Sungkyunkwan Scandal

Sungkyunkwan Scandal

5/10

Sungkyunkwan Scandal

Genre:                                                  Episodes: 20                                    Year: 2010

Romance

Comedy

Historical

Synopsis:

Since her father passed away, Kim Yoon Hee has needed to earn money to support her mother and her sick brother. She works by disguising herself as her brother and providing answers to the men's only national exam. After being discovered as a stand-in during the exam, Yoon Hee is forced to take the exam under her brother’s name, Kim Yoon Shik, and is admitted into Sunkyunkwan University.

Cast:

Park Min Young (Kim Yoon Hee)

Park Yoo Chun (Lee Seon Joon)

Yoo Ah In (Moon Jae Shin)

Song Joong Ki (Gu Yong Ha)

Seo Hyo Rim (Ha Hyo Eun)

Jeon Tae Soo (Ha In Soo)

Ahn Nae Sang (Jung Yak Yong)

Cho Sung Ha (King Jung Jo)

Kim Min Seo (Cho Sun)

Kim Kap Soo (Lee Jung Moo)

General Thoughts:

I totally expected to love this drama, so I was bitterly disappointed when that didn’t exactly happen. Considering that most people call this one of the best ever K-Dramas, it didn’t really live up to the expectations.

Another drama killed by the hype-train

It’s not that the drama was all bad, there were definitely fun and interesting aspects to the story, it just didn’t hold my interest well enough for me to appreciate the fun and interesting moments when thy came around. To start with, the story wasn’t exactly extensive enough to warrant 20 episodes.

Quit forcing your love-line on me

The crossdressing hijinks and the humour that ensued could be pulled out for a few episodes, but after that we needed some beefy plot to kick in, and that kind of didn’t happen. A lot of the beginning of this drama was dedicated to various goings-on in Sungkyunkwan that were basically only there as a cause for Yoon Hee and Seon Joon to get closer. Which is fine, I guess, I just wished there’d been a tad more meaning behind these events as it was painfully obvious that they were only included as a way to get the leads actually interacting with each other. And when it requires that much effort to get your leads interacting, their whole relationship feels a bit forced. The second half of this series was dedicated to finding the Geum Deung Ji Sa (which the King then didn’t even use), and having the leads actually get together. Which isn’t a lot to spread over 10 hours. The acting was either really quite good, or on the worse side of mediocre. I’m a huge fan of Park Min Young, but I will admit that she felt a bit green here. Granted it is one of her earlier roles, but she didn’t have the natural charm that makes you love her character that she has since developed.

Moody, moody, dark and broody 

I’ve never found Yoo Chun to be a great actor- he’s just passable. But I actually found him pretty bad here. His character was painfully emotionless and robotic, and Park Yoo Chun didn’t add anything to the character that made him stand out as a loveable hero. Song Joong Ki and Yoo Ah In were so good that it kind of served to make Park Yoo Chul feel worse than he really was. Song Joong Ki and Yoo Ah In just have so much charisma that they completely overpowered poor Yoo Chun in every scene they were in together. Which of course kind of made me wonder why the heroine would fall for the most boring man in Sungkyunkwan.

These two were so much more fun. And nice. 

Jeon Tae Soo did well as our main character of conflict, and I found him believably arrogant and manipulative. However, his scare-factor was reduced a fair bit by having two of his minions being silly, bumbling characters who couldn’t pull off a single scheme.

It felt like they just barley tolerated each other

I thought Seo Hyo Lim was delightful as the innocent noblewoman, and Kim Min Seo was so dynamic as Cho Sun that I wished her story had been explored a bit more. The bromance between the four boys (well three boys and a girl) was charming when it came about, but I always had this feeling that they didn’t actually like each other all that much. Seon Joon was far too busy looking down on everyone to actually be friends with any of them, and Jae Shin had a pretty big hatred for Seon Joon and the rest of the Norons. While I understand that the drama needed tension behind it, I wish that the writers could’ve come up with some other way to add tension that didn’t include the main guys not liking/trusting each other. There were so many moments that could have been used to bring the boys closer together, but the writers always seemed to opt for using every single situation as an excuse to push Seon Joon and Yoon Hee together. It just felt like a total waste of these other two brilliant characters they had in Yong Ha and Jae Shin. I actually thought Yong Ha as a character got shafted pretty badly.

You're so cute and so interesting and so underdeveloped

He’s one of our main quartet and he only gets a smidge of his back story shown right at the end. Yes, I suppose the drama could have been trying to maintain his air of mystery, but Yong Ha would have been so much more interesting throughout the whole series had we known he was masquerading as a nobleman.

A fangirl's fantasy

I also just plain wasn’t a fan of Yong Ha’s ambiguity when it came to the friendships. While it was cute that he just did things for fun and to stir up toruble, in the grand scheme of things it didn’t make a lot of sense. Yong Ha clearly knew that Yoon Hee was a girl and that Jae Shin liked her, and yet it felt like he was going out of his way to set Yoon Hee up with Seon Joon- even before it was clear that Yoon Hee liked Seon Joon. Which seems like a pretty cr*ppy thing to do to your best friend who is so obviously in love with this girl. These behaviours might have been excused if he’d actually had a crush on Jae Shin, and it seemed like the drama was going to go that way for a while before it pulled out, but as just friends its a bit of a d*uche move. The ending also left me a bit baffled. Yoon Hee was teaching at Sungkyunkwan, that much was obvious, but was she still pretending to be a man (the students called her Yoon Shik not Yoon Hee)? Her gender was outed to the King and the rest of the quartet had known for ages- but was it ever actually revealed to everyone? If so, how did she avoid punishment? And how did she end up teaching?

This whole ending was just a confusing attempt at fan-service

The new messenger that Jae Shin caught was also obviously a girl (as evidenced by Jae Shin's hiccups), and yet Jae Shin mentioned that she was studying at Sungkyunkwan. If the Geum Deung Ji Sa wasn't used then how did the King manage to get to that Joseon he dreamed of- and so quickly too. 

What Was Great:

Solid Base:

The ingredients for this drama were all there, it’s just that they weren’t put together quite right. Yoon Hee crossdressing was always going to be fun, and there were definitely some hilarious moments that were caused by this situation. The moments of friendship and bromance we got between the main four were usually pretty delightful, and left me wishing that there had more moments like them.

There were some cute moments

The idea behind the Geum Deung Ji Sa was a good one, and having these four scholars hand picked by the King was a great way to bring them together. The idea of political faction friction and the class divide was an interesting one, but I just don’t think it was used to its full potential. 

What Wasn’t:

Seon Joon:

I was not a fan of this character. He was boring and uninteresting and came across as exceedingly arrogant most of the time. From the start I got off on the wrong foot with this character when he was criticising Yoon Hee’s view of class divide,

Isn't cool, no, I don't like you

poverty and the world at large when he himself had only lead a severely sheltered life with a buttload of money and power. Despite Yoon Hee being constructed as a smart character, I always kind of felt like he was belittling her. Sure, I think it was more that the writers were trying to have him teach Yoon Hee and challenge her world views, but for me it just ended up causing him to come across as highly obnoxious. And then when he thought he was gay it only lead me to dislike him more. While Yoon see sometimes acted shallow and petty it was obvious that this arose out of jealousy. However, when Seon Joon started acting petty it wasn’t because he was annoyed with how close Yoon Hee and Jae Shin were, or because Cho Sun loved Yoon Hee, but because he himself liked her. And that’s a really stupid and childish reason to be mean to someone. To make matters worse, Seon Joon was actually engaged to another woman for most of this show’s run. And he treated her like total poo.

I felt so bad for this poor girl

Seon Joon used Hyo Eun to try and make Yoon Hee jealous and to try and get over his own feelings, and I’m never a fan of abusing a third party like that.

Go for the guy that makes you smile not the guy that makes you cry

Hyo Eun was sweet and naive and in no way deserved to have her feelings trampled on so carelessly the way Seon Joon did- especially when you consider that his selfish act of asking her to marry him and then changing his mind would have a huge societal impact on Hyo Eun regardless of which party broke the marriage off. Girls in Joseon whose engagements fall through aren’t exactly thought of nicely, and don’t tend to have a lot of suitors afterwards. It only made things worse that next to Seon Joon we had Jae Shin- who was encouraging and supportive of Yoon Hee, and always went out of his way to make her feel comfortable. Yoon Hee smiled more when she was with Jae Shin, which only made me question more why she liked Seon Joon. The whole relationship just felt forced. 

Aged:

I don’t think this drama has aged particularly well. I know that’s it’s almost 10 years old now, but the whole show felt very dated. From the way it was shot, to the side characters that were purely for slapstick comedic effect, to the way it took 500 years for the plot to get moving- everything just felt like it belonged in the past.

I know it's set in the past and all, but this drama just felt old

While there are a lot of K-Dramas that have withstood the test of time and remain engaging, interesting shows despite the year they were made, I don’t think ‘Sungkyunwan Scandal’ is one of them.

Recommend?

Not really. Despite still being one of the top K-Dramas people say are fabulous, I really don’t think there’s that much good stuff in this drama. I can see how it could’ve been amazing when it first came out- but that was a whole 8 years ago now.

I didn't really feel the sparkle