The top reviews for Dong Yi are mostly accurate as it is a wonderful show. The writing, acting and chemistry between the characters-especially the Dong Yi and the king are wonderful. They entire cast did a great job.

The story flows quite nicely after the initial time jump to adult Dong Yi but falters around episode 23-28 I personally feel as though they dragged this and with each episode being over one hour long, you feel the unnecessary near misses, and filler scenes.

After this was resolved, the show picked up again-and one of the best moments happened but then it fell off again because they needed to create more conflict to fulfill the episode count, i suppose. Frankly, the last 20 episodes were unnecessary. The should could have stopped at episode 40 and been great.

After watching Yanxi Palace and Minglan, my standard of female leads went all the way up-especially when it comes to dramas that deal with scheming, manipulations etc. I now need to have a capable female lead who not only is intelligent, quick witted but does not fall prey easily to deception. The same goes for the male leads as well so when i started Dong Yi, I was worried because in the first couple of episodes of adult Dong Yi, she made some pretty impulsive and dumb decisions but you soon forget those and grow to appreciate her type of intelligence and strength.

The King was great as well. His smile and laugh were infectious and he smiled and laughed A LOT when he was with Dong Yi. His portrayal of a man in love was lovely to watch.

I wish there was more skin ship and time spent between dong yi and the king

Lady Jang can ACTT-that is all that i will say.

I feel a lot of people have a misunderstanding of the antagonist’s character-that is they believe that she is inherently a good person who was led astray by her family members but that is not my perception of her. She was never a good person-her earlier acts of “kindness” were not for kindness sake or for the good of the person receiving it but for herself. She wanted to foster a sense of loyalty in them and create a perception of herself as a magnanimous with every kind act. Your actions in the face of adversity is a reflection of your character and what she chose to do, on numerous occasions was the wrong thing without remorse. This is not a misunderstood woman. This is a woman who fails to see her faults and understand that the world does not revolve around her and that other people’s suffering matters less than hers.

Flashbacks were plenty and incredibly misused. There are flashbacks of scenes that just happened 30 seconds ago which was like watching a show and having someone take the remote and rewind a scene you just finished watching for no reason.

My only other qualm was the king’s indecisiveness. While he has to be one of my favorite historical king/emperor, his inability to have a definite stance when it came to the women of the inner palace irked me. He was always dumbstruck when accusations were made against the bad wife as if he wasn’t aware of her character. He gave her so many chances but not the kind and generous wife who was accused originally but had literally never done anything. I just wish he was more firm and less susceptible to her manipulations.