3
2
Salatheel
A bit all over the place, but really hit the spot on occasion
We all know the romcom/romantic drama plot beforehand, but just have to be willing to forget that episode 7 means that they will hug, episode 10 means they will kiss, episode 14 means they will be breaking up etc etc and "The Master’s Sun" is no different. Perhaps it is worth remembering, as I write this in 2022, that it is 9 years old and still watchable, which is worth a great deal and should therefore be forgiven if some of it seems hackneyed. It was probably not so when it first came out.
The towering strength of this drama is So Ji Sub as The Master, Joo Joong Won. Yes he plays the standard rich, cold, arrogant ML, but he does it with a believeability rating of 10+ which outshone the Sun (Gong Hyo Jin as Tae Gong Shil) and all the other little moons and asteroids circling around it. For once, the writers gave the character a credible reason for his attitude and So Ji Sub revealed it in every scene. For the first half of the drama he was the compelling watch. Not to say that Gong Hyo Jin and other cast members gave a bad performance, but it was standard fare.
The plot was a bit all over the place. It introduced short story lines for individual episodes, particularly at the start, but that eventually became annoying as it fragmented the main thrust of the story. There were also other threads and backstory to fill out the time. Joo Joong Won’s was the best of them. The backstory for Tae Gong Shil was very badly handled.
Although the Hong sisters wrote some really enjoyable interactions, especially around the love triangle, they really did scrape the barrel regarding reasons why the leads shouldn’t really be together. Some of them were understandable, but at other times, they seemed convoluted to the point of complete confusion and I had no idea what motives the writers wanted me to pick up on. The whole of episode 16 was an annoying waste of time as we went around that loop yet again.
I wanted to give this a better rating than I eventually did because it really tried to get there, but just kept not quite reaching it. I don’t think the writing was sufficiently tight to get the dynamics right over seventeen episodes. It would have worked better with the modern tendency on platforms to commission a shorter length of 12 episodes. I will say that this drama was a far superior watch to the other offering of theirs that I have ventured into—"Alchemy of Souls," which was so badly written and directed that I dropped it!
What my rating means: 7+ A watchable drama, but nothing exceptional. Good enough to qualify for the race, but finished with the pack. The sort of thing that promises more than it delivers.
The towering strength of this drama is So Ji Sub as The Master, Joo Joong Won. Yes he plays the standard rich, cold, arrogant ML, but he does it with a believeability rating of 10+ which outshone the Sun (Gong Hyo Jin as Tae Gong Shil) and all the other little moons and asteroids circling around it. For once, the writers gave the character a credible reason for his attitude and So Ji Sub revealed it in every scene. For the first half of the drama he was the compelling watch. Not to say that Gong Hyo Jin and other cast members gave a bad performance, but it was standard fare.
The plot was a bit all over the place. It introduced short story lines for individual episodes, particularly at the start, but that eventually became annoying as it fragmented the main thrust of the story. There were also other threads and backstory to fill out the time. Joo Joong Won’s was the best of them. The backstory for Tae Gong Shil was very badly handled.
Although the Hong sisters wrote some really enjoyable interactions, especially around the love triangle, they really did scrape the barrel regarding reasons why the leads shouldn’t really be together. Some of them were understandable, but at other times, they seemed convoluted to the point of complete confusion and I had no idea what motives the writers wanted me to pick up on. The whole of episode 16 was an annoying waste of time as we went around that loop yet again.
I wanted to give this a better rating than I eventually did because it really tried to get there, but just kept not quite reaching it. I don’t think the writing was sufficiently tight to get the dynamics right over seventeen episodes. It would have worked better with the modern tendency on platforms to commission a shorter length of 12 episodes. I will say that this drama was a far superior watch to the other offering of theirs that I have ventured into—"Alchemy of Souls," which was so badly written and directed that I dropped it!
What my rating means: 7+ A watchable drama, but nothing exceptional. Good enough to qualify for the race, but finished with the pack. The sort of thing that promises more than it delivers.
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