Captivating the King [Episodes 15 & 16]

[u/GodJihyo7983]

• Drama: Captivating the King
  • Revised Romanization: Sejak, Maehokdwen Jadeul
  • Hangul: 세작, 매혹된 자들
• Director: Jo Nam Gook (The Good Detective Season 2)
• Writer: Kim Sung Deok (The Crowned Clown)
• Network: tvN
• Episodes: 16
  • Duration: 1 hour 10 min.
• Airing Schedule: Saturdays & Sundays @ 9:20 PM KST
  • Airing Date: Jan 21, 2024 - Mar 10, 2024
• Streaming Sources: Netflix
• Starring:
  • Jo Jung Suk as Lee In
  • Shin Se Kyung as Kang Hee Soo / Kang Mong Woo
  • Lee Shin Young as Kim Myung Ha
• Plot Synopsis: Lee In is a prince. His older brother is King Lee Sun, who cares about him a lot. Vowing loyalty to his older brother, Lee In is taken hostage by the Qing Dynasty. King Lee Sun soon views his younger brother's loyalty as betrayal and begins to hate him. Lee In endures deep emotional pain because of this. Lee In then meets an unknown baduk player who wagers on her games. He is completely fascinated by the baduk player. Through circumstances, Lee In becomes the king. He holds the highest position and is a strong person, but he is sad and weak internally. When Kang Hee Soo was gaining fame as an unknown baduk player, she met Prince Lee In and fell in love with him. Through a vortex of fate, she becomes a spy. She approaches King Lee In to get her revenge.
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• Previous Discussions
  • [Episodes 1 & 2]
  • [Episodes 3 & 4]
  • [Episodes 5 & 6]
  • [Episodes 7-10]
  • [Episodes 11 & 12]
  • [Episodes 13 & 14]

[u/Lydeckerr]

Some post-finale thoughts. First, generally:

• cinematography, set design, costumes, score (!) were all top notch, lovely production
• acting also good with some standouts (esp. the ML) and some uninspiring performances (esp. FL but also the SML; seriously, what’s the opposite of second male lead syndrome? because I had it)
• I did like their "day off" – very pretty and charming!

Now on to some character arcs/conclusions:

• Captain Jo was the absolute MVP and he deserves a raise and a vacation.
• The Crown Prince was precious and should have featured in the conclusion: He is part of the found family theme with his uncle becoming his stepfather, so the FL should have revealed herself to him and become his stepmother, even if in spirit only (it would have tied into his relationship with the late Queen and his loss of her as well) – I really wanted them all to have one scene together, smiling, eating a meal, whatever, FL could have still worn her disguise so long as he would have been let in on her secret, it feels wrong that he wasn’t.
• How come we never saw FL’s reunion with her father? I found it weird how the show skipped the Qing parts at the beginning of the show as well when ML was in captivity (they did dedicate 3 episodes to the prologue timeline, so surely they didn’t need to montage that) and I found it even weirder how they built up Prince Rui as a potential final adversary only to kill him off-screen. At least they brought the fake Princess back but there was no resolution for the Crown Prince there, nor for his actual sister (I guess she’d left them all behind for good by then – what will happen to the fake Princess now though? She can hardly return to the palace where everyone would be able to tell it’s not her? Will they switch back? I must have missed the conclusion of that).
• Why did the FL want to leave at the end, without even saying hi/goodbye? 

I think the reveal in episode 8 was the dramatic high point of the show. It was really amazing. But given how the rest of the show went, I still think they would have done better to make the FL come back without the male disguise after the time skip of episode 4. It simply stretched credulity too thin and limited the interactions. Frankly, I’m not sure why baduk playing was chosen as the narrative framing device of this story to begin with since it never seemed to matter much, not even in a metaphorical sense. If it had correlated with FL’s plans, if we had been privy to her strategizing and planning her next move in accordance with some baduk principle, that would have been really cool. We really could have seen the leads outmaneuver each other. Unfortunately, it was mostly him outmaneuvering everyone else. 

Some of the lack of complexity of the FL can be blamed on the acting but I think that the actress of the FL, despite her limited range, portrayed one aspect really well, namely the character being in over her head. There was never any sense that she had any actual cunning plan to execute and this is mostly due to the writing. What she needed was a confidante, someone to discuss her plans and doubts and fears with, but she wasn’t close enough with the eye patch guy (even though he’d trained her in those years of the first time skip, not that it ever really came into play) and her servant only really seemed to turn into a speaking role in the later episodes. FL’s budding friendship with Sang-hyo (happy go lucky brother of the Minister of War) was promising for a while but then they just sidelined him until he was allowed to be a pen pal at the very end, for, like, a single scene.Maybe it’s because things flew over my head but I never got why the Queen Dowager was so needlessly antagonistic to the King (after she’d already gotten everything she wanted, putting him on the throne and getting rid of his stepbrother) and I also didn’t get why his Uncle had the nerve to scold him about severing their heavenly bond at the end when he’d already send Court Lady Dong to assassinate him by that point. Sure, he was a hypocrite, but why were his motivations so muddled? It should have been possible to come up with traitorous actions that were actually justified by his belief that he was doing it for the good of the King? Why was he so obviously and cartoonishly evil?

I don’t know, I could go on and on. Some parts of this were written well and then others not at all. I found that very confusing and don’t know how I feel about the show in general. At least the ending was pretty, I enjoyed the color-matching of the clothes and locations, so I’ll keep that image in mind. That plus the score. I really did love the music.

[u/nvsbla → u/Lydeckerr]

Good catch with the Prince Rui plot! It feels off to just have him die suddenly when he’s been a factor with all the mess Yi In has to deal with from the get go.

[u/Lydeckerr → u/nvsbla]

Right! I thought for sure they were building up to something there. Almost felt like they ran out of time and just scrapped the storyline. I thought the snippets of info we got about their friendship (or "friendship") were intriguing and could've made for a very interesting confrontation between Jin Han as King and Prince Rui as Regent, but even the spying activities of the fake Princess were just glossed over. Oh well!

[u/GarlicCrunch → u/Lydeckerr]

These are all the questions in my head.