Early Access: The King: Eternal Monarch E1

E1. I find myself surprisingly entertained by episode 1; way more than I’d expected to be. This is quite possibly due to the extremely low expectations I had, going into this show.

Show is expensively produced, polished and shiny to look at, and feels glossy and carefully finished. The music is well-handled, in that I don’t find it intrusive, and at key moments, the music chosen does work to amp up the feels.

Also, so far, this doesn’t feel like a show that will make my brain hurt, but perhaps it’s too early to say. This episode felt like quite a breeze to get through, considering that I don’t generally care for Kim Eun Sook’s stuff. So far, it doesn’t feel like the kind of connect-the-dots writing that I’m used to, from her. Everything feels quite thought-through, from what I can tell, so I hope Show keeps it up.

It helps to know ahead of time that there are time travel elements involved, so I can already guess that the version of Tae Eul that rescues young Lee Gon is from a timeline that’s in the future, since 2019 Tae Eul still has no idea of the parallel universe thing.

I think my enjoyment of episode 1 was helped by the fact that Lee Min Ho is only in about half the episode. The kid actors did well, and I am suitably amused that Precocious Crybaby grows up to be the very decorous and rather stiff Captain of the Royal Guard. Dare I hope that he’s still got some of that precocious crybaby inside of him?

Lee Min Ho is.. ok. Which is more than I’d dared hope for, so this is a reasonably promising start. I don’t hate him in this, which is the positive. But, I do think that he lacks gravitas, charisma and screen presence, for a king. He doesn’t give me the regal, commanding vibe that I expect of a king, and I’m not talking about whether he’s fierce or laidback; a king has to have a regal kind of presence, where he commands attention and respect, just by being. And Lee Min Ho’s not managing that, so far. Even the slo-mo and echoed footsteps effects that are applied to amplify the moment he meets Tae Eul, don’t give him a boost in the gravitas department. I can see why some people say that he seems to be sleepwalking through this role. But, let’s see. It could get better.

Another positive, is that I don’t hate Kim Go Eun in this. I’d been wary that I’d hate Tae Eul, since I’d heard that she can be quite brash and annoying. So far, she isn’t brash or annoying to me, and that’s a cautiously optimistic start. Even when she’s ordering Lee Gon to get off his horse, she doesn’t come off as giving him attitude. She just seems to be doing her job, while kind of tired, because she’s had a long day. Not bad.

As for the Prime Minister of Corea, I get why people roll her eyes at her ambition of snagging the king. As a Prime Minister, she doesn’t come across as very businesslike at all, and all we’ve seen her do is try her best to flirt with the king. I agree she would be much more interesting if she had more to her than this ambition to be queen, but, she does fit squarely into the type of second female lead character that most kdramas traditionally have, in that she exists mainly to pine after the male lead, and scheme her way into his arms. I’ll just keep in mind that this is pretty much all she’s here for, and if I don’t expect more from her, this shouldn’t be a big issue for me.

Lee Jung Jin is doing a nice job of being our resident baddie who doesn’t age. I was rather startled when he killed his parallel universe self, but once it became clear that he wanted to use the body to fake his own death, it made sense why he’d do that. And I can believe he’d do that; after all, he killed his own brother, and attempted to kill his young nephew.

Also, it seems that Rim had already had an inkling that parallel universes existed, since he’d remarked something along the lines of “I thought so,” when he got to Korea. Is this a concept that’s fairly top of mind in Corea, since Gon doesn’t seem overly shocked either, upon arriving in Seoul?

What I do find an issue this episode, is that Show isn’t always clear about which universe we’re in, and I found myself sometimes a little confused, until I could get my bearings. I hope that doesn’t turn into a Thing. In a story with parallel universes, I think it’s important not to lose your audience.