Hwayugi

So I'm here to pull the ratings up at least a little higher. And that's mostly because of the actors. There are three aces here. The first is of course the monkey, Seung-gi Lee, who I can find no fault with apart from the bangs. On the contrary, he got to me, he got to me yet again. And the same goes for that greatest of madmen and incredible comedian who manages to turn himself into an unbelievable maniac. Yes, that's right, Seung-won Cha. What he did was unprecedented. And thirdly, Se-yeong Lee as the most amazing (actually the only amazing) zombie I’ve seen yet. After her calm and sensitive role in The Crowned Clown, I was surprised by her range. As a comedian, she's just great, and I have to say that I was initially much more entertained by her than Sam-jang. That one had some nice moments, but she was also boring at times. I'd blame the stylist a bit for that too. I don't really understand why she walked around half the time in a suit similar to what the monkey was wearing. Especially in the love scenes, it wasn't entirely pleasing to the eye. Her character just could have been more interesting. Fortunately, there were a number of other likable and funny characters. Among them were the secretary Ma, P.K., and the monkey's advisor. I took a liking to this bunch very early on and was rolling with laughter whenever they sat down at the dinner table together. There were a lot of good jokes, innuendos, and cameos. I can't say the same for the effects. They were definitely on the weak side, some of them could even be said to be lousy. It didn't affect the story or my enthusiasm, but on the other hand it's an unnecessary weakness of the show. I wonder what's behind the low rating. Perhaps high expectations of famous female writers? Or it could be that the story dragged on and didn't make sense, but I didn't notice because I was enjoying the actors so much just by looking at them. Either way, I'm going to go against the grain on this one... 4.5 stars. Oh, and the soundtrack was fabulous! (10/06/2019)

If I had to describe the flow of watching the series: let's see what comes out of this -> hmmm, why not -> boy, this is a bit boring -> has it been this illogical this whole time? -> the penultimate episode is pretty good -> why did the last one totally kill it? That's how it would have ended up. Basically, this show doesn't have much to offer besides your favorite actors and the interactions between the Monkey and Devil King. If glitz is enough for you, take it. If you want an interesting story, my advice is to try the next house down. I was honestly looking forward to it, but in the end... unfortunately the main character was completely useless and overall her character was portrayed so inconsistently that I didn't really know what to think of her anymore. Apart from morsels of lighter moments, you wanted to murder her, and you actually wondered what was supposed to be appealing about her to fall in love with... And then the whole priestess/shaman from back in the day story... when you think about it, it doesn't make that much sense, it just feels like the Hong sisters needed something to move the plot along a bit at times, but they didn't want to kill it, which is one of those things that didn't make much sense. It was all kind of half-baked, half-assed, but so be it. For a while I thought it would have been rated higher, but then it totally dropped off towards the end. That last episode was worth getting smacked over, basically tossing away the little bit that had been building up for the whole 19 episodes! I'm really walking away from this with a bad taste in my mouth and hope to discover something better on Netflix. P.S.: The music was bad. P.S. 2: Big takeaway: makes me want to read the original legend. (04/03/2018)