Breathtaking 2 episodes!

Breathtaking because of how beautifully the narrative, cinematography, art direction etc. all come together, but also because I was literally holding my breath the whole time.

Once again, I want to go on record to say The Matchmakers is truly one of the very best series I have seen this year. I count myself blessed that 2023 started strongly and will end strongly -- bookmarked by my two favorites -- an explosive glittering AoS2 in Jan 23, and closing with the exquisite poetic beauty of MM in Dec 23. Nothing else in between matters much.

Top notch across all categories - I especially want to salute the writer for her complexity, compassion, humor, and loving care in breathing life into all these characters great and small that we have come to love laugh and cry with in 8 weeks.

Bravo show! NOW, pls stick the landing on Christmas Day - it will be such a gift to us! ❤❤❤

Don't say this please, @unit I am already scared as it is watching the preview. After all these cute moments and calling out for the noble idiocy, I won't bear the OTP not ending up together. My heart will break and I will cry my eyes out. Happy Ending for all the five couples please and I am also on board with Soo-deuk's son and real lady Yeoju being a match.

It's finally Wedding Day! Everything came around! All the couples are finally matched and all the shenanigans that led up to it even on the day of the wedding itself was delightful! I was pleasantly surprised when they reminded us that Our Grand Prince unintentionally made a lot of matches while working with the Maeng Sisters. My heart hurts and I miss each and every character already. Every moment is so pure and beautiful. Our adorable leads and all the youngsters are so sweet and kind, I don't know how to express how much I love them, and I'm just blabbering at this point. This drama is just purely all about love and I love the love. I love love.

Favorite moment: Sam-Soon-Gu and the see through hanbok

This show is so cute and so fun, even though I don't personally see a ton of chemistry between the two leads. I love them both as characters so much though and get enough romantic squeals from the other couples (besides the crown prince noona romance which is odd but seems fitting that they're not really lovey dovey, just waiting for a few years and it will be a fitting place for her). So I don't really mind that the leads don't have as much chemistry with each other. Such a fun ride!

I have never been more elated at the end of episode 15 before. Does this mean I’m going to be crushed at the end of episode 16? Please no 😓😭🤞But we got two of our couples safely married! I hope we don’t end next week without more scenes with Shi-yeol and Du-ri, who are so fantastic together. We haven’t gotten to see them when they are both aware of the other’s feelings like we have with Sam-soon-gu and I want more!

Sam-soon-gu (as we all know) is the cutest and I had to watch the scene where he is shielding her from the prying eyes of the mayor multiple times to appreciate how elated she was to be held by him. I think the verisimilitude of her romance scenes might increase from here on out. 😏

Yay for Jung-woo’s noble idiocy being short-lived and unconvincing! Soon-deok was having none of it, and I’m so glad. I understand why he thought that was the best course of action because he’s quite inexperienced, but it pretty much never is so I’m glad she shut it right down.

I just knew the reason Jung-woo had to stand in for the missing groom was height, I just knew it! That reveal was still so fun (and am I the only one who was distracted by Rowoon’s back in that scene? Somehow even under the wedding robe you could see it) and I’m massively in favor of our leads going through a wedding ceremony together.

I found Lady Park’s transition in episode 14 really interesting. To me it seemed like the stress of finding out the truth about how her son died, murdering her husband and brother, pinning everything on her dead son, and then clawing back some respectability for her family had finally taken its toll and she was starting to crack a bit. She’s been so controlled this whole time and has remained calm through super trying situations so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we were starting to see that break down. I think the revelation of why the king accepted her husband’s explanation (really her excuses) about the treason, that it was out of gratitude to her son, will probably take her farther down this road.

Thanks Unit for the recap, nicely capturing all of our sources of our anxiety!

I'm with those thinking this is easily the best sageuk, and certainly in the top three k dramas we've had this year. Fabulous acting, plotting, cinematography, sound, everything.

Wins so many points for subverting or avoiding all of the normal tropes, above all in providing best king ever!

My favourite moment in these two episodes was the bashful brother nervously gulping down drink, and the battle armour.

But the moment when Crown Prince told the story behind his sister's demise (and I'm guessing he knew exactly what he was saying and exactly who he was saying it to) was a close second.

I'm a bit worried about just what Lady Park's plan is though - she clearly has one, it clearly involves her demise (since she keeps saying Soon-deok will be head of the household soon), and gazing at that portrait of her by Jung-Moo.

Infuriating that we have to wait another week!

I love how much fun parts of these episodes were even with the darkness and drama intertwined throughout it all. This drama has managed to do such a good balance of humor and smaller moments of touching genuine interactions to go with the big period drama plot.

I also absolutely loved the subversion of the annoying break up to protect the other person cliche. Jung woo tried to do it but Soon Doek knew him too well to believe it and they talked to each other like two people truly meant to be together and gave the best resolution to that short lived trope. Destiny or not, they belong together in every way.

I also love that this drama has both a lovely lead couple and absolutely amazing secondary characters. Loved Doo Ri laying a kiss on her husband and then cussing out the chief, and Soon Gu being bashful with a confident and ecstatic Sam Soon but then springing into action and almost taking the chief's eye out with the chopstick. Ye Jin finally choosing happiness and running away to be with the man she loves made me so happy too and created the funniest set of scenes at a wedding ever.

Lady Park is such a great antagonist. She feels so real, she's not a cardboard villain, she truly thinks she's doing what she thinks is the right way to approach power and that scene of her getting shaken up by realizing what her son actually knew and managed to accomplish with his death was great.

The preview for the last episode looked pretty dark but things have been misleading before, i hope this delightful show has the right ending.

The wedding machinations are more thrilling than a heist movie and Soon-deok is general moving things into place. I loved how they got so many people involved- some were in on the plan (even the real Yeojoodaek's daughter!) and some where their well-placed pawns. Also, the whole thing was gorgeous to watch and listen to. I'm glad the drama stuck with instrumental music.

Soon-deok and Jung-woo both had their moments going toe-to-toe with Lady Park, and they were glorious.

Will we never see this mysterious nephew prince?

I knew Jung-woo couldn't stay away from Soon-deok. I LOLed when he rushed to see Soon-deok after she wrote to ask to see him for matching Yeojudaek and Former Prison Guard. He was complaining and Soon-deok commented and how quick he came to see her!

I loved how they matched up Yeojudaek and Former Prison Guard and having that sequence emphasize that people don't get together just because they were fated to marry, but because they love each other. However, sometimes believing in fate, destiny, and the whole "meant-to-be" stuff helps relieve people's worries and doubts and feel supported by a greater power so that they can move forward. And that's fine too.

Soon-gu wants Samsoon to tone down the erotic scenes, but he pays attention to them too... He's so incredibly proper that he can't even imagine that sheer, sexy clothing can exist. Samsoon will have to take the lead during their wedding night.

Shi-yeol was right that Doori has a tender heart under her strong interior and sharp tongue.

Doori really dodged a bullet with #16. I LOL how they gave him unflattering filming angles now that he's been revealed to be a terrible guy. Guess he hadn't heard the news about Doori being the future Crown Princess's sister!

Glad we also got glimpses of #12 and #23's weddings!

I think the writing is handling Hana and the Crown Prince quite sensitively with their moms emphasizing the companionship aspect. 17 seems to be the minimum age for marriage among non-royals (Soon-deok wants Jung-woo to wait 5-7 years so she can marry off her son first before living before eloping with Jung-woo), so I don't see them have a physical marriage until the CP is 17

51 minutes and 56 seconds of Noble Idiocy, and it’s not too bad! Considering that in the past 2 hours was a standard runtime of a trope, I harbor a bright future in the dramaland, when hopefully it’ll be reduced to 20 minutes, please!

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a happy ending because it would be shocking if they showed the actual ending in the preview, at least I have not seen anything like that in dramaland yet. So cheer up Beanies, I’m sure our couple will find a clever way out of a tricky situation.

And, Show, would it have been so hard to show more wedding night canoodling between our main OTP, and adorbs Roowon getting all bashful and eager like he would surely be?!?

Highlights for me in no order of merit:

(i) Du-ri: Oh my dear dear Du-ri. The oft-neglected middle child trope gets blown to smithereens this time round when our feisty chili-padi made me cry as she shares why she pledged not to marry (the pathos!) and then made me LOL with her oh-so-salty cusswords on the Magistrate (well-deserved ha!) such a treat watching her. Also her Confucian boy exploding into indignant fury on her behalf was a delight to watch lol -- a first too.

(ii) The translucent battle dress: too hilarious for words. "Can you be less lewd, or at least more realistic?" (let me show you *how* realistic this is 😉)

(iii) Ye-jin doing her runaway bride marathon in that onerously heavy bridal gear (you go gal!) - I love how she went: "I am yours now!" (I could almost cry cos aside from our OTP, this is the couple with the greatest angst, deepest history, and highest barrier to happiness). So them crossing the finish line by hook or by crook just spikes my optimism quotient for the Finale ending.

(iv) Definitely the bombshell / cold cold dish of revenge served back to Lady Park in that quietly worded revelation: "It was not you, but your son who saved your family." (with JW proceeding to tell her exactly WHY and HOW) Oh the knife twist! Bleed, Lady Park.

(again, can I say how much I love the quiet restraint, measured cadence and evenhanded tone of this story -- how rare! and what a refreshing delight!)

(v) again the amazing attention to details: everything has a payoff. We finally solved the pilot's mystery of how the Princess died in Ep 15.
The allusion to the seemingly ominous "Fairy and Woodcutter" folktale is now directly addressed and given an unexpected twist. If her son sees himself as the woodcutter who really is just having this fairy on borrowed time (until she has borne him 4 kids) then the narrative logic should hold through that it means her son will have to let her go when the time is right (fairy returns to heaven when she finds her winged clothes).

(vi) Love the King & Queen - best royalty couple EVER in a saguek drama! The mtg between the mothers-in-law was so pleasant and cordial, and we realise the key thing holding back the king from granting the annulment was hurting his bereaved wife. Once the queen gave her blessings, he was all in for JW.
We already see that foreshadowed when it is her son who gave her his heartfelt blessings as a fairy matchmaker blessing soulmates in love.

If The Matchmakers sticks the landing, it will be my favorite Kdrama of 2023. Someone mentioned that the writing for this show is quite Shakespearean and I can't agree more. Shakespeare would have surely approved of this comedy of errors!

May the King and Queen continue to rule with their level-headedness. They really are a good pair, they consult each other and hear each other out. A direct opposite of Lady Park and Lord Jo.

When Lady Park suggested that JW accompany Prince Jisung, she asked the King to do the exact opposite, which resulted in JW's wedding to be annulled. Way to go Queen! The ladies are really cunning in MM.

Love Samsoon teasing the very staid Soon-gu. And the actual use of the translucent lingerie. Love the sisterly love and affection between Doori and Samsoon.

The story how SD and JW became the groom and bride was funny and nerve-wracking at the same time. Does this mean that they're married? I get kilig whenever JW calls SD "booin" O-Bong being swallowed by the groom's clothes was hilarious. That tag-team between O-Bong and Bok-hee was great.

All-in-all a very satisfying penultimate episode. Crossing my fingers (eyes, legs) for a HAPPY and satisfying ending. Kudos to everyone behind and in front of the cameras in the creation of The Matchmakers.

This drama never ceases to impress me.

Of course, Jung-Woo was a cutie being alone in his big house. I really could feel his loneliness. When you see the other houses, there are a lot of maids who clean and make the food. But for him, there is only O Bong (who is the best!) who doesn't live with him.

Even the King realized the consequences of his daughter's death on Jung-Woo and I think it made stronger his decision to annul the marriage. I love their scenes together.

Soon-Deok is small and cute but she's very strong. She isn't scared by her MIL when everybody is. She saw through Jung-Woo and took measure to console and reassure him. The hug was cute.

I didn't think we will get the big wedding in the penultimate episode. But everything we saw in the 14 episodes before made sense in the 15th episode :
- Sam-Soon always wanted to get married and she got it! She was of course very upfront with her timid new husband.
- Doori had good reasons to sign the non-mariage contract. Her mother lost the man she loved, ended with a coward scholar who did nothing for his family, let his mother poison his wife and made his daughters earned money... It's cute how the sisters protected their younger one from the truth. I'm happy she had the possibility to marry the only one who could interest her and she took the things over control when she understood the situation. Maeng women are the best!
- Ye-Jin tried to be strong for so long for her family. But I'm happy she finally chose her happiness because it was very sad to see her drink so much. I hope she will get in time with #24!
- I know a lot of people have issue with Crown Prince Lee Jae and Ha-Na. But I don't see their relationship as lovers but as friends who have the same vision. They're soulmate in this sense.
- The Princess's death : we finally know how the poison for the Prince ended to kill the Princess. I don't think the Prince knew the consequences of what he was saying because he didn't look sad or feeling guilty. The confrontation between Lady Park and Jung-Woo was great. She's the one who caused more damage to her own son with her husband when the King was the one who recognized him.

Now, we need the last episode to find a solution to let our cute ducks to be happy!

The wedding scene with the blue and red colors was really beautiful. I like the details like how Rowoon's clothes weren't properly placed on his back, because he was pressed by the time, when the other 2 grooms were looking good. The scene between Soon-Deok and Jung-Woo was very funny, I loved how we could see their confusion in their eyes.

"You know what I hate in stories, 'I am leaving you because I love you'" - Thank you SD for saying this. All the writers please take note. No one enjoys noble idiocy, starting from the characters who do it to the audience. If you want angst bring it from somewhere else, not through noble idiocy. I loved how SD handled it. I think we all expected her to deal with it that way and she did it. We have understood her character well.

So if the past 15 episodes have shown us something, it is that when the stakes are high, the hijinks are higher, but they've always found a solution. For the last episode, we have the biggest question and the most impossible looking situation. So we will probably get a more complicated solution. I just wish we had at least 2 more episodes left because I want to see our adorable JW living a married life. (I am totally going to assume that they live happily ever after, until Monday's episode, it is needed for my mental health).

I was wondering about the concept of 'fated ones'. If we marry someone, doesn't it automatically make that person our destiny / fate? So the thread that we see or the heartache that JW gets is for people who are soul mates probably? or that one person in this world with whom you're a perfect fit (like that The One series, where they match DNA to find the perfect match).

I love that they're going for 2 people can fall in love and be very happy together even if they are not the fated ones. I would have liked if they had also shown a 2 soul mates concept, because I truly believe in that. Not just 2, I believe that there can be more soul mates. Some of these we'll never meet, just because we are in an entirely different part of the world or something.

Anyway, it's early morning here and I am completely off on a tangent, thinking about soul mates.

How I wish this series was on Netflix, it would have reached different heights. Extraordinary series, definitely my top in 2023 I think and I was seriously obsessed with Jun Ho and KTL for a good 3 months, so it's saying something (don't judge me, I discovered Jun Ho this year and I have Jun Ho syndrome that will never be cured).

“Your greed killed the princess and also your own son,”
This is my fav line and scene, eat that Lady Park!

The consummation night is really hilarious, I love that Duri 'save' their weeding night and Soon-gu 'protects' his bride.

and we only have 1 episode left!

@unit, thanks for the recap !
What a show. Humor, romance, murder mystery , royal family politics.
The frantic team meeting as the wedding day plans fell apart 😂
The Cookie of Death ☠️ reveal 😢
So many squee worthy moments between the various couples..
Looking forward to final episode.

It's wonderful that this drama just kept getting better all through its run, culminating in these two perfect episodes. I loved everything about them, from Soon-deok cutting through all of Lady Park's nonsense rationalizations for her own greed by speaking the simple truth to her, to the beautiful colors and staging of the wedding scenes, to the suspense over how everything could possibly be resolved. Even though this is a fantasy sageuk in the purest sense in that it's imagining a historical world in which women had agency in their romantic lives, it has an internal logic and practical sensibility that makes it so fun to watch.

I'm wondering if in the end Lady Park will redeem herself by concocting a scheme by which Jun-woon and Soon-deok can be together.

Finally, I continue to wish they had cast an older looking actor to play the CP (the fact that he's 14 would never had made a romance feel less than icky, but if he actually looked like someone in his late teens it would be easier to watch) but I can see how the show wants us to see them as tempermentally well suited.

Sam-soon and her groom must just have their own drama as leads. That’s a wholesome, innocent looking love story! My best pairing 🩷🩷🩷🩷. The lingerie was such a cherry on top!! *squuuuuill*

This show! I love it so much so far that I am scared for the last episode... Oh well, it is a thing of beauty till now, so will try to be zen, however the last episode goes.🧘🏻
How it should go though - my anti-shero Mme Park heard about her son, so she told her daughter to run away to the man she loves, made her daughter-in-law stand in for her, gave OBong too long clothes, so that JW had to substitute on the other side, will out them both in the consummation room, pretend with the king to kill them both, send them out somewhere to live happily ever after, send her grandson to live with his aunt and kill herself in remorse. 🙃

@unit Thank you for a good recap. Ep.15 was great fun. Now, I am all set to enjoy Ep.16, whatever be the outcome.

I started watching this late and have now arrived at ep 15. I haven't read the recap yet obviously, as I don't want to read about what I have yet to see. For the same reason I haven't read any of the comments and won't until I'm finished .... BUT -

I just can't keep quiet about the awful clashing colours of the clothes. I really have never seen so many ugly colours grouped together on so many people. The men less so, as they are clad in one main colour but the women, god almighty!

It has bothered me so much throughout that I am now at the point of going UGH at just about everyone who comes into view. The ugly colour clashing was obviously a deliberate choice, but a horrible one as far as this particular viewer is concerned. Unless the costume designer is colour blind, what were they thinking? Just UGH.