of the jaw-dropping number of characters that are listed for this show.
I only a couple of days ago, went into Asianwiki to look for the little girl who plays the role of Fate (I almost couldn’t find her in the loooong credits!!!), but in the process, I scrolled down and was aghast that the page extended and extended. There were 88!!! photos of characters (main, secondary, side characters) plus 4 additional cast members. And it is true, not many characters were given enough focus, distinction and good lighting so that we can easily recognise them again.
Therefore we pat ourselves on the back that we have managed to figure out the most of them.
What really took the cake was that our Fate was not even clearly shown to us to be a girl!!! 😵 😲 😱 Another deliberate troll? Are we meant to be in error only to get a slap in the face? Is show saying Fate can be a boy or a girl, since it is not a person? I so seldom see girls playing the yo-yo that I’d not associate that with a girl. That and the androgynous hair and dress! So I keep asking myself. Is this confusion and ambiguity deliberate? What do you think?
If this was only broadcast in TVN, it could be an hour and half show. I felt the PD was pressured or not up to the task and rushed with the editing and was not even concerned with how the audience will respond with this parallel worlds theme. I believe many scenes only ended up in the cutting room. I really like this drama but I couldn’t help wondering what if it was in the hands of a more capable director and more focus on the storytelling rather than stuffing scenes with product placements. Lesser characters would also work with me. For me the PM and her mom could be totally written out. I mean Tae Eul’s dad merely appeared four times if I’m not mistaken, including two flashbacks. She might as well be an orphan or an adult simply living alone in that house. What’s the point of casting supporting actors when they’re barely there? And was it even necessary for us to see the chief detective with his wife buying groceries? And now in the most recent episode they introduce a new character out of the blue. Again related to PM. Is the character even necessary. With so many likeable supporting characters being sidelined like extras. The instant Kimchi has been treated much much better if I may say so.
@WEnchanteur @packmule3 Bad news! “Rose Mae Aguilar” posted this article to Facebook like right now. I make a complaint to the manager and left a quick comment. I am not good at Facebook, and don’t know what else I can do. Anything I can do please just let me know.
I think you should know about this.Sorry, Gotta run now.
So I had composed a long answer to this blog post but in the end I kept questioning myself thus keeping this short.
The blog writer has done a meticulous job as pointed out beautifully by @GB however, I beg to differ with regard to what is called confusion.
I am not a fan of the first few episodes and they did a good jobs of putting off people but I think the editing style is deliberate. The need to go back and show the dramatic elements of the previous episode with more detail while keeping the details ambiguous is a choice that has been made.
To be more precise , they show a dramatic end in one episode and then spend half an episode going back to that dramatic moment is their way of going back in time (??). The choice of calm moments to begin an episode are deliberate. Most episodes begin with the lovers and warmth. Most episode end with dramatic highs.
They wanted to create a sense of security through peaceful long winded sequences with clues everywhere and nowhere. Such that this could then be pulled from under the feet of the audience and leave them in shock.i like how LR and his followers in the salt field biz was done. They didn’t aim at linear storytelling and I did not have difficulties knowing which land it was.
I think people had problems when they tried to understand each character which was introduced instead of following the actions only. It is almost as though the creators wanted us to read a novel.
They aimed at making it obvious that they are keeping secrets. However, the way they did it is not my favourite and because I do not trust the creators so I keep bringing it up again and again. I do think there is a better and more polished way of doing what they did though what I can tell is they did try a lot of experiments at once.
Rewatch value of this drama is high, for me. First viewing with subs a lot of things were off key but second viewing helped and third viewing was more immersive (though had read lots of explanations by then).
Sets are detailed as is the script. Almost everything has a logic as of now. But… the romance execution with information gaps as is aimed could have been better. Some background and association with main characters could have helped. I mean we see LG as a child and then as a grown up, nothing in between so we can’t tell what his character is about except depend upon his actions to reveal him.
But for that kind of storytelling we need some elements which I thought were missing, for me.
They gave that signal reference early on (and I missed it) to hint at what one should expect investigation wise (though these guys included another parallel universe in the mix).
I do agree with @GB I have been amazed with how the production has stuck to its guns. Ppl placement+cheesy lines — the show knows how they are doing it and how in your face it is. This knowing/consciousness makes me inquisitive.
Btw I found a few people who have been tempted by the ppls while I found some funny while others irritating.
Were somethings mandated by higher powers (advertisers/producers/channels)? Did they cover their costs so they are fine with experimenting? Or they believe enough in what they have created that even if it is considered experimental they want it out there.
How could (obviously) experienced entertainment professionals not know that some of the sequences in the first few episodes would fall flat? For a production of this size they must have done testing? Answers I came up with: either the team had too many political games which made the emergence of one style difficult. Thus the mashup. Second option: they knew to some extent what the reaction would be and it was a calculated risk. If this was aimed at being a commercial hit then it failed. But failure or success or everything in between… everything depends upon the goals set by the core team whoever they were.
The drama is supposed to be commercial yet the storytelling techniques used have been experimental.
Their use of music in the first few episodes is bad. They begin with songs of longing. The foreshadowing of death is super strong, so much so that I keep questioning that in a mystery would one want to give so many hints of impending doom?
The short was not short at all and I need to find an anecdote to this obsession with the king. And I wouldn’t be able to make recommendations or break everything up in the detailed manner that this particular blog entry does (am in awe of the effort spent) unless I had all the footage and knew the aims+limitations 🙂
So all in all what has been broadcasted is already a part of history that will be studied by Kdrama enthusiasts, producers and academics and we can never really know the full story of what was intended and what was a slip. We can just assume that anything that was repeated was a pattern (as suggested by the PM) and if there are no logical plot holes then most production moves were intended.
@Fern
It’s not really an analysis but rather a testimony.
When I watch the drama, I’m focused by what I see.
How I understand what I see is not an intellectual process.
That’s normal, since I’m trying to immerse myself in the story.
There are no thoughts formulated in words or phrases in my head.
It is a series of instantaneous and simultaneous questioning or observations.
The result is that all this ends up being forgotten, and it becomes difficult to say why I liked or disliked the drama, knowing that if I didn’t understand something, I will rarely like it.
– If I didn’t understand something, maybe it’s my fault?
– I’m not focused enough, for example?
– Shouldn’t I have drunk a bottle of soju to put myself in the shoes of an ordinary Korean spectator?
– Or am I too stupid to understand a story when it gets a little too complicated?
– I’ve loved stories that are just as complicated, why doesn’t it work here?
– And finally, is it a problem with the way the drama is told?
It’s frustrating not being able to answer these questions.
It’s also frustrating not to like something without knowing why.
In this article, I’m not nitpicking. There’s no superfluous analysis or speculation.
I don’t go looking for negative details just because I don’t like drama.
On the contrary, I am in the position of someone who is watching drama for the first time and wants to like what I see. It didn’t work, why?
So I reconstructed the exact path of my unspoken thoughts when I was watching the drama.
For each thought, I remembered the triggers I perceived in the drama.
This article does not contain any particular knowledge about scriptwriting.
Nor is it an explanation of the true meaning of the scenes or the story.
Anyone could have written this article, therefore.
The only added value is to present it in a orderly fashion:
– Going deep down into the drama, looking for every triggering piece of information in the drama for every thought.
– Finding the timecodes, the exact scenes and harvesting it all laboriously.
– Be as honest as possible. It’s a subjective experience. If I missed any additional information, too bad. At a certain point in the drama, one piece of information stuck in my mind more than another. Perhaps it didn’t affect other viewers. Or maybe they were marked by information other than mine.
@GB
“Perhaps the fun is in trying to break the code.”
If someone’s having fun at that, good for them.
It’s quite possible, rebellious cinema students for example. ^^
I can only relate to my own way of liking things.
So about that…
There are two types of content to decipher:
– Mysteries relating to the story of the drama.
– The mysteries of how drama is told.
The mysteries of the story of the drama.
For example, at the beginning of the drama, an ID badge appears in the story, but this badge displays a date 25 years in the future.
– Effect: Woo! This is exciting. A mystery!
I want to find the solution to the riddle. Maybe there will be some information that will allow me to figure it out by myself later. Even without that, I want to get to the moment when the drama will explain this mystery. A good plot-twist perhaps.
– Result: I immerse myself more in the story, forgetting that I am a spectator.
The mysteries of how the drama is told.
For example, the scenes mentioned in episode 3, at the PM Koo’s mother’s house, then strangely enough, the mean uncle has the umbrella in his hand, when the umbrella is supposed to have been dropped off in the mother’s apartment.
– Effect: Huh? What’s this? Do I have to go through the scenes again to understand a minimum? No, even then it doesn’t work. What order is this thing told in? Never mind, I’ll go on.
Here, you have to decipher something related to cinematography (unless it’s really rubbish, and the editor made a huge mistake). So it’s a “meta” problem.
– Result: I stop immersing myself in the story, I remember that I’m a spectator. Currently I’m not watching a story, I’m doing a complicated investigation of the cinematic process used to tell the story. On top of that, I fail, and as a cascade effect, I’m not going to understand anything about what happens next. And what happens next, just for fun, will contain other such “meta” mysteries. I don’t call it a mystery anymore, I call it confusion.
– Conclusion: if a confusing cinematic process is used, it must be quickly explained or made understandable. The viewer must not be taken “out of the story”.
This is what I have said before:
If there is a mystery, the viewer must be made to understand that there is a mystery, and not generate artificial mysteries.
– A mystery relating to history will never be a problem. There are even stories where you get to the end, but the solution of some mysteries has not been given. It can be frustrating, but I bet if you liked the story, you’ll want to go back to the drama to find the clues you missed. If the drama does not contain any misunderstandings related to the way it is told, chances are you liked it.
– A mystery in the way the story is told is a problem. Because of this, you are in a nebulous context throughout the story, where you don’t understand anything anymore, don’t hold on to anything. Not only at the level of the story, but at the level of the transmission channel! You probably won’t like the story, even if it had potential deep down inside. You’re even less likely to want to revisit the drama to try to understand it.
– It’s as if you were in a math class given by a bad teacher. You’re obviously lacking in the basics. Every class gets harder and harder. Not only do you not understand anything because you are missing the basics, but the teacher keeps explaining everything in nonsense. All your life you will think that mathematics is the worst thing in the world. If you were a drama character, the scriptwriter would make you fall in love with a mathematician just to piss you off!
– If you were lucky enough to have a good teacher, and although mathematics is a complicated subject, you will still have fun learning. You will have fun doing the exercises, solving complicated problems. It’s not easy, but you have the right tools to do it, solid knowledge, a clear problem statement. It’s worth insisting, it’s fun! In a drama, you meet a woman who will call you a pimply teenager, a retarded geek, she will use a smartphone but will declare without a trace of hesitation that mathematics is useless in life!
Ideally, a film or drama should never contain any “mystery about the way the drama is told” that is insoluble, or too far removed from immediate understanding.
It is perfectly normal, and even desirable, for the screenwriter to use sometimes complicated procedures to tell her story, when there is a purpose to it.
Example: you are surprised by a huge plot-twist, but you have no idea why it happened. Later, the story contains a flashback explaining what happened. The writer’s motivation is obvious: she wants to surprise you first and make you curious to see what happens next. So she needs to use a narrative process that breaks the classical, chronological understanding.
– Here, the first mystery (plot-twist) relates to the story of the drama.
– Then, the flashback, if well presented, is not a “meta” mystery. The director makes you understand that it is a flashback. The spectator’s pleasure continues, he remains immersed in the story, and he will know the solution of the plot-twist.
Since the spectators are now used to these narrative processes, screenwriters can use them more often. We are no longer in the time of ancient Greece, where a play was chronological, with a context always defined.
This complicates things.
Is it related to cultural evolution? Is TKEM too ” avant-gardist ” a drama?
If so, just watch films using this kind of confusing process. “Memento” for example. The whole film is told in reverse chronology! With each new scene, there is a risk. If the film is badly narrated, the viewer won’t understand that there has been a time jump.
There are many examples of films or series using original processes, and yet there is no problem to understand, so I think TKEM is badly told.
(I exclude films such as “Eraserhead” which are rather experimental, and are not intended to follow the adventures or romance of characters, and become a television program).
If you show a drama to a viewer of ancient Greece, how will he react? He has never seen a flashback in his life!
I take the bet, a little crazy, that he will understand it anyway, if the drama is well done!
Put yourself in the shoes of an ancient Greek, and watch the first episode of “I can hear your voice”. The only thing he’ll tell you when he sees a flashback is: “woo, it’s original and clever this way of telling what happened before, I liked it because I was really curious to know the heroine’s past when she was talking about it during her exam. Luckily, it happens two seconds later, and it’s much nicer to see it than she tells it”.
I’ll say it again, but all this is just my opinion!
Just logic, no particular knowledge.
If I’m watching a David Lynch film, I know what I’m getting into.
In a drama, I’m attached to popular culture, as an ordinary viewer.
The One
The product placement scenes bother me a lot less. But what’s frustrating is that I now have an incredible urge to eat fried chicken the way they do. Even though I know it’s junk food. And I can’t even do it, because there’s nothing like it next door!!!
I noticed I forgot one thing in the article.
Episode 1 and 2, I know that LL is in ROK.
If he was back in QOK, it could have caused a timestop.
So that’s information that I could have used to deduce that in the timestop of episode 3, he goes from ROK to QOK.
However, at this point in the drama, what triggers a timestop is unknown to the viewer. It is not known that timestop is systematic, or that it can occur when the flutes are separated.
Moreover, in my subjective experience, I forgot to use this information where another spectator could have used it. This is not to say that the timestop of episode 3 would have been understood though.
@WEnchanteur I understand you. I too would have felt most disconcerted if I think about the whys of how I feel about the show not working out for me. There are times in other shows when I do that a lot. In this show, I do it less. I am distracted by the hidden code LOL and discussing all the possibilities of the code, therefore I do not pay much heed to what would have bothered me if I’d watched the show with a different focus.
I’m accepting all the scenes as they are played out before me, without questioning what they are for. Instead I’m looking for clues however they might be dropped. Therefore, even though I may look back and say that a certain character or some scenes were a waste of time, now, I do not feel it.
Enjoy what you can and have a swig of whiskey for me!
@WEnchanteur, have you ever been with a group of people who shared a commonality you didn’t: a family, old friends, schoolmates? They’d allude to an in-joke or mutual knowledge and instantly understand, but you’d be left in the dark? I think that’s the feeling we’re getting watching TK:EM. The writer, director, and editor of this drama have spent a long time with it. They get it. They’re probably so immersed that they don’t realize others don’t speak their language.
Confusion I feel on first watch of a TK:EM episode could be explained by my not being a member of the target audience. I don’t speak Korean. I’m not well-versed in Korean culture and history (although I’m learning). Creators of Kdramas are, and should rightly be, proud of their role in propelling Hallyu (The Korean Wave), but I imagine the international market is secondary to them. The sponsors that fund Kdramas want their money to have a return, so their targeted viewers are the people who will buy their products and patronize their businesses.
TK:EM is struggling with its ratings in South Korea, so its problem appealing to an audience isn’t just in the international market. I find this sad, because the show had so much potential. I think this drama will be easier to digest once all episodes have been released and it can be binge watched. Less time between episodes means less time for confusion to simmer.
WEnchanteur,
Your math example pretty much sums up my own experience with math and this show. I have given up on math, but I am still watching The King. It feels like putting a puzzle together, but instead of the pieces clicking together, more pieces are added. Welmaris is right: a binge watch of all episodes will help. Meanwhile I enjoy reading the comments while waiting for new episodes.
@No One @Welmaris
If you don’t take into account the confusion generated by a mountain of processes, I think the plot makes sense. Well, I haven’t found a plot-hole so far, except for a few odd things.
This whole mess is unlikely to be a mistake, as you point out.
Already because the drama is pre-produced.
The mistake is more like thinking it would work.
I can easily imagine this scene:
————————————–
Projection room.
The producer, writer, director and other technicians are there.
They’re watching the episode of the drama they just finished.
SCENARIST – Mmmh, yes that’s good, what style!
DIRECTOR – The script is flawless.
PRODUCER – The ratings are going to go through the roof!
At the back of the room, there’s a guy cleaning up with his broom.
He’s barely working, and spends more time looking at the screen.
In a low voice, he says:
SWEEPER – This thing sucks, we don’t understand anything about it, and we’re bored.
By accident, the director, who has a keen ear, hears this inappropriate remark.
DIRECTOR – Oh!!!! Are you a director or a sweeper ?!!
SWEEPER (facial expression: shit, I’ve gotten screwed)
REALISER – So hurry up, clean up the mess and get the hell out of here!!!
————————————–
They all know their story so well that they are no longer aware of how it is perceived by the public.
They would have had to have test sessions with test viewers. I don’t know if they do that for drama. It’s more of a Hollywood technique reserved for blockbusters. It also has a negative effect, because it produces very standardized films that lack originality. One of the qualities of TKEM is originality. 😉
I would have preferred to binge watch this drama too. Already because it’s difficult to keep a lot of characters in mind. You have a better chance to remember if the reappearance time is shorter. On the other hand, you quickly become overwhelmed by the details.
Drama has one quality: it’s dense with information, a lot of details. I said in a previous comment that taken in isolation, the scenes are very well written. The screenwriter thinks of everything (or almost everything). That doesn’t necessarily make them good scenes, but it’s remarkable.
But if too many details are important to understand, that also becomes a problem, because it’s very easy to miss something. Especially if they come out in a jumble, are not very visible, if they are in boring scenes, or not understandable scenes for other reasons.
So I classify the details in two categories:
– A detail vital to understanding.
– A detail which is not vital, but which improves coherence, or prepares the future.
Here, I don’t deal with the other elements that help understanding, but which are rather related to the story, the meaning of a scene. You can perfectly well have things to understand, but no details for that.
It would be necessary to make an inventory of all these details, it would be long to do. But for each one, you can classify it this way. Then you note its visibility in the drama, according to the focus made by the director: “Easy to see”, “Difficult to see”.
– Vital detail : It’s quite obvious that a vital detail should be as visible as possible, and probably be confirmed, or be accompanied by other details/situations to assist it.
– Non-vital detail : A non-vital detail does not need to be perfectly visible, as it is not essential to understand. Sometimes it is even desirable to make it difficult to see (foreshadowing).
EXAMPLES
– Vital detail “Easy to see”: one end of flute in the umbrella, the other end of flute in the whip. You don’t see the flute end being physically put in a scene (or I don’t remember). It is perfectly understandable, the spectator can guess by himself. There are a lot of shots showing these objects insistently or in close-up. Both characters always have these objects in their hands.
Just a sidebar: these two objects help the drama to be emblematic, and characterize the characters enormously.
– Vital detail “Difficult to see” : Episode 1, the corpse in the morgue (23:20). The viewer must recognize that the face of the corpse is the same as the face of the King. It’s the only way to guess that LL killed this man, and then the woman is his wife. Except that the preliminary context induces that one expects to find the corpse of LG’s double. The position of the face, the pallor, the wounds, hairstyle, etc., were all taken into account. All this makes me unable to recognize the King. I can guarantee that the next scene (the woman goes home) is highly incomprehensible. Especially since there is an error of logic (or almost). The child is not there: if we saw his mother, she would be worried. We end up understanding all this, even later (episode 2), but the instability generated remains during episode 1.
– Non-vital detail “Easy to see” : Episode 7 (51:35). LL reads a newspaper and then puts it on the table. You can see President Trump in the picture. I classified this as easy to see, yet I didn’t pay attention! A man reading his newspaper is common. There’s the short closing shot on the newspaper. But since the episode was well advanced, my concentration was not optimal. Also, I couldn’t locate LL. If I had known for sure that he was in QOK, Trump’s picture would have jumped out at me. Finally, some rather boring scenes put me to sleep. So I missed this detail, and yet it didn’t prevent me from understanding the rest !
The advantage is that this detail will be used very quickly, at the end of the episode, when the PM Koo receives the newspaper by mail. A redundancy of information was useful for me to understand: the letter comes from the PM Koo’s mother, except that LL often goes to her mother’s house. Note also that I may have seen this detail without remembering it, but that I unconsciously remembered it!!! So I unconsciously understood the following scene.
– Non-vital detail “Difficult to see” : Episode 4, “59:20”. You’re supposed to understand that it’s November 11th, not the end of October. The problem: one scene before, the heroine was at the end of October and is impatiently waiting for her badge. There’s no way she forgot to claim it. An officer gives her a microchip. If it had been the badge, it would have been more understandable (but less realistic). There is a banal conversation to which little attention is paid (especially in such a painful episode). Lost in it is the phrase “two weeks ago”. The only indicator allowing to make the link. I missed that. Fortunately, the scene will confirm that it’s November 11th a bit later. This non-vital detail was important though, because without knowing that, the rest of the scene is surreal. No sense of time having passed. It gave me the impression that the heroine had undergone some kind of supernatural phenomenon, as if she had travelled through time, or that she hadn’t lived during that time and had just woken up after losing consciousness.