Queen In-Hyun's Man - first episode rave

I actually watched the first fourth of this last, due to a screw-up on the upload of subbed videos. I think this may have been a good thing, for reasons I'll explain later...

This show promises to be compelling. Not in a sudden, plot-racing way, but in treatment and mood. I've wanted to check out this director's work after hearing about Vampire Prosecutor (which was not as camp, but also not as humorless, as you might think from the title. Apparently) and the posters for this were so...evocative.

It's a time-travel drama in a season of time-travel dramas, but this has the personality to pull it off...

A hero who, when transposed in time, reels a second, but then carefully asks a question to try and discern what's happened, knowing it's something outside his experience. He's an intelligent, intuitive person--he's not going to crash around, flailing through his assumptions.

The heroine is apparently ditzy, if resourceful, and dedicated to being an actress (which, no doubt on purpose, never looks too distinguished onscreen) but her cute manner belies a sharp edge that can cuss out an ex--and accept a job got through his connections.

The thing with the opening: sageuk, the Korean equivalent of a Western, or more realistically, wuxia drama, is fond of its trope-laden openings. I watch fusion sageuk for the crossover fantasy elements present in the ones I've picked out. I haven't yet learned to enjoy the sameness.

This is where the service of missing the actual opening lies: when I got plopped down into a political debate first moment, I knew I'd missed something, figured an intro got cut off. I am pretty quick on the uptake, and know a bit about the premise, so it wasn't a problem. The beautifully lit moonlit horse-chase wasn't particularly new, but I liked the next library fight (in the familiar Scholar's Library of Sungkyunkwan). Despite the fact that I wasn't sure any scholar would allow wreckage of such hard-won manuscripts...

Anyway. I will not make big claims for this show yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be nuanced enough to really hit a spot that nothing I've watched recently has... Being unimportant but not dumb.

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