Review: The Master’s Sun

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Co-posted at Still Just Alison

TV series – 17 episodes

This is just stitched together from a whole steaming pile of wrong. It can’t seem to decide what it is, so it veers between Cinderella rom com, mystery, and episodic ghost series, while never managing to be good at any of them.

Then there’s the acting and characterisation. Some of the actors manage, although the script doesn’t give them much to work with, but the male lead is like a lugubrious ironing board. I think if it was a choice between talking to ghosts or dating this man, I’d go the ghosts every time. In the Bad Acting Olympics, he rivals the lead from You Are Beautiful, who at least had good looks going for him.

The two romances are also entirely unconvincing. They’d have been better the other way around, as at least the female lead and male second lead had some chemistry. That might be because they were the only two decent actors in the bunch – female lead Kong Hyo-jin was in Don’t Dare to Dream, and you’ve probably seen second male lead Seo In-guk in Reply 1997 and the recently released Café Minamdang. The other two were pretty woeful – the second female lead, an egotistical actrine who behaved like a petulant toddler, was so badly written that it was almost impossible to imagine that anyone would want to be in the same room with her, much less get romantically involved.

If I were the female lead, I’d have made a ghost eradication deal with Mr CEO Ironing Board and moved in with the handsome bodyguard. But maybe that’s just me.

The icing on the Total Crap Cake was the frequent use of dialogue to convey plot and emotion, instead of using all that tedious acting nonsense that other series indulge in. Honestly, I don’t know why they bothered – they could just have held the story outline up to the camera and filmed that, saving us the bother of 17 episodes of utter tosh. And why 17 episodes, fergodssakes?!? Not 16, or 20, but 17? Were they aiming for 20 but ran out of money? Did they plan 16 but had to fit some more in? What?

Sorry, let me compose myself. Okay, let’s finish up.

The sole redeeming feature of the series was the fact that the ghostly revelations rarely fixed things for those left behind. We’ve been led to believe that one secret can change everything, that telling someone how you feel can change their behaviour, but alas, that’s rarely the case – in most cases people will continue to do what they’ve always done, because habits are easier, and there are always comfortable excuses.

No OST because the damn thing was so annoying.

Alison blogs at Still Just Alison, where she writes about Korean drama, movies, music, and, very occasionally, things that aren’t Korean. But only occasionally.

1 ignored ghost message out of 10.
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