I really don’t know if I’ve time for this romcom.
But I want to see the premiere because the actress Park Ju Hyun (“Zombie Detective”) is another favorite of mine. Like Kim HyeYoon (“Extraordinary You”), Kim SeJeong (“A Business Proposal”), Bae Suzy (“Start-Up”), Joy (“Once Upon a Town”), and Hyeri (“Reply 1988”), I like them not necessarily for their acting skills, but for their charm on-screen. Watching them helps improve my laugh lines and remove my frown lines since their aegyo doesn’t grate on me.
I hope Park Ju-Hyun has chosen her first sageuk project well.
Episodes: 12
Start Date: Fri, Dec 9
Airs on Fridays and Saturdays
Where to watch it: Viki
Network: MBC
Let’s enjoy the show.
Thanks @pkml3, however I believe I’ll go more for ‘Forbidden Love/Unchained Love’ the cdrama with Dylan Wang in it, when it finally airs. Too much to watch at the moment!
Thank you, @packmule3. She has a mischievous face, but in a good way. I loved the leads in Zombie Detective. It was very well constructed drama.
Episode 1, so far so good. I liked So-rang’s schemes. She thinks she’s smart, but she’s reckless and gets caught. This actress, Park Ju-hyun, is great at sparky, cheeky roles and this seems just right for her. Her trope-tastic fall into Captain Lee Shin-won’s arms was just right. It seems they never met before but she had a marriage offer from him or his family at some point in the past before her hand to mouth existence.
I would have had the same thought about meeting the king: “He’s the King? Wow, that’s amazing. He’s handsome!” Kim Young-dae is doing a great job as the lovesick king, haunted by his memories of his first wife.
The King’s meeting with the Crown Princess on the bridge showed their differences. I had the feeling that his love for her wasn’t matched evenly, at least not in public. She seemed unwilling to indulge his need for warmth and humour in the relationship. I also think she could see the rot within the palace politics better than he did. When she spoke of a person without a rope getting swept away by a political storm, I believe she also meant him. She wouldn’t promise him that she would take care of herself. The next day she was dead, allegedly a suicide. Did she kill herself to protect him or was she killed to destabilise him?
It’s a possibility that she was killed but she knew her death was coming because she was the designated sacrificial lamb, @Fern.
It’s also my theory that the Crown Princess (CP) and the heroine Sorang are twin sisters. But the CP was married off to the Crown Prince (the current King) while Sorang was hidden away. She had to assume a new identity and live as a commoner.
She remembers the King’s Bodyguard/close friend. That tells me that she was once a noblewoman, the same noblewoman that the Bodyguard had fallen in love with and written a letter to. He’s been looking for her all these years but can’t find her.
She most likely disappeared sometime around the time the King (or then Crown Prince) selected her twin sister to marry.
😂 This is my theory. Take it or leave it.
I’ll get on this one tomorrow.
I just finished First Love and my gosh! That drama was excellent! I love it! 🥰
No rush. I shouldn’t have watched it at 4 am. I woke up my hubby with my loud burst of laughter. The actress was so funny. She more than made up for the moroseness of the king.
That’s a great start if your bursting with laughter and even waking up your hubby. 😁
I’ll get on to it after helping sister at her unit.
Sounds good.
@packmule3, I like your theory. So now I wonder why Sorang and the bodyguard/friend don’t seem to recognise each other’s faces? Could it be that they corresponded but never met face to face? There was an image of a woman falling off a cliff in the episode. It could be her, I suppose, and she survived the fall but went incognito afterwards? Sorang will now know who he is, but not visa-versa -yet. The 2 male leads both have the surname Lee. They may be brothers or cousins. Sorang’s surname is Ye and there’s another young woman character listed with that name (not yet appeared). The C-Princess’s family name is Ahn, but of course that may not mean anything.
You may already have the confirmation if you have watched episode 2.
Wah.😫 Family is watching England play France tonight and after that I’ll re-watch You are My Hero with Kate and anyone else like me who got the days mixed up. Forbidden Marriage will have to wait until tomorrow.
Pingback: Forbidden Romance: Ep 1 First Impressions – Bitches Over Dramas
I haven’t watched Ep 2, @Fern. It’s on queue. Intend to watch AoS and buy winter plants (yes, I’ve put this off…sigh) this afternoon.
We’re having an unusually cold and frosty week here in the UK, @packmule3. I may buy a hanging basket for the front door where it will catch sun and reflected heat, but nothing else for the outdoors.
I watched the 2nd episode after the YAMH rewatch so I have a rather blurry recollection. Good development and more laughs was my main impression. I shall have to rewatch.
In episode 2, I laughed when our FL was shown to have ‘animal ears’ as far as hearing goes. Running down the beautiful flower meadows to … Mr Ax and his flute. Then running back.
My younger daughter is like that. At 6-7 yo she hated going to a big store in Leicester because there was a horrible noise. None of us could hear it and when I asked the staff about it, they acted as though I was crazy. It was probably the ventilation system. To this day she dislikes the sound of gas burners on our stove. I figure a few more rock concerts or live watches of World Cup will cure her.
While waiting for Forbidden Love, I might as well try Forbidden Romance/Marriage LOL.
The Cutting of Flowers and Set Up for the Character of So Rang
Whenever I see people viciously cutting flowers I’m led to think we are given a metaphor for the sexual exploitation of a girl or the cutting short of her life. A flower is cut in the palace garden but then we are shown the Nursemaid Court Lady Won and Eunuch Se Jang bringing spiced wine to the king with a girl called Cho Ran. Instead of any harm coming to Cho Ran however, only her hair ribbon gets cut and we are gifted with a sensual view of the king’s various body parts.
In episode 2, the snipping off of flowers is more in line with cutting off a life, and we see Villainess Seo Woon Jung deciding to get rid of So Rang/Ye Hyeon Seon (I’m guessing the older half sister) so that the younger sister Hyeon Hee can be the one to be married off.
(My guess is that Villainess Seo is the stepmother of So Rang/Hyeon Seon. So Rang may be the disregarded daughter of the first wife who gets to be married first. Daughter of Villainess is a spoiled brat who mistreats the maid, and appropriates So Rang’s things. In the end she also attempted to appropriate So Rang’s bridegroom.)
So Rang was to be taken away to be killed and the story that was circulated was that she ran away with a slave. SR had been slashed and thrown off a cliff, but her body had not been found. So she lives in deadly fear of her stepmother(?) Unfortunately her Seo also has access to the palace to see the queen mother, so it’s a matter of time before she recognises So Rang and tries to kill her again.
The Petals Motif
Lee Shin Won is the good friend of king Lee Hyeon, and is an investigator, but after an initial time searching for his lost bride, So Rang, he’s become the king’s confidante and stopped active investigation. I hope he’s still sending out people to find out what happened to So Rang. Of course the funny irony is that she’s right there in the palace, being guarded by him, but he does not recognise her.
We get the backstory of how 7 years earlier, Shin Won had sneaked into General Affairs Minister Ye’s grounds to see the girl he was to marry. Show goes pretty heavy into the falling petal trope.
The peach petals falling metaphor tells us that love is in the air. Shin Won spies So Rang and likes her. Afraid to be caught, he escapes over the garden wall, but So Rang hears him and goes out to investigate. We get a few nice camera shots of them: him on the outside and So Rang looking out just above him, with peach petals (and the scent of peaches) floating around them both. However they are separated by a wall.
In the present, the wall of his inability to recognise her, and of her subterfuge, in order to hide from Villainess Seo stands between them. But in the mean time, she will spend a lot more time in the king’s presence, and become indispensable to him. So we have the trolling set up of the love triangle trope. The two hot guys, who are good friends, will go for the same girl… one because she had been betrothed to him, the other because she will heal him from missing his dead wife. And the ones who will be trolled are us viewers who will not know which guy So Rang should end up with.
The trolling continues when we see So Rang deliberately befriending Shin Won. She tells him to forget his lost betrothed and he says staring at her very seriously : “If I forget her, would I meet a new one (love)?” She gets uncomfortable. As she gets up to leave him after their little drinking party, he calls out her real name, Ye Hyeon Seon, which stops her in her tracks, but he says that is the name of his bride who vanished. Once again we get falling petals.
To add to the troll, we see that Lee Hyeon keeps asking for So Rang. He sees his dead wife in her although she is lying that she’s channeling the Crown Princess’s spirit. But we get the scene of them on (I think) the same bridge that he’d walked with his wife. Instead of lighted lotus lanterns floating on the pond, we again see petals falling, but this time upon all three of our triangle, showing us that they are going to be inextricably linked. Episode 1 ends with Lee Hyeon embracing So Rang much to Shin Won’s amazement.
The Metas
The Metas had me in stitches.
So Rang pretending in Ep 1 to be possessed looked like she was becoming a zombie, and in Ep 2, when she had a leg cramp, her jerky, sideways swing walk really reminded me of Zombie Detective. What a great meta!!
We know about the risque book titles meta, although I don’t what show the 3rd title refers to. Diss-ing those shows, are we?
In Ep 2, we get So Rang’s brief on Goblin with a sword through his chest and on Hotel Del Luna as bedtime stories to tell the king. They were so apt because both dealt with brides or separated lovers and tied in well with the lifting of the marriage ban. Hyeon had threatened to torture SR if her stories were not interesting but he never seemed to mind that she kept harping on lifting the marriage ban. His bark is worse yadda, yadda.
I was ROFLOL when she pointed at Hyeon’s chest and the synthesized version of Goblin’s theme played. The red scarf and white flowers at the seaside completed the meta. As for Hotel Del Luna, I have to admit that IU made a more stylish hotelier and didn’t gun tote quite as much.
The last unfinished story sounded like any of the youth dramas where parents hounded their kids to study… maybe Skycastle or something similar?
And the naked male torso alert goes out again! Not only in Ep 1 where we get a sneak peak at the chest, but we actually get to admire the whole muscled torso in Ep 2. Actor Kim Young Dae was doing such a good job looking ‘sexy’ while channeling weightlifters. I think he was enjoying himself. I know I was.
The best joke of the lot however was So Rang scamming both the king and his best friend to entertain her with some live fighting. All that was lacking was makgeolli LOL.
@Growing Beautifully, yes, the flower was cut at it’s most beautiful point and quite viciously. Did I get it right that every time the palace invites young women for the queen selection, one of them dies? We also see that the queen didn’t go like a lamb to slaughter, but fought and threatened but was overcome; strangled and made to look like she hung herself.
I thought that one of the portraits in the book that Madame Seo, in the guise of a royal marriage broker, brought to the queen mother was of her daughter, the one she tried to marry off in So Rang/Hyeon Seon’s place. A bit earlier, when So Rang ran off to avoid being seen by Madame Seo, I was hoping that Shin Won could recognise Madame Seo and understand her situation. I believe that by the end of episode 2, he has recognised her, but harking to the advice of Mr Ax, he will keep her secret.
Mr Ax seems to have some actual psychic power or at least a very good understanding of human nature. He said at one point that he doesn’t like to scam people, unlike SR/HS. He seemed surprised that SR/HS wanted to return to the capitol city area.
I was laughing at the meta, too. The scenes where So Rang questions the King’s strength and implied masculinity were funny. Park Ju Hyun is great with physical comedy. And yes, Kim Young Dae didn’t seem to mind putting some torso out there. He knows he is good looking. The repeats of people being surprised by his face seem to emphasize this. But unlike some handsome actors who can relax, I like that his look can go from threatening and cold to goofy and clumsy. I’m enjoying him in this role.
I agree @Fern that Mr Ax looks like a genuine psychic 🙂
I just like that as much as SoRang doesn’t want to keep pretending that she can see the CP, whenever she does it, it does help King Hyeon. She’s helped him eat, she’s helped him sleep. I can’t wait till his all better and able to finally let go of CP. I felt that he really did like her.
I want some royal babies for the ending of this show because they’ve already mentioned a few times that the King’s royal jewel might not be able to stand up. bwahahahhahaha
@agdr03, what are you like!?! Yes, they’ll need proof. A bunch of mini-kings.
I feel that she is starting to get attracted to him in spite of herself and her strong sense of self-preservation. I mean, it would be hard to resist a handsome man who loved so deeply and sincerely.
In the second comment above, I meant to write ‘unlike some handsome actors who *can’t* relax. 🤦♀️
Agree @Fern, she’s starting to get attracted to him. But maybe she just feels for him for still hurting all this time. That’s why I liked that she held his hand when he was trying to sleep.
I liked that too. He knew in that moment that it was her and not the CP, because he said that their hands were similar. I was moved.
She’s like Sheherezade, telling stories to keep herself alive. She knows that if she stays ‘useful’ she will live. But she’s starting to attract attention from the wrong people. @pm3 said that it’s only time before her step-mother sees her in the palace and the creepy minister has noticed her too. Her stepmother had her eliminated as a competitor before, so now that she is trying to get her daughter on board as queen, won’t she try again.
True, it won’t be long and she’ll be in danger. Hopefully King Hyeon will be in a much better state of mind then and will be able to protect her. I think the Queen Grandmother is a nice person but she seems close to SoRang’s stepmom too.
It’s true what Mr Ax said about SoRang, she’s the best liar in Joseon. LOL!
I thought the queen mother was nice, but perhaps not too clever.
In a flashback when the CP was newly dead, the now King was outside of the palace begging for an audience with ‘His Majesty’. It made me think that the King was still the Crown Prince at that point and that his father was still alive. The evil minister emphasized that HE was the one who put the King on the throne and was his spokesperson. That’s why I think that the queen mother may not be one of the plotting types who was the power behind getting the old king on the throne.
I just had to put this out here on the sexual innuendos. I chortled through them but particularly these 2.
Ep 1 – Lee Hyeon’s name. Hyeon was extremely desirous that Crown Princess should call him by his name Hyeon, Hyeon-i … he repeated his name so many times it started to sound not like ‘Honey’ but ‘Horny’ LOL. To cap it off, he points at his dimples.
Ep 2 – Our tall, stooped Eunuch suddenly knocks on the door while So Rang tries to convince Court Lady Won that the women for the king should be more proactive in bedding him. The ladies are shocked when Eunuch announces that he comes with a talent for ‘banging’ LOLOL… but he’s referring to banging in nails. The connotation is obvious.
He proceeds to straighten up amidst the appropriate bgm that suggests muscles and amazing strength. He displays rugged, muscular arms as he pulls back his sleeves. Suddenly he appears so tall and dashing as he hammers in the nail, in a most manly way. LOL. Lady Won is perspiring and practically breathless at the sight.
I was thinking that the eunuch looks like Lurch the butler in the Addams Family films and cartoons. If he’s a eunuch, he may have had the ‘operation’ when he was well past puberty, right?
I’m enjoying all the sexual innuendos in this kdrama. Should we make a running list in case someone innocent miss out on them? Lol.
For instance, the tall, stooped Eunuch slowly rising to his great height was also a sexual joke. VISUALLY, @GB, VISUALLY, he was a phallic symbol. He looked like a weenie enlarging or a “burgeoning manhood” as the romance books writers would say. (where’s my evil emoji at?)
@pkml3 Trust you to see the phallic symbol. I loved the sound effects when he straightened up. 😂
Yes @Fern, you are right. Eunuch does look and behave like Lurch!
There was some reference to his ‘operation’ or suggestion, in episode 1, I think, that even if he had had it, not all was cut and dried, so to speak. LOL. I’m not sure if I remembered it right and I didn’t write it in my notes. We’ll see if I can double check on that later. 🤔
Starting this tad late but I’m enjoying your comments esp. @gb’s and @pm3’s predictions.
I watched Park JuHyun in Love All Play and loved her there even though her character is a suffering one.
Hope I can keep up with this!
Hi there @grace, good to see you again!
I’m expecting the other Forbidden show to drop anytime. Then I’ll be watching both Forbidden Marriage and Forbidden Love. 🙂
@Grace,
You have time to catch up. Show is taking a break for the holidays. It’ll be back next week.
@GB & @PM3 thanks! I enjoyed it so much I binged the 6 episodes in 2 days, ahhh so sad it is taking a break! I was so looking forward to it! will watch up all your comments in the other posts then!
Hello everyone !
Started this – watching on smartphone to avoid Viki glitches – and it is absolutely delightful: intriguing and amusing and warm-hearted -a story being well-told.
So many of you have enthused about this and I am grateful for the encouragement to watch it.
ps I’ll come back and read comments and @Packmule3’s thread reflections and introductions when I am a little further in. Looking forward to enjoying your commentary.